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A review by frasersimons
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
2.5
Bit of a weird one for me. I watched the TV show and wanted to see how rooted in the memoir it actually was, which was neat. It is quite candid, with the author being pretty open about their trajectory as they report in Japan, and the emotional and mental toll the beat took on them.
It takes a while to demonstrate why this is actually a thing; as in, why it is being written. For a while it actually isn’t particularly clear. It is narrated by the author and the distant tone and rendering of an already disillusioned approach to the human figures being talked about makes it feel meandering, or even pandering and indulgent as to what the reader may want out of it. Lots digressions into the cultural context of sex, until it migrates to the true focus: human trafficking and that particular story.
This was fine, overall, but feels like a product of it’s time and oddly really generational in its thinking and pseudo progressive outlook toward sex, sex workers, and indentured sex workers imported to the country, which the government and laws just did not serve. It’s admirable doing something about it, but the mix between the professional and personal and those later decisions colours it as somewhat suspect in some areas, and feels more like unfocused fiction than anything else.
It takes a while to demonstrate why this is actually a thing; as in, why it is being written. For a while it actually isn’t particularly clear. It is narrated by the author and the distant tone and rendering of an already disillusioned approach to the human figures being talked about makes it feel meandering, or even pandering and indulgent as to what the reader may want out of it. Lots digressions into the cultural context of sex, until it migrates to the true focus: human trafficking and that particular story.
This was fine, overall, but feels like a product of it’s time and oddly really generational in its thinking and pseudo progressive outlook toward sex, sex workers, and indentured sex workers imported to the country, which the government and laws just did not serve. It’s admirable doing something about it, but the mix between the professional and personal and those later decisions colours it as somewhat suspect in some areas, and feels more like unfocused fiction than anything else.