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: #529810 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9784770030429
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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

Bloody Moon
Whereas the samurai encapsulates the image of the pre-modern ideal of Japanese masculinity through his martial skill, stoic nature, self discipline, and code of honor, the yakuza, Japanese gangster, supposedly carries on a number of these traditions in the modern, or post-modern, world, especially the codes of honor and respect for not only his superiors but his inferiors. Wearing traditional Japanese garb, an expensive Western suit, or a loud aloha shirt, pockets full of money from sometimes questionable businesses, and carrying centuries of culture within his being, the yakuza has come to fascinate not only the Japanese populace, but the world at large through primarily his depiction in film and crime novels.

Shoko Tendo is the second daughter and third child of the yakuza oyabun, Japanese gang boss, Hiroyasu Tendo and she witnessed his great excesses and eventual downfall, but she was not involved in the gang herself and therefore is unable or not willing to expunge deeply upon the topic of her father's involvement with the yakuza, but instead writes on her life and how her father's being a yakuza would affect her life for years to come. It is for this very reason that I believe that a number of Western readers are disappointed with Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter. They are looking for a memoir that will feed into their cinematic/stereotypical ideals of what Tendo's life should be like, but instead they receive a thin tome written by a woman who suffered from continuous abuse at the hands of men who were yakuza and these men, instead of being paragons of virtue, Japanese tradition, and honor are alcoholic, cowardly dope fiends who beat on those weaker than them and cower from those who are stronger.

What Tendo gives the reader is a cathartic, honest account of a woman who is connected to the shady crime underworld and how it ostracizes her from mainstream Japanese society. Scoffed at by her teachers, neighbors, and classmates after her father is imprisoned, Tendo becomes a yanki, female delinquent and gang member, and finds herself growing addicted to a number of narcotics starting off with huffing paint thinner to injecting heroin daily all the while drifting from detention centers to abusive relationships. At times, it seems she finds peace, but eventually these fleeting moments are shattered by harsh reality.

Another criticism that I have read concerning the memoir is that it is poorly written, and that it seems like a sordid tale written by a grade-schooler. Tendo herself apologizes about the writing in the book's afterward stating that she has next to zero formal education (she nearly ceased doing school work after elementary school, having become a yanki at 12). Leaving the quality of writing behind, Tendo does have the tendency to foreshadow in a sophomoric way and her moralizing is a bit weak, but the bare bones honesty of a woman opening her heart to the reader makes the overall read overcome its limitations in craft. A fine memoir that attempts to shatter some of the stereotypes associated with the yakuza, Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter makes for a quick and enlightening read on the subject of the Japanese underworld.

Nice first try.
This was supposed to be a weekend business trip filler. It ended up just a 4 hour plane ride and a few more hours in the hotel. I gave it 4 stars though becasue I couldn't put the book down. But I am a voyeur and this book really delivers on the exhibitionism. This is really just a Jerry Springer story with a happy ending. However, I am a Japanophile, so this book held my interest more than the same story about a girl from say, Hamilton, Ohio would have. I met several girls like the author while living in Japan and I can say the story does ring very true. This is a great, fast read if you are into Japanese culture, otherwise you may find it a bit maudlin.

The Life of a Yakuza Daughter
A great read, was hard to put down once I got started. Not at all the type of life you would expect from a family that was once very powerful.

Her child hood bullying, drug use during her teen years, and horrible relationships with men in the past serve as a warning that just because a life style may appear to be glamorous does not mean that it is.

Told with shocking truth, Shoko Tendo's memoir is a great read.