In the wake of the Bomb, ex-soldier Shozo Hirono joins a Hiroshima yakuza gang (the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia) and then the shooting, slashing, and scheming begins. Premiering a year after The Godfather, The Yakuza Papers also broke box office records and spawned sequels, but, in contrast, took a ruthlessly de-romanticized view of the underworld. Based on an actual gang boss's memoirs, this film plunges the audience into a gritty, brutal, violent newsreel of a three-decade struggle for power of Shakespearean complexity - an epic unlike any other.