天藤湘子，一位39岁的作家和母亲，当她褪去衬衫，露出通体纹身，精雕细刻龙凤图案，日本艺伎嘴里含刀。天藤父亲是一个与山口组关系密切的黑帮首领，后来，她自己加入黑帮、并且先后成为多个黑帮成员的情人。后来她开始了新生活，一直到今天当了作家并生育了儿女。
《极道之月》目前只得英文及日本版本。

作者: Shoko Tendo
书名: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter
出版社: Kodansha International
出版年: 2007-05-04



Yakuza Moon is the shocking, yet intensely moving memoir of 37-year-old Shoko Tendo, who grew up the daughter of a yakuza boss. Tendo lived her life in luxury until the age of six, when her father was sent to prison and her family fell into terrible debt. Bullied by classmates and terrorized at home by a father who became a drunken, violent monster after his release from prison, Tendo rebelled. A regular visitor to nightclubs at the age of 12, she soon became a drug addict and a member of a girl gang. At 15 she was sentenced to eight months in a juvenile detention center.
Adulthood brought big bucks and glamour when Tendo started working as a bar hostess during Japan's booming bubble economy of the nineteen-eighties. But among her many rich and loyal patrons there were also abusive clients, one of whom beat her so badly that her face was left permanently scarred.
When her mother died, Tendo plunged into such a deep depression that she tried to commit suicide twice.
Tendo takes us through the bad times with warmth and candor, and gives a moving and inspiring account of how she overcame a lifetime of discrimination and hardship. Getting tattooed, from the base of her neck to the tips of her toes, with a design centered on a geisha with a dagger in her mouth, was an act that empowered her to start making changes in her life. She quit her job as a hostess. On her last day at the bar she looked up at the full moon, a sight she never forgot. The moon became a symbol of her struggle to become whole, and the title of the book she wrote as an epitaph for herself and her family.