Overview
Known for their striking full-body tattoos and severed fingertips, Japan's gangsters comprise a criminal class eighty thousand strong--more than four times the size of the American Mafia. Despite their criminal nature, the yakuza are accepted by fellow Japanese to a degree guaranteed to shock most Westerners. Here is the first book to reveal the extraordinary reach of Japan's Mafia. Originally published in 1986, Yakuza was so controversial in Japan that it could not be published there for five years. But in the West it has long served as the standard reference on Japanese organized crime, inspiring novels, screenplays, and criminal investigations. David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro spent nearly two decades conducting hundreds of interviews with everyone from street-level hoodlums and police to Japan's most powerful godfathers. The result is a searing indictment of corruption in the world's second-largest economy. This updated, expanded, and thoroughly revised edition of Yakuza tells the full story of Japan's remarkable crime syndicates, from their feudal start as bands of medieval outlaws to their emergence as billion-dollar investors in real estate, big business, art, and more.
Full Product Details
Author: David E. Kaplan ,
Alec Dubro
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Edition: 2nd edition
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.476kg
ISBN: 9780520215627
ISBN 10: 0520215621
Pages: 422
Publication Date: 01 February 2003
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Out of Print
Availability: In Print
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.
Reviews
State-of-the-art investigative reporting...must reading for those who consider themselves already highly conversant with yakuza activities...disturbing.
A superb study of Japan's underworld that is both entertaining and revealing. The authors miss none of the color and curious detail of the yakuza style, but at the same time go far beyond surface observations. Blend the Mafia with the Masons. Let them simmer a while, then fold in the Ku Klux Klan and you'll have the yakuza....Important and timely...Yakuza will serve for years as the source document on Japanese organized crime. State-of-the-art investigative reporting...must reading for those who consider themselves already highly conversant with yakuza activities...disturbing. The book is laden with fascinating information, some of it heretofore unavailable in English.
The book is laden with fascinating information, some of it heretofore unavailable in English. A superb study of Japan's underworld that is both entertaining and revealing. The authors miss none of the color and curious detail of the yakuza style, but at the same time go far beyond surface observations. Blend the Mafia with the Masons. Let them simmer a while, then fold in the Ku Klux Klan and you'll have the yakuza....Important and timely...Yakuza will serve for years as the source document on Japanese organized crime. State-of-the-art investigative reporting...must reading for those who consider themselves already highly conversant with yakuza activities...disturbing.
Author Information
David E. Kaplan covers organized crime and terrorism for U.S. News & World Report. He is coauthor of The Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult (1996) and author of Fires of the Dragon: Politics, Murder and the Kuomingtang (1992). Alec Dubro is a freelance journalist and communications consultant for labor and non-profit groups. He is past president of the National Writers Union.
