Tokyo Confidential: Titillating Tales From Japan's Wild Weeklies (Paperback)

~ Mark Schreiber (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Chronicling the post-bubble years, "Tokyo Confidential" is a showcase of the best of the weeklies' tabloid-style investigative reporting. -- Daily Yomiuri, July 29, 2001

Funny, juicy and highly instructive, the stories are a great guilty pleasure--just like the weeklies themselves. -- The East magazine, May 2001

Product Description

Tokyo Confidential collects over 100 of the most irreverent and controversial stories toemerge from Japan's weeklies over the past decade, as adapted from the original Japanese. The result is a hair-raising ride--and a forceful reminder that there is more to Japan than Mt. Fuji, Zen gardens, cherry blossoms and a tarnished economic miracle. Tokyo Confidential is a sociology textbook, supermarket tabloid and adventure comic, all wrapped into one.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 259 pages
• Publisher: The East Publications (April 26, 2001)
• ISBN-10: 4915645193
• ISBN-13: 978-4915645198
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #364,748 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bubble Gum for the Mind - FUN Nevertheless!!!, October 3, 2003

By	J. CHOI - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read the book in one sitting after I got it in the mail. The stories are gathered from the sensational sections of various Japanese daily newspapers. There are stories about mothers who sexually satisfy their sons so the sons will focus on schoolwork, insurance sales ladies that have sex with clients so they can meet their monthly quotas of sales, etc., This book shows that Japan has nuts - albeit of a different flavor - just like the rest of the world.

A guilty pleasure to read.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't have to live here, though, to appreciate this book, February 25, 2002

By A Customer

As one of the gee-whiz, rocket eyebrow types who has lived in Japan nearly 20 years, I really appreciated Schreiber and his cohorts explaining what is going on with Japanese high school girls and their thigh-high uniform skirts, compensated dating, etc. There's lots more in this book than that, certainly, as the various seedier and "oh my!" parts of (mainly) Tokyo are parsed from the vernacular tabloids by these witty and perhaps *too* informed writers. They translate not only the words, but the titillating currents that buffet the "impenetrable" Japanese people and help give this society some of its excitement and spice. Thanks, Mark et.al, for opening up the bamboo curtain a whole lot wider!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stimulating stories from a different side of Japan, March 20, 2004

By	Jim Richards "mr_grumpy" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This collection of magazine articles, translated and re-written in English come from the Mainichi Daily News, who have sourced them from Japan's weekly tabloid magazines. Each article exposes a truth about Japan that most would be surprised to hear. Stories about old age people and their sex lives, schoolgirls and their "compensated dating," or selling their used underwear. About Tax Officials and exclusive hostess clubs, stay at home loners and bored housewives, of corruption, perversion and down right weirdness.

This is the real Japan. Not the Japan of Kyoto, Geisha or high-tech, but of real people and their perversions. It is a highly entertaining read.

Although now a little dated, they all ring true and are all still happening somewhere in the Land of the Rising Sun.