Jake Adelstein - Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

Meeting is merely the beginning of separation . Japanese proverb

PRELUDE Ten Thousand Cigarettes Either erase the story, or well erase you. And maybe your family. But well do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.The well-dressed enforcer spoke very slowly, the way people speak to idiots or children or the way Japanese sometimes speak to clueless foreigners.It seemed like a straightforward proposition.Walk away from the story and walk away from your job, and itll be like it never happened. Write the article, and there is nowhere in this country that we will not hunt you down. Understand?Its never a smart idea to get on the bad side of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japans largest organized crime group. With about forty thousand members, its a lot of people to piss off.The Japanese mafia. You can call them yakuza , but a lot of them like to call themselves gokudo , meaning literally the ultimate path. The Yamaguchi-gumi is the top of the gokudo heap. And among the many subgroups that make up the Yamaguchi-gumi, the Goto-gumi, with more than nine hundred members, is the nastiest. They slash the faces of film directors; they throw people from hotel balconies; they drive bulldozers into peoples houses. Stuff like that.The man sitting across the table and offering me this deal was from the Goto-gumi.He didnt make the proposal in a menacing way. He didnt sneer or squint his eyes. Except for the dark suit, he didnt even look like a yakuza. He had all his fingers. He didnt roll his r s like the heavies in the movies. If anything, he was more like a slightly surly waiter at a fancy restaurant.He let the ash from his cigarette fall onto the carpet, then stubbed it out undramatically in the ashtray. He lit up another with a gold-plated Dunhill. He was smoking Hope. White box, block lettersreporters notice stuff like thatbut they werent standard Hope cigarettes. They were the half-size, stubby version. Higher nicotine; lethal.The yakuza had come to this meeting with one other enforcer, who said absolutely nothing. The Silent One was thin and dark with a horselike face, and he had a messy long haircut dyed orangethe chahatsu look. He had on an identical dark suit.I had come with backup, a low-ranking cop formerly assigned to the AntiOrganized Crime Task Force in Saitama Prefecture. Chiaki Sekiguchi. He was a little taller than I, almost as dark, thickset with deep-set eyes and a 1950s Elvis haircut. He was mistaken for a yakuza a lot. If hed gone the other way, Im sure he would have been a well-respected crime boss. He was a great cop, a good friend, my mentor in a lot of ways, and he had volunteered to come along. I glanced at him. He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head, and shrugged his shoulders. He wasnt going to give me any more advice. Not now. I was on my own.Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette while I think this over?Be my guest, the yakuza said, more diffident than I.I pulled a pack of Gudang Garam, Indonesian clove cigarettes, out of my suit jacket. They were loaded with nicotine and tar, and they smelled like incense, which reminded me of my days living in a Zen temple during college. Maybe I should have become a Buddhist monk. It was a little late now.I stuck one in my mouth, and as I fumbled for a lighter, the enforcer deftly flicked his Dunhill and held it close until he was sure it was lit. He was very accommodating. Very professional.I watched the thick smoke waft in concentric circles from the tip of the cigarette; the burning clove leaves embedded in the tobacco snapped and crackled as I inhaled. It seemed to me that the whole world had gone quiet and this was the only sound I could hear. Snapping, crackling, sparking. Cloves tend to do that. I was hoping the sparks wouldnt burn a hole in my suit or hisbut then again, after further reflection, I decided I didnt really care.I didnt know what to do or say. Not a clue. I didnt have enough material to write the story. Hell, it wasnt a story. Yet. He didnt know that but I did. I had only enough information to have gotten me into this unpleasant face-off.Maybe there was a bright side to this whole problem. Maybe it was time to go home. Yeah, maybe I was tired of working eighty-hour weeks. Maybe I was tired of coming home at two in the morning and leaving at five. I was tired of always being tired.Tired of chasing after scoops. Tired of being scooped by the competition. Tired of facing six deadlines a daythree in the morning for the evening edition and three at night for the morning edition. Tired of waking up with a hangover every other day.I didnt think he was bluffing. He seemed very sincere. As far as he was concerned, the story I was trying to write would kill his boss. Not directly, but that would be the result. That would be his oyabun , his surrogate father. Tadamasa Goto, the most notorious Japanese gangster of them all. So naturally, he would feel justified in killing me.However, if I lived up to my end of the bargain, would they keep theirs? The real problem was that I couldnt write the story. I didnt have all the facts yet. But I couldnt let them know that.All I knew was this: In the summer of 2001, Tadamasa Goto had gotten a liver transplant at the Dumont-UCLA Liver Cancer Center. I knew, or thought I knew, who the doctor was who had performed the transplant. I knew about how much Goto had allegedly spent to get his liver: close to $1 million according to some sources, $3 million according to others. I knew that some of the money to pay for his hospital expenses had been sent from Japan to the United States via the Tokyo branch office of a Las Vegas casino. What I didnt know was how a guy like that had gotten into the United States in the first place. He must have forged a passport or bribed a Japanese politician or a U.S. politician. Something was fishy. He was on the watch list of U.S. Customs and Immigration, the FBI, the DEA. He was blacklisted. He shouldnt have been able to get into the United States.I was sure that there was a great story behind the journey of Goto and his operation. Its why Id been working on it for months. I could only guess that while I was working on the story someone ratted me out.I noticed that my hands were shaking. The cigarette seemed to have evaporated in my fingers while I was thinking.I lit a second cigarette. And I thought to myself, how the hell did I end up here?I had one chance to make the right choice on this one. There wasnt going to be a second meeting. I couldnt print a correction later. I could feel myself starting to panic, my stomach knotting up, my left eye twitching.Id been doing this job for more than twelve years, and I was ready to leave. But not like this. How did I get here? It was a good question. It was a better question than the one being asked of me at the moment.I got lost in thought; I lost count of the number of cigarettes Id smoked.Erase the story, or we erase you was what the enforcer had said.That was the proposal.I didnt have any cards to play, and I was out of cigarettes.I swallowed, exhaled, swallowed some more, and then muttered my response. Done, I said. I will not write the story in the Yomiuri. Good, he said, very pleased with himself. If I were you, Id get out of Japan. The old man is mad. You have a wife, two children, right? Take a vacation. Take a long vacation. Maybe look for other work.Everyone stood. There were the merest of bowsmore like inch-long nods and wide-eyed stares that did not waver.After the enforcer and his helper left, I turned to Sekiguchi. You think I did the right thing? I asked.He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed a little. You did the only thing you could. That was the right thing. No story is worth dying for, no story is worth your family dying for. Heroes are just people who have run out of choices. You still had a choice. You made the right choice.I was numb.Sekiguchi walked me out of the hotel, and we got into a taxi. In Shinjuku, we found a coffee shop. We slid into a booth. Sekiguchi pulled out his cigarettes and offered me one, which he lit.Jake, Sekiguchi began, you were thinking about leaving the newspaper anyway. Now would be the time. Youre not a coward if you do it. You have no cards to play. The Inagawa-kai? The Sumiyoshi-kai? Theyre cute compared to these guys. I dont know what the frigging deal is with the liver transplant he got in the United States, but Goto has got to have big reasons why he doesnt want the story to get out. Whatever he did, its a big deal to him. Retreat.Then Sekiguchi tapped me on the shoulder to be sure I was paying attention. Looking me right in the eyes with a razor-edged intensity, he went on, Retreat. But do not give up on that story. Find out what that bastard is afraid of. Youll need to know because your peace treaty with this man will not hold. I guarantee you that. These guys dont forget. Youll need to know. Otherwise youre going to spend the rest of your life in fear. Sometimes you have to pull back to fight back. Dont give up. Wait. Wait a year, two years if you have to. But find out the truth. Youre a journalist. Thats your job. Thats your calling. Thats what got you to this point.Find out what hes scared that people will find out, what he doesnt want people to know. Because he is a man scaredscared enough to come after you like this. When you know it, you have a card to play. Use it carefully. Then you have a chance to go back to doing what you want to do.When I got knocked back down to traffic dutybecause someone, one of my own people, set me up for demotionI wanted to quit the force. Every day I wanted to quit. You cannot imagine how it feels to be a detective and then be forced to write traffic tickets because some dishonorable, insecure know-nothing cannot get ahead any other way. But I had my family to think about. The choice wasnt about me alone. So I waited it out. I had to eat it, day after day, but time passes, and after a while things changed, I was able to make my case, and now Im back doing what I am pretty good at. Youre in the same boat, Jake. Dont give up.Sekiguchi was right, of course. It wasnt the end.But Im getting ahead of myself.There was a time when I wasnt pissing off yakuza, when I wasnt a chain-smoking burned-out ex-reporter with chronic insomnia. There was a time when I didnt know Detective Sekiguchi, the name Tadamasa Goto, or even how to write a decent article on a purse snatching in Japanese, and yakuza were something I knew only from the movies.There was a time when I was sure I was one of the good guys. It seems like a very long time ago.