Confessions of a Yakuza

Junichi Saga transcribes the life story of Eiji Ijichi, an aging yakuza boss who recounted his experiences in Japan's criminal underworld from the 1920s through the postwar decades before his death. The oral history captures gambling culture, notions of gang honour and episodic violence, offering a rare, unmediated intimate portrait of organised crime from one who lived it.

ISBN 9784770019486 · Kodansha International · 1997