It’s a book about being a journalist in Japan, about the Japanese sex industry and about the Japanese mob (yakuza).
The book markets itself as being very much about the yakuza and revealing some amazing stories about the yakuza, and it does. The only problem I had with it is that it’s equally as much about the authors life in Japan and the sex industry. The information about the sex industry was just as interesting, if not more interesting, than the information about the yakuza though. The information about the authors life was, well, a 4 out of 10 read.
I would recommend the book, but only if you really can’t find anything better to read for the moment or are truly interested in reading about true investigative journalism.
I now know, perhaps more than I wanted, about the Japanese sex industry, human trafficking and the workings of the yakuza. Although I have two upcoming books that cover the sex industry and the yakuza respectively, so in a while I’ll know even more about it.
One funny little factoid I found in the book that was humorous is a weird way was that one of the biggest types of front-company for the yakuza is management consulting. Apparently a lot of yakuza are “management consultants”.