Pristine condition. Hardcover with dust jacket. Editorial Reviews From Library Journal The establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 ended Japan's long era of civil wars and ushered in a time of relative domestic tranquility and order. Yet, as amply demonstrated by this lively tour of criminality in Japan from 1600 to the present, not even the best ordered of societies is free of crime. Through a series of deftly sketched vignettes, Schreiber, a Tokyo-based U.S. journalist with an eye for the bizarre, introduces us to a colorful cohort of murderers, rapists, arsonists, embezzlers, and criminal psychotics, many of whom wound up on the gallows or the executioner's chopping block. This is intellectual snack food salty, crunchy, and flavorful, rather than a full meal but the author adds just enough history and sociology to make the first half of this popular book more than mere entertainment. The second half, in which the author himself seems to have tired of his subject, is a slapdash assortment of briefly summarized crime stories that are best read in small doses. For larger public libraries. Steven I. Levine, Univ. of Montana, Missoula Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.