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. Here is the first book to reveal the extraordinary reach of Japan's Mafia. Originally published in 1986, Yakuza was so controversial in Japan that it could not be published there for five years. But in the West it has long served as the standard reference on Japanese organized crime, inspiring novels, screenplays, and criminal investigations. David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro spent nearly two decades conducting hundreds of interviews with everyone from street-level hoodlums and police to Japan's most powerful godfathers. The result is a searing indictment of corruption in the world's second-largest economy.

This updated, expanded, and thoroughly revised edition of Yakuza tells the full story of Japan's remarkable crime syndicates, from their feudal start as bands of medieval outlaws to their emergence as billion-dollar investors in real estate, big business, art, and more.

日本的黑帮以其引人注目的全身纹身和断指而闻名，他们组成了一个八万人的犯罪阶层--是美国黑手党规模的四倍多。尽管山口组具有犯罪性质，但他们被日本人所接受，其程度足以让大多数西方人震惊。这是第一本揭示日本黑手党的非凡影响力的书。山口组》最初出版于1986年，在日本引起了很大的争议，以至于五年内都无法在日本出版。但在西方，它长期以来一直是日本有组织犯罪的标准参考资料，激发了小说、电影剧本和刑事调查。大卫-卡普兰（David E. Kaplan）和亚历克-杜布罗（Alec Dubro）花了近二十年的时间，对从街头流氓和警察到日本最有权势的教父等人进行了数百次采访。其结果是对世界第二大经济体的腐败进行了尖锐的控诉。

这本经过更新、扩充和彻底修订的《山口组》讲述了日本这个了不起的犯罪集团的全部故事，从他们作为中世纪亡命之徒的封建开始，到他们成为房地产、大企业、艺术等方面的亿万投资者。