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A review by chrisiant
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
4.0
This book is fascinating and disturbing in equal parts. I haven't read a lot about Japan besides pretty basic history, so a lot of the cultural differences that Adelstein describes were news to me - like the whole concept of hostess clubs, the structure of the yakuza crime syndicate and the entire way that the Japanese press functions.
Adelstein ends up covering the Tokyo Police vice unit, and getting good at plumbing the seediest elements of Tokyos hostess clubs and sex districts for information on organized crime and eventually their connections to human trafficking. Along the way he encounters some godawful stuff, as you might imagine, and eventually gets himself in some pretty hot water with the yakuza for knowing too much, as you might also imagine.
His being an obvious foreigner works both for and against him, and he manages to get some acknowledgment from some of the better cops in Tokyo as a decent report, for a gaijin (white foreigner).
Here and there the story dragged a little, and it took me a little effort to wrap my head around all the Japanese concepts and words thrown in the narrative, but that was to be expected. All in all this was a thorough and interesting exploration of a really unexpected corner of the world, and a glimpse of someone doing some really difficult and important work to root out some real-world evil.
Adelstein ends up covering the Tokyo Police vice unit, and getting good at plumbing the seediest elements of Tokyos hostess clubs and sex districts for information on organized crime and eventually their connections to human trafficking. Along the way he encounters some godawful stuff, as you might imagine, and eventually gets himself in some pretty hot water with the yakuza for knowing too much, as you might also imagine.
His being an obvious foreigner works both for and against him, and he manages to get some acknowledgment from some of the better cops in Tokyo as a decent report, for a gaijin (white foreigner).
Here and there the story dragged a little, and it took me a little effort to wrap my head around all the Japanese concepts and words thrown in the narrative, but that was to be expected. All in all this was a thorough and interesting exploration of a really unexpected corner of the world, and a glimpse of someone doing some really difficult and important work to root out some real-world evil.