Reddit reviews Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

He wrote a book "Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan". I read it a few weeks ago and was impressed. It shows how the yakuza, not one single entity but multiple groups that rise and fall, have an often symbiotic relationship with the government. It also answers a lot of questions about japanese sex culture and wider culture in general, the open side and the darker one where human sex trafficking can go uninvestigated.

You can read the book instead. I enjoyed it.

Interview about it here.

If you're interested in the Japanese Yakuza, I wholeheartedly recommend the book Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein (mentioned in this article).

It is simultaneously a credible assessment of the modern-day Yakuza's place in society (albiet from a westerner's perspective) and a very authentic memoir from a remarkable journalist. Also, I found it to be quite humorous and entertaining without that air of condescension that quite a few books on Japan tend to succumb to.

Probably one of the most enjoyable non-fiction pieces I've read in a while.

What's his take on the incident reported by Jake Adlestein regarding Yamaguchi-guchi member Tadamasa Goto?

Tokyo Vice

I wrote that comment in a hurry, so I didn't any time to back my comment up. So here's a quote from Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan :

> Hamaya's [a Japanese reporter] field of expertise was the mentally disabled, especially involving the appropriate measures to be taken with them when they broke the law. She was a also an enthusiastic advocate for the handicapped, an area where Japan is still decades behind the United States in terms of social intergration.
>
>The law and how it should deal with the mentally was being discussed heatedly in the late 1990's. Some people have loudly asserted that officers of the law should have stronger authority to forcibly incarcerate mental patients.
>p.207

I would like to go on to quote the book more, but I'm too damned lazy. Anyhow, this case and this case brought quite a bit of heat on the mentally handicapped and Japan and solidified a lot of prejudiced ideas the Japanese people held against the insane.