Quick Facts
Biography
Jake Adelstein (born March 28, 1969) is a Jewish American journalist crime writer and blogger who has spent most of his career in Japan.
Career
Adelstein grew up in Missouri and moved to Japan at age 19 to study Japanese literature at Sophia University. In 1993 Adelstein became the first non-Japanese staff writer at the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper, where he worked for 12 years.
After leaving the Yomiuri, Adelstein published an exposé of how an alleged crime boss, Tadamasa Goto, made a deal with the FBI to gain entry to the United States for a liver transplant at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2009, Adelstein published a memoir about his career as a reporter in Japan, Tokyo Vice, in which he accused Goto of threatening to kill him over the story.
Adelstein was subsequently a reporter for a US State Department investigation into human trafficking in Japan, and now writes for the Daily Beast, Vice News, The Japan Times and other publications. He is a board member and advisor to the Lighthouse: Center for Human Trafficking Victims (formerly Polaris Project Japan).
On April 19, 2011, Adelstein filed a lawsuit against National Geographic Television, which had hired him to help make a documentary about the yakuza, citing ethical problems with their behavior in Japan. Adelstein withdrew the lawsuit a month later, after reaching a settlement.