A riveting, behind-the-scenes look at the life and times of yakuza mob
boss Makoto Saigo, aka Tsunami, by America s foremost expert on Japanese
organized crime.
Makoto Saigocould have been a rock star. Instead he became a yakuza.
Born in Japan, but the son of an American-born Japanese woman who moved
back to Japan to avoid internment camps Saigo was never a typical
Japanese boy. As a child, other children referred to him as a damn
American, or simply a non-person. He was always an outsider, but as a
teenager in 1970s Tokyo he found his tribe in Japan s notorious
motorcycle gangs the "B s zuko." His life was full of speed, whether
synthetically through crystal meth, mechanically from the engine of his
bike, or rhythmically as he played guitar for Japan pioneering punk-rock
group Gedo. But a chance encounter and perhaps a bit too much lust for
life that kept leading him to Toyko s notorious red light district
placed him on a different path of becoming a boss in the Inagawa-kai,
the country s third largest organized-crime group.
Full of swordfights, gun battles, finger amputation, rock n roll,
financial crimes, gang wars, tattoos, and personal vendettas, Saigo s
story is one of a kind. But it is not the only story told here. "The
Last Yakuza "also tells the history of the yakuza since World War II,
and explains how the yakuza became so entrenched in Japan. Saigo s life
is the axis around which tales of yakuza life and their role in Japanese
society are told. It is the story of one yakuza boss not a good man, but
a man with a code of honor and the history of the rise and fall of Japan
s underworld as it is almost literally tattooed on his body and charted
by his missing finger.
(With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)"
