Jake Adelstein

Tokyo Vice was not what I expected.

I learned about Tokyo Vice from NPR's Planet Money and listened to the interview with Jake Adelstein about the economics of Yakuza crime in Japan. I was expecting something more like "Tokyo Underground" but with a more economics spin. What I got was a very interesting True Crime book about the seedier side of Tokyo and its outer suburbs.

Although the book didn't give me what I initially expected, it did dish up huge heaping servings of wonderful True Crime show more Noir. Jake Adelstein has really lived the life out there on the streets and he's not afraid to tell the stories exactly as they were. Some of the stories end with the bad guy getting it in the end and sometimes the bad guys win. His best work is his portrayal of the cops on the beat and how hard these Detective guys work in a culture so obsessed with saving face that they have to step around insane restrictions to get anything done.

He describes hookers, drug dealers, club owners, sex traffickers, the issues of being gaijin in the Japanese underground, and all sorts of yakuza and insane sleaze. The best story may be the one about the serial rapist who took girls to his condo on the ocean and drugged them.

If you're interested in Noir and crime stories, I can highly recommend this book. The writing is crisp and clear. The book moves along briskly without ever getting bogged down. Jake's fight for the rights of women trapped in Japanese human trafficking and sex slave schemes is an amazing bit of reporting.

I read this version on the Kindle. show less

There's something to be said for firsts, even if the only thing to be said there is that you can probably get a book out of that first if it's notable enough. Fortunately, that's not all that Jake Adelstein has going for him in Tokyo Vice - the story itself is also quite good. Adelstein was the first white reporter for the Japanese edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun, the biggest and most prestigious newspaper in Japan. Adelstein takes us from his first moment of deciding to try to join the show more newspaper and the employment process, through learning to be a police reporter in Saitama, before moving into Tokyo and taking on life in the big city. There's a good amount in here in the early parts of people reacting to this white Jewish guy from Missouri showing up as a reporter, but as Adelstein gets more accustomed to his job, the stories of being a reporter and the more lurid side of Japan come forward more. And in the end, Adelstein ends up pursuing a story regarding the #1 yakuza in Japan at the time, and his work leads him to receive death threats. (Note: this is the prologue of the book, and thus not a spoiler.)

A lot of this sounds fairly typical of these sorts of guy-makes-the-beat-and-then-gets-in-over-his-head stories, I suppose, but it's really done well here, and there are a lot of details that make the story quite fascinating, at least if you're interested in Japan stuff. The workplace scenes at the newspaper at the beginning, as he learns about his coworkers and how things are done, how to build up contacts and what goes into keeping them are well-observed, and then later on, when we hear about life in the Tokyo red-light district, it's sobering and harsh, but presented clearly and with the viewpoint of the police contact telling Adelstein about it. I have to say, I really did quite like the writing. It had a lot of impact - funny when it was supposed to be, disturbing and horrifying on call, and then always clear. As I suppose befits a journalist.

It sounds odd to say, but I liked a lot of the characters (or real people) in the book, and particularly Adelstein's mentor, and the Alien Cop. But I really did like the way Adelstein himself slowly and subtly changed over the course of the book, from someone who was doing this because it seemed interesting and he wanted a job in Japan, but whose Japanese wasn't really that great and was clearly an outsider, to someone who knew lots of the connections in organized crime and became so part of Japan that he couldn't really go undercover as a foreigner anymore. And it helps, then, this dual inside/outside status, when he gets involved in investigations of human trafficking in the last parts of the book - the real, horrible record of it in Japan, and his connection to and feelings towards the women involved leading to breaking him down, and roughening his methods. It's all well done, and informative.

On the whole, Tokyo Vice was a fairly fast, engaging read, with a good amount of informative kick, and an interesting, ground-breaking lead to follow. It's definitely worth a read if you're into Japan stuff, or if you like newspaper or crime stories. There's a lot here to offer, and while it's not always enjoyable, I don't think you'd regret trying it. show less

Quite enjoyable -- a reporter discusses his time covering vice crimes in Japan and what he learned there. Organized crime and all kinds of vice abound, replete with cultural differences from the United States. Tokyo Vice makes for a good anthropological-sometimes-verging-on-sociological read on Japan generally, or the yakuza (organized crime groups) or Japanese sex industry specifically. The author's writing training shows itself in a nice story arc throughout the book regarding the author's show more own slow and barely perceptible descent away from morality, an arc that serves to connect a series of topic-focused chapters.

This is not non-fiction that repeats its main points once every chapter. Definitely worth picking a chapter or two from to read independently from the rest of the book (yakuza, anyone?), and more than enjoyable enough to read as a whole. show less

This isn't a book for those with a sensitive disposition. The crime and the sex are graphic, and Adelstein doesn't sugar coat a word of it. But as an insight into the world of a crime journalist, as insight into the world of an American in Tokyo, as insight into the world of the yakuza, this book can't be topped.

Not an easy read, but a very good one.