Yakuza
Tokyo Vice - Jake Adelstein
At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime... crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. Working eighty-hour weeks for twelve years, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face-to-face with Japan's most infamous yakuza boss - and the threat of death for him and his family - Adelstein decided to step down... momentarily. Then, he fought back.
Yakuza - David E. Kaplan, Alec Dubro
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. Yakuza is the first book to reveal the extraordinary reach of Japan's Mafia.
The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura
Nishimura is a seasoned pickpocket, weaving through Tokyo's crowded streets, in search of potential targets. He has no family, no friends, no connections. But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when his old partner-in-crime reappears and offers him a job he can't refuse. Suddenly, Nishimura finds himself caught in a web so tangled and intricate that even he might not be able to escape.
The Night of Baba Yaga - Akira Otani
Fierce, mixed-race fighter Shindo has been kidnapped by the yakuza. After brutally beating most of them in an attempt to escape, she is forced to work as a bodyguard to protect the gang boss's sheltered daughter Shoko, a strange, friendless eighteen-year-old who could order Shindo's death in a moment. At first Shindo derides Shoko's naïvete, but as the men around them grow ever more bloodthirsty and controlling, she becomes ferociously devoted to her charge. However, she knows that if things continue as they are, neither woman can expect to survive much longer. But could there ever be a different life for two people like them?
Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife. Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story. Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival.