Journalist Adelstein follows up The Last Yakuza with another illuminating blend of memoir and reportage. For 12 years, Adelstein covered the crime beat at Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, focusing on organized crime. In late 2008, a purge of the top bosses in Japan’s largest yakuza group—including Tadamasa Goto, who’d developed a particular grudge against Adelstein—left the reporter feeling adrift. He rebranded as a private eye, investigating yakuza front companies and mob involvement in the largely Korean-run pachinko parlor business. Then, in 2011, Adelstein was drawn back to journalism by the Tōhoku tsunami and subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. His inquiry into the power company’s gross negligence pointed to collusion with the yakuza. Threaded throughout the narrative are more personal matters, including Adelstein’s descriptions of mourning one of his best friends and dealing with the discovery of a cancerous tumor on his liver. As always, the author’s ability to boil down Japan’s complex sociopolitical dynamics in sharp, often-humorous prose impresses (“I don’t think most of the customers there were seeking spiritual enlightenment,” he deadpans about a strip club supposedly founded on Buddhist principles). The account ends in 2017, when he took vows to become a Buddhist priest, and readers will be left hoping he details that experience in his next book. For true crime fans, this is a treat.
Tokyo Noir: In and Out of Japan’s Underworld by Jake Adelstein, a memoir and sequel to Tokyo Vice that further sheds light on the dark side of Japan, comes out on October 1, 2024.
Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993, reporting in both Japanese and English. From 2006 to 2007 he was the chief investigator for a US State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. He has been writing for The Daily Beast, The Japan Times, Unseen Japan, ZAITEN (Japan) Tempura Magazine (France) and other publications since 2011, and was a special correspondent for The Los Angeles Times. Considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan, he works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the United States. Adelstein has appeared on CNN, The Daily Show, NPR, the BBC, France 24, and other media outlets as a commentator on social issues in Japan, as well as its criminal justice system, politics, and nuclear industry giant, TEPCO. He is the author of the book Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter On The Police Beat in Japan (Pantheon, 2009), which became a hit series with two seasons on HBO Max, and also The Last Yakuza: Life And Death In The Japanese Underworld (Scribe, 2023). He co-hosted and co-wrote the award-winning podcast about missing people in Japan, The Evaporated: Gone With The Gods in 2023. His latest true crime podcast, Night Shift, investigating a series of mysterious patient deaths at the VA Hospital in his Missouri hometown in the 1990s, was released by Sony Music on September 1, 2024 and quickly reached the number 1 spot on Apple’s top podcast charts.