I’ve met Jake Adelstein on a few occasions, but not recently. He recounted a couple of anecdotes about edgy stories that had been squashed during his time as a reporter on the crime beat at the Yomiuri Shimbun; ironically, though, they involved powerful figures’ improprieties, not the yakuza-related material that eventually caused him to resign. Jake, I wish you the best of luck and I hope the Japanese police’s stance of not sharing information about organized crime groups with their overseas counterparts changes; it’s a damning, concrete example of official tolerance of organized crime and I can only hope that it dies in the light.
JapanSoc
