Lies in Tokyo Vice

Stories that are absolute lies on a prima facie examination (6 stories):

- - Medical Examiner story

Adelstein claimed that a medical examiner he refers to as Takagi in Saitama suddenly beeped him one day in 1993 (note that cell phones were a rarity at that time). Upon calling him back from a pay phone, apparently at a victim family’s home phone number, Takagi said, “Hey, Jake, you want to see something really weird?” The book goes on, “He gave me the address and told me to get there fast. ‘The homicide guys aren’t here yet, but if they see your big-nosed gaijin face at the scene, we’re both going to be in deep shit.’” Adelstein then describes, “pulling up to the soon-to-be-designated crime scene exactly fifteen minutes later,” and walking into a the home of a dead juvenile, through the hallway and into the kid’s room. There is no mention of the parents or other family members who found the body or any of the dozens of police, detectives, ambulance people, firefighters, etc. who would have been there.

Adelstein then wrote, “The kid was lying on the top of a bunk bed, facing the wall, his naked back toward us. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was about to tap the kid on his shoulder when Takagi stuck out his foot and tripped me. ’What the—?’ ‘You’re not paying attention, Jake-san. You almost got yourself killed. You can read Japanese. Take a look, you idiot.’ With his arm on my shoulder, he led me closer to the kid, and upon closer inspection I saw, attached to the kid’s back, a piece of paper with small writing that said, ‘Do not touch me, please. Imminent danger of electrocution.’ I leaned over and saw wires taped to his chest and nipples that ran along the wall and down directly to the electrical outlet. My mouth must have been hanging wide open. Takagi laughed at my shock. ‘You have to be careful, Jake-san.’”

This story is so preposterous that it is not even good fiction. Medical examiners don’t call their friends up and invite them to suicide scenes to gawk at the body of a dead teenager in his home. The police would be the first to respond with a dozen or more present, then an ambulance crew and firefighters (with the electrical stuff) followed by detectives and others. It would not be possible for a foreigner like Jake nor anyone without official business there to just walk in.

Jake also claimed that an article was published about this suicide in the Yomiuri, but an electronic search found no such article anywhere near the location and timeframe.

Reaching out and touching Tadamasa Goto in open court

Adelestein claimed he attended the reading of a not-guilty verdict in the criminal trial of Tadamasa Goto on Mar. 7, 2008. This would have been two days after Adelstein claimed to have been put under Japanese police and FBI protection in Japan and the U.S., respectively, because Goto was planning to kill him.

Adelstein wrote, “I managed to get into the trial for a few minutes. I sat directly behind the man. I could have reached out my hand and strangled him if I’d been so inclined, or jabbed a pencil into his larynx. I didn’t do that. But I couldn’t resist sort of bumping him with my hand, if just for a second, to make sure he was real. He didn’t appear to notice. I had to leave halfway through the proceedings. I wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. I waited in the hall outside.”

This is big lie and a huge mistake! Aside from the likelihood that Adelstein with no Yomiuri affiliation at the time would even be able to get into the court room for such a famous trial, let alone a front row seat behind the defendant, Goto, and reach out and touch him in front of a full gallery of media and judges watching, Adelstein has made a major mistake by describing the layout of a U.S. court room for this imaginary encounter.

In a U.S. court room the prosecution and defense along with defendant sit on opposite sides of the room both facing the judge and both with their backs to the gallery with a jury box off to one side. This is universal in America. The distance from the people in the gallery to the defendant varies from state to state and the size of the courtroom. In a rural area, e.g., Columbia Missouri where Jake is from, you might very likely be able to reach out and touch a defendant while seated in the gallery. Adelstein described the scene as if he were sitting in an American courtroom.

In Japan, however, there are no juries (excluding for the moment the topic of recently introduced “lay judges,” which were not in place at the time). From the gallery perspective the prosecution is seated on the left side of the room and the defense on the right side of the room (both perpendicular to the gallery) with a witness stand in the middle. A witness who is testifying faces the judges with his or her back to the gallery. There is no jury box. The witness stand is about two meters away from the gallery, and the defense table on the right is about three meters away from the gallery. There is a row of seats behind the defendant, but the only people sitting there are assistants to the defense team. Moreover, the defendant sits on an open sofa directly in front of the defense table, again at a right angle to and at least four meters away from the gallery. Therefore, Goto’s lawyer would have been seated behind him and not Adelstein.

There may be a bench behind the witness stand, which would be in front of the gallery, but that may be more for escorting guards to sit or a defendant would not be sitting on that bench for long if ever. Meanwhile there is a walkway in front of the gallery seats. Thus, in order to possibly touch someone sitting on the bench in front of the witness stand, a person would have to stand up and lean over a railing and reach to touch a person sitting there. That would not be possible with three judges staring right at the person as well as all sorts of other eyes in the courtroom.

After a nonguilty verdict was read, Adelstein then claims he came face to face with Goto in front of the elevators where Goto mouthed something to him that appeared to be a threat, to which Adelstein responded by giving him the finger. So, just two days after claiming Japanese police and FBI protection, Adelstein pursues the “threat” to the courthouse, reaches out and touches him in the court room and then gives him the finger in the hallway. And we are supposed to believe that the Japanese police and FBI are going to waste their time protecting this guy? It sounds more like Goto needs an order of protection for Adelstein to stay away from him.

Adelstein then writes, “I followed the throng of reporters to where his lawyer, Yoshiyuki Maki, a former prosecutor, was holding court.” Note that this would be the “press” room where “journalists” who are members of the “press club” are “allowed admittance” and other people are not allowed. Never mind that Adelstein, who in his own words after leaving the Yomiuri two years before “was a nobody, a man without a business card or a normal job. I was now just a nonentity, a former journalist…” Never mind that point.

Adelstein claims that he went into the press room and responded to Goto’s lawyer’s statement, “Excuse me, what exactly do you mean by his suffering? This is a man whose organization kills people, sells drugs, distributes child pornography, and sexually exploits foreign women. The amount of suffering the Goto-gumi and therefore Goto have inflicted on innocent people is immense. Why should anyone give a damn about his suffering? As a former prosecutor, how can you even say those things?”

Adelstein further described the scene, “Maki was taken aback, either by the question or by my rage. He flinched visibly. The other reporters all moved away from me as if I were a rabid dog. Maki cleared his throat and said, ‘It’s my job to defend my client, and there is no question that Goto-san has not committed any illegal act, that this …’”

Only in the fantasy world of Super Jake!

Then the very next day Adelstein claims that while at a party of his cop friends at his home they informed him that Goto has an informant in the police department who is relaying every detail of information about Adelstein to Goto and thus not only Adelstein but also his friends are in serious danger. One of the cops said, “Jake, there’s a guy in the police force who’s in Goto’s pocket, Lieutenant K. He’s been asking about you. We know he’s corrupt but he brings in good intel about non-Goto-related stuff, so he’s kind of allowed to do his thing.”

So, let’s get all of this straight; Adelstein is placed under Japanese police protection on Mar. 5, and then on Mar. 8 Japanese police tell him that one of their own is feeding all his information to the gangster Goto and there’s nothing they can do about it because the guy brings them good information. These same cops then tell Adelstein that the only way he can really protect himself is to get his article about Goto out.

Helena story

As one of the main subplots in TV, Adelstein claims to have developed a very close platonic relationship with an Australian prostitute who was working as an English teacher by day for one of the leading schools in Japan (mainly for visa purposes) but was working at night as an escort in Tokyo. Helena is one of his sources of information, and Adelstein clarifies that Helena is not her real name. He also later states that she had told him her real name. He also knows where she works and where all of her visa information is known. So, her real name is known.

Adelstein then claims in multiple places in the book that Helana was brutally murdered (tortured, raped and body dismembered and disposed of) for helping him investigate the International Entertainment Association (an NPO) operating out of the Roppongi Hills Residences apartment complex. Although Helena just disappears in March 2006 and there is never any definitive evidence that she was murdered, Adelstein repeatedly asserts that she was murdered, and the circumstantial evidence he asserts is compelling if he is telling the truth. Adelstein also hints that IEA is a front company for the Goto Gumi.

There are multiple problems with this story. First, no Australian citizens have gone missing in Japan, and a female English teacher of any nationality at a leading English school not showing up for work and being missing would be front page news in Japan and not long afterwards international front page news. Family and friends would be conducting press campaigns to find her.

Secondly, if this woman were such a close personal friend of Adelstein and if she were missing and the possible or likely victim of foul play, why in Hell is Adelstein not mentioning her full and real name and participating in a public campaign to find her? What kind of human being or a better word would be what kind of coward leaves a close personal friend anonymously resigned to such a fate? In addition to saying that Helena had told him her real name, Adelstein also states that she did not show up to her school for work or to her apartment, which he visited. Her real name is known at those places because you have to show passports before starting at those places.

Upon finding Helena vanished, Adelstein wrote, “I had no idea what to do.” Let’s see… here is what any normal person would: Since you are in her apartment with access to all her stuff, you (1) call the Australian embassy, (2) get in touch with her family via the embassy if necessary, (3) call the police, (4) get her name and picture out to media as a missing person, (5) flyers, etc., etc. This stuff is not rocket science. Ordinary untrained human beings do it all the time when a loved one is suddenly missing.

When he first could not contact Helena in March 2006, Adelstein wrote, “I was afraid that if I called the regular police, she’d get busted for being a prostitute.” Fair enough but once she was clearly a missing person that argument goes out the window. Moreover, Helena had said she would be returning to Australia within months. Her life is more important than having to return to Australia where there is surely an active market for the world’s oldest profession.

Adelstein’s method of coping with Helena’s brutal murder was, “I pulled a 10,000-yen note out of my wallet and gave it to Fujiwara-san at the Polaris Project Japan.” At the same time he is spending far more money than that at the sex shops and other seedy places he claims to continually visit throughout the book. To this date he has not divulged Helena’s real name. Then, from that time onward he is motivated to being a champion of trafficked and abused women. Yet we are to believe that he let this close personal friend die anonymously with no effort to make a public search for her?

Adelstein writes that in December 2006 “I worried about Helena. She’d completely disappeared.” But still no action that normal human beings do in the case of a missing person. Later he wrote, “Helena’s disappearance did something to me. If I had known what had happened to her, it would have been better. Not knowing was agonizing.”

Finally, the story itself just does not make sense. Yaks controlling an escort ring are not going to kill a person for simply for asking questions. At worst they would slap the person around, scare the person and tell her to mind her own business or get out of the country, which most people would gladly and promptly oblige.

Even for yaks killing a person is a last resort and an extreme measure. Any true murder and disappearance like that would have brought worldwide publicity and intense police scrutiny on the yak escort operation. Adelstein makes it sound like Tokyo is some kind of action thriller movie where you see scores of people getting killed by evil forces as the movie plays on. The Helena story is absolutely a lie.

Yomiuri entrance exam scores.

Adelstein claimed that he scored 90th out of 100 or better than 10% of college graduate Japanese on the “Japanese language” exam for the Yomiuri entrance exam (even after he failed to notice questions on the other side of the page, which had to be rapidly filled in) and 59th out of 100 as a total score from all exam categories in Japanese with 79 total points out of 100.

Not since the Day of Pentecost has the world seen such amazingly fast acquisition of language skills. While it could be possible going from European language to European language, Japanese is a completely different language that has over 2,000 pictoral characters (kanji), each of which has two readings and some three or more readings. So, in order to do what Adelstein said he did, a person would have to be very familiar with 8,000-9,000 readings of these alien pictograms and know all the subtleties around their usage. Because of all the multiple readings becoming proficient in reading Japanese is more difficult than doing so with Chinese.

My source told me that Adelstein received a personal introduction from the President of Sophia to the Yomiuri. In other words, he did not get in on the basis of his language skills after a competitive examination with a hundred Japanese students as he claimed he did in TV.

It is impossible for a grown man (as opposed to a young child who acquire language more quickly) who grew up in Columbia Missouri to score better than native Japanese speakers on writing tests in Japanese, particularly in the area of journalism, after only several years at Sophia University, which offers a lot of its course work in English. Even Japanese children take 12 years of hard study to learn all of the kanji’s. Japanese college professors are also very lenient in handing out passing grades to students. College level Japanese writing skills on par with other Japanese students are not necessary to graduate from Sophia.

Moreover, Adelstein directly contradicts himself in his own book. After saying “my Japanese tested better than that of 10 percent of the Japanese applicants” during the Yomiuri entrance exam, later during the Chichibu Snack-Mama case he wrote, “They’d begun trusting my ability to comprehend Japanese—or maybe they’d run out of personnel. My Japanese skills were up to junior high school level.” If these skills had been “up to” junior high level half a year into the job, might they have been 5th or 6th grade level during the entrance exam a year before? That would be normal language acquisition progression for most people. How does a junior-high school level Japanese person score better than 10% of college graduate Japanese on a company entrance exam? The answer is that he does not.

Later when a manger asked, “You speak Japanese, right?” Adelstein responded, “I speak Japanese. Writing it is another issue.” Welcome back to earth Jake. In reality most foreigners in Japan speak some Japanese, but writing takes a decade or more to master and only a very few people ever achieve that level. But we are supposed to believe that Superjake “nailed” those entrance exams and scored better than many Japanese and that he was writing articles in Japanese as a crack crime reporter.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun as quoted in the recent Le Soir article, this examination score story, which was also appeared prominently in the Netflix series, is busted at a lie. The Yomiuri is quoted as saying that no exam scores were released to any of the applicants, including Jake, so this has been proven to be a complete fabrication.

Anti-Human-Trafficking Crusade in 2004

Multiple bold-faced lies are told about articles related to the Anti-Human-Trafficking conference in June of 2004 and ILS Report in November 2004. (See the articles page for full details rather than repeating them here.)

Extremely unlikely stories (10 stories)

Newbie foreign reporter put in charge of covering organized crime

Super Jake claims he covered the Saitama Organized Crime Control Bureau as a new reporter only half a year into his employment with Yomiuri. Advancement in Japanese companies is slow and usually involves at least a year of training. No new hires go straight into covering organized crime. Such work would be left to veteran reporters. Adelstein wrote, “New employees were forbidden from driving a car for the first six months,” but they can be put in charge of covering organized crime? Really Jake?

Anyone familiar with Japanese society and particularly large conservative corporate environments knows that newly-hired college graduates are brought along very slowly and basically carry water buckets for older colleagues during the first 10 and even as long as 15 years on the job.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun as quoted in the recent Le Soir article, Jake Adelstein was never in charge of covering organized crime. The Yomiuri was quoted as saying he worked on 150 articles from 1993 to 2004 on a team basis, and among those only 2 were about organized crime.

“His job was to report mainly on crime committed by foreign nationals in Japan. As for reporting on crime caused by the [yakuza], gun crime or drug trafficking, this was handled by other journalists,” according to a spokesman for the Yomiuri Shimbun. The Yomiuri was further quoted as saying, “Other journalists were in charge of “the yakuza,” “descriptions are impossible to verify,” “exaggerated facts”…

The Yomiuri was also quoted saying, “There are descriptions whose veracity is impossible to verify, and other descriptions in which the author has distorted or embellished real facts. There are many of these. We also note his willful abandonment of ‘absolute secrecy regarding sources of information,’ the most important and respected professional ethic in journalism.”

Naoya “the Cat” Kaneko Story

Early in TV, Adelstein claims that he was summoned by Naoya Kaneko, a.k.a. “the Cat,” who was the number two man in the Saitama Sumiyoshi, and who had a favor to ask. Someone in his gang was spreading a rumor that he was bribing a police officer. This in turn was interpreted by the gang to mean that he was an informant and the police were just saying he was bribing them as a cover.

When police officers made their regular visits to his office to chat (which is apparently a real occurrence in Japan), these officers refused to drink the green tea he was offering saying that there was a rumor going around the department that they were being bribed by him. The gangster then asks Adelstein to ask his sources in the police department to find out which member of his gang was spreading the rumor. The man says it is a matter of life and death for him and makes various offers of money, women, favors, etc. in exchange for the information. Although refusing any payment Adelstein then makes the call to a source he has in the police department who then asks around and gets the information and relays it to Adelstein who then relays the name of the gang member spreading the rumor.

This is nonsense all sorts of fronts. First, that a gangster would go to a newbie reporter (literally on the job for only “months” at that time) he had never met with such a request is unlikely. Second, that Adelstein would participate in an activity that would likely result in another person getting killed (i.e., the person belonging to the name he passes along) is weird and would say something about Adelstein if he in fact he did that. Third, a police officer is not going to go digging around for the name of a gangster who is saying the police are being bribed and then pass that name on to a gaijin reporter, who he has known for “months,” or any reporter so that that person can then relay it back to another gangster. That is too many nearly impossible things that would have to happen, which make this story an impossibility.

Adelstein concludes the story by saying “I never asked what had happened to Saito; Kaneko and I never discussed the incident again.” Saito is the man belonging to the name Adelstein claims to have pass along. If Adelstein were as involved and close to covering the organized crime scene as he claimed, how could he not know what happened to Saito? Moreover, if true how does Adelstein sleep at night when he may have gotten this guy killed?

Adelstein working his way through college as a gigolo

The claim that this self-declared geek was doing part-time work giving Swedish massages to wealthy Japanese housewives is very doubtful. In later interviews he hints or all but says that these massages were sexual in nature, which means that he worked his way through Sophia as a “gigolo.” How does a person even find such work, especially when the man is a self-described and well-known geek?

In my 35 years in Japan, I’ve never known anyone to have such a job. While possible, it is not very likely and certainly not by a geek. Adelstein also claims to have been living in a Buddhist monastery for three years at about the same time, which is in no way consistent with this line of work.

A much more likely story would be that he had an affair or two with a Japanese housewife or two who he was teaching English to and massages occurred along with the paid English lesson continuing for some time. That I could believe. Then, these one or two affairs morphed into the gigolo story in Tokyo Vice.

Preliminary internship at Yomiuri

Adelstein claims that he went to the Yomiuri HR department in October and asked for a preliminary internship, which they agreed to even though the initial response was, “I admire your desire to be prepared… But the truth is that we’ve never had anyone wanting to work before officially beginning. You’re an unusual case, though, so I’ll see what I can do.” Adelstein then goes on to explain how he was in the TMPD (Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department) press club for three days and then in Chiba for some time where he got his own story about Israeli street vendors in the national edition of the Yomiuri.

So, the large conservative Yomiuri, which had never done this before, made an exception? Sophia University does not mind its students not attending classes for weeks on end, and the Yomiuri HR department is not worried about that point either?

There are rules about what companies can require from new hires while they are in school, and companies can get into trouble, e.g., be denied access to campus recruiting, if they are breaking these rules. Thus, it is unlikely that a large conservative company like the Yomiuri would grant such a request and especially to a foreigner on a student visa.

Then, the article being referred to was nearly two months after the time Adelstein said it was published and the titled was different and exaggerated.

Regular drunken brawls at Yomiuri bonenkai

Just before describing a drunken brawl at the Yomiuri Urawa office year-end party (bonenkai) in which Adelstein demonstrates masterful use of martial arts skills to win the fight, he describes Yomiuri bonenkais, “For the Yomiuri’s Urawa office this has traditionally meant getting into a drunken brawl. This year was no different.” “Regular” or even “rare” brawling at any Japanese company event, let alone a large first-tier, old, conservative company like the Yomirui is unheard of. Although such an incident could be possible just as a lightning strike is possible, it is highly unlikely and the coworkers would not say, “Let them fight it out.” Some Americans may behave that way in some situations but Japanese almost never do.

In Japan you never strike a person even if hit first because the return blow is also a crime. While our crack crime reporter does not seem to comprehend this fundamental principle of Japanese law, Japanese know this principle well and physical fist fighting occurs only at a small fraction of what you see in America and certainly not at company parties, no matter how drunk people may be. A fist fight would not be forgotten the next day and would likely result in termination of the person’s job.

About the worst thing that will happen to you at a company bonenkai in Japan is you may be made to wear a silly hat or costume and sing a song in front of all of your colleagues while they laugh at you. “Round house kicks,” “punches to the larynx,” “palm heels to the nose,” etc.? … No, I’m afraid not Mr. Adelstein. This was a shameful misrepresentation of Japanese society by a fraud and a phony.

Additional note: After rereading Tokyo Vice, this alleged fight seems to have happened after a smaller group broke away from the main bonenkai where the entire office staff would have been gathered. So, the story moves from impossible to within the realm of possibility. At the same time, however, one of Adelstein’s coworkers who said he was probably the Frenchie character in the book, was quoted as saying he never saw any fighting at bonenkais and he was was at that first bonenkai. Later, he retracted his statement saying he did not remember if he had been there or not.

Adelstein’s fighting prowess

Adelstein writes, “After years of wing chun, there were only three things that I could do correctly. The short-distance punch was one of them.” After describing a drunken colleague throwing a round house kick at him during a year-end company party, Adelstein wrote “Without thinking, I turned and blocked the kick and punched him full in the chest, knocking him on his back… he sprang up and grabbed me, putting my head in an armlock and wrestling me to the ground… Shorinji kempo has some great joint holds, but by relaxing into Kimura’s lock, I was able to get out of it, and I returned Kimura’s favor by gouging him in the larynx. While he was choking, I rolled up on top of him and in a drunken fury was getting ready to palm-heel his nose into pulp when Odanaka… pulled me off Kimura.”

His boss then says, “Tomorrow, everyone will have forgotten… By the way, nice punch. If you could write articles as well as you fight, you wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass.” A larynx gouge is hardcore move as is a palm-heel to the nose. Both are potentially lethal. Might such actions be excessive against a coworker at a drinking session where your life is not in danger? Or it is far more likely that it never happened?

After being spotted trying to interview a woman in a club, Adelstein claims, “The eight-fingered, badly tattooed, pock-faced giant bouncer at the door…grabbed me and pulled me outside and into the entranceway, where he started beating the shit out of me… I was still a terrible martial artist. Even though I had since studied both karate and aikido, I had no talent for forms or kata or anything at all…I recalled what my old aikido teacher, who was a cop, had once told me was the most effective aikido move of all. It’s effective because even the biggest man in the world can’t survive without taking in oxygen. I stiffened my fingers and jabbed him repeatedly in the little indentation under the larynx as hard as I could, rapid-fire. It was basic atemi. There was a nice tactile sensation of puncturing fleshy tissue, and he fell back. Now I could breathe. He couldn’t breathe; he started gagging and fell to his knees. While he was down there I curled my hands into half shells and smash-clapped them over both of his ears as hard as I could. This is called happa-ken, or “the rupturing fist.” …. He moaned and rocked back. I kicked him in the face and then ran out of the place as fast as I could.”

Not bad for a “terrible marital artist” and a “goofy geek” with mismatched socks. Such a person taking out a giant yak bouncer, what are the odds? Also, the kick to the face while the guy was down and gasping for air was a punk move and not in any Akido training I am familiar with.

Mayumi Hamaya driven to suicide by evil Yomiuri boss

Adelstein claimed that a coworker, Mayumi Hamaya was driven to commit suicide in the summer of 2004 by a cruel Yomiuri boss named “Kikuchi.” It’s difficult to know if this was a real person at Yomiuri who committed suicide, but even if true, Adelstein’s story about the circumstances is not believable.

Once again Adelstein is in the middle of a major incident. He writes, “Mami Hamaya took me under her wing when I first got to the shakaibu. She had been a police reporter as well.” After going into detail about the friendship over several years with this woman,

Adelstein then sets up the reason for the suicide, the “department chair,” Kikuchi (no full name), who had been unhappy with her standing up for the mentally ill who committed crimes, told her, “You are leaving the department and being assigned to Human Resources. You either accept this or resign or be fired. You will never work again as a reporter while you are in this company. That’s all.” The transfer was then formally announced on August 29, 2003.

After describing how utterly dejected Hamaya was, Adelstein then describes learning about her suicide. These events are back to back in the narrative implying the suicide was not long afterwards, but a careful reading of the story indicates that he had to have occurred the following summer of 2004.

About hearing of the suicide, which was the same day, Adelstein wrote, “I went to the bathroom and puked,” and “I don’t remember the exact date anymore. This is very odd. I can remember all the dates of people close to me who have died, particularly when such deaths were sudden or untimely. Even though in my life I have experienced the news of sudden untimely deaths on different occasions of two of my four immediate family members as well as a couple of friends, I did not puke nor even feel close to it. There were certainly some descriptive feelings at those times, but vomiting was not one of them. Jake has been watching too many movies.

Hayama’s transfer was announced on September 12, and Adelstein described her farewell greeting to the department, “her voice cracked so badly that she was hard to hear. She almost cried, but she managed to hold herself together.” But Adelstein claims he was transferred back to covering TMPD on August 1, so he was in a different department and would not have been able to witness the farewell greeting. Note that he had to assign himself to TMPD by August 1 so that he could cover the Susumu Kajiyama loan shark case, which broke on August 2. But what is six weeks of time discrepancy for Super Jake?

The following passage in TV was also very strange, “The day after the funeral… I had an unopened e-mail from Hamaya. It was sent about two days before she killed herself. I have never opened it. I’ve never had the courage.” Who would not open an e-mail message from a very good friend who had just killed herself? I guess the same person who does not search for his murdered friend Helena.

In Japan, if there were any mention in the e-mail about the tormenting from the company, legally it would mean a huge payout by the company to her family. Shouldn’t our crack police reporter be familiar with this aspect of Japanese law? Moreover, why isn’t there a full name of Kikuchi? Kikuchi, which is a very common name, appears nowhere else in the book other than the suicide story. Thus, it is doubtful whether this horrible tormentor really existed. A big company like Yomiuri probably has at least 10 if not 20 Kikuchi’s working for it.

Finally, after saying that the weekly magazines were hanging around and asking questions, Adelstein also wrote, “I wished that a weekly magazine had called me. I would have told them that Hamaya hadn’t killed herself…” (i.e., she was driven to it by her cruel boss, Kikuchi.) How hard would it have been for a crack, veteran reporter like Adelstein to get the true story to the weekly magazines? The Maymi Hamaya suicide story just does not make any sense, and in the absence of any corroborating evidence of her existence, the logical conclusion is that this story was fabricated by Adelstein.

Libido crisis

Nearly every woman in the book wanting Jake. When it comes to women, Adelstein cannot seem to keep straight whether he is Geeky Jake or Super Jake. Although he describes himself as a goofy geek who is often wearing mismatched socks, Super Jake claims that while at Sophia he had a part-time job giving Swedish massages to wealthy Japanese housewives. In later interviews he all but says these were sexual in nature.

In 1993, six months into his job in Saitama Geeky Jake is not only a regular customer at a local sex shop called the Maid Station, he knows the girls working there so well that he is also teaching them English on the side as they plan to spend some of their earnings on overseas travel.

At the same time, Super Jake claims to have a nice girlfriend “I-Chan,” who leaves him because of his “overwork” and “being an absentee boyfriend.” If the I-Chan story is true, then Adelstein’s “absentee boyfriend” issue was the result of all the time he was spending at the Maid Station receiving sexual services and teaching English classes to the girls afterwards as well and not his working hours. Also, in Japan the “maid” scene, which is usually not related to sexual services, is well known to be a “geek” scene. So, at last something Adelstein writes actually make sense.

In 1999, Geeky Jake, who is supposed to have been covering organized crime as Super Jake since 1993, claims naivete and ignorance when the Shinjuku police try to explain the prostitution law to him. His ignorance is so profound that the other reporters were laughing and snickering at him. So, the head of the vice squad meets him in a bar in Kabukicho to explain the sex industry laws in Japan. The guy’s subordinate then takes Geeky Jake on a whirlwind tour of all of the sleazy establishments in Kabukicho, which Adestein claims to have footed the bill for most of it. This ends in a health salon for a massage and handjob.

Geeky Jake then goes home and tells his wife all about it, and she is basically okay with his visit to the sex shop and all the other places that night. She even gently massages his shoulders as he tells her about getting the handjob at a sex shop. Frankly, my wife would have had her hands on a body part a little higher up while wringing it if I went home and told such a story. There was no mention of whether the wife was upset about his blowing what had to have been half a month’s salary of more for two on the extensive tour of Tokyo’s red light district. It is also amazing that Adelstein would have so much cash in his pocket, but I guess there are such things at ATM machines. Maybe there was hell to pay later after the wife saw the ATM withdrawal records.

Throughout the book Super Jake has multiple yak women, hostesses, strippers, prostitutes, etc. all throw themselves at him, many of whom he claims to be pumping for information (his actual words, not mine). In fact, there is hardly a woman in the book who does not try to get his pants down at some time while Super Jake usually claims he does his utmost to keep his pants up.

After meeting Viktor’s former girlfriend and giving her a brief shoulder massage while trying to elicit Viktor’s telephone number, Adelstein claims she called him “raging drunk, demanding the massage.” After returning to the bar she was working at, Dispario, they then went to a love hotel where Super Jake administered a massage that was so good, the woman then made demands for sex, which Super Jake refused. He conceded that fingering her orgasm would be okay but she had to pay for it. Upon hearing this the woman threw a handful of Y10,000 notes (roughly hundred dollar bills) at him, and Super Jake then performed the service to the woman’s complete satisfaction.

Guys, doesn’t that always happen to you when you go to Roppongi, i.e., hostesses and strippers literally throwing wads of money at you and demanding sexual services? No? Well, if you were a super hero it probably would happen.

Adelstein then describes going home to his wife and kids who were a asleep. He later laments that his marriage falls apart due to all of his long hours, drinking and job related necessity of being around vice all the time. However, when leaving Super Jake’s fantasy world and coming back to reality, his marriage no doubt fell apart due to Geeky Jake’s excessive visits to sex shops and other womanizing, which are abundant in Tokyo Vice and even geeks are capable of, especially in Japan. See the Charisma Man comic strip for more details of this phenomenon.

At this point, when his marriage falls apart, Super Jake cloaks himself in cause of protecting women from trafficking, exploitation, abusive companies, etc., and organizations like the Polaris Project seem to have no problem with Adelstein, who is unashamedly documented his involvement in the Japan sex industry both as a habitual customer (i.e., the proverbial John) and amazingly a habitual provider of paid sexual services as well, using its name to back up his claims of being a champion of protecting trafficked women.

The far more likely explanation to the break up of Adelstein’s marriage, however, was penchant for visiting sex shops and philandering, which are both clearly documented in the book. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that Adelstein has ever been paid to provide sexual services to women as he claims to have been the case on multiple occasions in the book.

Kabukicho Sex Industry Tour

Our hero Super Jake was in charge of covering organized crime in Saitama since 1993. We know this because he wrote early in TV at the end of 1993, “My focus now was on organized crime, theft, and public security. In other words, the yakuza 24/7” and in January 1994 (less than a year into the job) his boss told him, “You’re the guy covering the Saitama Organized Crime Control Bureau. That means you’re a natural for the yakuza Endo and his driver Wakui.” Note that the sex industry is a significant part of organized crime in Japan.

However, when talking to Shinjuku police in 1999 Geeky Jake, who was a regular at the Maid Station sex shop in Saitama five to six years before, claims naivete and total ignorance of the prostitution laws in Japan. In addition to contradicting his early statements in the book, this I-don’t-know-about-the-sex-industry” line is again contradicted later in the book when Adelstein writes, “The girls at Maid Station had been very frank about how their whole operation worked. I was pretty conversant with the legalities of the sex-for-money industry in Japan.”

Nevertheless, the head of the vice squad, a man named “Shimozawa”–we hardly ever get full names in TV—invites clueless Geeky Jake to meet him in a Shinjuku bar where the guy’s subordinate takes Geeky Jake on an extensive tour of the Tokyo red light district, which is called Kabukicho.

Then, Adelstein has the cash on hand to pay for all of that, goes home and tells his wife, and she’s okay with it. It all sounds fishy, and since the premise for this tour, i.e. that Adelstein knew nothing about the sex industry in Japan and its laws, was a lie, this tour story has little credibility.

”Yomawari” night visits to police officer homes

Adelstein describes a custom of “yomawari” or night visits that journalists do at the homes of police officers. This yomawari practice is mentioned repeatedly in the first part of TV with multiple police officers, and it is a key element in his relationship with Sekiguchi. On the surface, this seems bizarre. What kind of human being, police officer or otherwise, wants to bring his work home with him. Particularly when your work is vice, why on earth would you want to be discussing this in your living room around your family at 10:00pm after the long hours Japanese are known for.

At one point Super Jake claims to have been asking who killed who and why to Sekine with his two young daughters playing right in front of them. And Mrs. Sekine is not only okay with all this, she’s so happy to have Jake around that she asks him to babysit while she runs errands.

Most Japanese homes are very small and Japanese do not have the custom of having visitors over like people do in the U.S. where people often have large spacious homes with plenty of furniture to receive guests. In Japan, you have to be on very close terms with someone to visit their home and family.

Also, police officers maintain odd hours with shifts varying throughout a 24-hour cycle. Thus, they are going to have odd sleeping times and all the more reason why reporters are not going to be knocking on their doors at 10:00p.m. at night.

In theory, I can imagine such a home visit system playing a role in police/journalist relations, but only at a very high level with high ranking police officers, who would have larger homes capable of receiving guests, and high profile journalists who have a tangible effect on public opinion via what they write. The police officer would also have to be high enough up in the system to actually care what the public opinion is.

The idea that a newbie reporter would be able to first even get such personal information as home addresses of police officers and then be able to just go knocking on their doors at night is ludicrous. Being arrested is a more likely scenario than being invited in.

Viktor and Slick Imai white slaver operation

Adelstein claimed that he got wind of, and then personally investigated and brought to justice two men in an international human trafficking ring in Tokyo, which used threats, violence and coercion to force foreign women into prostitution, even occasionally murdering some of these women. According to Adelstein this white slaver operation was headed by a tall and good-looking Dutch-Israeli man, “Viktor, who was rumored to be married to a Japanese woman,” and a Japanese man with a British accent named “Slick Imai.”

Adelstein wrote, “Slick ran four clubs—Club Angel, Den of Delights, Club Divine, and Club Codex—in the Roppongi area, supplied the Den of Delicious in Shibuya, and ran an escort service on the side. He was the king of foreign flesh in the ward, pocketing the equivalent of $20,000 a month.”

He further asserted that a police source said, “Slick could not be touched” and then went on to comment, “I suspected as much because his intel had provided one of the keys to breaking open the Lucie Blackman case. Until the TMPD got a new chief in the Roppongi jurisdiction, Slick was free to do as he pleased.”

This story culminated in a February 8, 2004 Yomiuri article. The article actually exists under a joint byline by J. Adelstein and Eiichiro Matsumoto. Some of the details in this article are consistent with Tokyo Vice, including mention of a Dutch man being involved but no names. He then commented that the police were protecting these two characters, and they continued their business activities with Adelstein not being able to do anything to stop them.

At the same time Adelstein never reported this “white slaver” operation to the website he claimed the recruitment advertisements had been placed, either for information about Viktor and Slick Imai or to explain what was going on. Thus, he was either lying or greatly exaggerating the story or he did not care about the women he claimed to be fighting to protect.

In the meantime, Adelstein claimed that both Viktor and Slick Imai were later arrested and went to jail, yet he does not produce their full names, nor any of the details of conviction and sentences, which draws a lot of suspicion as to whether or not these people were real and or Adelstein was telling the truth about them.

It should be noted that Adelstein very clearly worked on a story about some foreign women who were involved in the sex industry in Japan with claims of having been tricked or forced into it to some degree. This point is not in dispute. The extraordinary details of a a full-blown white slaver operation that he described in Tokyo Vice and that were not consistent with the Yomiuri article, however, are being questioned. Again, why no full names for Viktor and Slick when they had been arrested and convicted? And why no details of those convictions?

Stories that are more likely than not to be untrue or exaggerations (5 stories):

Dirty Japanese cops

When talking about the women trapped in the white slaver operation, Adelstein wrote “One girl I knew went to the police; she was threatened with being arrested herself. And then she ended up having to service the fucking cop.” Although this is within the realm of possibility, slightly above the chance of a lightning strike, it would be a very rare case and highly unlikely that Adelstein would run into a woman who had had this experience. Although certainly not without sin, the Japanese police force is as clean or cleaner than other industrialized nations. Adelstein also later confirms this point by writing in Tokyo Vice that there is little corruption among Japanese police.

Japanese anti-Semitism

Adelstein wears a bit of a Jewish complex on his sleeve. He makes repeated references to anti-Semitic remarks that Japanese make to him, e.g. at the Yomiuri job interview, “A lot of people in Japan believe that Jews control the world economy. What do you think about that?”, “Can you work on the Sabbath?”, “Besides, you’re a Jew. I’m sure you’re used to getting blamed for everything,” “the six-year-old girl and the nine-year-old girl who tried to convince me that I couldn’t be Jewish because every single Jew had been killed in World War II, just as they’d learned in school. The younger one had wanted to take me to school as an exhibit for show-and-tell.”

However, there is very little if any anti-Semetisim in Japan where people have not been exposed to this centuries-old European/Western tradition, nor do they know very much about the struggle Jewish people have gone through other than some general knowledge of the Holocaust and certainly not in elementary school. Most Japanese high school students would be hard pressed to name more than two or three Pacific battles in WWII, let alone know anything about them. How would elementary school students know about WWII in Europe?

In a boingboing.net article, Adelstein said Goto said, “That fucking American Jew reporter. I’d like to kill him.” For Japanese that would be the same as if he had said “That fucking American Methodist reporter. I’d like to kill him” as Jewish has no more meaning to Japanese than Methodist, Catholic, etc. Since Adelstein does not seem be practicing the religion, it has even less meaning. At the very least he would have to walk around with a kippah on his head for Japanese to take any notice of his Jewishness.

Finally, Adelstein throws this is in, “You’re a Jew, too. He thinks there might be repercussions for whacking you… You could be Mossad.” Only in the fantasy world of Super Jake Adelstein. Japanese have virtually zero interest in military topics and have no idea what Mossad is, let alone imagining that Adelstein is a member.

Yak threats on Adelstein’s family

This claim does not make sense on two counts. While within the realm of possibility that a yak would make such a threat toward the family, like the Italian mob, the Japanese mob has never been known for actually going after people’s families. Such acts would get the police cracking down on them quickly and hard. Adelstein seems to be confusing the yaks with South American mobs, which are well known for going after family members. Moreover, if such threat and danger really existed, what kind of sane person would continue to hound Goto while leaving his family in such danger?

Adelstein managed to get a CBS news crew to go with him to the Budhhist monastery where Goto had moved to become a monk. One of the monks was being interviewed and said, “He’s a changed man” to which the CBS reporter responded, “Then, why is he still involved in child pornography?” with Adelstein standing next to her and giddily interpreting with literally with smirk on his face. (Note: This event was not in Tokyo Vice but occurred afterwards.)

What kind of man scared for his life chases his would-be assassin down to a monastery, where he is hiding out, with a CBS reporter and throws, “What about the child pornography?” in his face? The answer is that Adelstein knows he is not in any danger and the whole thing is one big game for him, which he has been enjoying thoroughly. This is evidenced by the smile on his face during that interview.

Adlestein also claims to have been having a sexual relationship with one of Goto’s mistresses, “pumping her for information,” to use Adelstein’s own language. Frankly your adversary does not have to be gangster to get your ass kicked in such a situation. One moment Adelstein claims to be playing with fire, and then next moment he is crying foul, i.e., “Help me,” “Protect me!”

Moreover, why would the Japanese police or FBI bother to offer protection to a person who chases down and publicly taunts the person he claims is threatening him at the same time he is messing around with the guy’s girlfriend? At that point it would be like, “Hire your own damn security! Mr. Big Shot journalist.”

Ironically, Goto, who Adelstein claims to be the worst of the worst and who published his own book, about summed up the situation with Adelstein very accurately. Goto wrote, “He’s not a journalist. He’s a novelist” while explaining that he was not after Adelstein who had nothing to fear from him.

It should also be noted that Adelstein has maintained a regular presence in Tokyo with a number of scheduled appearances at various public places. Any person with any interest could easily find him. So, the notion that the head of one of the major yakuza groups in Japan could not find Adelstein and get him, if that is what Goto desired, is a ridiculous notion.

Masaki Shibata meeting at hospital in Dec. 2006

Adelstein claims that he met Masaki Shibata in December 2006 at a hospital where the man was dying of liver cancer. He describes Shibata as an ex-yakuza who had been “a big man in his organized crime group, but he was no longer an organization man,” and “a wet-your-pants kind of enforcer in his day” who was Adelstein’s best yak source. He was also a former friend of the Emperor of Loan Sharks, Kajiyama.

During this meeting Adelstein wrote that Shibata asked him, “You want to know the real story?” in regard to the Eiju Kim murder on the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station. Shibata then went on to tell the real story, which Adelstein never tells the readers. He keeps the story secret and only mentioned, “It was an incredible story. It involved slush funds in the Osaka prosecutor’s office, media suppression, and a colossal cover-up. Still, it didn’t make complete sense, kind of like conspiracy theories, which abound in Japan. I’d go into detail, but I want to live out the rest of my natural life.”

Aside from being bad writing to let the readers smell the story but not actually taste it, Adelstein contradicts himself. He has no problem exposing, hounding and taunting Tadamasa Goto, who he describes at the worst of the worst, but he is afraid to tell another yak story or he could be killed. One moment Adelstein is our brave super hero fighting evil in Japan, and then next the moment he’s a spineless coward quivering in fear. Go figure.