Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese, living in small-town Japan. He has two talents: playing guitar and picking fights. When his dream of being a rock star fails to materialize, he turns to the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer performance, loyalty, and brute force--the yakuza.

Saigo, nicknamed Tsunami, quickly realizes that even within the organization, 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 organized crime and the compassion of a longtime friend, investigative journalist Jake Adelstein presents a sprawling biography of a yakuza, through postwar 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.