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.

'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.'Terrific, expertly told and highly entertaining' George Pelecanos, on Tokyo Vice

'The Last Yakuza might be a work of non-fiction, but it reads more like a thriller... a gripping read' - Irish News'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 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

The sequel to bestseller Tokyo Vice, now a major HBO drama, with a second season coming in 2024.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.Adelstein has a new 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. Underneath layers of paperwork, corporations are thinly veiled fronts for the yakuza. Pachinko parlors are a hidden battleground between disenfranchised Japanese Koreans 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 gangsters look like philanthropists.In this riveting memoir, Jake Adelstein once again reveals Japan’s dark underworld, as he battles to keep himself in the light.

The wild, true story of cyber-era commerce, crime, cold-hard cash, and one of the greatest heists in history. Even in hell, Bitcoin talks. This modern take on an old Japanese saying still holds true. Cryptocurrency was supposed to do for money what the internet did for information, but it didn’t work out that way. Its virtual existence unleashed real-world chaos — especially in the homeland of its mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Tokyo was the centre of the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, until that company collapsed with nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of bitcoin gone missing. It might be the greatest heist in history. If it was a heist.So what really happened? Here’s the true story of the humble-to-hot commodity, from the former geek website that launched the boom to an inside world of absent-minded CEOs, hucksters, hackers, cybercrooks, drug dealers, corrupt federal agents, evangelical libertarians, and clueless techies. You’ll discover Bitcoin’s connection to the infamous Silk Road, learn why hell has nothing on Japan’s criminal justice system, and get the lowdown on the high cost of betting with the Devil’s dollars. All of this for less than the price of a single bitcoin.