Jake Adelstein, the author of “Tokyo Vice” returns with the thriller “Tokyo Detective”

He’s an American suicide bomber. In the “Tokyo Vice” series on Canal+, adapted from his novel, Jake Adelstein was played brilliantly by the actor Ansel Elgort. This journalist, the first foreigner in the history of the press in Japan, plunged courageously into the world of the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, and managed to bring down its leader. Jake Adelstein is still living in Japan and in his new novel, Tokyo Detectivehe tells the rest: why he left the largest Japanese daily, the yomiuri shinbun, after twelve and a half years of career. “I realized that the newspaper itself was corrupt in many ways. Before, we were in a corner on the fourth floor of the newspaper. And then they put us in the center of the floor. It was like being in a zoo, everyone could hear what we were saying. This is not a good way to do investigative journalism, especially when you suspect journalists from other departments are telling politicians they are friends with that you are investigating them..”

Jake Adelstein will work as a detective for private or public organizations. He updates in particular the close links between Tepco, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and the yakuza. “A yakuza boss had blackmailed Tepco into paying him thousands of dollars not to write articles about safety issues at the nuclear plant. I learned that Tepco had always called on the yakuza to provide the workers to clean the plants, to operate them, because no one else wanted to do this dirty and dangerous work..”

In Tokyo Detective, Jake Adelstein also recounts the links between the yakuza and the Japanese Olympic Committee. “I first found out that Japanese Olympic Committee Vice President Hidetoshi Tanaka had long ties to an organized crime group, the Sumiyoshi-kai. In the past, and until recently, he was closely associated with Shinobu Tsukasa, the leader of Japan’s largest criminal organization, the Yamaguchi-gumi.”

This new novel Tokyo Detective will form part of the frame of the second season of Tokyo Vice, currently being filmed. But the two novels have still not been published in Japan. “I don’t think he will. tokyo vice was only released in Japan in 2015, only on Amazon, and I still can’t convince a publisher to print it“So why stay in Japan and not return to the United States?”Because I’d rather deal with superficial Japanese politeness than fake American friendliness.” Tokyo Detectivea fascinating and exciting dive into the reality of Japan.

Tokyo Detective was published by Marchialy editions.