Toppamono: Outlaw, Radical, Suspect: My Life in Japan's Underworld

Toppamono n: a person with a devil-may-care attitude, who pushes ahead regardless. In Toppamono, Miyazaki Manabu tells of his journey through the shadows of postwar Japan. Born the son of a prominent Kyoto Yakuza family, Manabu tells about his life of violence, revolutionary politics, crime, and writing. Manabu paints an intriguing picture of the "darker side" of the beautiful city of Kyoto just after the war, the ways of the street, his own privileged status among the under classes and the colorful characters that populated his world. An autobiographical account, this exclusive story reveals the hardships, pain, and excess of life in the Japanese underworld and is panned by an author who is still the chief suspect in Japan's largest and highest profiled unsolved criminal extortion case--the Glico-Morinaga affair.