An insight into the Japanese underworld
Tokyo Vice was a memoir about Adelstein’s career as a crime reporter in Japan, which covered his work chasing after stories involving serial killers, loan shark empires and human traffickers.
Acclaimed Jewish American author Jake Adelstein gained notoriety for exposing the dangerous ways of the Japanese organised crime group – the Yakuza, following his work as an investigative journalist in Japan.
He will soon be in Australia, speaking at two sessions at the Sydney Writers Festival – on May 24 to discuss “A Yakuza history lesson and true crime exposé” following his book The Last Yakuza: A Life in the Japanese Underworld; and on May 25 to discuss his latest book Tokyo Noir, which is a sequel to his book Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan. This book inspired the HBO Max television series Tokyo Vice. He will also be speaking at the Brisbane Writers Festival on May 31 and June 1.
Tokyo Vice was a memoir about Adelstein’s career as a crime reporter in Japan, which covered his work chasing after stories involving serial killers, loan shark empires and human traffickers. Adelstein grew up in Missouri but at the age of 19 moved to Japan to study Japanese literature at university. In 1993, he became the first non-Japanese staff writer at the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, where he worked for 12 years. After leaving the Yomiuri, Adelstein published an exposé about how a notorious crime boss made a deal with the FBI to gain entry to the US for a liver transplant.
Speaking to The AJN, Adelstein said Tokyo Noir picks up where Tokyo Vice left off, describing a period of his life when he was working at the US State Department on human trafficking, and also when he was investigating organised crime making inroads in the stock market.
“A lot of firms became very nervous that they had the wrong clients accounts, and so a couple of them reached out to me, so I spent this time as a due diligence investigator looking at the Yakuza from a different angle.
“That’s the thrust of the book until we have the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima in which I decided to return to journalism because I was so appalled at what happened, and it became very clear that it was preventable … and the entire nuclear industry was very corrupt.”
He adds, “It also deals with my own worst enemy, which is myself, by 2011 I was diagnosed with liver cancer right about the time the nuclear incident happened.”
Asked if there are lessons about organised crime for other societies, he said, “If you don’t push back on organised crime they become the ruling force in your country. The power of corruption is so powerful because they have no qualms, they have no restraints – blackmail, extortion, collecting information …if you don’t stop organised crime, quickly they run the government.”
He believes Japan has managed to address this issue. “I think since 2011 they have done a tremendous job of removing the actors from positions of power, and I think they are on their way out.”
For tickets to the Sydney Writers Festival visit www.swf.org.au/writers/jake-adelstein. For tickets to the Brisbane Writers Festival visit bwf.org.au/artists/jake-adelstein
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