Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) [Paperback]

Or, in Jake Adelstein's case, it doesn't -- thankfully, because American readers now finally have access to a book that chronicles the real Japan, free of stereotypes and even more well-rounded and nuanced as any of the 'foreigner abroad' books we are accustomed to reading from Americans who head off to the more culturally-familiar terrain of Europe.

Full disclosure: I lived in Tokyo for parts of early 80s before finally leaving in 1985, before Adelstein arrived to study at Sophia University. Like him, I began my journalistic career there, although it was as a copy editor at the English-language Japan Times rather than as a reporter for a Japanese daily. Even in 1985, being a 'gaijin' (foreigner) and a female would have put paid to any such plans, even if my decidedly unfluent Japanese hadn't. Adelstein, however, benefited from the passage of time, his language skills and his gender and landed a job at the Yomiuri newspaper, one of the country's largest. Automatically an unusual person in Japan's extraordinarily homogenous society (at the time I lived there, at least, there was no space on a driver's license for hair or eye color -- because it was assumed that all would be the same...), Adelstein ended up covering another kind group of misfits in Japan: the country's yakuza, or organized criminals.

It's a fascinating world, part of Japanese popular culture as much as the Mafia is here, and yet virtually unrecognized outside of the country. Along with writing about the yakuza, Adelstein does a fabulous job of raising the curtain on the lives of ordinary Japanese, finally debunking all the stereotypes. Japanese men gawk at the pictures in Madonna's "Sex"; the male reporters openly read porn magazines in the workspace. Social life revolves around getting drunk; the job of a police reporter like Adelstein includes paying evening calls to the homes of his detective friends. Adelstein shows how phenomena like the hostess clubs are fueled by "alienation, boredom and loneliness."

That said, this is a very uneven book. The first half, in particular, seems to be the story of a foreigner who gets himself a job at a Japanese newspaper, thinks to himself, "wow, this is cool and different and maybe I'll write a book about it, too, because not many people have done what I've done." The glimpse behind the scenes of a Japanese newspaper were interesting enough, but after a while the long paragraphs, one after another, of people talking became wearying. So did Adelstein's self-congratulatory air: Getting words of praise from a colleague is "a good feeling"; another story is "a nice little scoop", or "our investigative reporting had the gratifying result of spurring the Saitama police into arresting the people responsible for the bank failure." Yawn. And I could have done without the insights into his sex life, as when he leaves his 'girlfriend' hanging on in the love hotel room they have rented by the hour in order to deal with an editor. "Honorable me, I knew I owed her. So I turned my beeper off for the first time in months." At times, he sounds almost smug.

And yet, just as I was about to give up on the book, it took off and turned into an extraordinary chronicle, revealing in the process an entirely different narrator, someone passionate and thoughtful enough about the world he sees around him to be willing to stand up and be counted. He becomes the nail that sticks up and must be hammered down, in the Japanese saying used of people who place their independent thoughts above smooth social relationships. And the people who wanted to do the hammering were Japan's yakuza, as Adelstein's beat takes him into an investigation of sexual slavery and abuse in Japan's hostess bars, 'soaplands' and brothels. What had been almost flippant before (see Jake Adelstein as a male host!) becomes deadly serious, and I ended up reading late into the night to discover what happened, just as I would have done with a great thriller. The catch, of course, is that the crimes and abuses committed by the yakuza, for which the police are unable or unwilling to prosecute them, were and remain real. Adelstein points out the difficulty of prosecuting human trafficking offenses in a country where the victims are promptly deported -- and then the police and law enforcement officials point out that they have no complaining witnesses! He points to the impact of the casual racism and sexism on law enforcement, from attitudes to Koreans of Japanese descent to the women who arrive in Japan to work as hostesses. And ultimately, he puts his life on the line -- literally -- in an effort to expose some of these abuses.

The heroes of Adelstein's book come from across the board -- this is not smart gaijin hero versus thick-witted racist Japanese, or evil Yakuza versus courageous journalists. Some of the most poignant and heartfelt parts of this ultimately very moving book are those devoted to one of his closest friends, a Japanese police detective, and to an Australian bar girl who becomes a friend of sorts. And ultimately Adelstein sheds that self-satisfied foreigner abroad persona, recognizing that his all-too-human failures as a person and a reporter meant that "I'd endangered every person I cared about, liked, loved, or simply knew. (They had become) potential leverage for (the yakuza target of his investigations) who had no qualms about using people like cannon fodder." It's a cry from the heart, and the story of Adelstein's investigations and efforts to get his worked published make this book a 'must read'.

I'd like to think that the Japanese fascination with what other nations think about them would mean that this book will be translated into Japanese and have a wide audience there. Given the difficulty Adelstein had in finding a Japanese publisher for his journalistic scoops about the yakuza's worst crimes, I'm not sure it will happen. Moreover, the home truths that Adelstein tells -- from a position inside Japanese society, not from the usual gaijin perspective of having one foot in Tokyo's expat community -- about everything from the ugly realities underlying the hostess bar culture and the treatment of a female fellow reporter and friend at the Yomiuri, to the horrors of human trafficking, may prove hard for them to digest. In any event, it's a fascinating read that I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in Japan or thinking of going to live or work there.

A few other recommendations: For more insight into the dysfunctional part of Japanese society (if not the criminal element), try Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (Vintage Departures) or Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan. Some dark comedy and brilliant film-making comes from Juzo Itami, who, it appears, may have been murdered by yakuza rather than committing suicide. Many probably are familiar with Tampopo; just as good, IMO, is A Taxing Woman; the sequel, A Taxing Woman's Return, is still available only on VHS. Both are great and hilarious examples of a crusading tax inspector battling her own bureaucracy and the criminal elements who happen to be evading their taxes. I can't recommend either film strongly enough.

with a pitcher of beer, sort of watching the game. A novelist and a reporter sit down on either side of you. They want to make you a deal: they get to have some of your beer and in exchange, each of them will take turns telling you incredibly good stories.

At first you're a little worried because, well, who are these guys drinking your beer?

Within a couple minutes, you are not worried anymore. You are ordering another pitcher. And then another one. These guys are two of the best storytellers you've ever met, and the drunker they get, the more they appear to be trying to outdo each other. The stories they are telling you are as engaging as they are strange and unbelievable.

Now imagine that both of these guys, the novelist and the reporter, are actually the same guy, and the stories they are telling are all true. That's what reading this book is like.

The subject matter is the obvious initial draw to this book. Mr. Adelstein's relays his years of experience as a reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun with efficiency, clarity and wit, while at the same time managing to convey some of the structure and texture of a number of complex institutions and sub-cultures (the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, other prefectural police departments in Japan, crime reporters for the Yomiuri and, of course, the yakuza).

Beyond the fascinating subject matter, however, I could and would and will recommend this book solely for the quality of writing. Mr. Adelstein works expertly at the level of the sentence and the vignette. He doesn't accumulate detail, but instead precisely curates it, giving just enough to put you right there with him. Any less detail and the narrative would be flat, lifeless. Any more detail would drag it down, make it feel like a reading assignment. Instead, Mr. Adelstein's prose has a tactile quality to it. It is measured and balanced and paced in such a way that you live the story with him. I would buy this storyteller an ongoing supply of beer just to keep listening to him tell stories.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book -- most stories about Westerners moving to Japan are simple, ego-driven pieces of "finding yourself" trash.

I gotta say, though, that Tokyo Vice, while it might have fallen into this category, DOESN'T. Jake Adelstein knows his stuff, and the audience can figure that out in the first lines. This is no "ohmygosh-Japan-is-different-because-everyone-is-ASIAN-and-speaks-JAPANESE!" Instead, this is layer upon layer of real information, texture that I don't think anyone could pick up unless they were actually immersed in a culture, and written from a place far past the wide-eyed excitement of a first-time visitor.

The book has an interesting, engaging narrative, that stands on its own even without all the depth of knowledge the author brings. And, though the subject seems like it's straight out of fiction, it's not. I know more about the Japanese newspaper industry, the Tokyo Police Department, and the seedier aspects of life in Japan now than I ever have. And that's saying something.

Frankly, this book could have been a piece of garden variety, semi-racist, often lurid, pulp fiction. Instead, it's a thoughtful look back on an experience no one else on this earth has had.

Read it.