“The fucking Jew American reporter, I’d like to kill him,” is one of
Jake Adelstein’s favorite accolades, courtesy of yakuza boss
Tadamasa Goto. Adelstein’s career in Japan has literally almost killed
him. He calls his first book, Tokyo Vice: An American
Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan—about his career as a
journalist for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper based in
Tokyo—an “insurance policy.” He knows if anyone tries to kill him
after this, it’ll be bad press for the yakuza, which could result in
stricter laws in a country where organized-crime syndicates are
technically legal entities.
Japan is a comparatively strange place when it comes to both the
yakuza and the media—newspapers still publish morning and
afternoon editions, with tens of millions of subscribers and more
credibility than television news, and while the yakuza are still
criminals, large mobs have office compounds and official membership
(the largest in the range of 40,000 members). Adelstein’s work at
infiltrating both of these realms took finesse, a couple of beatings,
and playing the dumb American from time to time.
Adelstein isn’t dumb, maybe only foolhardy. In a foreign country,
speaking a second language, he uncovered international
human-trafficking rings and revealed a conspiracy between the Japanese
and United States governments and yakuza bosses. He made friends with
mobsters, prostitutes, and cops. He even ended up with an ex-yakuza as
his bodyguard. He’s fought mobsters in back alleys, taken their
deathbed confessions, and seen his friends disappear when they got too
close to sensitive information.
Tokyo Vice isn’t just another true-crime book or wide-eyed
account of the exoticism of Japan written by an unaware American. The
criminal accounts are exciting and bizarre; mobsters, cops, and
reporters work together toward different ends (smoking out a mole,
finding a serial killer, saving women’s lives). The sharing of
information and use of leads as bargaining chips makes a delicate
balance of alliances and favors. As a journalist, Adelstein comes off
as the detective from a film noir—a part of the underbelly doing
the right thing, while drinking, smoking, and sleazing along the
way.
For this reason, Adelstein’s book should make most American
journalists feel like assholes. In Japan, they have just as much
internet, television, celebrity gossip (even fan mags for yakuza), and
other temptations to sway the populace away from being informed, but
they haven’t seen the decline of news media that we have here in the
United States.
“People going into journalism who don’t have [a] sense of social
justice—feeling what they are doing is [helping] to create a
better world—they shouldn’t be doing it. If you want glory, go
into sports,” Adelstein said in an interview over pancakes at Portage
Bay Cafe. “I’m getting paid not just to follow what’s on my beat, but
to do something more.”
During the Iraq war buildup (and continuously on major news networks
in general), journalists did what Adelstein calls “announcement
journalism”—turning press releases into articles. Adelstein cites
low pay and the death of local media through media consolidation
leading to the reduction of competition for scoops as the major factors
in the decline of the American press.
Announcement journalism isn’t considered news in Japan. Scoops are
the core of Japanese news—and if you miss a big one, your career
could be finished. The government regularly feeds scoops to reporters,
but those stories are perfunctory compared to what Adelstein and his
fellow reporters are looking for. “There’s a scoop where you announce
something before it’s announced by the government,” he explains. “And
then there’s the scoop where you write something about the government
that they never wanted out but the people should know about.”
Adelstein explained in roughly a minute how he would set up his same
degree of networks and scoops here in Seattle: learn to read
real-estate records and court documents, network with police, get
training manuals, and read relentlessly about his beat. Reporting like
Adelstein is tough. It’s not blogging or opining. It’s expensive and
it’s not about writing per se (though he’s a good writer).
As Tokyo Vice shows, investigative reporting can destroy
your liver, wreak havoc on your personal life, and get you killed. “It
was very satisfying to get a front-page story,” he reminisces. “Not
just because you got the page, but because you would write something
that would make a difference. It’s like, Ah, I did my job
well.”
As for the job of an American journalist, Adelstein says the primary
goal is “surviving.” But he believes the ideal is “to write the truth
by any means possible.” 
Saw this guy on JohnStewart/Stephen Colbert (whichever it was, doesn’t matter) and he’s fabulous. The man has had contracts out for his life. i.e. His calling is more important than his safety.
To have a calling be so thoroughly satisfying must be quite fulfilling, no?
Would love to hear in more details about the plan for the ideal re-birth of journalism. Would love more to see The Stranger try it.
Corey-san,
I really enjoyed our interview and what you focussed on in your article.
I have seen some great things in the Stranger over the years and last week’s THE REJECTIONIST was a fascinating look at the world of publishing.
I hope the phrase “announcement journalism” becomes embedded as a term for use in disparaging so much of what passes for reporting in the United States.
I think the Western press is just as bad as the Japanese press in trying to avoid controversy. Last week, Kamei Shizuka, the current Minister of Financial Services spoke at the Japan Foreign Correspondent’s Club luncheon and I think the moderator deliberately ignored me, fearing that I would ask Kamei about his yakuza connection.
Kamei (Mr. Frog-Face) is the same guy that took 40,000,000 yen from Yasuji Ikeda, the Yamaguchi-gumi crime boss in the early nineties and political donations from Kajiyama Susumu in the late nineties and early 2000s.
Okay, I digressed for a second. Good luck pursuing a life in journalism–it’s a hard lot but sometimes making a difference makes it seem worth it all.