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Jake Adelstein

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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 HBO Max's 2022 television series of the same name, starring Ansel Elgort as Adelstein.

Jake Adelstein
BornJoshua Lawrence Adelstein
(1969-03-28) March 28, 1969 (age 55)
Columbia, Missouri, U.S.
OccupationInvestigative journalist, writer, editor, blogger
GenreTrue crime, non-fiction, journalism
Notable worksTokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Children2
Website
www.japansubculture.com

Early life

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. He moved to Japan at age 19 to study Japanese literature at Sophia University.[3]

Career

In 1993, Adelstein became the first non-Japanese staff writer at the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, where he worked for 12 years.[4]

Jake was able to break the story of this guy illegally jumping the line and getting into the U.S. and receiving a liver transplant, way ahead of many other patients, because of illegal donations and selling information to the FBI. All kinds of dirty stuff. But that story was still untouchable in Japan. Even though Jake was working for the Yomiuri Shimbun, the newspaper, at that time, he could only get the story published by selling it to the Los Angeles Times.[5]

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.[6] An April 2022 article by The Hollywood Reporter raised doubts about the veracity of the events described in the memoir.[7] In November 2022, Esquire reported that Adelstein had released via twitter a folder of source materials which he claimed supported his versions of events.[8]

Adelstein was subsequently a reporter for a United States Department of State investigation into human trafficking in Japan, and now writes for the Daily Beast, Vice News, The Japan Times and other publications. He is a board member and advisor to the Lighthouse: Center for Human Trafficking Victims (formerly Polaris Project Japan).

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.[9][10] However, the court dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning the plaintiff is barred from bringing that claim in another court.[11]

Reportage

Works

  • Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan. New York City: Pantheon Books. 2009. ISBN 978-0-307-37879-8. OCLC 699874898.
  • The Last Yakuza: A Life in the Japanese Underworld. New York City: Pantheon Books. 2016.
  • Pay the Devil in Bitcoin: The Creation of a Cryptocurrency and How Half a Billion Dollars of It Vanished from Japan. New York City: Pantheon Books. 2017.
  • Operation Tropical Storm: How an FBI Jewish-Japanese Special Agent Snared a Yakuza Boss in Hawaii (Kindle Single) ASIN B00Z7DUV7W June 7, 2015 [12]

Interviews

References

  1. ^ Jake Adelstein, "Yakuza, strippers, drugs, an undercover Japanese-Jew FBI special agent? Pulp non-fiction.", Twitter, June 26, 2015. Archived March 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Ganey, Terry. "Gaijin Journalist: American reporter covered cops and crime in Tokyo". Columbia Daily Tribune. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
  3. ^ Hessler, Peter. "All Due Respect" Profile, The New Yorker, January 9, 2012.
  4. ^ Mark Willacy, "Exposing Japan's Insidious Underbelly", ABC News, October 20, 2009; accessed November 20, 2010.
  5. ^ O'Connell, Mikey (February 9, 2024). "'Tokyo Vice' Is Back — and Alan Poul Is Thrilled About the Slow Rollout". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
  6. ^ Jake Adelstein, "This Mob Is Big in Japan", The Washington Post, May 11, 2008, Accessed November 20, 2010
  7. ^ THR Magazine, "Insiders Call B.S. on ‘Tokyo Vice’ Backstory", The Hollywood Reporter, April 29, 2022; accessed May 2, 2022.
  8. ^ Esquire, "The Gripping True Story Behind ‘Tokyo Vice’ and Jake Adelstein's Tussles With the Yakuza", Esquire, November 24, 2022; accessed December 27, 2023.
  9. ^ Gardner, Eriq (May 10, 2011). "NatGeo Delays Japanese Mafia Show at Center of Lawsuit (Updated)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved August 1, 2015.
  10. ^ "Superior Court of the District of Columbia. April 19, 2011" (PDF).
  11. ^ "Superior Court of the District of Columbia. May 4, 2011" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 28, 2014.
  12. ^ 299_ James Stern –Yakuza Japanese Mob, Operation Tropical Storm

Further reading

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