Jake Adelstein: Tokyo Vice

Book Reviews

Jan 19

Written By Oscar Shinozuka

Tokyo Vice (2009) by Jake Adelstein

Amazon US | Amazon JP

My Rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Either erase the story, or we’ll erase you. And maybe your Family. But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.’

Continuing with my research on Japan, I picked up this book to learn more about the Yakuza—the Japanese mafia. Apart from the tattoos and finger cutting, I’ve heard them be described as a “necessary evil”—some members are even treated as celebrities, and so, I’ve always been fascinated with how they operate and why some people believe they’re “necessary.” The above quote is literally the first few lines of the book, which speak for itself.

My initial reactions after reading this book were fear, but even more so, fascination with how sophisticated the Yakuza, or Gokudo—literally meaning “the ultimate path,” have become in their operation in recent years. Using humorous prose, Jake Adelstein guides you through the darkness beautifully illustrating life in modern-day Japan from a foreigner’s perspective making his memoir extremely easy to understand and very relatable—being from America myself. In addition to unveiling the relationships between Japan’s mass media, the Japanese national government, and the Yakuza, he also touches on Japan’s work culture, manual culture, and sex culture which makes this an insightful book on both the underworld that most people, including Japanese people, don’t know and Japanese contemporary culture. You wouldn’t think that a book like this could be humorous, if at all, but it was well written and witty and easily one of my favorite books about Japan that I’ve read so far.

Disclaimer: The following sections contain spoilers

The Yakuza

My knowledge of the yakuza is negligible, so when I imagine what one would look like, the only things that come to mind are full-body tattoos—and the anime/manga Kaiji, which from what I’ve read in this book, probably isn’t that far off. However, a more alluring depiction was written by Adelstein and went as follows:

“The modern-day yakuza are innovative entrepreneurs; rather than a bunch of tattooed nine-fingered thugs in white suits wielding samurai swords, a more appropriate metaphor would be ‘Goldman Sachs with guns.’ ”

I was thunderstruck after reading Adelstein’s explanation of the way the Japanese government has handled the mafia and gang membership. In Japan, “…the state still hasn’t made membership of a criminal organization illegal or given the police the tools the antimob tools long considered crucial in other countries: wiretapping, plea bargaining, and witness protection.” If you found this shocking, just wait until you hear about the police raids. Everybody knew about them, literally:

“The press knew, and so did the yakuza! If they didn’t, the police would notify the yakuza that a raid was going to happen. That way everything would go smoothly, and nobody would get hurt.”

Now, I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s how things are supposed to work. Obviously, the police didn’t find anything useful during these raids. He also mentions Robert Whiting, author of Tokyo Underworld, and other experts who have already pointed out that the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) “…was actually founded with yakuza money,” go figure!

There is a whole lot more on the yakuza in the book that I won’t go into here to keep things short and simple.

Manual Culture

An unexpected aspect of Japan that was mentioned in this book was the tendency of Japanese society to do things by the book and their obsession with manuals:

“Today the Japanese obsession with manuals is unabated. A few years ago, the term manual ningen (‘manual humans’) was in vogue to describe a generation of younger Japanese who seemed incapable of independent thought. The term is now part of the vernacular, used for someone who can only follow instructions and can’t think outside the box. A synonym for manual ningen is shijimachi ningen (‘the waiting-for-instructions people’), which, as you can imagine, refers to passive employees with no initiative.”

While writing the chapter on manual culture, Adelstein also took a look at the Amazon JP best-sellers list and found that the top ten books were all manuals of the sort. He doesn’t mention when this list is from which would have been nice to know, but I’ll take his word for it. He doesn’t give titles for all of the books, but has a description of what the books are about—some are pretty self-explanatory:

A manual for how to argue with Koreans (whether in Japan or South Korea - can’t speak for North Korea) who don’t have nice things to say about Japan
Kabu no Zeikin, was a manual for preparing tax returns if you own or sell stocks
A manual for aspiring landlords
Perfect Manual of Suicide
The Manual of Superorgasmic Fellatio and Cunnilingus - with over 400 Photos
The Advanced Cardiac Life Support Provider Manual by the American Heart Association
Sex: A Foreplay Manual
A book for engineers wanting to pass a really difficult test
The Sought-After Guy (How to Get Chicks): A Manual of 40 [Techniques] - What Women, in Their Heart of Hearts, Really Want from Men
The Indispensable Manual for the National Center Test for University Admissions

As someone that studied suicide in Japan including karo-jisatsu and karoshi—even wrote my senior thesis on the topic during my University days, it’s sad to see that number four on the list was a book on suicide. Included in this Tokyo Vice, is an account of a young boy who had committed suicide after purchasing the Perfect Manual of Suicide. It was gloomy scene where the boy had been found standing in the middle of his room. Adelstein approached him and reached a hand out to tap the boy’s shoulder, but fortunately, his co-worker who had invited him to see the scene grabbed his hand before Adelstein touched the boy’s body. The boy had electrocuted himself to death and was still connected to the source of electricity—if Adelstein had touched him, he would have died then and there. He had failed to see a note on the boy’s back stating that whoever found him shouldn’t touch him. Even on his way out of this world, the boy had in mind the danger the discoverer of the body would be in and left a note. It’s a sad story.

Kabukicho: Sex and Loneliness

In the list of books above, three of the ten involve sex, and when I think about sex in Japan, I think of Tokyo’s red-light district, Kabukicho.

“ ‘It’s an odd thing about this country. The police don’t mind if you get a blowjob in the middle of the day or if the operators of sex clubs advertise their services right out in the open, but they get their shorts all twisted up about people looking at people having sex. Pubic hair is too close to the real thing. The moral of the story: do it, don’t watch it.’ ”

Japan has a reputation for being a “sexless” country, but on the other hand, there is Kabukicho—where, “do it, don’t watch it” takes full effect. The above quote is from the beginning of the book when Adelstein describes his workplace and co-workers at Yomiuri Shinbun. His superiors are huddled together looking at two porn mags. They were the same magazines, but one was published in America and the other in Japan—which meant that one was uncensored and the other wasn’t (you can probably guess which one was which). Had the Japanese version been uncensored, “the police would have raided the publisher and confiscated every copy.”

Japan is known for being a country full of contradictions where logical reasoning is shadowed by ideology and corruption. For example, the following excerpt is about what Japan’s Prostitution Prevention Law actually prevents, or in this case, allows:

“ ‘You have to understand that the Prostitution Prevention Law here is really about protecting the prostitutes. You could call it the Prostitute Protection Law.’

‘How does that work?’

‘Well, in 1958, prostitution as it used to be was banished. It used to be a licensed industry. The idea was to make sure that the women couldn’t be forced into sexual servitude. So basically, the people the law punishes are the pimps, the brothel owners, and the guys who solicit for the prostitutes. The idea at the time was that many of the women in the industry were being coerced into it and if you punished them, it would be punishing the victim. Plus, no one would come forward to the cops. For the john and the hooker, there’s no punishment. If the woman is under twenty, we might put her in a shelter.’

‘Why doesn’t the law punish the customers? Wouldn’t that discourage the trade?’

‘Sure it would, but who the fuck do you think wrote the laws?’ ”

I’m pretty sure that the laws have changed, but that last line is pretty funny—and revealing. To wrap up this review, I just want to add this one bit where Adelstein is making some closing remarks about Host and Hostess culture in Japan. Hosts and Hostesses are men and women who get paid by people to be a companion for a few hours—not sex, just to listen to their problems like a friend would. He recounts an opportunity where he was allowed to work as a host for a night in a bar/club located in Kabukicho before commenting on the loneliness in Tokyo, the densest populated city in the world:

“There is, admittedly, the underlying game that’s the lure (but where is it not?): is this evening of sympathy and champagne going to lead to sexual intercourse? Be that as it may, what the clubs are really fuelled by is alienation, boredom, and loneliness. The rates are not unreasonable, but the costs in human terms are incredibly high.”