Boing Boing: “Jake Adelstein was the first US citizen to work as a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, but he quit after getting death threats from the Yakuza. He has a book coming out called Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan. This is an article about his experiences reporting on the Yakuza for The Washington Post.
I have spent most of the past 15 years in the dark side of
the rising sun. Until three years ago, I was a crime reporter for the
Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, and covered a roster of
characters that included serial killers who doubled as pet breeders,
child pornographers who abducted junior high-school girls, and the John
Gotti of Japan.
I came to Japan in 1988 at age 19, spent most of college living
in a Zen Buddhist temple, and then became the first U.S. citizen hired
as a regular staff writer for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. If you
know anything about Japan, you’ll realize how bizarre this is — a
gaijin, or foreigner, covering Japanese cops. When I started the beat
in the early 1990s, I knew nothing about the yakuza, a.k.a. the
Japanese mafia. But following their prostitution rings and extortion
rackets became my life.”
FULL STORY
Recent Comments