Jake Adelstein | |
---|---|
Born | Joshua Lawrence Adelstein March 28, 1969 Columbia, Missouri, U.S. |
Occupation | Investigative journalist, writer, editor, blogger |
Genre | True crime, non-fiction, journalism |
Notable works | Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan The Last Yakuza: A Life in the Japanese Underworld |
Children | 2 |
Website | |
www.japansubculture.com |
Joshua Lawrence "Jake" Adelstein (born March 28, 1969) is an American [1] journalist, crime writer, and blogger who has spent most of his career in Japan. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan , which inspired the 2022 Max original streaming television series Tokyo Vice, starring Ansel Elgort as Adelstein.
Adelstein grew up in Columbia, Missouri and graduated from Rock Bridge High School. [2] As a teenager he volunteered at KOPN and co-hosted a punk music program on the air. In 1988, he moved to Japan at age 19 to study Japanese literature at Sophia University. [3]
On April 15, 1993, Adelstein became the first non-Japanese staff writer at the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Urawa, Saitama, where he worked for 12 years. [4]
After leaving the Yomiuri, Adelstein published an exposé of how an alleged crime boss, Tadamasa Goto, made a deal with the FBI to gain entry to the United States for a liver transplant at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2009, Adelstein published a memoir about his career as a reporter in Japan, Tokyo Vice , in which he accused Goto of threatening to kill him over the story. [5] An April 2022 article by The Hollywood Reporter raised doubts about the veracity of the events described in the memoir. [6] In November 2022, Esquire reported that Adelstein had released via Twitter a folder of source materials which he claimed supported his versions of events. [7]
Adelstein was subsequently a reporter for a United States Department of State investigation into human trafficking in Japan, [8] and now writes for the Daily Beast, [9] Vice News , The Japan Times [10] and other publications. He is a board member and advisor to the Lighthouse: Center for Human Trafficking Victims (formerly Polaris Project Japan). [11]
On April 19, 2011, Adelstein filed a lawsuit against National Geographic Television, which had hired him to help make a documentary about the yakuza, citing ethical problems with their behavior in Japan. [12] [13] However, the court dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning the plaintiff is barred from bringing that claim in another court. [14]
Adelstein is Jewish. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] Jake was formerly married to Sunao Adelstein with 2 children; both of them live in Missouri after 2005 due to threats made by Goto towards them. [11]
Yakuza, also known as gokudō, are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media call them bōryokudan, while the yakuza call themselves ninkyō dantai. The English equivalent for the term yakuza is gangster, meaning an individual involved in a Mafia-like criminal organization.
The Yomiuri Shimbun (讀賣新聞/読売新聞) is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are The Asahi Shimbun, the Chunichi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. It is headquartered in Otemachi, Chiyoda, Tokyo.
Juzo Itami, born Yoshihiro Ikeuchi, was a Japanese actor, screenwriter and film director. He directed eleven films, all of which he wrote himself.
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Hideo Murai was a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult and one of the perpetrators responsible for the Sakamoto family murder. He also helped plan the Tokyo subway sarin attack. Murai held a doctorate in astrophysics. He was reportedly the number three person in the Aum leadership, after Shoko Asahara and Kiyohide Hayakawa. He headed Aum Shinrikyo's Ministry of Science and Technology.
Kenichi Shinoda, also known as Shinobu Tsukasa, is a Japanese yakuza and the sixth and current kumicho of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza organization.
The Goto-gumi was a Japanese yakuza organization founded by Tadamasa Goto.
Sukeban (スケバン/助番) is a Japanese term meaning 'delinquent girl', and the female equivalent to the male banchō in Japanese culture. The usage of the word sukeban refers to either the leader of a girl gang or the entire gang itself, and is not used to refer to any one member of a girl gang.
Vic Lee is a veteran TV reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States. He most recently worked for KGO-TV, his reports being broadcast on the five o'clock news, the six o'clock news, and ABC7 news at nine on KOFY.
Hiroyuki Jo is a Zainichi Korean member of Shinshushieikan (神洲士衛館), an uyoku organization, and the Mie Prefecture-based Hane-gumi branch of Yamaguchi-gumi, a yakuza organization. Jo assassinated Hideo Murai, a member of Aum Shinrikyo, on April 23, 1995.
A deep state is a type of government made up of potentially secret and unauthorized networks of power operating independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals. In popular usage, the term carries overwhelmingly negative connotations and is often associated with conspiracy theories.
Robert Whiting is a best-selling author and journalist who has written several books on contemporary Japanese culture - which include topics such as baseball and American gangsters operating in Japan. He was born in New Jersey, grew up in Eureka, California and graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo. He has lived in Japan for more than three decades since he first arrived there in 1962, while serving in the U.S. Air Force. He divides his time between homes in Tokyo and California.
Yoshinori Watanabe was a yakuza, the fifth kumicho of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza organization. He became kumicho in 1989. He was known for a more low-key approach than his predecessors, partly due to an anti-gang law passed in 1992. He retired in 2005.
Kiyoshi Takayama is a yakuza best known as the second-in-command (wakagashira) of the 6th-generation Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest known yakuza syndicate in Japan, and the president of its ruling affiliate, Kodo-kai, based in Nagoya.
Tadamasa Goto is a retired yakuza. He was the founding head of the Goto-gumi, a Fujinomiya-based affiliate of Japan's largest yakuza syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi. Goto, who has been convicted at least nine times, was a prominent yakuza and at one point the most powerful crime boss in Tokyo, even being dubbed the "John Gotti of Japan". Goto was once claimed to have been the largest shareholder in Japan Airlines, but this was disputed by stock exchange filings.
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan is a 2009 memoir by Jake Adelstein of his years living in Tokyo as the first non-Japanese reporter working for one of Japan's largest newspapers, Yomiuri Shimbun. It was published by Random House and Pantheon Books. Max adapted the memoir into a 2022 television series. According to Gavin J. Blair of The Hollywood Reporter, there were individuals that disputed whether certain events in the book happened as stated.
Tokyo Vice is an American crime drama television series created by J. T. Rogers and based on the 2009 memoir by Jake Adelstein. It stars Ansel Elgort, Ken Watanabe, Rachel Keller, Hideaki Itō, Show Kasamatsu, Ella Rumpf, Rinko Kikuchi, Tomohisa Yamashita, Miki Maya, and Yōsuke Kubozuka. The series centers on Adelstein (Elgort), an American journalist investigating the yakuza in Tokyo. The first season of Tokyo Vice premiered on April 7, 2022, on HBO Max, and the second season premiered on February 8, 2024, on Max. The series received generally positive reviews, with praise for its setting, aesthetic, and characters. In June 2024, the series was canceled after two seasons.