Jake Adelstein

From a Q & A with Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan:

Has anything changed with regard to sex trafficking in Japan in the recent past?

Japan should be given credit for really cracking down on the sexual trafficking and exploitation of foreign women. Unfortunately, this has prompted the scumbags who rule the human-trafficking world to set their sights on domestic victims, usually runaway teenage girls.

I'm on the Board of Directors of Polaris Project Japan, a nonprofit organization that set up hotlines several years ago for foreign human-trafficking victims. We are now receiving many calls from teenage girls who are being blackmailed or coerced into prostitution. Of course, these girls also provide fodder for child pornography and neo-child pornography, which Japan still produces in great amounts.

It would be nice to see Japan create some real shelters for teenage runaways rather than just driving them into the arms of the bad guys.

In Tokyo Vice, there is a price placed on your head by a certain yakuza faction. Can you travel freely in Japan today?

I wish I knew the answer to this one. I'm still nominally under the protection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The faction I pissed off, the Goto-gumi, has been split into two groups. Goto Tadamasa, their leader, is now allegedly retired and a Buddhist priest. He was a notorious yakuza gang boss, very wealthy, and known to decimate his enemies—even public figures. He may be officially retired, but cars belonging to the Goto-gumi have been showing up parked around my neighborhood. You can recognize them by their...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue