Japan Behind the Lines Hills, Ben

Ben Hills takes you into the parts of Japan tourists never see — the underworld of yakuza gangsters, the salaryman's hostess bars, the ritual of corporate life, the hidden poverty beneath the gloss. As a foreign correspondent in Tokyo, Hills spent years digging past the polite surface to find the Japan that doesn't make the travel brochures: teenage gangsters, homeless communities in Shinjuku, the dark side of the economic miracle. This isn't another book romanticising cherry blossoms and temples. It's sharp, unflinching journalism that reveals a society of immense contradictions — high-tech and feudal, wealthy and brutal, orderly and violent. Hills writes with clarity and an eye for the absurd, moving between boardrooms and back alleys with equal confidence. For anyone who thinks they know Japan, or anyone curious about what's really happening behind the neon.