The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it's never been told before in this gripping, true crime story by the author of Tokyo Vice.

Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese, living in small-town Japan. He has two talents: playing guitar and picking fights. When his dream of being a rock star fails to materialize, he turns to the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer performance, loyalty, and brute force--the yakuza.

Saigo, nicknamed Tsunami, quickly realizes that even within the organization, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.

The internal politics of the yakuza are dizzyingly complex, and between the ever-shifting web of alliances and the encroaching hand of the law that pushes them further and further underground, Saigo finds himself in the middle of a defining decades-long battle that will determine the future of the yakuza.

Written with the insight of an expert on Japanese organized crime and the compassion of a longtime friend, investigative journalist Jake Adelstein presents a sprawling biography of a yakuza, through postwar desperation, to bubble-era optimism, to the present. Including a cast of memorable yakuza bosses--Coach, the Buddha, and more--this is a story about the rise and fall of a man, a country, and a dishonest but sometimes honorable way of life on the brink of being lost.

Adelstein, Jake

Jake Adelstein was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper, from 1993 to 2005, and from 2006 to 2007 was the chief investigator for a US State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. He is also the public relations director for the Washington, DC-based Polaris Project Japan, which combats human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade. Adelstein has written for The Daily Beast/Newsweek, The Independent, and The Guardian, and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic Wire. He has appeared on CNN, NPR, the BBC, and other media outlets as a commentator on yakuza-related news and Japan's nuclear industry giant, TEPCO.