Networking Event Details
Join us at the Redhill Conversations Networking Event to connect with Redhill and AmCham's business leaders and expand your network over a glass of wine.
Meet with our special guest, Jake Adelstein, and get an inside look into the world of Tokyo Vice through the eyes of the author himself. Jake is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, where for twelve years he covered the dark side of Japan: extortion, murder, human trafficking, fiscal corruption, and, of course, the yakuza. But when his final scoop exposed a scandal that reverberated all the way from the neon-soaked streets of Tokyo to the polished halls of the FBI and resulted in a death threat for him and his family, Adelstein decided to step down. Then, he fought back. At this event, Jake will give an unprecedented look at Japanese culture and a searing memoir about his rise from cub reporter to seasoned journalist with a price on his head.
Jake Adelstein is an investigative journalist in Japan, a due diligence investigator, an author, and a low-ranking Zen Buddhist priest. He was born on March 28, 1969, in Missouri, USA, and moved to Japan about 20 years later. He became the first foreigner to join the editorial staff of Japan's largest daily newspaper, the Yomiuri Shinbun, in 1993.
For nearly 30 years, he has covered organized crime in Japan. He pissed off a yakuza boss, Goto Tadamasa, during his investigations, which led him to write Tokyo Vice, and he was placed under the protection of the Japanese police for several years, but chose never to leave Tokyo, where he has lived for more than thirty years.
After leaving the Yomiuri Shinbun in 2005, he continued his work as an investigative journalist for various media: the Los Angeles Times, Asia Times, Vice News, Forbes, and, most notably, the Daily Beast. Meanwhile, he wrote The Last of the Yakuza and I Sold My Soul in Bitcoins and became a Buddhist priest on March 28, 2017, his forty-eighth birthday. He should be ready to perform weddings and funerals before long. And lately, he has been spending a lot of time with the production team working on the adaptation of Tokyo Vice into a series for HBO, the first episode of which is directed by Michael Mann. The second season is in production, and the show runner, JT Rogers, is his high-school friend. His fourth book, Tokyo Private Eye, will be published in English and French next year.