Product Description

Yakuza Moon is the shocking, yet intensely moving memoir of 37-year-old Shoko Tendo, who grew up the daughter of a yakuza boss. Tendo lived her life in luxury until the age of six, when her father was sent to prison and her family fell into terrible debt. Bullied by classmates and terrorized at home by a father who became a drunken, violent monster after his release from prison, Tendo rebelled. A regular visitor to nightclubs at the age of 12, she soon became a drug addict and a member of a girl gang. At 15 she was sentenced to eight months in a juvenile detention center.
Adulthood brought big bucks and glamour when Tendo started working as a bar hostess during Japan's booming bubble economy of the nineteen-eighties. But among her many rich and loyal patrons there were also abusive clients, one of whom beat her so badly that her face was left permanently scarred. When her mother died, Tendo plunged into such a deep depression that she tried to commit suicide twice.
Tendo takes us through the bad times with warmth and candor, and gives a moving and inspiring account of how she overcame a lifetime of discrimination and hardship. Getting tattooed, from the base of her neck to the tips of her toes, with a design centered on a geisha with a dagger in her mouth, was an act that empowered her to start making changes in her life. She quit her job as a hostess. On her last day at the bar she looked up at the full moon, a sight she never forgot. The moon became a symbol of her struggle to become whole, and the title of the book she wrote as an epitaph for herself and her family.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69375 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Tendo, the daughter of a yakuza (mob) boss, grew up in 1970s and '80s Japan, living through the booms and busts of life on the wrong side of the law. Her first published work, Shoko uses unpracticed but appropriately blunt prose to memoir her exceedingly arduous life; readers will appreciate her restrained but powerful details, especially during some of the harsher scenes. From age 12 onwards, Shoko's life was enveloped in drug addiction, poverty, psychological and sexual abuse, miscarriage, attempted suicide and the deaths of many close family members, set against a backdrop of Japan's ultra-secretive yakuza society. Admiration and a detached style keep Tendo from exploring any resentment she might harbor toward her criminal father, which may prove off-putting for some, but feels entirely honest given the emotional trauma Tendo suffers, and is as revealing for what it includes as for what it doesn't. Emotionally complex and thoroughly heart-rending, this book is recommended for anyone searching for a more thorough and personal understanding of Japanese society, and its darker corners, than is offered by more popular Japanese imports (movies, comic books) featuring similar subject matter.
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Review

" ...A fast read... And her best-selling book has been reprinted 11 times in Japan. Maybe its because it tells it how it is, and its hardly a romantic portrait of the gangster life."--Giant Robot
"...Deserves an enormous amount of credit for her willingness to love and accept her family - and herself - regardless of their flaws."--Bust
"Powerful" Bloomberg News Service
"... Shining a light into a dark and little understood corner of modern Japan." --The Guardian (U.K.)
"Emotionally complex and thoroughly heart-rending, this book is recommended for anyone searching for a more thorough and personal understanding of Japanese society."--Publishers Weekly.com
"Yakuza Moon is a very personal book about a young woman's struggle to survive in a hostile and brutal environment, and it gives a rare insight into 'life in the other side' in Japan."--Asia Times Online

About the Author

Yakuza Moon is Shoko Tendo's first book. She currently lives in Tokyo with her baby daughter, and is working on her second book, a lighthearted look at the life of a single mother.

Customer Reviews

Yakuza Moon - Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter
Entertaining read, a very short rushed biography i thought it was not detailed as a biography should be.

Yakuza?
I read an article about the author of this book, with a photo shoot of her tattoos and short description of the book as a candid and open look of being apart of a Yakuza family. I was very much intrigued, but the book really isn't "memoirs of a gangster's daughter" and has very little to do with the Yakuza at all. The book is an autobiography about a troubled childhood with a wild father, which then leads to a rebellious adolescence and then a string of doomed relationships, interspersed with the author's regret and apologies to her family. Although her father and some of her boyfriends have been Yakuza members, there's no insight to how her life has been affected by the Yakuza organization. The book reads like she had a deadbeat dad who she then dates cabon copies of. There is very little to do with understanding the Yakuza organization or the organization's involvement in her life.

If you disregard the misleading title, the book topic wise is an interesting account. The language is very simple, where details are clipped to the point of emotional detachment. For example she describes feelings of love, but there's very little said to make the reader understand why. However, something have been lost in its translation.

Closing summary: Should not be called Yakuza moon, since it has nothing to do with the Yakuza.

I couldn't put it down!
Shoko Tendo's Yakuza Moon is an amazing recollection of her life as a Yakuza daughter. I couldn't put it down and finished the book in 2 hrs. I just could not put the book down. I look forward to reading more books written by Shoko.