Jake Adelstein

I never started out to write a trilogy about the underworld in japan, but here we are. Tokyo Vice (2009) The Last Yak*za (2022) and now Tokyo Noir (2024). Between writing books, I have been doing investigative journalism in audio. Please check out The Evaporated (2023) and Night Shift (2024). I was born in Missouri and first went to Japan in 1988 as an exchange student at Sophia. I spent most of my time in college living in a Zen Buddhist temple in Tokyo, failing to obtain enlightenment or even a little, tiny satori. I became a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper (circ. 10,000,000 daily) and was there from 1993 until close to the end of 2005, primarily as a crime reporter. I worked for a year on a human trafficking study of Japan sponsored by the US State Department from 2006-2007. I travel back and forth between Japan and the United States, writing both in English and Japanese for various publications under my own names and pen names. I do some consulting work on occasion.

I hope you enjoyed my books or at least learned something useful. If you're interested in the dark side of the sun--the problematic, interesting and strange aspects of Japanese society, please see our sporadically updated blog Japansubculture.