Review by Rocky Swift Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) — For the opening scene of a book, it’s hard to beat a hardened gangster calmly threatening to liquidate the main character, who’s furiously smoking clove cigarettes as he ponders his strategy. That’s how Jake Adelstein starts “ Tokyo Vice ,” his memoir of working as a police reporter for Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun , the world’s largest newspaper, and how his snooping landed him in hot water with a particularly violent faction of the yakuza. The story follows Adelstein through 12 years covering everything from roadside shakedowns to serial murder as the only American member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s press club. “Tokyo Vice” is bookended by Adelstein’s investigations into how a sickly crime boss named Tadamasa Goto and three other yakuza managed to get lifesaving liver transplants in the U.S., abetted by U.S. authorities. This story turned out to be the reporter’s savior, since once he published it Adelstein became too high profile to kill. Before he was “pissing off yakuza,” Adelstein was a student at Sophia University , a Jesuit-affiliated school in the center of Tokyo. On a whim, the Missouri native took a battery of tests to join the Yomiuri, a media leviathan that also owns a television network, a theme park and the Giants baseball team, Japan’s equivalent to the New York Yankees. Very Organized Crime Adelstein’s first glimpse into the world of organized crime comes from a mob boss worried that the local police won’t drink tea at his offices anymore. “Tokyo Vice” is a primer on such complicated relationships between Japan’s cops and criminals. The yakuza emphasize the “organized” in organized crime, earning toleration from the authorities and public by keeping violence low and providing the prostitution and drugs that some parts of society secretly desire. In the years Adelstein worked the crime beat, the yakuza evolved from extortion, prostitution and drugs to high finance, orchestrating real estate scams and manipulation of the stock market. Even now, the Tokyo Stock Exchange obliquely acknowledges the yakuza’s meddling in markets, calling them “antisocial” forces in official documents. The most famous case detailed in the book is that of Lucie Blackman , a British citizen found partially dismembered near the home of a man later convicted of multiple rapes. She had come to Tokyo to work as a hostess in Tokyo’s Roppongi entertainment district, and investigating the case drew Adelstein deep into the rabbit hole of Japan’s sex industry. Through it all, Adelstein was able to use his otherness as an advantage. Fear among the yakuza that a crackdown might result from wiping out an American probably saved his life, he writes, as did the mistaken suspicion that he was an undercover agent for the CIA or — because of his Jewish heritage — Israel’s Mossad. Backhanded Compliments Much of the book is made up of reconstructed, movie-like dialogue, with a jarring number of backhanded compliments for Adelstein, as when a thug says the American is “stupid, obtuse, stubborn and reckless,” but “I guess that’s what makes a good journo.” While his tale is gripping, it shows the strain of a writer rushing to the finish line. The Goto transplant saga, the most compelling part of the book, is teased in the beginning and doesn’t return for some 250 pages. Goto’s priest says the gangster has renounced his former ways to study Buddhism, Adelstein reports with skepticism. Still, that might be enough to rest a little easier in Tokyo. “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan” is published by Pantheon (335 pages, $26). It will be published by Kodansha in the U.K. on Jan. 1. To buy this book in North America, click here . ( Rocky Swift writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer on the story: Rocky Swift in Tokyo at rswift5@bloomberg.net .
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Yakuza Bosses Sell Sex, Drugs, Finagle U.S. Liver Transplants: Book Review
