‘[A]n excellent installment in the Western infatuation with how weird and strident Japanese low life and low culture can be.’
Sunday Age
‘[A] gripping story … Pulls the curtain back on a sordid element of Japanese society that few Westerners ever see. In addition to his clash with [a] yakuza boss, Adelstein details the more notable cases from his 12-year career at the Yomiuri, including "The Chichibu Snack-mama Murder Case" and "The Emperor of Loan Sharks." No less fascinating is the view Adelstein provides into Japanese society itself … Adelstein's Tokyo is a veritable Gomorrah where nearly every act of intimacy is legally bought and sold.’
San Francisco Examiner
‘[A]n audacious and fascinating account of crime and the symbiotic relationship between the police, gangland and politicians.’
Herald Sun
‘[An] entertaining memoir that takes the reader on a tour of Tokyo’s seedy underworld. With humour and hard-boiled prose, Adelstein tracks his rise from a student in Tokyo to a police reporter on Japan’s premier paper. Over 12 years, he covered some extraordinary stories, but one in particular resulted in a price on his head — and those of his wife and children. He didn’t write the story, he wrote a very fascinating book instead.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘[A]n audacious account of crime and the symbiotic relationship between the police, gangland and politicians.’
Sunday Times
‘Tokyo Vice is the American’s gritty, true-to-life account of 12 years on the news beat as a staffer for a Japanese daily — and it is exceptional. Its classic atmospherics rekindle memories of Walter Winchell and Eliot Ness. It's a tale of adrenalin-depleting 80-hour weeks, full ashtrays, uncooperative sources, green tea, hard liquor, and forays into the commercialised depravity of Shinjuku’s “adult entertainment zone”, Kabukicho. Adelstein, the “morbidly curious” observer, presents his stories with a newsman’s objectivity, using self-deprecatory humour, pathos and occasional horror. He does not refrain from harsh criticism, but his writing never condescends … It is a classic piece of 20th-century crime reporting.’
Mark Shrieber, The Japan Times
‘What's a nice Jewish boy doing in a place like this? It’s a question that haunts this fascinating memoir about a world largely off-limits to Western audiences ... You’ll never see Japan in the same way again.’
Antony Loewenstein, Sun Herald
‘Jake Adelstein writes in the classic hard-boiled Dashiell Hammett manner — complete with stubbed out cigarettes and a shot of whiskey shared with his cop informant — but this is not San Francisco or New York, it’s Tokyo, and it’s not fiction. Those who live and work in Japan will recognise reality on every page. It’s at times a harsh and ugly reality, but depicted humorously with whimsical details of Japan’s twilight world that we only dreamt of. A guaranteed page-turner.’
Alex Kerr, author of Dogs and Demons: tales from the dark side of Japan
‘In this dark, often humorous journey through the underworld of Tokyo, Jake Adelstein captures exactly what it means to be a gaijin and a reporter. Whether he is hunting for tips in Kabukicho or pressing yakuza for information, it is an adventure only he could write. For anyone interested in Japan or journalism, this is a must read.’
Robert Whiting, author of Tokyo Underworld
‘A gripping and absorbing read. Very few foreigners ever come close to discovering what’s really going on in Japan’s closed society. Adelstein chases two major stories that pull him into a vortex of destruction, threatening his friendships, his marriage and even his life. As he battles with profound issues concerning truth and trust, Tokyo Vice approaches a heart-pounding denouement. This is a terrifying, deeply moral story which you cannot put down, and Adelstein, if occasionally reckless, is an extremely courageous man.’
Misha Glenny, author of McMafia: a journey through the global criminal underworld
‘Vivid, insightful, and totally revealing of the decadent, seedy and sexual parts of Japanese society, Tokyo Vice is ripping fun.’
Karl Taro Greenfeld, author of Speed Tribes: days and nights with Japan’s next generation
‘Sacred, ferocious and businesslike. This is the Japanese mafia that Adelstein describes like nobody else.’
Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah: a personal journey into the violent international empire of Naples' organised crime system
‘Jake Adelstein’s razor straight reporting from the mean streets of Tokyo is a coming of age story that reveals more than it pretends to — because he has the guts to find the truth, and the gall to tell it.’
Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: how Japanese pop culture has invaded the US
‘A tale of a gaijin who stumbled onto a story so important and so dangerous that it put his life at risk. A yakuza offered him half a million dollars not to tell it. He wrote this book instead.’
Peter Hessler, author of River Town: two years on the Yangtze
‘Anyone interested in tattooed yakuza, ‘soapland’ brothels, and the various other aspects of Japan’s lurid underbelly is guaranteed to be electrified by Tokyo Vice. Why is a manual on the perfect way to commit suicide a Japanese bestseller? Who goes to sexual harassment clinics? What's it like to spend a night in a male hostess bar? Tokyo Vice reveals all this and more. It’s a story of lust and profit; a chronicle of fear and determination; most of all, a modern bildungsroman that simultaneously illuminates the soul of its narrator and that of modern Japan through the underside of Tokyo, the world’s most fascinating city. I loved this book for many reasons — its humour, its pathos, its insight, its honesty —and maybe most of all, for reminding me of how lucky I am to live here.’
Barry Eisler, author of Fault Line
‘Marvelous … Tokyo Vice offers a fascinating glimpse into Japan’s end-of-last-century newspaper culture as seen from a gaijin’s perspective. It’s filled with startling anecdotes and revelations … Adelstein writes of his quest for scoops with sardonic wit, and his snappy style mixes the tropes of detective fiction with the broader perspective of David Simon’s books as he makes a careful account of his journalistic wins and losses … The author’s gallows humour bleeds into even darker, more serious hues once Adelstein starts covering the Japanese mafia … Astonishingly proves that no matter how weird and perverse Japan may seem in fiction, the real thing never fails to exceed our most violent expectations.’
Sarah Weinman, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind
‘Terrific. With gallows humour and a hardboiled voice, Jake Adelstein’s memoir takes readers on a shadow journey through the Japanese underworld and examines the twisted relationships of journalists, cops, and gangsters. An unusual reading experience, expertly told and highly entertaining.’
George Pelecanos
‘Tokyo Vice leaps recklessly into this seamy underworld, recounting with verve Adelstein’s increasingly perilous investigations. The result is hard-boiled memoir: thrilling, pacy and wise-cracking, but never far from the clammy grip of fear.’
Financial Times
‘[Adelstein’s] juicy and vividly detailed account of investigations into the shadowy side of Japan shows him to be more enterprising, determined and crazy than most … Adelstein builds his stories with as much surprise and grit as any Al Pacino or Mark Wahlberg movie, blurring the lines between the cops, the crooks and even the journalists … As the kid from Missouri begins to disappear deeper and deeper into the demimonde — sleeping in police HQ, drawing dangerously close to a hostess who works at the Den of Delicious and taking on the gangs responsible for human-trafficking in Japan — he comes to lose all sense of where his life ends and the 8th Circle of Hell strip club begins … [But] even as he is getting slapped around by thugs and placed under police protection, Adelstein never loses his gift for crisp storytelling and an unexpectedly earnest eagerness to try to rescue the damned.’
Pico Iyer, Time
‘A journalist’s memoir unlike any I've ever read.’
Dave Davies, Fresh Air
‘Tokyo Vice is a fascinating, highly readable, and unflinching story of an American reporter working for the Japanese newspaper, Yomiuri Shinbun… The story is fascinating, revealing not only the inner workings of Japanese journalism, but also the sex industry, organised crime, and the police.’
UPI Asia
‘The extortion, racketeering, prostitution and gambling rings associated with Japan’s yakuza criminal organisations have been written up in books and glorified in films too numerous to count. Yet a substantial first-hand peek inside this insidious underworld by a foreign journalist — not straitjacketed by Japan’s rigid press system — has not existed. Enter reporter Jake Adelstein, a 40-year-old Jewish-American and the author of the memoir Tokyo Vice, an account of his 12-year stint of working the crime beat for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan‘s largest newspaper … Written in a fast-paced, acerbic and sometimes humorous style, Tokyo Vice recounts his investigations into serial rape, child pornography, murder and his greatest scoop: providing details on how four gangsters were able to travel to the US to receive liver transplants. “Erase the story or be erased,” was the subsequent threat from the particulars involved. “Your family too.” Substantial repercussions linger to this day.'
The Tokyo Reporter
‘Debut author Adelstein began with a routine, but never dull, police beat; before long, he was notorious worldwide for engaging the dirtiest, top-most villains of Japan's organised criminal underworld, the yakuza. Thanks to [Adelstein's] immersive reporting, readers suffer with him through the choice between personal safety and a chance to confront the evil inhabiting his city … Adelstein also examines the investigative reporter's tendency to withdraw into cynicism ("when a reporter starts to cool down, it's very hard … ever to warm up again") but faithfully sidesteps that urge, producing a deeply thought-provoking book: equal parts cultural exposé, true crime, and hard-boiled noir.’
Publishers Weekly, starred review
‘Not just a hard-boiled true-crime thriller, but an engrossing, troubling look at crime and human exploitation in Japan.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘Tokyo Vice takes its reader on a gripping journey into a world few people will ever witness.’
Yen Magazine
‘Engrossing … fast-paced.’
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution
‘There is some humour here but it's humour of the absurd, set among gobsmacking tales of life as a reporter on a police beat in Japan … From police rounds — where wining and dining police, businessmen and politicians in their homes is the acknowledged way of getting information — to vice and then, unwittingly, into the dark world of organised crime, Adelstein’s account is often bemusing but no less engaging and impressive.’
West Australian
‘[Adelstein] provides a three-pronged insight into Japan: its work culture, journalism and the Yakuza, and shines a light on the interplay between the gang and Japanese society, wrapped in a gritty true story any crime writer would be more than pleased to have dreamed up.’
Adelaide Advertiser, starred review
‘Though it is a fascinating account of a young American who becomes a local crime reporter on Japan’s biggest daily newspaper, Tokyo Vice’s greatest virtue is the insider account it gives of the dark nooks of Japanese culture — and the work-rooms of one of its social institutions.’
Ian Steward, Weekend Press
‘Stinking of hard liquor and chain-smoked cigarettes, this is an eye-popping journey into Tokyo’s secret underbelly.’
Men’s Health
‘Tokyo Vice is three things: an outsider’s perspective on Japan in the ’90s and noughties; an insider’s view of the complex, quite often contradictory symbiotic relationship between that country’s press, police force and organised crime syndicates; and an example of the classic journalistic dilemma — how far a person is willing to compromise their own principles in search of a story.’
Australian Penthouse Magazine
‘Adelstein packs a lot into this memoir. Whether he’s tracking down a rapist who drugged and videotaped dozens of women or dressing up to work at a ‘host’ bar for lonely women, it’s always compelling. He has a journalist’s eye for a story and vivid details abound, illuminating a world most Westerners barely know. As with all good hard-boiled tales, a downward spiral slowly becomes apparent. And as things go sour, Adelstein’s last big story comes just in time.’
Anthony Morris, The Big Issue
‘Adelstein’s memoir, both economical and incisive, is a fascinating, occasionally stomach-churning insight into a strange, frightening world.’
Courier Mail
‘It’s an utterly fascinating look at a world many westerners know nothing about and sure to be one of the most interesting books of the year.’
Illawarra Mercury
‘Tokyo Vice succeeds on several levels: as gripping journalism, as a ragged crime tale, as culture-shock memoir. Stakes are raised in its third act as the yakuza exercise increasing pressure on Adelstein, but he pursues the story anyway. Obviously, he lived to tell his tale — and thank goodness, because it’s a fascinating one.’
BOOKGASM
‘Adelstein's reporting style had me riveted.’
Grapeshot
