Jake Adelstein – författare

''Sacred, ferocious, and businesslike, Adelstein describes the Japanese mafia like nobody else'' Roberto Saviano, on Tokyo ViceMakoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force - the yakuza.Saigo, nicknamed "Tsunami", quickly realizes that even within the organization, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.The internal politics of the yakuza are dizzyingly complex, and between the ever-shifting web of alliances and the encroaching hand of the law that pushes them further and further underground, Saigo finds himself in the middle of a defining decades-long battle that will determine the future of the yakuza.Written with the insight of an expert on Japanese organized crime and the compassion of a longtime friend, investigative journalist Jake Adelstein presents a sprawling biography of a yakuza, through post-war desperation, to bubble-era optimism, to the present. Including a cast of memorable yakuza bosses - Coach, The Buddha, and more - this is a story about the rise and fall of a man, a country, and a dishonest but sometimes honorable way of life on the brink of being lost.

A darkly comic sequel to Tokyo Vice that is equal parts history lesson, true-crime exposé, and memoir.

It’s 2008, and it’s been a while since Jake Adelstein was the only gaijin crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun. The global economy is in shambles, Jake is off the police beat but still chain-smoking clove cigarettes, and Tadamasa Goto, the most powerful boss in the Japanese organised crime world, has been banished from the yakuza, giving Adelstein one less enemy to worry about — for the time being. But as he puts his life back together, he discovers that he may be no match for his greatest enemy — himself.

And Adelstein has a different gig these days: due diligence work, or using his investigative skills to dig up information on entities whose bosses would prefer that some things stay hidden.

The underworld isn’t what it used to be. Underneath layers of paperwork, corporations are thinly veiled fronts for the yakuza. Pachinko parlours are a hidden battleground between disenfranchised Korean Japanese and North Korean extortion plots. TEPCO, the electric power corporation keeping the lights on for all of Tokyo, scrambles to hide its willful oversights that ultimately led to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. And the Japanese government shows levels of corruption that make the yakuza look like philanthropists in comparison. All this is punctuated by personal tragedies no one could have seen coming.

In this ambitious and riveting work, Jake Adelstein explores what it’s like when you’re in too deep to distinguish the story you chase from the life you live.

A riveting true-life tale of newspaper noir and Japanese organised crime from an American investigative journalist. Now a Max Original Series on HBO Max----------EITHER ERASE THE STORY, OR WE''LL ERASE YOU. AND MAYBE YOUR FAMILY. BUT WE''LL DO THEM FIRST, SO YOU LEARN YOUR LESSON BEFORE YOU DIE.From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, first-hand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. Working eighty-hour weeks for twelve years, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face-to-face with Japan''s most infamous yakuza boss - and the threat of death for him and his family - Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.With its visceral descriptions and detailed exploration of the modern-day yakuza, Tokyo Vice is a deeply thought-provoking book: equal parts cultural exposé, true crime and hard-boiled noir.''Expertly told and highly entertaining'' GEORGE PELECANOS, writer and producer of The Wire''Sacred, ferocious, and businesslike, Adelstein describes the Japanese mafia like nobody else'' ROBERTO SAVIANO, author of Gomorrah''Gripping and absorbing . . . A terrifying, deeply moral story that you cannot put down'' MISHA GLENNY, author of McMafia

Kunnian hinta on koko elämä.

Tositarina kunnian kulttuuriin perustuvasta perinteikkäästä ja rikollisesta elämäntavasta, joka imaisee nuoren miehen mukaansa peruuttamattomasti.

Makoto Saigo on hyvä soittamaan kitaraa ja joutumaan tappeluihin. Kun unelma rocktähteydestä jää toteutumatta, hän kääntyy yakuzan puoleen – järjestön, jossa voi nousta alimmalta tasolta huipulle pelkällä uskollisuudella, armottomalla voimalla ja suorituskyvyllä.

Yakuzan toimintatavat ovat hurjia, ja mielipide-erot voivat johtaa hengenvaarallisiin yhteenottoihin. Yksi virheliike voi maksaa hengen – tai vähintäänkin sormen.

Saigo tempautuu keskelle kostojen, kaunojen ja skandaalien aikakautta, joka määrittää yakuzan tulevaisuuden.

Jake Adelstein (s. 1969) on yhdysvaltalainen tutkiva toimittaja, joka on asunut ja työskennellyt Japanissa opiskeluajoistaan lähtien. Hän ei ikinä aikonut kirjoittaa Japanin alamaailmasta, mutta tässä sitä ollaan. Adelsteinin Tokyo Vice -kirjasta on tehty samanniminen HBO:n menestyssarja.