{"id":20186,"date":"2011-06-27T10:48:36","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T14:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=20186"},"modified":"2011-06-27T10:48:36","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T14:48:36","slug":"justins-japan-interview-with-tokyo-vice-author-jake-adelstein-on-yakuza-films-umbrellas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/27\/justins-japan-interview-with-tokyo-vice-author-jake-adelstein-on-yakuza-films-umbrellas\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin’s Japan: Interview with “Tokyo Vice” Author Jake Adelstein on Yakuza Films, Umbrellas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

"I think the JET Program is a wonderful thing. Many people who have become scholars of Japan and have settled down in Japan begin on the JET Program. It is a wonderful way for the Japanese to get to understand Americans, and Americans to get to understand Japan." (Justin Tedaldi)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

By<\/em> <\/strong>JQ<\/strong> magazine<\/strong><\/em><\/a> editor <\/em>Justin Tedaldi<\/a><\/em> (CIR Kobe-shi<\/a>, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0page <\/em>here<\/a> <\/em>for related stories.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Examiner\u2019s note:<\/em> The following interview was conducted at New York\u2019s Japan Society<\/a> on March 10, 2011, hours before the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami would ravage eastern Japan. I was there to chat with guest lecturer Jake Adelstein<\/a>, whose twelve-year career as a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun<\/em> was chronicled in his acclaimed 2009 book Tokyo Vice<\/a><\/em>. Adelstein is currently working on his second book, and as the editor of the Japan Subculture Research Center<\/a> blog he continues to report on all the intriguing and seedy aspects that keep Japan running. In this exclusive interview, I spoke with Adelstein during an ominous cloudburst.<\/p>\n

Thanks for meeting in this gloomy weather.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I used to like rainy weather, but my bodyguard, who\u2019s an ex-yakuza, hates rainy weather. And I asked him once\u2014I wish I hadn\u2019t asked him\u2014\u201cWhat\u2019s your deal with rainy weather? Why do you always not want to go out of the house and discourage me from going out?\u201d And he\u2019s like, \u201cOh, you know, when a yakuza kills another yakuza, they almost always do it on a rainy day, because first of all: bad visibility. The sound of the rain blurs the sounds of what\u2019s going on, and the rain washes away all the trace evidence.\u201d And ever since then, I haven\u2019t been able to enjoy rainy weather as much as I used to.<\/p>\n

I read that your birthday is coming up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, let\u2019s see. I\u2019ll be 42. If all goes well, I will be ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist<\/a> priest on my birthday. I\u2019ve got about a week of training left\u2014if I could just remember that damn sutra. I had a talk with the priest and told him that I didn\u2019t believe in the metaphysics of Buddhism, and he was like, \u201cIt\u2019s all right. You just have to pretend that they\u2019re true.\u201d So as long as you uphold the precepts, it\u2019s not belief; it\u2019s deeds. I\u2019m comfortable with that, the Episcopal King James version of Buddhism.<\/p>\n

In an interview last year<\/a>, you said you were going to have the opportunity to meet with yakuza boss Goto Tadamasa<\/a>\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

I might still have the opportunity, if he\u2019s in good health. He\u2019s been in and out of the hospital.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s his current status?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. He is still a priest. I\u2019ve had some issues with his autobiography<\/a> that was published last year, which had the equivalent of a yakuza fatwa on me. If you understand how the yakuza order people to be killed, you can read the lines very well. He refers to the attack on the director Itami Juzo<\/a> in his memoirs and says, \u201cOf course he deserved to be attacked, because he wrote a movie that was unpleasant about the yakuza,\u201d and he refers to my writing as unpleasant. And then he has these two lines about, \u201cI don\u2019t know who this guy is, but even as an ex-yakuza, if I ever met him he would go from someone being targeted for death to someone being dead, ha-ha-ha.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a boss wants someone whacked in the yakuza, what he does is, he never gives an order, because then he could be held responsible. He just says, you know, \u201cJohnson-san is a real pain in the ass; I don\u2019t really like Johnson-san very well.\u201d And his cohort immediately knows that he\u2019s been asked to whack the guy. He whacks him and goes to jail, and comes out and gets a cash bonus from the organization. That\u2019s how it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s talk that a film version of Tokyo Vice<\/em> is in the works.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Lesher, who produced No Country for Old Men<\/em>, is signed on as the producer. There have been two or three actors who have expressed interest in playing the role. J.T. Rogers, who is a very good playwright\u2014he\u2019s got a play opening at Lincoln Center this year called Blood and Gifts<\/em>\u2014he is the principal screenwriter, and I am the co-writer. J.T. and I went to the same high school together. Actually, it\u2019s interesting: he\u2019s a very successful playwright, writes about Afghanistan and foreign countries. Peter Hessler, who is a China expert, he and I also hung out in high school at the same time.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on the JET Program?
\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the JET Program is a wonderful thing. Many people who have become scholars of Japan and have settled down in Japan begin on the JET Program. It is a wonderful way for the Japanese to get to understand Americans, and Americans to get to understand Japan. Like any program, it has problems. I think it\u2019s a great thing, and I hope it continues to be supported by both sides.<\/p>\n

For the complete interview, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong>
\n<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0page here for related stories. Examiner\u2019s note: The following interview was conducted at New York\u2019s Japan Society on March 10, 2011, hours before the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami would ravage eastern Japan. I was there to chat with guest lecturer Jake Adelstein, whose twelve-year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,25,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-interviewprofile","category-justins-japan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-5fA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20191,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20186\/revisions\/20191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}