Last Yakuza: life and death in the Japanese underworld

The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it’s never been told before.

Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force – the yakuza.

Saigo, nicknamed Tsunami, quickly realises that even within the organisation, 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 organised crime and the compassion of a longtime friend, investigative journalist Jake Adelstein presents a sprawling biography of a yakuza, through post-war 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.



‘Journalist Adelstein parlays decades of reporting on Japanese organised crime into a propulsive history of the yakuza. Drawing on interviews with both his yakuza and Japanese law enforcement contacts, he examines how yakuza groups obtained power … He’s especially good at tracing the yakuza’s political influence in Japan, explaining how they bribed and blackmailed legislators into opposing bills that would have curbed their influence. Painstakingly reported and paced like a thriller, this is a must-read for anyone interested in organised crime.’
-Publishers Weekly

Praise for Tokyo Vice-
‘Tokyo Vice is about Japanese subculture. Adelstein instructs us in the vagaries of Japanese journalism and provides a gamy, colourful tour of the morally flexible areas of Japan, particularly in Tokyo. He also shows how Japanese police work and interact with journalists. Adelstein shares juicy, salty, and occasionally funny anecdotes, but many are frightening … Adelstein doesn’t lack for self-confidence … but beneath the bravado are a big heart and a relentless drive for justice.’
-Carlo Wolff, The Boston Globe

Praise for Tokyo Vice-
‘ Adelstein’s juicy and vividly detailed account of investigations into the shadowy side of Japan shows him to be more enterprising, determined and crazy than most … Adelstein builds his stories with as much surprise and grit as any Al Pacino or Mark Wahlberg movie, blurring the lines between the cops, the crooks and even the journalists … Tokyo Vice is often so snappy and quotable that it sounds as if it were a treatment for a Scorsese movie set in Queens … E ven as he is getting slapped around by thugs and placed under police protection, Adelstein never loses his gift for crisp storytelling and an unexpectedly earnest eagerness to try to rescue the damned.’
-Pico Iyer, Time

Format: Paperback
Pages: 416
Imprint: Scribe Australia
Publication date: 31/10/2023