Yakuza Audiobook By Andrew Rankin cover art

Yakuza

A 400-Year History of the Japanese Underworld
Pre-order: Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can listen catalog of 150K+ audiobooks and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Yakuza

By: Andrew Rankin
Pre-order: Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order for $28.79

Pre-order for $28.79

The definitive history of Japanese organized crime, from its origins in samurai-era black markets and gambling rings to the shadowy syndicates of the present.

Japan’s gangster groups, known collectively as the yakuza, are among the oldest underworld societies in the world. With military-style organization and a code of absolute obedience, they have run Japan’s black markets for centuries. They have remained strikingly conspicuous in Japanese society, and as a cultural force beyond Japan, with movies and video games celebrating their exploits globally.

Andrew Rankin offers the first comprehensive history of the yakuza, from their emergence out of seventeenth-century samurai gang culture to the present day. Though their activities have always encompassed illegal gambling and sex trafficking, the yakuza have also aggressively maintained business interests in private security, the construction industry, the entertainment industry, and debt collection. Yakuza bosses acquired a degree of legitimacy by styling themselves as peacekeepers maintaining order at society’s bottom end. Yet that legitimacy has come into doubt in recent years as Japan’s contracting economy has pushed the yakuza into increasingly predatory criminal activities.

Featuring a lively cast of extortionists, smugglers, hit men, and corporate crime lords, Yakuza is a fascinating tour of Japan’s sprawling mob syndicates and the cultural traditions with which they are so deeply intertwined. Asia Biographies & Memoirs Historical Japan Organized Crime True Crime World

Critic reviews

“Andrew Rankin has produced the yakuza book that everyone has been waiting for. The clear-eyed narrative is studded with vivid vignettes and pen portraits, and the twists and turns of mobster life are securely located in the context of Japan’s tumultuous modernization. Yakuza is both shrewd and engrossing.”—John Dickie, author of Cosa Nostra
No reviews yet