Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein Read Free Book Online

have high hopes for you.”
    •    •    •
    While we rode home, I told Matsuzaka’s protégé that I’d been assigned to Urawa. Her response was
“Goshushosama desu.”
It’s the phrase used at funerals to express your condolences.
    Saitama is a large, half-rural, half-suburban prefecture just outside Tokyo, and Urawa is a giant bedroom city from which tired workers commute to the capital.
    Saitama. A place considered so uncool by urban Japanese that it had spawned its own adjective,
dasai
, meaning “not hip, boring, unfashionable.”
    In other words, I’d been assigned to the New Jersey of Japan.
    1*
Santa Fe
was a book of nude photos of the popular actress Rie Miyazawa published before
Sex
. The publication of
Santa Fe
was significant because it showed pubic hair. The “artistic qualities” of the work earned a tacit approval from the authorities, cracking open the door to the more relaxed policy of today.
    2*
The Daily Yomiuri
is an English-language edition of the
Yomiuri Shinbun
with some original reporting. Most of the content comes from articles selected to be translated from the Japanese version of the
Yomiuri
. A number of foreign journalists and foreign correspondents in Tokyo got their start working there, and it has some great original writing. On the other hand, many Japanese staffers consider being put there a form of demotion, torture, and punishment or a trial of passage to a better position in the international news department.
    †
A seisha-in
is a full-fledged employee. In 1993, that meant employment for life. Once hired, you were never fired. Lifetime employment in Japan has always been a bit of a myth, but in the nineties several major corporations implicitly offered that kind of hiring.

All Right, Punks, Grab Your Notebooks
    The reputation of the Urawa office preceded it. An article by a former reporter assigned there had appeared in
Tsukuru
magazine, a journal for the media trade, and it had been scathing.
“Yomiuri Shinbun:
My Three Months of Disillusionment” was the title, but if that didn’t get the point across, there was the subtitle: “Disillusion, Desperation, Suffering, and Finally a Decision.”
    The exposé documented the endless trivial tasks the author had been forced to perform 24/7. It told of abuse by an editor who went ballistic upon encountering the use of a kanji not on the approved list for the paper, cursing out the young reporter and throwing a sandal at his head. It told of the stench of sake permeating the office at six each evening, when the editor declared the workday over and always opened a bottle.
    I would come to view my own first year at the paper as a partial validation of the article. I say “partial” because I don’t think the author really understood the full picture, which is: the first year of life as a reporter in Japan is an elaborate hazing, punctuated by a little on-the-job training. If you survive that, things get a little better. If you’re lucky, you get your own fresh slaves to boss around and begin to discover the fundamentals of journalism.
    The
Yomiuri
had only recently decided to shore up the ranks of the Urawa office. Part of the reason was that our sworn enemy, the
Asahi
, had put its Urawa office under the auspices of its shakaibu (metro/national news). It meant that while our office could draw only upon the meager resources of the regional bureau, the
Asahi
office could call up an army of a hundred reporters to be sent to Saitama for a big story. The
Asahi
was kicking
Yomiuri’s
ass, and the powers that be had decided to even the odds.
    There were four rookies who were to be cannon fodder in the battle of Urawa: Tsuji, Kouchi, Yoshihara, and myself. In Japanese company life, the people you enter the company with, and especially the people who go with you on the first posting, become the closest thing you will ever have to a family. The fact that you are
doki
, which translates, literally, as “of the same period of