Tokyo Vice

Journalist Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan is a remarkable achievement on several fronts. Adelstein arrives in Tokyo in the early 1990s to study at Sophia University, then lands a job reporting in Japanese for the Yomiuri Shimbun. He works relentlessly to build connections and extract information from police departments and various layers of the underworld, all while navigating media red tape and the threat of reprisals against himself and his family and friends.

Having lived in Tokyo for about as many years as Adelstein, I remember quite a few of the cases he covered. The book filled in many gaps for me, and while some of his experiences—and possible lapses in judgment—are unsettling, I have a great deal of respect for what he accomplished. I’m a little surprised I never ran into him over the years in one of Tokyo’s seedier corners, and I look forward to reading more of his work.