• Sun. Oct 1st, 2023

Japan Subculture Research Center

A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun.

Jake Adelstein

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  • Today Japan starts dumping its nuclear waste into the ocean. 

Today Japan starts dumping its nuclear waste into the ocean. 

"Japan’s decision to go forward with the release of the treated, radioactively contaminated water is not surprising, but certainly disappointing.  Both Japan and the IAEA can turn a challenging situation…

Lessons Learned From Encounters With Clickbait Journalists

In the yakuza world they say, “As soon as you get to the top, someone will try to kick you down.” The world of journalism is, sadly, surprisingly “If you’re…

What I’ve Learned In The 30 Years Since I Became A Reporter: The 12 Rules Of Being A Good Journalist In Japan

Share your data. The internet is a vast and endless storage hub. If you’ve written something the world should know--put up supporting data and documents on the web, maybe in…

Tokyo Private Eye (東京探偵) the sequel to Tokyo Vice was published on March 28th 2023, with Marchialy (France). English version next year!

Clients say they want to know, but they don't They want you to tell them what they want to hear But that's not the job My job is to deliver…

Comment gagner un combat perdu d’avance contre les auteurs de pièges à clics?

S’il y a une maxime de connue chez les yakuza, c’est bien « Dès que tu arriveras au sommet, quelqu’un essaiera de t’en faire tomber. » L’univers du journalisme est,…

Recent threats against FOreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) and the history of media intimidation

by Robert Whiting (reprinted with permission) TOKYO — Over a recent early weekend, there were a series of threatening calls made in English and Japanese to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club…

Japan: The Shape Of Things To Come? Find out this Sunday (May 15)

This coming Sunday (May 15, starting 10am), sees a unique event at the Yokohama campus of Meiji Gakuin University and online via Zoom, called THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, marking the…

Response to The Hollywood Reporter Article

Any competent journalist here knows that the civil servant laws here (公務員法) and the State Secrets Law make it a crime for government officials to divulge confidential information to third…

Protecting Sources & Risking Lives: The Ethical Dilemmas of Japanese Journalism

"1. Write the truth by any means possible. 2. Protect your sources. 3. If you can't write the story, without protecting your sources, find new or different sources or drop…

"Where Is The Romance?"–a hard-boiled meditation on mating rituals in Tokyo (for V-day)

In a departure from our usual somber posting, I’ve written an original prose-poem, which is for a friend’s upcoming “Where is the Romance” theme party in Tokyo–a pre-valentines’s day event.…