Jake has much to say on the subject, of course, and has offered his underworld knowledge to various media as they rush to cover what is looking to be a major turning point in Japan’s largest traditional sport.

From AFP:

Experts point to a shortage of money that has made sumo wrestlers and stables vulnerable to organized crime. Sumo’s popularity is falling as baseball and football have become the country’s most popular sports.

“The yakuza have always been huge supporters of sumo, financially and in other capacities,” said Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice and a specialist on organised crime in Japan.

“Many sumo wrestlers have yakuza ‘patrons’ who give them money under the table to supplement the sumo wrester’s meagre income and reward them for their victories or encourage them to train harder.”

Read Japan’s sumo bodyslammed by scandal.

And The Observer:

Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice and an authority on organised crime in Japan, said the scandal was connected with a fresh crackdown on a notoriously violent faction within the Yamaguchi-gumi that also had strong ties to the sumo world. “The media haven’t suddenly decided to expose the relationship between sumo and the yakuza,” Adelstein said. “The details were leaked to them by the police.

“Failed sumo wrestlers often end up as yakuza enforcers. The sumo world and the yakuza world have long been intertwined. Some ex-sumo wrestlers have even become yakuza bosses.”

Read Sumo threatened by scandal and crime.

Jake expounds on the topic:

The current scandals involving Japan’s organized crime groups, the yakuza, and the Sumo Association, and the sport of sumo itself shouldn’t be seen as an aberration in Japanese society or something that has never existed before–that would be missing the point. It simply is one battle in a war between Japan’s National Police Agency and Japan’s most powerful criminal organization, the Yamaguchi-gumi, that began in September of 2009. The damage inflicted on the image of sumo as Japan’s national sport and the careers of many wrestlers–they simply are casualties of war. And in the case of the Sumo Association, some of those wounds are also decidedly self-inflicted.

The story really began at last year’s Nagoya tournament when member of the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodokai were given front-row seats at the match and appeared in the NHK television broadcasts. This allegedly was to express solidarity with their jailed boss, Tsukasa Shinobu, who is serving time on fire-arm charges. (In prison, yakuza are allowed to watch sumo matches but not other sports events, and especially not boxing.) The expressed reasons for the yakuza presence may be true but in reality, yakuza often get the best seats at sumo matches and sports events, particularly at sumo matches. This is because they are often a source of revenue for the smaller sumo stables and yakuza and sumo ties have always been strong. In any event, the Kodo-kai members parading in front of the television cameras did not go unnoticed by the authorities. However, the Aichi Prefectural Police were aware of the special seating arrangements for Kodo-kai members since 2006 according to police sources; it simply wasn’t an issue for them.

In September of 2009, Ando Tokuharu, the head of Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) declared war on the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai (4,000 members), the ruling faction of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest syndicate (36,000 members) and directed all police departments in Japan to devote their energies to arresting Kodo-kai members, crippling their businesses and front companies, destroying their revenue sources, removing their spheres of influence, and inflicting as much damage to the group as possible, by any means possible. The declaration partly has to deal with the Kodo-kai’s attempts to intimidate police officers and their refusal to honor the unwritten agreements of cooperation between law enforcement and organized crime that have existed for decades. From October of 2009, discussions began at the NPA level on how to expose the Kodo-kai and sumo world ties in a way that would do the maximum damage to the Kodo-kai’s reputation. The police have always known that sumo and the yakuza were connected. Now for the first time they were ready to make an issue of it.

In January of 2010, the Sumo Association agreed to ban yakuza from attending matches after immense pressure from the NPA, and they publicly proclaimed that they would do so. This helped set the stage for what was to come later. In May of 201o, the police leaked to the media that at the 2009 Nagoya Tournament a total of 55 Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai members had been in front row or prime seats at the event. NHK, Japan’s version of the BBC, which televises the tournaments, “scooped” the story on May 25th of this year. (There are plausible rumors amongst other reporters that NHK was spoon-fed the story by the NPA, which also knew that NHK would have the footage, because of course, NHK were the same people who originally aired the matches). This forced the Sumo Association to conduct an internal investigation and more or less banish the Sumo Association executives who had arranged for the yakuza to receive the special reserved premium spots. Even though the Nagoya tournament incident predated the Sumo Association pledge to forbid yakuza from attending matches, in the public eye, it made the Sumo Association look hypocritical and it also tarnished the image of the Kodo-kai as well. In addition, the police leak of this information created dissent and chaos within the Sumo Association–a situation advantageous to the police who planned to play sides against each other in an attempt to expose the baseball gambling and yakuza connections.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Organized Crime Control Bureau has been peripherally aware of Yamaguchi-gumi ties to the sumo world since the investigation of Suruga Corporation in late 2007-March 2008. Suruga Corporation, once listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, employed a Yamaguchi-gumi front company to consolidate real estate projects by scaring away tenants in areas ripe for real estate development. They also sold condominiums in Mongolia to Japanese businessmen and Asashoryu and other Mongolian sumo wrestlers functioned as salesmen/brokers in the operations. At Suruga Corporation sponsored parties to sell the condominiums, sumo wrestlers and yakuza fraternized with businessmen representing major Japanese corporations investing in Mongolia. In that investigation, other ties to the Yamaguchi-gumi and the sumo world were also noted. It should be noted that while the yakuza working for Suruga were arrested for violations of the lawyer laws, no one from Suruga Corporation was arrested or prosecuted for hiring them. This may have been because on the board of directors was a former NPA bureaucrat from the Organized Crime Control Bureau and a retired prosecutor. It may simply be that under current Japanese law asking an organized crime front company to settle land disputes itself is not necessarily a crime.

This year, the Mongolian born sumo wrestler Asashoryu assaulted a civilian and paid damages to keep it quiet, but the story was leaked to the media nevertheless. The resulting scandal forced him to retire. The “victim” in this case reportedly repeatedly provoked and poked and prodded Asashoryu until the point where Asashoryu lost his temper and punched him. The “victim” also allegedly had ties to the Yamaguchi-gumi  and other anti-social forces, including the Inagawakai, which is now very much under the Yamaguchi-gumi umbrella. What the authorities believe and so did other Mongolian Sumo wrestlers in the Sumo Association, was that Asashoryu was set up for a fall by a rival Japanese sumo wrestler faction in the organization which wanted to get rid of him and diminish the Mongolian faction influence. They supposedly did this by outsourcing the work to the Yamaguchi-gumi’s Kodo-kai. Whether that was the case or not, when Asashoryu was questioned by the police about the incident, he talked about a lot of things and aired a lot of grievances. As did the Sumo wrestlers who were kicked out for alleged use of marijuana. Note: I wouldn’t want to imply that Asashoryu was solely responsible for the baseball gambling investigation or the cause of the story to break or that he was the sole person talking to the police, that would put him in a rather precarious position.  He’s a piece of the puzzle. As early as January of this year, the National Police Agency had solid intelligence from both the Aichi Prefectural Police Department and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department that a number of sumo wrestlers were socializing with the yakuza and gambling with them as well.

The “sumo wrestlers betting on baseball” story was leaked to Shukan Shincho by the police. Just as in October of 2008, the police leaked to the same magazine the story of how Japanese gang boss Goto had a lavish birthday party attended by celebrities, including famous enka singers. The mass media then picked up the story, the Shukan Shincho article turned out to be correct, and NHK banned the attending singers (Kobayashi Akira etc.) from appearing on television. Just as NHK is now not broadcasting the Sumo tournament. In Goto’s case, the scandal resulted in his fall from power. In the case of the Kodo-kai, top level executives will be forced to resign or be arrested for their part in the baseball betting operations. In fact, the arrest of yakuza crime boss, Mori Kenji, (Yamaguchi-gumi Tsukasa Kogyo), on gambling charges, several weeks ago may be part of the current investigation as well. In his hotel suite, where he held a traditional gambling session, sumo wrestlers, celebrities, and some corporate executives were also alleged to be in attendance. One part of the　sumo-yakuza-gambling scandal that may never come to light is that, not only were sumo wrestlers were participating in the gambling, so were some executives from the Japanese companies sponsoring the sumo tournaments. For those reasons, the investigation is likely to be cut off at a predetermined point before it becomes an international embarrassment. Established connections between gambling, yakuza, sumo and major Japanese corporations wouldn’t reflect well on the business image of Japan. There is already a proposal to “pin the crime” on low-level yakuza boss who died of natural causes last year, designating him the “puppet master” who ran the show. Dead men make the perfect fall guys and don’t say things they shouldn’t.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is doing their job and doing it in the way they’ve probably always wanted to do it. Except now they are acting with the approval of the National Police Agency from the top down. When the curtain is pulled away, it will be revealed that the Yamaguchi-gumi was running most of the bookie operations, that they made the baseball betting possible and that the Yamaguchi-gumi and Sumo Association ties have been strong for several years. (Some of the bookie operations were run by different crime groups in different regions.) In the end, the NPA will achieve another victory in its war on the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai. Their biggest victory will be in terms of public relations. By showing that the yakuza have corrupted Japan’s national sport, they turn public opinion against the yakuza and create an atmosphere where stronger anti-organized crime laws are likely to be supported.

Ironically, the exposure of sumo wrestlers involved in high-stakes gambling operations run by the yakuza and Sumo Association executives giving special perks and favors to yakuza–these very issues also came to light because some Sumo Association members tried to use the yakuza to solve internal conflicts within the organization, and many Sumo wrestlers were happy to be on the organized crime dole.

All over Japan’s legislation on the local government level, there are laws which are pending which would make it a crime to pay money or offer rewards to the yakuza for any services performed. The new laws will in essence punish not just the yakuza for their crimes but the civilians who utilize them as well. A similar law is already on the books regarding racketeers (sokaiya) and it had a devastating effect on that as an illegal business.

However, all the law really does is put into legal code Japanese folk wisdom that has been around for years: “When you curse someone, dig two graves.” Or as some Japanese cops jokingly put it, “When you use the yakuza to get what you want, you’re sure to get something you don’t want as well.”

Update 07/11/2010

The article here, Ex-Sumo Wrestler Involved In Baseball Gambling Connected to Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai is in  Japanese, from Sankei Newspaper, but it discusses the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai connection to the current scandal in explicit terms. In May of this year, Ando Tokuhara, the head of the National Police Agency, obliquely hinted at the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai and Sumo connections in his press release of instructions (kunji) to Japan’s police department heads,  which called for a crackdown on the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai, including their banishment from Japanese society and reduction of their spheres of influence, while explicitly mentioning the Sumo Association.

Also it’s worth mentioning that the excellent book, Sumo: A Thinking Fan’s Guide To The National Sport by David Benjamin, almost foretells the current troubles on pages 231-233, in an entry called “Cracks In the Facade.”  It starts off describing how powerful the Sumo Association has been in Japan for years, cozying up with major media, suppressing any scandal.  It notes that in recent years: “The weekly magazines had become so persistent, in accusations about matters like hazing, links to the Mob, and yaochozumo (fixed matches), that the Sumo Association could no longer keep such stories entirely out of the mainstream press.Two ex-rikishi, reportedly ready to spill the beans about yaocho, died mysteriously.”

I’d almost forgotten about those unfortunate two. It always struck me as a little odd that both whistle blowers should fall ill and die in the same hospital shortly after holding press conferences where they announced that they were ready to blow the lid off the dirty diaper bin of the sumo world. (Probably just a coincidence. Squealers and whistle blowers in the sumo world probably tend to feel so bad about betraying the sport, that they invariably get really sick and die, of the same illness, around the same time–which is why you only need to do one autopsy for every two mysteriously deceased wrestlers)

However, I think the two dead rikishi held one of their press conferences at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan, that means there should exist an audio recording of the conference or a transcript. Any enterprising reporter who’d like to “dig up” that story and is in good health, good luck.

Also check out  Tokyo Reporter’s summary of weekly magazine reporting on the dismal state of sumo affairs and organized crime links.  As usual, Brett does a stellar job of putting the popular press spin on events into context: Sumo worlds ties to gangsters baseball betting have long legacy.

The Nagoya Tournament, which NHK is not broadcasting, opened as planned. A reporter friend in Nagoya says the police presence there is immense.  It marks the first time that the Aichi Prefectural Police have posted organized crime control division detectives to guard the entrances and check for a yakuza presence. It isn’t just to keep the yakuza from watching the contest. The National Police Agency quietly fears that a sumo wrestler will be killed or have their “suicide” arranged by the Yamaguchi-gumi as a warning to others to keep their mouths shut.  It only takes one death or serious assault to make thirty people suddenly very quiet and forgetful. This makes investigations difficult.

However, the yakuza don’t always have to use direct brute force to get a point across. If I were a sumo wrestler who’d admitted to participating in gambling or had talked at length to the police, I’d be extremely careful when eating my chanko nabe; I’d probably insist on making my own, with no added secret ingredients.

Finally, Mori Kenji, a recently arrested Yamaguchi-gumi Kodokai member, was also reported to have attended Asashoryu’s birthday party last year.  By now, no one should be surprised that the yakuza and the sumo wrestlers associate with each other–the question is just how symbiotic the relationship really has become.  Recent reports suggest that many of the shops and businesses selling Sumo tickets are also run by the yakuza as well. What many fear is that when you remove the yakuza support and sponsorship of the Sumo wrestlers and the smaller Sumo stables, the whole thing will began to collapse under its own weight.

Update 07/12/2010 (corrections to previous posts are colored)

The Sumoforum.net has some very interesting posts on this subject, some poking holes in this article, some supporting it. In any event, most of it is rather intelligent discourse and polite–something quite rare for on-line forums about any subject.  I could be wrong, of course. I will point out that what I wrote in Tokyo Vice in 2008 about Goto-gumi, Goto Tadamasa’s links to Sokagakkai and powerful politicians and his liver transplant at UCLA were more or less confirmed with the publication of Goto’s memoirs in May of 2010 (this year). He’s donating all of his profits on the book to charity, which is very nice of him. Just wanted to say that I’m right some of the time.

Anyway, reading the posts which express reasonable doubts made me decide to add more source materials where possible (although not everything could be found in English).  Check out the forum yourself if you’re interested in following the story. I’m taking a break from it until the first arrests or  perhaps until the TMPD files papers on the dead yakuza boss. (It’s a classic way of solving a case–blame it on a dead guy, file charges with the prosecutors (shoruisoken) and then call it a day. Case closed).

For its latest event, Polaris Project will host author Jake Adelstein and other representatives for an evening on Thursday, May 27 to speak on issues related to human trafficking and crime in Japan.

Place: Tokyo 21c Club, near Tokyo Station

Time: 7-10pm

Entry: ¥5,000 (Soft drinks and a light buffet will be served)

RSVP is required in advance as seating is limited to 90 people
Please RSVP to events@polarisproject.jp

Click here to view the flier.

About Polaris Project

Founded in 2002 in Washington DC with the Japan branch established in 2004, Polaris Project combats human trafficking through advocacy work, outreach and education. Since its establishment, Polaris has grown to become of the largest organizations of its kind in the world and has won awards from numerous organizations, including Ashoka Innovators for the Public and the DO Something BRICK award. Polaris Japan is a registered NPO in Japan and Polaris USA is a 501(c)3 NGO in the United states.

Polaris Project would like to thank Tokyo 21c Club for allowing us to use their event space and services. Tokyo 21c club is also home to the Entrepreneur Club for Growing Japan (EGG Japan). For more information on 21c club, please see their website.

Author Joshua “Jake” Adelstein supposes that if he’d stayed home in rural Missouri and had never come to Japan, he’d probably have become a small-town lawyer or a very happy detective on the local police force.

“I was always attracted to the law, probably because my father was the county coroner for many years — and still is now,” he says.

But Adelstein has spent roughly half his life in Japan, first as a student at Sophia University in Tokyo and then as a reporter for the vernacular Yomiuri Shimbun, where he landed a job that put him in touch with what he describes as “the dark side of the rising sun.”

Read “Insider Reaching Out” [via The Japan Times]

After Jake’s interview on NPR earlier this month, Thomas Dreisbach and other interns put their skills to work in editing a segment about Jake’s time covering the case of Gen Sekine, animal breeder turned serial killer in Saitama. It’s a fun, quick-and-dirty summary of “The Saitama Dog Lover Serial Disappearances, Part 1 & 2″ (pages 102-135), and artist Kathryn DeFeo got Jake’s hairdo down pretty good.

Check out NPR: In Other Words, Japan Confidential

Be sure to watch The Daily Show on Monday, November 16 to catch Jake Adelstein in an interview with Jon Stewart talking about his book, Tokyo Vice, and all the nitty gritty of working the police beat in Tokyo.

inside japan's underworld

Hello to all the viewers of 60 Minutes or the readers of the Washington Post who have stopped by after seeing the program and/or reading the article. We’d like to thank Lara Logan and the rest of the CBS News crew for visiting Tokyo, and hope everyone enjoyed the segment!

Browse around the site to learn more about the case of Tadamasa Goto and the rest of the Japanese underworld, and don’t forget to check out information about Jake Adelstein’s new book Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.

For those who have yet to see the 60 Minutes feature on yakuza, it’s available for online viewing here.

“When you are looking at child pornography, you are not looking at something sexually titillating. You are looking at a crime scene. I mean it is crime scene. It is evidence that crime has been committed and that people can derive sexual pleasure from that or profit on that is horrifying.”

– Jake Adelstein

The Australian Broadcasting Corperation’s Radio Australia reports on how old time Yakuza are concerned about the rising number of younger blood who are looking to make their fortune with child pornography. Jake Adelstein weighs in.

Listen here:

Veteran Yakuza express concern over porn push [via Radio Australia's Connect Asia]

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s underworld can tell you a lot about what’s happening in the legitimate economy.

Gangsters are on the run as growth wanes and deflation worsens. Yet the oddest development by far involves yakuza members sitting for exams covering key aspects of their work.

If you think this is just a law-enforcement issue, think again. It’s a sign Japan’s funk will be longer than economists predict. That may surprise those betting Japan is recovering. Oddly, though, the plight of gangsters tells the story.

Huddled over legal texts and documents isn’t the popular image of Japan’s storied mobsters. When they aren’t collecting debts, shaking down shop owners, overseeing prostitution rings or rigging stocks, members of Japan’s biggest organized crime group, Yamaguchi-gumi, are studying for 12-page tests.

Yakuza’s Series 7 Exam Is Harbinger for Economy [via Bloomberg]

I’ve been working on this thing now for almost three years and its nice to finally see it in print. If you’re curious about the sex industry in Japan, about yakuza, cops, journalists and all that can go terribly wrong in the little island country of the rising sun, please read the book.   The following interview was done for Random House, who have been kind enough to publish the book.

What drew you to Japan in the first place, and how did you wind up going to university there?

In high school I had many problems with anger and self-control. I had been studying Zen Buddhism and karate, and I thought Japan would be the perfect place to reinvent myself. It could be that my pointy right ear draws me toward neo-Vulcan pursuits—I don’t know.

When I got to Japan, I managed to find lodgings in a Soto Zen Buddhist temple where I lived for three years, attending zazen meditation at least once a week. I didn’t become enlightened, but I did get a better hold on myself.

How did you become a journalist for the most popular Japanese-language newspaper?

The Yomiuri Shinbun runs a standardized test, open to all college students. Many Japanese firms hire young grads this way. My friends thought that the idea of a white guy trying to pass a Japanese journalist’s exam was so impossibly quixotic that I wanted to prove them wrong. I spent an entire year eating instant ramen and studying. I managed to find the time to do it by quitting my job as an English teacher and working as a Swedish-massage therapist for three overworked Japanese women two days a week. It turned out to be a slightly sleazy gig, but it paid the bills.

There was a point when I was ready to give up studying and the application process. Then, when I was in Kabukicho on June 22, 1992, I asked a tarot fortune-telling machine for advice on my career path, and it said that with my overpowering morbid curiosity I was destined to become a journalist, a job at which I would flourish, and that fate would be on my side. I took that as a good sign. I still have the printout.

I did well enough on the initial exam to get to the interviews, and managed to stumble my way through that process and get hired. I think I was an experimental case that turned out reasonably well.

How did you succeed in uncovering the underworld in a country that is famously “closed” or restricted to foreigners? Do you think people talked more openly to you because you were American?

I think Japan is actually more open than people give it credit for. However, to get the door open, you really need to become fluent in the spoken and written language. The written language was a nightmare for me.

You’re right, though; it was mostly an advantage to be a foreigner—it made me memorable. The yakuza are outsiders in Japanese society, and perhaps being a fellow outsider gave us a weird kind of bond. The cops investigating the yakuza also tend to be oddballs. I was mentored into an early understanding and appreciation of the code of both the yakuza and the cops. Reciprocity and honor are essential components for both.

I also think the fact that I’m too stupid to be afraid when I should be, and annoyingly persistent as well—these things didn’t help me in long-term romance, but they helped me as a crime reporter.

Do you feel that investigative journalism is being threatened or aided by the expansion of the Internet and news blogs, and the closing down of many printed newspapers?

In one sense it is being threatened because investigative journalism is rarely a solo project. It requires huge amounts of resources, capital, and time to really do one story correctly. Legal costs and FOIA documents are expensive things. The bigger the target, the greater the risk and the more money is required. The second-biggest threat to investigative journalism is crooked lawyers and corporate shills who sue as a harassment tactic. In general, it’s rather hard and time-consuming to be an army of one. It took me almost three years to break the story about yakuza receiving liver transplants at UCLA on my own. The costs in financial terms were immense, and so were the losses along the way. A team of reporters could have done the work much faster, probably.

However, these things said, blogging is also a great source of news that might go unreported, or be overlooked, by the mainstream media. Twitter, too, has had an interesting impact, actually helping a journalist get out of jail in the case of James Karl Buck. We’re beginning to see kind of a public option in investigative journalism, too—such as things like ProPublica. They do an awesome job at investigative journalism, partly through donations, and they have a great Web site. So the Internet is not all bad for investigative journalism, as long as we proceed with caution and forethought. At the same time, real intelligence-gathering work actually requires you to put down your cell phone and your computer and get off your ass and meet people in the real world. As odious as it may be, we have to sift through garbage, pound the pavement, and visit the scene of the crime. Not all answers can be found in front of a keyboard, or on Google, and the “it’s all in the database” mentality is the bane of reporting and often generates shoddy reporting. HUMINT is essential.

The individual journalist can do great investigative work—it’s just a lot harder, and usually financially difficult to do unless you’re independently wealthy, like Bruce Wayne. Most of us don’t have the time or the resources or the luxury of holding down a day job and doing investigative journalism on the side, as a hobby.

Has anything changed with regard to sex trafficking in Japan in the recent past?

Japan should be given credit for really cracking down on the sexual trafficking and exploitation of foreign women. Unfortunately, this has prompted the scumbags who rule the human-trafficking world to set their sights on domestic victims, usually runaway teenage girls.

I’m on the Board of Directors of Polaris Project Japan, a nonprofit organization that set up hotlines several years ago for foreign human-trafficking victims. We are now receiving many calls from teenage girls who are being blackmailed or coerced into prostitution. Of course, these girls also provide fodder for child pornography and neo-child pornography, which Japan still produces in great amounts.

It would be nice to see Japan create some real shelters for teenage runaways rather than just driving them into the arms of the bad guys.

In Tokyo Vice, there is a price placed on your head by a certain yakuza faction. Can you travel freely in Japan today?

I wish I knew the answer to this one. I’m still nominally under the protection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The faction I pissed off, the Goto-gumi, has been split into two groups. Goto Tadamasa, their leader, is now allegedly retired and a Buddhist priest. He was a notorious yakuza gang boss, very wealthy, and known to decimate his enemies—even public figures. He may be officially retired, but cars belonging to the Goto-gumi have been showing up parked around my neighborhood. You can recognize them by their license plates, which include the number 510, readable as go-to in Japanese—and they are usually black Mercedes-Benz. Yakuza love German cars. I don’t know why the cars are there, but it makes me feel ill at ease.

I’ve also unintentionally alienated the leader of the Matsuba-kai, another Tokyo crime group, by mentioning him in a Japanese article I wrote on Goto’s deal with the FBI. This guy didn’t make a deal with the FBI, though, as far as I know. I’m pointing that out so maybe he’ll decide I haven’t smeared mud on his face.

I go back and forth between the United States and Japan, and when I’m in Japan, I have a bodyguard and driver who used to be a yakuza crime boss himself. He travels with me constantly when I’m there—like a really, really, really big shadow.

The thing about the worst of the yakuza—and they’re not all evil—is that you can’t worry only about your own physical safety. There’s a chance that your friends or loved ones will be brutalized in your place. It’s certainly happened in Japan before, to other journalists. Even if you’re not terrorized physically, they can still ruin your life. Goto-gumi is a great intelligence-gathering organization, and extortion and blackmail are powerful tools to discredit someone or make them shut up—even Japan’s National Police Agency noted the group’s ability to use the media to silence their enemies. In the Goto-gumi’s case, they actually own a private detective agency. That’s not uncommon for organized crime groups in Japan, as is noted in the book. There are many yakuza groups that excel in collecting damaging information on cops and writers who get in their way. This summer in a police raid, the Aichi Police Department found the car registrations of several of their detectives in the offices of the yakuza. In other words, the yakuza know where the detectives live, and probably much more. That’s what makes them formidable entities—because if you cross them, they’ll expose your quirks, fetishes, weaknesses, indiscretions, and mistakes to the world. Failing that, they’ll find someone you care about and ruin their life.

I realized several years ago, when I started writing about human-trafficking issues in Japan, that I was able to accept the possibility of getting whacked in the process of reporting on the criminals involved. Not that I would be happy about it—but I accepted the risk. What I can’t accept is the risk that what I choose to do endangers people I care for, or the sources who trust me. I’ve done everything I can to minimize those risks, and perhaps some of it has been unsavory. You can’t deal with the most violent and sociopathic factions of the yakuza without becoming a little like them yourself. 毒をもって毒を制す。: “Fight poison with poison.” It’s a handy Japanese proverb to know.

What do you hope your American audience can learn from your book?

I think everyone will take away something different from the book. I suppose you can learn a lot about how journalism works in Japan, how the police work, and how the yakuza work. I would also hope that people take away from the book an understanding of some of the things I really like about Japan and the Japanese, things like reciprocity, honor, loyalty, and stoic suffering. I think in Japan, I learned how important it is to keep your word, to never forget your debts—and not just the financial ones—and to make repayment in due course. Perhaps that’s what honor is all about.

There’s a word in Japanese, 反面教師, hanmen kyoshi, which means, more or less, “the teacher who teaches by his bad example.” At times, I’m an excellent hanmen kyoshi in the book.

Everything I’ve learned that’s important to me is in the book somewhere. I hope there’s something universal in the contents beyond just making people aware of cultural differences between the United States and Japan, or reiterating the importance and value of investigative journalism. Like a book I would choose to read to my children, I hope there’s some kind of moral to it all. Maybe the real lesson is to be kind and helpful to the people you care about whenever you can, because it’s good for them, and good for you, and your time with them may be much shorter than you imagined.

PAID FRIENDS, EGO-BOOSTING, HIGH PAY AND HIGH-RISKS