Installed in Japan for over thirty years, journalist Jake Adelstein was the privileged interlocutor of a Yakuza chef. He pulled the successful story, adapted today in series.
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He hands you his business card, written in English and Japanese. And, according to one of the many Japanese customs adopted by Jake Adelstein, it must be read carefully while looking at the person in the eyes. On this card is written: journalist. Journalist, this 53 -year -old American author is certainly. He has become a singular bridge between the West and Japan since the publication, in 2009, of his story, Tokyo Vice. An American journalist on the Japanese police field (translated in France in 2016 to Editions Marchialy).
His bestseller has just been adapted in a miniseries of the same name in eight episodes, broadcast in the United States on HBO and in France on MyCanal, with Michael Mann behind the camera for the first episode. Amusing detail, the director of Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004) was the producer of the emblematic series of the 1980s Miami Vice (two cops in Miami), of which Tokyo Vice resumes, the very admission of Jake Adelstein, the Title.
Party in Japan at 19 for his studies, Jake Adelstein was the first foreign journalist to join five years later, in 1993, the writing of a big Japanese daily, Yomiuri Shimbun, the most read in the world (15 million copies sold per day). He will stay there for ten years, starting by covering various criminals, until becoming the favorite interlocutor of a chef Yakuza.
Esca of the Missouri
The Japanese underworld is the center of gravity of Tokyo Vice. The journalist describes from the inside an ultra -was advanced environment, a priori impossible to penetrate. This access earned Jake Adelstein, in the late 2000s, to be a target. At that time, he dyed his hair in red to escape the hitmen, and never moves without his driver and bodyguard – a former member of the Yakuzas to whom a little finger, a mutilation that must ‘Inflict the yakuzas having failed in their obligations towards their godfather.
Nothing predestined Jake Adelstein, who grew up in a Missouri farm, to make his life in Japan. The passion for this country came to him from a karate teacher. As for language, it was particularly suitable for it. “I have a very bad ear,” says Jake Adelstein. I cannot make a difference between all the vowels. Now Japanese has only five. In writing, I have not had too many problems, I quickly understood the logic of this language. “
Write on various facts immediately appeared to him as a fairly simple exercise. In Japanese daily newspapers, they are written in very specific formats, which it is enough to respect, without having to take many initiatives. This very marked exercise did not really ask him for an investigation, the articles being often written from the press releases provided by the police.
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