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Tokyo Noir:
in and out of Japan’s underworld
by Jake Adelstein
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Pub Date 18 Jul 2024 | Archive Date 30 Jun 2024
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Description
The sequel to bestseller Tokyo Vice, now a major HBO drama, with a second season coming in 2024.
It’s been a while since Jake Adelstein was the only gaijin crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun. The global economy is in shambles, Jake is off the police beat but still chain-smoking clove cigarettes, and Tadamasa Goto, the most powerful boss in the Japanese organised-crime world, has been banished from the yakuza, giving Adelstein one less enemy to worry about — for the time being.
Adelstein has a new gig these days: due-diligence work, or using his investigative skills to dig up information on entities whose bosses would prefer that some things stay hidden. Underneath layers of paperwork, corporations are thinly veiled fronts for the yakuza. Pachinko parlors are a hidden battleground between disenfranchised Japanese Koreans and North Korean extortion plots. TEPCO, the electric power corporation keeping the lights on for all of Tokyo, scrambles to hide its willful oversights that ultimately led to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. And the Japanese government shows levels of corruption that make gangsters look like philanthropists.
In this riveting memoir, Jake Adelstein once again reveals Japan’s dark underworld, as he battles to keep himself in the light.
Advance Praise
Praise for Tokyo Vice:
‘[Adelstein’s] juicy and vividly detailed account of investigations into the shadowy side of Japan shows him to be more enterprising, determined, and crazy than most … Adelstein builds his stories with as much surprise and grit as any Al Pacino or Mark Wahlberg movie, blurring the lines between the cops, the crooks, and even the journalists … Tokyo Vice is often so snappy and quotable that it sounds as if it were a treatment for a Scorsese movie set in Queens … [E]ven as he is getting slapped around by thugs and placed under police protection, Adelstein never loses his gift for crisp storytelling and an unexpectedly earnest eagerness to try to rescue the damned.’ – Pico Iyer, Time
‘Tokyo Vice is about Japanese subculture. Adelstein instructs us in the vagaries of Japanese journalism and provides a gamy, colourful tour of the morally flexible areas of Japan, particularly in Tokyo. He also shows how Japanese police work and interact with journalists. Adelstein shares juicy, salty, and occasionally funny anecdotes, but many are frightening … Adelstein doesn’t lack for self-confidence … but beneath the bravado are a big heart and a relentless drive for justice.’ – Carlo Wolff, The Boston Globe
‘In this dark, often humorous journey through the underworld of Tokyo, Jake Adelstein captures exactly what it means to be a gaijin and a reporter. Whether he is hunting for tips in Kabukicho or pressing yakuza for information, it is an adventure only he could write. For anyone interested in Japan or journalism, this is a must read.’ – Robert Whiting, author of Tokyo Underworld
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9781915590893 |
PRICE | £10.99 (GBP) |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
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Tokyo Noir is the sequel to Jake Adelstein's best-selling memoir Tokyo Vice, now an equally successful TV series.
Having moved on from journalism Adelstein goes into the field of due-diligence ,investigating businesses for signs of corruption or organised-crime links for potential buyers and investors. Not everything has changed however and Adelstein's nemesis Tadamasa Goto ,thrown out of the Yakuza as a result of one of his scoops, is still angry to the point of not very subtle death threats.
This is a bit different to Tokyo Vice in that a number of diverse topics are addressed,some very personal,Adelstein's friendship with his chief researcher blooming before tragedy strikes, Japan's appalling treatment of its Korean population since world war 2, the truth behind the Fukushima incident and much more.
A fascinating read that will open many eyes into the way Japan is run,not least the massive level of corruption that still lingers on even as the Yakuza is finally being taken on by the authorities.
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