Michael Gerald's Reviews > Tokyo Vice

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

Jake Adelstein, an American graduate of Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan wanted to become a journalist for one of Japan's biggest newspapers, the Yomiuri Shinbun. Turns out, getting in was the easy part.

In this book, Adelstein tells his experiences working the police beat in Japan, lifting the veil on Japan's supposedly peaceful, orderly society. It is a society with a manual for almost anything, including suicide; where prostitution is supposedly illegal, but one can find shops that offer blowjobs and handjobs (and sex on the sly, of course.)

And of course, the Yakuza. Adelstein narrates in fascinating prose the complicated love-hate relationship that Japanese society has with the Yakuza, an organization with many "families" and is embedded in many facets of Japanese life: politics, business, even the media; but also a sinister group that exploits people and rakes in lots of money from human suffering.

One thing I also learned is that the news media race against each other for scoops (nothing new there), and that the news industry, especially the crime beat, is like the intel business: You protect your sources.

Funny, sometimes boastful, sometimes self-deprecating, always ballsy, Tokyo Vice is not your usual read. But then again, an American writer for a Japanese newspaper is not so usual, either.