Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

Everything I ever learned that was important in my life I put in this book; it's almost the totality of what I have learned about Japan and right and wrong and the grey areas in between Giving it four stars is probably a little like as they say in Japanese, 自画自賛 (jiga-jisan) "praising your own painting" which is terribly immodest and not Japanese like at all but there you are. It's not perfect but it's probably the best book I will ever write and I'm happy with that. I've gotten some rea [...]

”Either erase the story , or we’ll erase you. And maybe your family. But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.”Jake Adelstein went to Japan at the tender age of nineteen. One beautiful thing about being nineteen is it still feels like anything is possible. I remember those heady days well, when failure was a foreign word and those bumps in the road were not anything to get stressed about. On the inside cover of the book, it said that Adelstein had gone to Japan � [...]

Wow. Double Wow. Did I say, wow? Jake Adelstein is an amazing superhero and a total douchebag. This book made me realize how potently similar the profession of Intelligence Officer and Reporter are. The only real difference is that in Reporting you protect your sources and in espionage you burn them.Adelstein protects his sources while putting his family and friends at risk. He knows three forms of martial arts, speaks several languages, and happens to have a Japan fetish. Whether he really is C [...]

Jake Adelstein's recounts his time on the biggest Japanese Newspaper, Yomiuri Shinbun. This book promises yakuza, coverups, prostitution andce. However, Adelstein breaks the cardinal rule: your subject is interesting, not your experiences of them. No one wants to read about a journalist's experience, they just want to read about the story. Unfortunately, we get a lot of anecdotes about his early days on the paper, vaguely interesting cases told without any setup or suspense, and updates about pe [...]

Christ, what a douche.

This is one of the most riveting books I've ever read. In fact, I'm writing this review after staying awake all night finishing reading it.Adelstein isn't much of a writer. His prose is clumsy and frequently cliched, and he has sentences so awkward you can tell he's now more used to writing and speaking in Japanese than in his native English. But none of that matters. He's such a brilliant storyteller that it's easy to see how he was able to become a successful reporter for a Japanese newspaper [...]

After reading Tokyo Vice I had to take some time to digest it, to let the incongruities of laws and bureaucracy in Japan try to somehow make sense, to remind myself again and again that the world is an ugly, ugly place behind the neon lights and the advertisements and the glare of a TV screen. The impact that Tokyo Vice left upon me was as wide as an eclipse and as deep as a crater.If you are looking for characters to admire you'll only find a few between these covers, Jake being one of them. Do [...]

Jake Adelstein is some kind of guy. This story is as much about him as it is about the sex industry in Tokyo. I mean, really, what kind of guy would have the hutzpah to study Japanese and then apply to be a newspaper journalist at the most prestigious newspaper in Japan? He downplays but admits to crushing difficulties, at least difficulties that would crush most of us. But perhaps you've met his kind--bold, bright, talkative, confident, curious, unimpressed. I have. I just never thought we'd ge [...]

Very mixed feelings about this one. I never got over my distrust as Adelstein as a narrator, a judgment mainly rooted in my own time spent in Japan, and the incongruousness of the hardboiled, poorly constructed, and ego-centered writing alongside claims of serious and altruistically motivated journalism. I don't think those things (hard living and altruism) are inherently contradictory, but in this book the claims toward both mostly serve the cause of making Jake Adelstein seem like an awesome b [...]

Jake Adelstein is a talented and hard-working journalist who has written some enlightening and important articles about crime, Yakuza, enjou kosai and the darker side of Japan's sex industry. I recently was made aware of his memoir, Tokyo Vice, and out of respect for his work, thought I'd give it a go.Unfortunately, Tokyo Vice is not an important or enlightening book. Though it does contain some interesting bits and pieces about the Japanese metropolitan underworld, the majority of the book is t [...]

I heard about this book from an interview and followed up by reading the prelude. Both of these led me to believe that this book would be a journey into the yakuza (Japanese Mafia) and how it related to journalism and the rest of life. I was disappointed. Only about 1/3 of the book actually related to the yakuza. The first few chapters hooked me in describing how the author actually managed to get into Japanese journalism when his Japanese writing skills were only marginal. But, it is clear that [...]

3.5 stars -- but a positive 3.5. This is an interesting book, and Jake's an intersting guy. He takes some flack for having dolled up his prose a little (fair enough), and he's definitely a self-absorbed kinda guy (as he's the first to admit). But there's some real honesty here -- about himself, as well as about others - a lot of insight into the lunacy that is contemporary Japan - and, in the final analysis, Jake's a guy with balls -- who took a lot of risks (including risking his life) to be, u [...]

Je me suis arrêtée à la page 180/497, l'histoire est intéressante mais ce que j'ai lu était suffisant en soi pour me donner une idée globale sur les yakuza et leur fonctionnement. Je n'étais pas intéressée plus que ça d'en apprendre plus ni de connaître "le fin mot de l'histoire".

Avant toute chose j’aimerai signaler la qualité d’impression de ce livre paru aux Editions Marchialy avec un papier de qualité et une mise en page soignée et originale. Quant au récit, j’ai adoré du début à la fin. Dès les premières pages le lecteur est embarqué dans une histoire d’autant plus incroyable qu’elle est basée sur la réalité des affaires de la mafia japonaise. On découvre le parcours inattendu de l’auteur, un quotidien étonnant et des personnages inquiétan [...]

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.Jake Adelstein, an American graduate of Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan wanted to become a journalist for one of Japan's biggest newspapers, the Yomiuri Shinbun. Turns out, getting in was the easy part.In this book, Adelstein tells his experiences working the police beat in Japan, lifting the veil on Japan's supposedly peaceful, orderly society. It is a society with a manual for almost anything, including suicide; where prostitution is suppos [...]

Our Man tidied up an old blog post of a review. It was written under the influence of 7-Eleven red, but still holds, er, water:a) If you read Tokyo Vice and don't immediately want to down a bottle of Jack Daniels and run off to journo school to do battle with the forces of evil, please, please, please unfriend Our Man on Facebook, unfollow Our Man on Twitter and un-, er, just go, because Our Man has no time for you.b) Tell you what. You want the narrative voice of Holden Caulfield, with the wit [...]

Jake Adelstein, like his book, is unconventional, entertaining, intelligent and flawed. A Jewish American who acquired Japanese language skills sufficient to be recruited as the first foreigner ever to work for Japan’s top selling newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun (not to be confused with its English offshoot, the Daily Yomiuri), "Tokyo Vice" is the tale of Adelstein's unique experiences, including his near fatal run-in with one of Japan’s major crime bosses and his admirable exposure of an imp [...]

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 Noir. [...]

I saw this guy interviewed on The Daily Show and thought it was one of the worst interviews I'd seen in a long time. But, the book looked very interesting. I received it as a Christmas present and blasted through it in three days. I thought the book would be more about the yakuza, but it was more about the the way Japanese society is organized and his relationships with the yakuza, the cops and fellow reporters. The yakuza are real and very tattooed and much bigger than the Mafia in America. The [...]

This is a great story, and very unique. It is an insider's view on what it what like to be a foreign reporter in Japan. It is about writing, life in Japan, and the seedy underbelly of a beautiful country. I found it to be very informative, as well as well written. This novel gave me a glimpse into a life completely different than my own, and it was fascinating.

Japan today is a lot different from what the author portrays it as. The areas of Roppongi and Kabukicho have been cleaned up under Ishihara years ago, no longer filled with seediness and sleeze, although you can still find it if you look hard enough. It is much like the transition New York City went through.It's difficult to understand the transformation of Tokyo when reading this book as I don't think Adelstein points to it enough. He should have, because it lends even more authenticity to his [...]

An entertaining romp through underworld Tokyo, but there's far too much focus on the author's marital difficulties, his sexual conquests, and his struggles as a gajin reporter navigating Japanese protocol and culture.The book does have some good stories, a lot of black humor, and a bracing examination of contemporary Japan's darker aspects. There were a couple of interesting tidbits re the relationship between organized crime and Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) such as the Koizumi family' [...]

Ghi chép của một phóng viên người Mỹ, người làm hơn 10 năm cho tờ báo lớn nhất Nhật Bản và phụ trách mảng tội phạm. Đọc rất cuốn hút, qua đó cũng hiểu thêm về thế giới tội phạm Nhật Bản, nhất là yakuza và mại dâm/khiêu dâm, cũng như một phần cuộc sống và con người Nhật Bản. Giọng văn của tác giả chủ yếu là hài hước nhưng cũng có những lúc rất buồn, như khi nói về cái ch� [...]

A great reporter who has gotten far below the surface of Japanese life. This is a great read and shouldn't be missed. Some readers might be put off a bit by the self-focus, but Adelstein is a rare foreigner to have dug into the depths of crime, society and the real connections that keep things running, though not to everyone's advantage. As a reporter in two languages, his writing is sharp, clear and to the point. A genuine insight into Japan.

This is a hell of a book. It starts off scintillating, continues to educate and outrage and ends both victorious and tragic. I have to admit that maybe I'd romanticized Japanese culture in my mind. This book certainly aquatinted me with the dark side, particularly of the Tokyo sex trade and human trafficking.

I expected to be ambivalent about this book. I did not expect to blow through it in less than a week and come out so much better educated about the yakuza (and crime reporting in Japan) for it. This book is incredibly informative (and more than a little scary) but manages to read like a thriller. It was hard to remember that his story is real.

A must-read, a crime story, a primer on Japanese culture, an expose on international human trafficking in the sex trade, a scandal about how UCLA surgeons provide organ transplants (with organs that seem to appear conveniently quickly) to yakuza for big bucks (laundered through Las Vegas casinos) and a bildungsroman. There are so many disparate elements at work in this book, it is sui generis.The story of a young Jewish college kid who decides to take the Yomiuri Shinbun exam and gets hired on a [...]

Full disclosure: I lived in Tokyo for seven years as a teacher and office worker and, for a year during that time, dated a proof-reader for an international news agency, so I have some insight into the culture and the job.That said, I was really surprised at how disappointing this book was. For a memoir about a reporter's career investigating yakuza, prostitution, drugs, corruption, sex-trafficking, and murder, it's really dull. I wanted to rate this book a little higher for just being mediocre, [...]

I'm going to tell you straight away that this is a great book. If you're at all interested in Yakuza, Japan, journalism, or crime in general, this is a great book to pick up. It's full of great stories, sad stories, and a bit of procedural journalism, which I found pretty fascinating. Jake calls back to how he found his way into Japan, and how he got his start as a reporter, and follows high notes in his career until you are left with his (at the time) current state of affairs, after being threa [...]

Tokyo Vice, Tokyo ViceI'll try to structure this review in properly journalistic inverted-pyramid format. Overall, it's a really interesting story, written simply, directly, and honestly. It's easily a better American-in-Asia memoir than this other title I read recently *cough* Eat, Pray, Love *cough*. However, it was, at least in my experience, a bit front-loaded: the most balanced chapters are in the first half of the book, where Adelstein is being recruited by Japan's most-read newspaper (whi [...]