This was an interesting book that changed its character over time. Adelstein managed the comparatively rare feat of becoming a Western reporter working directly for a Japanese newspaper. The start of the book focuses broadly on workplace culture, the police beat and policing practices, and crime in Japan. The latter is actually fairly rare even though laws against the native organized crime outfits, called Yakuza, were so weak that membership was printed on business cards. Similarly, as Adelstein got more on the vice beat, he’d realized the extent to which human trafficking can be difficult to crack down on because the system’s first priority would often be to punish the victims for immigration violations.
The latter half of the book gets seedier, focusing on a few stories and reflecting the costs of the vice beat of the years. Adelstein broke a huge scoop about a Yakuza boss (and confederates) that was given priority treatment for a liver transplant at UCLA. As an interesting side note for a longtime Washington Post reader, John Pomfret, experienced Asia hand, actually played an admirable key part in helping Adelstein get the story out. The book unflinchingly documents the cost of getting that story, although the individual passages tend to be less connected and I often lost track of time in the back part of the book, perhaps because Adelstein was no longer embedded in the structure of his paper and seemed to be slipping away from his family.
The seediest places we actually saw in Japan were in Tokyo’s Akihabara Electric Town, not the sort of thing that even gets a cursory mention in this book. This is to be expected; in most any developed and safe country, investigative reporters can and should find the gaps and weaknesses that the ordinary person doesn’t encounter unless they are hard up for a loan or try their luck at an overseas job offer or the like. That said, I think the extremes can be useful to read about as they do tell you something about the country; for example just today in the Washington Post there was a story by Petula Dvorak about visiting a free medical clinic that got 1,500 attendees in Southwestern Virginia, a region that’s economy had been reliant on diminishing coal jobs. Those coming out, sometimes camping overnight, would be covered by Medicare were it not for sadists in the Virginia legislature who are among dozens of states rejecting the expansion that comes with the Affordable Care Act. While the magnitude varies greatly, there’s systemic cruelties in every country. However, understanding them, and the larger culture they reflect, requires the sort of solid reporting Adelstein manages.
To end on a lighter note, how do visitors to Japan, and indeed everyday citizens, interact with the police? Based on our experience, the answer is traffic management and police boxes, called Kōban. Between the two, we saw police out on foot a lot more than we do in a typical American city. The Kōban are particularly great because they’re also there to go to when you need help or directions, as most tourist guides will mention. We didn’t end up needing that service, but it shows the advantages of integrating police more into the community rather than having them patrol on cars.
Image credit: We had taken the Kōban picture, but the picture of the book is a promotional image from Japan Subculture, the site for which Adelstein is chief editor.
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