For this oral presentation, I would like to talk about a memoir entitled Tokyo Vice, An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, published in 2009.
(However, I’m sorry to admit that I only have a French version because I bought it when I was too impressed to read an entire story in English / Anyway ).
I thought it would be interesting to talk about it today because it gives a different point of view about journalism and Japan.
The author, Jake Adelstein, is an American reporter who became the first foreign journalist within the one’s largest Japanese’s daily newspaper, the Yomiuri Shinbun, at the early age of 24.
Jake Addelstein’s memoir starts with his early debut within the Yomiuri Shinbun. He previously wrote a few articles in his university’s newspaper in Japan but this new work makes him realize how the Japanese language stills challenging. He first
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However, this risky position let him to a dangerous situation.
As he dug for information about a yakuza organization, Jake Addelstein discovered that the leader, Tadamasa Goto, succeed in having a liver transplant in America through money laundering. This revelation is at the core of the book and led the reporter to question whether or not to publish an article about it because it will reveal another side of Japan: a society mostly ran by illegal organizations. But more importantly, his life is at stake.
But Jake Addelstein witnessed too many atrocities in Japan as he worked alongside the police and mixed with the mafia to remain quiet and choose to report the truth in an article for the Los Angeles Times. However, this article cost him serious death threats and led his family to leave Japan to be under the protection of the FBI in America for years while he stayed in Tokyo to work with the protection of