Stories Behind the Story with Better Reading
Stories Behind The Story: Jake Adelstein on Working in Japan and His Career Trajectory as a Journalist
Jake Adelstein talks to Cheryl about living in Japan, the challenges of assimilating into Japanese society, and his career trajectory as a journalist. His latest novel, Tokyo Noir, is out now.
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- Duration:
- 42m
- Broadcast on:
- 14 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to the Better Reading Podcast, Stories Behind the Story, brought to you by Belinda Audio. Listen to Belinda audio books, anywhere, everywhere. - Hi, this is Cheryl Arkel from the Better Reading Podcast, Stories Behind the Story. We talked to authors about how they came to tell us their story. (upbeat music) Jake Adelstein, welcome to Better Reading. - That's lovely to be here. - I mean, I just, it's just been such a coincidence having you here because really, I did not know very much about you until a couple of months ago when I found the series on HBO Max in the US. 'Cause it's usually you read the book and then you watch the TV series, but for me, it went the other way around. I loved the TV series that much. I wanted so much more and also everyone I knew over there started watching it because I was recommending it so much. So it's really, really such a pleasure to have you in person today in our office. Let me introduce you and then you can talk. Jake is an investigative journalist and has been in Japan since 1993, reporting in both Japanese and English, considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan. Jake works as a writer and a consultant in Japan and the United States. He is the author of Tokyo Vice, which is now the series that I was just telling you about. Now, help me with this, the last Yakuza. - Yakuza? - Yakuza. His latest book, Tokyo Noire, is a darkly comic sequel to Tokyo Vice and it is in Equal Parts, a history lesson, true crime, expose and a memoir. Welcome, welcome. We like to know on this podcast how it is that you came to writing. Now, I have so many questions of how it is that you came to Japan. So I want you to go way back. Talk to me about Missouri. Talk to me about growing up. - Well, I grew up on a farm in Missouri. So Columbia, Missouri is the town next door. I actually grew up probably in McBain, Missouri, which has like a population of 142, very rural. - Wow. - Father wanted to be a veterinarian, but decided to go back to school and be a pathologist, my mother's a nurse. - Wow. - We had horses and dogs. - Did they expect you to go into medicine? - No, no. No one ever put any pressure on me to be anything. - Yeah. - The nice thing about having father's veterinarian is that people would bring him wounded animals. So someone brought him a coyote, thinking it was a dog. And then I took care of the coyote for a year, which I always found one of the, one of, - You know, Jake, I'm, that's just gonna make me love you even more. If you love animals, I love you. - I do love animals. - I do too. - We took care of a hawk for a while too. - Yeah, oh, wow. - Until it, until she could, you know, fly on her own and come back. And the coyote was my favorite. I liked the joke that taking care of a coyote was like good training for dealing with Yakuza because you can be friends with them, but you're, you know, but they're predators. And at any moment, you know, they may turn on you. And that was the same with the coyote. I don't think the coyote was grateful. And I think it got used to me, but every time I'd go out to feed it, it would always size me up. You know, sort of move his head. And I'm like, I'm going, okay. You know, he's trying to decide, you know, what are my weak points if he has to, if he has to take a bite out of me. And I'm like, I'm just, that's just the nature of the coyote. - Oh, I like that a lot. - But you know, I used to, I used to have it, he died. His name was George and he was two kilos. So I don't know. Yeah, tiny. - I had a tequila show. - You know what, tequila just 'cause Americans often don't. But you'll know that being in Japan, he's tiny, little white thing. Gosh, but he was a tough nut. Like he was a toughest dog. And he, because he was so small, he was very prone to nipping. So I was always worried that he was going to bite people. And every time he was on guard. And if I take him to the park, because he looks so cute, people will often ask me if they could pat him. And I said, mmm, probably not a good idea. (laughing) And it's kind of the same thing, isn't it? He might look sweet, but he ain't sweet. - You know, sometimes people don't know how to weigh the importance of the words, probably not a good idea. - Yes, that's right, that's right. Okay, all right. So you're looking after animals. So looking after animals, you know-- - How would I still get the hawk? - The hawk is, I mean, the hawk is-- - How did it even get there? - I guess the hawk had been hit by a car or something, and you know, someone brought it to my father, and you can fix the wing. Anyway, we ended up, I think we called her a fair of the falcon, even though she was a hawk. And you just sort of, you know, feed the hawk and let it heal. - And off it goes. - And off it goes, when it's ready to go, the coyote eventually healed enough to go out. - Okay, all right. - Do you agree with me that people who have show empathy to animals? I feel as though they're a different breed of humans. - Well, my father's, you know, as of that, he's very much into animals, and he always said that, you know, it's an amazing thing to think of communicating with another species, but it's almost like meeting an alien race, and that if you can form some kind of bond with them, that that's a tremendous thing. I do know that one commonality in serial killers is they start by torturing small animals. So it's the same way I think if you have empathy with animals, you know, it's a sign that you're probably a good sentient being, and if you torture them or enjoy killing them, you're probably a terrible person. - I'd agree with that for sure. - So, you know, I went early in life, I discovered life at a community radio station, which is kind of like public radio. So, you know, I volunteered there, and for a short time, I ran the music library, and that was nice. In high school, I kind of got picked on because I was an oddball, like, you know, like in the punk rock in a very preppy, or you either kind of a preppy, or you were a farmer kind of school, and I was sort of not in the middle, and got in a fight with one of the guys on the soccer team. I didn't get a really fight, he just picked on me so much that one day, in a relieving class, I, you know, unfairly kicked him hard, so they fell down, you know, as we were leaving, 'cause I knew I couldn't win a fair fight, and instead of getting kicked out of school, which I was quite prepared for, the teacher offered him a chance to say that he had tripped, because, you know, who wants everyone to know you got, you're asked kicked by the skinny Jewish kid, which is how the teacher phrased it. So, he went off to the nurse, and then the teacher strongly advised me to take karate classes, so I could learn to deal with my anger, and I think that he was Mr. Beer, kind of implied that I would be expelled if I didn't, if I didn't, so I was like, okay, you know, I'm like, all right, all right, you know, this is turning out pretty good, like, you know, he's taking the fall, and now he's probably won't pick on me, and I'm gonna have to go to karate class, I mean, you know, there were kids-- - Boys schools, or, well, not just boys schools, but relationship with boys, particularly young males. You know, that's hard, and it's quite contentious, and there's a lot of stuff, I think, that goes on that girls don't experience at that age. - I mean, it's kind of survival of the fittest, isn't it? - Early on in life, very much. We later become survival of the smartest, but at that age of life-- - Oh, right, yeah. - It is survival of the fittest, and, you know, and I realize that, you know, if you can show enough force that people are less likely to screw with you, you know, you can't beat up the entire soccer team, but if you take out one guy, then everybody else sort of pulls back, 'cause nobody wants to be the next guy. And so-- - Did you think that's in our DNA? Is that what it is, or is it talk behavior? - I think it's talk behavior. I think if you will grow up in a society where, you know, they're teaching compassion and qualities of compassion and humor, intelligence are praised, then I think the dynamic between people is very different, but we're, you know, it's America, right? America, you know, I sometimes have to explain it to people or Japanese people who visit America, especially modern America, the only virtue is winning. I mean, that's it, you're a winner, you're a loser. And, you know, people love Donald Trump because he's a winner, he tells people he's winning. And that's it, so you're either win or you lose, and that invites, of course, vicious competition. And, you know, and everyone needs to-- - And there's nothing in between. - Well, there is, you know, there is definitely a way to live in between, but once everybody's trying to be the alpha male, you know, we have a constant world of upset betas and haughty alphas, and it's, you know, you could choose to be neither the conqueror or the conqueror and just live your life without doing harm. But, you know, people want to force you to be on one side or the other. - 'Cause that's the system. - Well, that's the system that's America, America's very, you know, win or lose. You know, I think Japanese have a saying about that. Like, if you win, you're the shogun, if you lose, you're a dirty pirate. - Right, well, well, well, well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot there, but I still want to stay in America 'cause I want to know how you learned the language. - So, when I started Karate, Karate, my teacher, John Foley had grown up in Okinawa, and, you know, he-- - Is he still in Missouri? - I don't know where he is, the last time-- - Not if you were. - I was, I was, I'm sorry. So, I'm taking Karate, and from Karate, I became interested in Japanese culture and Zen Buddhism 'cause we always meditated in class, and he explained how that was important in maintaining a combat set of state of mind, which is true, if you can have a thing about Zen Buddhism without sounding like, without being preachy, is that it does train you to have a state of consciousness where you're conscious of everything and stay calm, which is useful if you're in combat. Now, that also, like anything, can be used to turn people into kamikaze pilots, if you divorce it from the moral teachings that are also part of it. But the method itself is very good for martial arts. So, I became interested in all of those things, and in college, I took Japanese for a year. I was at the University of Missouri. There was a study in Japan program, and, like, literally, the flyer for study in Japan program hit me in the face right in front of the McDonald's on campus, and, you know, my first year of school, and I had to decide, like, well, I will go, get a filet of fish, or I'll go ask about this program, 'cause I might as well, 'cause the deadline was coming up. So, with my fire in hand, I went and I asked, and they told me, you can't go, 'cause you have to have two years of Japanese. - Oh, God. - But it turned out, because it was the bubble economy, right? We're talking in 1987. - Yep. - You know, Japan is very expensive. - Yep. - You know, Japan is buying up the world. - Yeah. - We thought Japan was gonna be rowing the world. - Yeah, I did too, man. I mean, look what we are now, man. I'm in the dollar store of Asia. But it turned out, we had 20 people coming from Sofia University. We had no one going from the University of Missouri, and I said, in one of my best earliest negotiations was, well, you know, I don't know a lot about Japanese culture, but I do know that if you have 20 people coming and we've got no one going, that's not in exchange, that's a fiasco. So, you should be glad I'm going. You should try and incentivize me to go, because I'm raising my hand, and who else is gonna go? - Yeah. - How old would you have been? - I would've been like 18 or something. - Yep. - And I said, why don't you go? And I was having this sort of lighthearted chit chat with the secretary for the International Studies Abroad program, and the president came out, and I forget her last name, and she said, like, you know, Mr. Honesty, like you make a convincing case, okay, you can go, fill out the forms. - Do you know, we have, and it's probably, it's wrong. I know it's probably not right, but we have a view in Australia. - And also, I guess, because America's such a big place, what are we up to, 300 million people living there? - Yeah, something like that. - Yeah, right. - I think Japan's 220 million. - Australia's 25. - Wow. - 25. Anyway, it just doesn't compare to when I'm in San Francisco, but what I was going to say is that often, and generalization, misconception, whatever you wanna say, people often think that Americans don't have a curiosity outside of the United States. I don't even remember George Bush didn't even have a passport when he became president. And so for me to hear that you're doing that at 18 makes me think that you're a curious person. - I was, I mean, I was an oddball. - Yeah. - I recently went home because I'm working on this podcast about a series of deaths at the hospital where my father worked like 30 years ago, 1992. So I've been back home more than I have been in many years. In my old bedroom around midnight, there's a train that goes through a main Missouri, can hear the sound of the train siren like right around midnight. And you know, my whole wife growing up, I was like, you know, in the middle night, I'm gonna go down and hop on that train and go as far as I can from Columbia, Missouri and see what the world is like out there. 'Cause you know, it's this enticing sound. So Japan was about as far as you could get from Missouri. - I mean, it would culturally end in so many ways. - Yeah. - Yeah, in so many ways. And that didn't speak much English back there. - No, no, I mean, Japan isn't, is, you know, in the 90s. Well, I arrived in the 80s, right? In the 80s, there was very little attempt to sort of, to not welcome, but to adapt to foreign or so there was like, there were no includes science. I mean, everything was in Kanji or Hiragana or katakana. Shinjuku station, you know, when I first got there and I'm still learning the basic Kanji at that point to navigate out of that station, it was just insane. - I, we had very working class, my parents were immigrants, you know, they were from Lebanon. So we grew up very, very little money. And so I'd never been on a plane until I became an adult, an aeroplane. Me and my partner at the time decided to go to Europe, right? That was my first plane trip from Sydney to Austria 'cause that was the cheapest ticket. But just coming back to what you were saying, when I, when we landed in Vienna, I couldn't, 'cause Australia's a relatively new place for white people, right? Not for the indigenous culture, of course. But when I got out of that airport, I couldn't believe how old everything was, how old the buildings, I mean, it was such a shock. Yes, think about it 'cause I'm surrounded here. Well, we colonized the Aboriginal people, but we've been here, what, a hundred and something years? It's new, you know, that's new. - And Japan's been around thousands of years, right? - And then you look at Austria and you look at Europe and I was in total shock. It was so shocking to me, I had to go inside and shut the door wherever I was for a while to be able to digest what was happening around me. First time on an aeroplane in the first time, seeing a different country. - Speaking of digest, what's a good Lebanese restaurant here? - Oh, I'll give you. - Okay, give me one. - Yeah, Emma's. - Oddly enough one, like 99 when I was covering the red light district, Kibuki Cho, which was a wonderful, strange time to be there before they cleaned up the area. Me and the other police reporters, we were often eating like at a Lebanese restaurant, just so it was like a Lebanese restaurant close to the police station. So that was kind of our daily place to go. I had a terrible, I mean, I think the name was Sinbad. I had no idea why you would call a Lebanese restaurant Sinbad, but that wasn't the name of the place. - Yeah, they close enough, right? Close enough. - And I'd take a cop's there occasionally and Japanese cops tend to be conservative and they would be like astonished, like, oh, cool, see. (laughs) They're like, oh, you can eat this food. And I'm like, yes, it is, it is good food. - Okay, tell me about arriving in Japan for the first time. You what, what, 1819? - 18, I would say, hold on, I'm born in 1969. - And you had one year's worth of language. - Yeah, one year's language. - Yeah. - What I soon discovered is, this is very interesting, that's a time, we're going way back in time, is that in order for, the thinking of the time was that we'll teach you polite Japanese, so that you don't offend anyone, and that you're easy to understand. And that is a wonderful, that's a great concept. But what people speak is completely different. So I discovered that people understood what I was saying, but they would reply to me in street Japanese, I had no idea what they were saying. So I would try, I was like, wow, I can have a conversation where I go a very old person, because they speak polite Japanese, right? - That's right. - You know, they will meet me. It means we're trying to speak to someone my old age, like I sound like someone who's, you know, like someone from the Showa, from the Taisho era, and they're from this era. - Well, I know what you're talking about, Jake, because when, and you'll know this, when immigrants migrate to a new country, like my parents did, they bring that country's culture and language out of that time. So 1960, right? So the Arabic that we learned growing up was 1960 Arabic. And then when I eventually went back as an adult to fit as my relatives, no one could understand a word I was saying. I could only speak to old people who remembered the language of 1960. It's exactly the same thing. - And my early memories of theirs, we had an orientation, we went to Niko, which is this lovely, it's a place known for the Cino Evil here, no evil monkeys, and this huge, gaudy shrine built in memory of one of the show goons. - Yeah, yeah. - And, you know, I've always tried to prepare for things, so I've read a couple books about the Japanese mind, and I understood a lot of the cultural issues and faux pas and things. But, you know, I was not prepared for like Japanese breakfast, you know, and I wake up hungry, and it's like, okay, here's your bull, hot rice, your cold fish, your raw egg, and some miso soup, and everything comes in a sesh. - I just want the coffee in toast. - And there was like, I think there was so much a dried seaweed, right? - Yeah, yeah. - So, that was okay, but I was just like, I'm like, fish in the morning, I had to buy it. - I could do rice, but yeah, everything else. - I mean, I could do fish if you've sautéed it now, a boil, and you know, put a little pot of sauce inside. - They're breading stuff. - But on the second day, I realized, the only giddy, right, the rice ball, that you sell in 7/11, so it's kind of like the staple of what, you know, that is Japanese like soul food, right? Like you're hungry, this is what people buy, it's a hungry and the bull rice wrapped in seaweed. I realized that as I was eating it, that the smell of seaweed smells very much like a corpse that's been dragged out of a river, just enough, you know? My father says he cannot remember this, but I got dragged to a scene once, and I don't know why we had to go to the scene, 'cause he's a medical examiner, and the smell is horrible, I mean, and so, you know, when I realized like, wow, for the rest of my time in Japan, every time I smell this, I'm going to have this horrible, like nauseating scene, and I'll never be able to eat, this is a snack food, and still even now. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's always that association, isn't there? - Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. - $45 up front for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time, unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month slows, full terms at mintmobile.com. We all have somewhere we're trying to get to. As the largest energy producer in Colorado, Chevron is helping meet rising demand, and we're working to do it responsibly. Our next-gen, tankless facilities reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of our operations by more than 90% compared to our older designs, working to provide Colorado with energy that's affordable, reliable, and ever cleaner. So everyone can get to where they want to be. You've arrived. That's energy in progress. Visit chevron.com/tankless. - I remember looking up when I was in Ginza in Tokyo, how many 7-Elevens were in Japan? And I don't know, I've forgotten that, but there are a couple of hundred thousand, 45,000. - Yeah, there's, I mean, 45,000 in that geographically small place. - Well, here's another fascinating thing about 7-Elevens. Is 7-Eleven was very quickly realized that, you know, foreign customers were going to be a staple of the future. So the only ATMs that everyone could access in Japan without any problem, if you had a foreign credit card or a foreign bank card, we're 7-Elevens. - I knew that even recently when I went. - So 7-Eleven has their own bank. There is an actual 7-Eleven bank, which just sounds like, you know, I don't know if they offer good interest rates. But they do exist. - I don't even know if it's possible to set up a bank account there, but there is definitely a 7-Eleven bank. - Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about, so your time in Japan and how it is that you became so literate, like people talk about being fluent in other languages. But I think that that word is quite fluid, you know, for some people what fluent is and what fluent isn't. But you became so fluent that you wanted to be a journalist in a Japanese newspaper. I mean, well... - Well, I mean, it's good for people to understand that. The Japanese written language is extremely difficult. - Oh, got you. - Because you have these 2,000 ideograms that have multiple readings. And you have two syllabaries. And really the only way to understand the context or how something is going to be read out loud is if you somehow get a good sense of what these things look like together. So it's very contextual. And, you know, I decided very early on that... At the same time, the Japanese grammar is very regular. It's very systematic. There's not exceptions. I mean, every verb is conjugated the same way. Every adjective is conjugated the same way. There's two exceptions in terms of verbs. And maybe a little bit when you get to polite language, which we'll put that aside for a second. So, you know, I realized like, "Okay, I can learn the patterns." So I sort of studied the Russian language, which is lots of pattern recognition drills and you do them again and again. And I spent a lot of time reading. And I learned like the way kids read. Kids read comic books. And comic books have the pronunciation next to the kanji. So you'll have like a full Japanese sentence. Then next to it, we'll tell you, "Okay, this is how you read it." So, you know, without trying to rationalize too much, "Okay, this is why you read it this way." - But you've obviously got, what do they say? A thing for languages. I can't really... - I don't, I don't... - Are you talking about learning to speak Russian and Japanese? - Well, I mean, I never learned to speak Russian, but I mean, but Japanese is... I'm a Mongolian and Korean because they're... I'll take languages, same family. It's familiar to me. It means... So I can apply that to me. My French, and I go to France all the time. I'm just like, I can't even hear the 13 vowels they're talking about. I mean, it doesn't register to me. I'm like, I'm partly colorblind. There's some colors I cannot see. And I feel that way about French vowels. Like, I am never going to hear the... You're talking about... - Yeah, yeah. - And then, Japanese newspapers, I realized, are very patternized. - Right, yeah. - I mean, they're not creative. The way that you write a Japanese newspaper article, it's, you know, who went and why or why? It's always a reverse pyramid. And I was like, I could do this. - So you walked into a place and said, I want a job. And they're like, what are you thinking? - Well, you have to take an examination because this is the crazy way they hire. I mean, this is very different from the United States. And maybe from Australia, 'cause I don't know how it works here. But in Japan, you have these like four major newspapers. And the structure of these newspapers is that there's a national edition and there's a local edition. So what they basically do is they have people writing for the local edition. And then if there's a big story in that local area, then you've got a reporter in place to write for the national edition. And so they hire people, fresh out of college, and by taking an exam. And they're very standardized like the SATs in the United States. Each one of them has their own type of exam. But since you've got years of these going on, you can study for them like there's study books, there's classes, you're like, okay. So at the time I was looking for a job, some of my other classmates in the news, I was writing for the school newspaper. And my poor editor-- - But you hadn't studied journalism by them. - No, no, no, I hadn't studied journalism. I wrote some things and wrote for the school newspaper. And my apologies to the serious journalists and the ones. I never was like, I want to be a journalist. That's what I want to be. And it was very late in my career that I realized this is an important thing. But it was fun, right? And for me it was like, okay, I get to interview people, and that's exciting, and that's why I was writing for the school paper. So I followed my classmates, and I did what they did, and I've prepared for the exams. And I already had a job lined up with Sony Computer Music Entertainment. - If you didn't get it. - I didn't get it. So I was like, my last year college, I already have a job waiting for me, a cushy job with Sony. And I'm like, well, I need to motivate myself to really improve my spoken and my written Japanese. So I'm going to try for these exams. And people told me, there's no way a Japanese newspaper is going to hire a foreigner to do what a Japanese person could do, even if you have a different perspective. And I was like, well, what am I going to lose by trying? I'm still going to improve my Japanese, and it'll be an interesting experience. So what I didn't know is that I would actually get hired. And then when I got hired. - You really were the only non-Japanese person. - Oh yeah, I mean, people were like, you know, I mean, they must have been thinking like, is this guy here to like, you know, deliver something, you know? - Because even like, for me, my experience when I was traveling in Japan, when I was in Tokyo, I mean, you've got on a train sometimes, and if you're the only non-Japanese person on there, I mean, you stood out a mile. - Yeah, well, I definitely stood out there in a mile, you know. - Oh, I can imagine. - And also because I was dressed for a funeral, but you know, it's the only suit I had. - Japanese men tend to wear black suits, don't they? - No, no, no, that was the year 'cause of luck. You only wore a black suit and a black tie if you're going to a funeral. And, you know, before going to the exam, I was like, I should look like I'm professional about this. So, you know, I didn't have a lot of money. So I bought a, I bought a funeral suit, you know. So, I was like, and I'm like, I'm going to wear this suit to the, I'm going to wear this suit to the desk because it's the only suit I have. - Yeah, yeah. - So, and getting offered the job was interesting. And actually, you know, if you talk about coming full circle, I did a podcast called The Evaporated about missing people in Japan, and I ended up working for Sony on that. And I'm like, oh, I'm just 30 years late and accepting a job with you. - Yeah, well, that is full circle, isn't it? Yeah, a little late to the party, but. - Yeah, well, those first couple of years really culturally shocking. Like, were you getting up and thinking, what have I done? What am I doing? Who am I? - More than culturally shocking, the hours were so long and so brutal that. - The work ethic is really hard. - The work ethic, and the immediate in particular is very militaristic. So, the vertical society of like, Senpai Kohai, like senior, junior. Yeah, I mean, I didn't have any free time. I didn't have days off. - And did you have friends? - I know, you know, friends. I mean, my previous life was gone, right? You had this image that you might be able to go up to Tokyo and see your friends, but no, my whole entire life was work. And it was like a break from the past. I mean, I rarely left Senpai Toma, and my friends became the cops and their families. - Yep. - My coworkers, other newspaper reporters, and then, you know, I'd start to sort of have lawyers and prosecutors that I would hang out with. - Yeah, yeah. When I speak to people like Australians living in America, for instance, or Australians living, you know, in other places, particularly ones that have lived there a long time, I often ask them what they dream in. 'Cause after a while, are you Australian or Japanese? Are you American or Japanese? And I feel that, you know that through your subconscious, I guess. So what do you dream in? - I dream in both. - Do you? - Yeah. - Yeah, wow. - I just had, I mean, I had a really long, long dream about going through a, along with like talking to this publisher about, like, why I was safe to publish my book now in Japanese. And it was, you know, it was so vivid. Like, I woke up and I go, finally, it was gonna be a printed edition of Tokyo Life and Japan, I'm like, oh, that was just a dream. (laughing) - And do you think you will live there for the rest of your life? - Well, considering the fact that if you've finished Tokyo and the war, that I have a pre-existing condition, yeah, I mean, America's never gonna have public healthcare. So I don't see a world in which I can afford healthcare in the United States, and also it's terrible and unreliable, unless you're in the 1%. So yeah, I'm gonna stay in Japan, where I aware... - Yeah, it's terrible. - My odds of living to, you know. - Yeah. - Healthy, you know, a healthy long life are much higher than they are in the States. - It's terrible that you have to make decisions based on healthcare. That's crazy. - It is, people do that all the time in the United States. They don't move or they don't take a new job. - Oh yeah, a friend of mine won't leave his job because of healthcare, you know? Yeah, it's kind of alien to me. We're so lucky, we've got a great socialized public health system. - You too have a great socialized public health system. - We do. - Ironically, the only socialized healthcare in the United States that is actually very good is the Veterans Hospitals, where my father works. If you're a veteran, you get, now you get really good healthcare. - What happened to Japan? What happened? How did it become that Japan was going to rule the world? And then Japan, as you said, is... - What was the description you said that it's become a... - Japan has become the dollar store of Asia. I wrote an article two years ago, I said Japan. I think the title is Japan will be the Daiso of Asia. - What happened? - What happened in a nutshell is that after the bubble economy collapsed, which could have been rained in a lot earlier, all the real estate expectuation and all the loans that couldn't be paid back, which ended up destroying the Japanese economy, is that the people in charge decided that they were going to, the liberal democratic party, decided that they were going to imitate the Americans. And so they gradually got rid of lifetime employment. They gradually opened, took down the trade barriers and things that made Japan economic successful. And by weakening the labor laws, they just created generations of impoverished Japanese people. And eventually that hurts your country. - Because also too, it wasn't that it was flourishing financially, but I guess these two things come hand in hand, but it was where all the good ideas come from. Or where if something came from Japan, it had value. Like it was so many things at the time, isn't it? - You know, many reasons that Japan failed, but one of the reasons that the country is doing so bad now is that for many years, the pillar of Japanese society used to be is that you would join a company, you would work with that company for the rest of your life, you would feel financially secure because you knew that you'd be getting a pension, therefore you would spend money, therefore you'd get married there for you would have kids. But when you remove that safety blanket, when you go from 80% life to employment to 47%, and you create a whole generation of people that have nothing but McJobs are working for a temporary staffing agency, in which case, you really don't ever acquire value, and you don't get the same benefits. - And you leave it for this, nevermind. - Yeah, and that has destroyed Japan. I mean, you could blame it on Takaneke Hazel, the economist who also happens to have shares in a temporary staffing agency who formed Japanese policy, which really messed up the place. - And of course, other dumb things that Japan did, which was like invest in nuclear power, we all knew that was going to be a disaster. - I'm just going to get you to pitch your latest book because we are out of time, I can talk for ages, but anyway, Tokyo and Hawaii. So the first book in a nutshell, I guess, was your experience of arriving, starting in journalism, fantastic story. I mean, it's just the pace is unbelievable. I felt that the pace for me was going to give me a heart attack, but you know, tell me what this one is. - Well, so Tokyo Noire takes place, a little bit over after Tokyo ice ends. So there was this period of time where I found myself, you know, not really working as a journalist, but I was working for companies. - I mean, I was surprised you were still alive. - Me too, man, sometimes. - Honestly, I was just like, you're one lucky person. - Yeah. - I would like to say I'm one smart, strategic person. - I, you know, in dealing with the underworld, I realized, and I was told this very earlier, you know, the operating principle is, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And, you know, everybody has an enemy. - I'll tell you, I'm a scaredy cat. I couldn't do any of that, but really, I mean, the survival tactics. - I'm a scaredy cat too. I've talked into the war correspondent for the LA Times. He was visiting Tokyo, and I'm like, I wouldn't do what you do. And he's like, you know, that's good. 'Cause I get the yakuza, I understand them. And if public relations, you know, they behave themselves, you can negotiate with them. Like, you can't negotiate with an IED. So, Tokyo Nowar takes place. And the first part of the book is this time when I was working for a couple of investment banks who had been warned, if you don't, you know, cut your yakuza assets, if you don't stop dealing with business with the underworld, we're gonna pull your private banking license and punish you just like we did with Citibank. And so, suddenly, they had this incentive to clean up their act. And the yakuza had moved into the stock markets and financial markets in ways that no one had ever anticipated before. So, I also had this lovely job, you know, basically doing what I'd always done, except instead of writing for, you know, 10 million readers now, I'm writing for three people. There's, you know, the president, there's the person in corporate security who hired me, and there's me. 'Cause I was very careful to make sure, 'cause you don't want people to know what you're doing when you're interfering with their business and their gangsters, because while Japanese gangsters are, you know, reluctant to dispatch civilians, they'll do it if there's enough money at stake. - Well, just silence people, we say it all the time. - And so, the token of war is about working as a private detective, but I felt like, you know, I'm getting paid well, and I'm also keeping money out of the hands of the yakuza, and that's a good thing. And then about, you know, with the nuclear disaster about returning to journalism, which coincided with some personal disasters at the same time. - Do you think that there's more violence in Japan amongst business, and there is in other places in the world, or do you think it's just different? - I would say that in Japan, the business world is much more dangerous than people imagine. - Yeah, wow. - And ask Carlos, goin' about that. - Yeah, yeah. - I mean, head of Nissan, suddenly he gets lured to Japan and arrested on what I still get to-- - And so, in a box and sent him-- - Yeah, just caping from Japan. - And sent to Beirut. - Or look at Michael Wood for the president of Olympus. - Yeah. - British guy, takes over company, realizes that there's a billion dollars of accounting fraud, and as soon as he brings it up, they basically fire him. - What about Boeing recently? - Oh, yeah, yeah. - To witnesses, accidentally dead. - Yeah, what a surprise. - Such a night, I mean, really? What a coincidence. You know, I mean, it must be the stress of turning on your employer. - Yeah, it must be, tell me the truth. - Well, you know, whenever there's a corporate scandal in Japan, not whenever, but often when there's a corporate scandal in Japan, somebody dies, and then everybody clams up, on one live door, which was, you know, kind of internet bubble company, which was huge in Japan when the president got arrested for insider trading. His second in command committed suicide by stabbing himself to death in the stomach in a love hotel. Now, any competent medical examiner will tell you, most people can stab themselves in the stomach once. They can't do it multiple times. It's not how you kill yourself. But of course, once that suicide happened, then everybody clammed up. - Okay, so this is kind of really unrelated to even the books, but I've got a bigger question for you. I feel as though, and you probably will too, that we're moving, in terms of global leadership, we're moving into a very, very unstable time. Do you think when we lose stability, that things become more dangerous? Do you think that comes hand in hand? - We live in a society where most of us are, you know, people with consciousness who behave well. But I'd say about 5% of the society are sociopaths, and they're, you know, maybe 3%, okay? And they just wait for an opportunity. Chaos is a joy for the sociopathic, 'cause they begin to seize power. I mean, the same with Hitler and Nazi Germany, the same with Trump in the United States. Chaos are Putin in post-Soviet Russia. Chaos is fertile. - Yeah, who is at the moment? - Yeah, yeah. - He's another. - He's another. - It's fertile ground for aggressive narcissistic sociopaths. - And so you think it brings out those people? - Oh, it gives them a license to behave the way they would like to behave. - Yes, it does. - By slowly stretching the bounds of what is acceptable to what would normally take down someone or make them resign and disgrace in making that okay, they give license to all the other sociopaths to run the world. - We've got to end on that note. Anyway, lovely chatting. I'm so happy to have you here in person. Jake, thank you so much for your time. - Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed our conversation. (gentle music) - If you'd like more information about better reading, follow us on Facebook or visit betterreading.com.au - This podcast is proudly sponsored by Belinda Audio. Belinda audio books are available on CD and MP3 from online booksellers and book shops everywhere. 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So everyone can get to where they wanna be. You've arrived. That's energy and progress. Visit chevron.com/tankless. (gentle music) - Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. (gentle music) - In 2021, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. The lives of Raha and Maua, two 20 year old women and best friends, were forever changed. One decided to stay. - I feel like I'm not, you know, worthy. - And the other to leave. - We got our tickets today to the Germany. - These are their audio diaries. - I could only carry my body without muscle. - Listen to inside Kabul, wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]