Tokyo Vice

by Jake Adelstein

  I was really delighted when in June that year the U.S. State Department put Japan on a watch list of countries doing a piss-poor job of addressing human trafficking problems. In terms of willingness to act, Japan was ranked only slightly above North Korea. For the Japanese, that was like pushing a button. Never underestimate the power of national humiliation to make the Japanese government get off its lazy ass.

  I felt gratified in another sense: when the U.S. Embassy held a symposium on human trafficking at the United Nations University later that month, I was invited to be a panelist. Not a journalist, but a participant. I felt honored.

  At the conference, the National Police Agency representative gave a speech outlining the amazing things Japan had done to combat human trafficking. I couldn’t resist raising my hand during the Q&A, and I went on a tirade. I related my experience dealing with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and then, using as an example the same roadblocks thrown in my face, I proceeded to explain why the NPA directive was a worthless piece of self-serving crap. The questions after my questions were only slightly less brutal.

  The next morning, my article on the conference came out with the headline “Japan: Kingdom of Human Trafficking? American Wants Japan to Criminalize Human Trafficking.” Normally, you know, reporters don’t get to choose their headlines, but I’d taken extra care to make sure that I got the headline I wanted. I only had to buy an 8,000-yen bottle of sake for one of the guys in layout.

  When I got to the conference that day, a trio of irate Japanese bureaucrats stood waiting for me. One was from the NPA, one from the Ministry of Justice, and one from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The MOFA official was a woman, and it was obvious she had been picked to do the honors because she could speak English. While the others stood behind her, she waved the newspaper in front of my face. “This headline is inexcusable,” she said, forgetting herself and speaking to me in Japanese.

  I took the paper from her and studied the headline. “You’re right,” I said. “This headline should have been corrected. The question mark after ‘Japan: A Kingdom of Human Trafficking’ should be an exclamation point. And the part about the American is unimportant. The whole headline should read ‘Japan: Kingdom of Human Trafficking! As Bad as North Korea?”

  I was on a roll. Even though it was tough, I had found a cause I could really fight for. There’s a certain charge and power derived from being on a crusade. Self-righteous anger can really motivate you. I had done some things I wasn’t proud of, but compared to the flesh traders I was writing about, I was the Dalai Lama, at least in my mind.

  And I was angry. I was angry that, although human trafficking was rampant in the country at the time, the Japanese police and the Japanese government didn’t care and didn’t want to deal with it. I can’t really blame the police that much. The laws are the laws, and without any real anti–human trafficking ordinances on the books, what were they supposed to do? The problem didn’t start with the cops; it started way above them.

  I was thinking like a good yakuza-busting cop investigating a gangland shooting. Who cares about the shooter? The shooter is just following orders. If you want to have an impact, bust the person who ordered the shooting.

  I decided to bust the Japanese government as far as I could.

  The crime in this case was indifference to and tacit approval of the exploitation of foreign women. I needed evidence to prove my case. I had some in mind. The U.N.-backed International Labor Organization (ILO) had carried out a study, funded by the Japanese government, on the state of human trafficking in Japan. The report was scathing: Japan had failed to punish human traffickers or to take care of the victims. The Japanese government ordered the ILO to keep the report under wraps; it would never be published.

  I knew it existed, however, and through certain channels I got a copy. It was the Yomiuri’s front-page story on November 19, 2004. I had to fight to get it decent coverage, but it was worth it. I followed up with another article the next day. My source told me that the government had been preparing to announce a plan of action for dealing with human trafficking and that my article had spurred drastic revisions to strengthen protection of the victims. I felt that as a reporter I’d finally done something that made a difference, however small it might be.

  I didn’t give up on getting Viktor and Slick put down. Eventually, both went to jail. The drug squad had taken an interest in Slick, his clubs were raided, and he went out of business. Someone fed enough information to both Japanese Customs officials and the Dutch police about Viktor’s enterprises that Viktor wound up behind bars. Apparently, someone also gave his name to the local yakuza, who beat the crap out of him for infringing on their turf.

  I had made a difference. No, I should rephrase that. Helena and I had made a difference. She had had the bravery to contact me and had worked harder than I on the first story, and if there had been any justice, her name would have been on it as well.

  In the end, the sex tours to the Maldives stopped. Slick’s clubs were raided and shut down. Justice was served, more or less.

  Something happened to me in the course of working on the human-trafficking stories. I couldn’t tell you when it happened or even why. I wasn’t very good at talking to the victims and keeping my distance. Their stories stuck in my head. There were images that rattled around as well. The skinny, toothless six-year-old boy of a Thai sex worker. She wasn’t allowed to get dental care for her son, because the traffickers didn’t want the authorities to realize that they were both in Japan illegally.

  The Korean woman who had been brutally beaten by a customer, cigarettes stubbed out on her breasts. The man who had done it, probably a low-ranking yakuza, had also given her AIDS and a child. She felt that God had cursed her. I found it hard to disagree with that.

  There was the Estonian woman who had been sodomized with a sake bottle for spitting on a customer, so savagely that she required surgery. And there were more.

  And in almost all cases, the women would never know who had victimized them, where they had been held, or the names of the Japanese people involved. They had memories of their suffering but rarely anything useful that could lead you to find the people responsible. It was like fighting yurei (ghosts and phantoms). Most of the time, the women were forcibly deported for visa violations immediately after the sex club owners were arrested, thus leaving no evidence for prosecution on other charges. I tried to convince the cops that they should be arresting the traffickers for kidnapping, rape, assault, and any other charges that were possible, but the cops would tell me, “In order to do that we’d need evidence and these women are poor witnesses because they don’t understand Japanese and can’t give solid testimony. In addition to this, they have been working illegally in Japan, which is a crime, and they have to be deported. Once they’re deported, it’s hard to build a criminal case.”

  It was like a Zen Buddhist mondo. I kept having that same conversation with law enforcement. I knew that if the laws were changed, things would change, but it didn’t seem as if that would ever happen.

  I’d cultivated various sources in order to get to talk to the victims, but try as I might I could never find out much about the victimizers. I didn’t have the resources or the money to do that. I started spending huge amounts of my pay on helping the women I met. Sometimes, that meant taking them to some place where they could get an abortion, off the books.

  I didn’t know how I felt about abortion, but I know that I believed that no woman should have to bear the child of the man who’d raped her or bought her unwilling services. Sometimes I’d cough up airfare. I did what I could. And, of course, I was breaking all the rules of objectivity. Don’t get involved. I got involved.

  Over time, I lost interest in sex. It seemed a vulgar, nasty, and brutish thing. Everything about it seemed vaguely unpleasant. I wasn’t impotent, I just wasn’t interested. Chronic fatigue didn’t help either.

  I should have talked about all these things with my wife, but I didn’t. Whe
n could I? I was never home. I called the house at night and said good night to the kids. I tried to e-mail her during the day but often forgot to do it. I was becoming distant. I observed it happening as if I were watching someone else. I might have been able to explain why to her, but I didn’t want to. She didn’t seem interested in my work, and I stopped talking about it. We argued. She accused me of spending too much money on booze, and I didn’t want to say I’d been giving it away to women she didn’t know. Why? I was afraid she’d tell me to stop doing it. She probably would not have done that. She probably would have been supportive. I just didn’t give her a chance.

  When lying is part of your job, you forget how love is supposed to work.

  I started sleeping in the back room of the house when I came home late. We shared the bedroom with our children, so that made intimacy difficult as well. We didn’t even really have a bedroom, just a tatami living room where we put out our futons.

  Even when I got home early, which was rare, I began to make excuses for sleeping in the back room. I felt better there. I didn’t like to be touched when I slept anymore.

  I knew that I was burning out. When my parents talked to me they noticed that I was always distracted. I began to think about calling it quits and going home. I decided that that would be a good thing to do, the smart thing to do. The best choice for myself, our marriage, and the children.

  1* This was the same Slick I’d met when covering the Lucie Blackman murder.

  2* I made sure that Veronika had left the country and was safe before interviewing Slick.

  Ten Thousand and One Cigarettes

  Sometimes I’m surprised at how often I find myself right back where I started.

  “Here’s a box of the finest tobacco money can buy,” I said when Sekiguchi opened the door, lifting up the DUTY FREE bag. He was surprised to see me—after all, I wasn’t even supposed to be in Japan. He didn’t seem to mind much, either. I showed up unannounced at his house around five in the afternoon in January 2006; he was the only one home—and at a decent hour, which was rare.

  He did a sort of double-take and then yelled, “Jake! Happy New Year!”

  “Happy New Year! I thought I’d hand-deliver this year’s New Year’s card.” I handed it to him. There we were, all of us on the card, goofy pictures of Beni and Ray, my son. Sunao and I looked at peace in the photo as well. We had put greetings in both Japanese and English on the card. It was probably one of the first times in years I’d actually been able to sit down and make a proper card.

  Sekiguchi was amused at our six-sided faux Japanese house in the photos.

  “Thanks for the card, but have you ever heard of stamps? Or is this something you barbarians in the Midwest don’t know about? Come on in. The wife and kids are out shopping, they’ll be back in an hour.”

  I took off my shoes in the entrance, lined them up facing toward the door, and stepped into the house, saying the obligatory Japanese phrase “Ojama shimasu” (I will honorably now bother you).

  As I hung up my umbrella on the coat rack, he looked at my feet.

  “Your socks don’t match today. I’m assuming that Sunao and the kids are back in America, right?”

  I laughed. As usual, his detective skills were top notch.

  He thanked me for the carton of cigarettes. They weren’t his brand, but they were Premium Mild Sevens—limited edition kind of things. He pulled out an ashtray that was remarkably clean.

  He took out a pack and looked at it longingly, shrugged his shoulders, and opened it. I retrieved my pack, the clove cigarettes. He lit mine for me, and I lit his for him.

  Sekiguchi wrinkled his face a little at the smell of the clove tobacco, “Those things smell like incense every time. You know … I’m not dead yet.” He inhaled deeply on his own coffin nail.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Weren’t you a little monk once? Incense is for funerals. You don’t have to smoke one now; you can light one for me then. No need to rush. You’ll have a chance soon enough.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m home early because I had chemo yesterday. I was too sick to work. I go in almost every day, though. What else am I going to do? Play golf? The doctors say I’ve got a year, maybe two years left.”

  Sekiguchi’s cancer had spread. It had started in his appendix, of all places, and metastasized quickly. There had been a period when it had seemed as though he might have been cured, but it was still there festering away out of reach and beyond detection. When they caught it the second time, it was way too late.

  If Sekiguchi had been Tadamasa Goto, the powerful gangster, he would have been getting the best medical care in the world. Several doctors would have been analyzing his charts, checking his vitals, and mapping his progress every day, every night. He’d have a hospital suite to himself at Tokyo University Hospital. But he wasn’t Tadamasa Goto, he was just a low-ranking cop who’d never made it past sergeant, and he didn’t have much money.

  He couldn’t afford to stay home and get better. He had to go to work every day. The cost of not dying was expensive, even in Japan.

  “You know, I finally quit smoking. A little late but I did.”

  “Sorry. Shouldn’t have brought these.”

  “Nahh, one last smoke with you. Seems like a good thing to do. Even with these shitty premium cigarettes. Maybe I’ll smoke one of yours.”

  “Be my guest.” I offered him one.

  He took it in his fingers, tapped it gently on the table, looked it up and down, lit it—twice; they’re hard to light—and inhaled.

  “Sweet. I can feel that nicotine burst. Not bad, not bad at all. Now, while I’m smoking this thing, bring me up to date. You better have a good reason for being back in Japan, or I’m going to have to kick your ass—something I never thought I’d have to do. I don’t think coming back so soon is a good idea.”

  He was right. He was almost always right. He’d been right when we’d been sitting at the hotel in Shinjuku having such a lovely talk with Goto’s ambassadors a few months before. A lot had changed since then. I had officially resigned from the Yomiuri Shinbun in November 2005, about a month after Goto’s emissaries had made their threats.

  In my mind, the Goto article was going to be my last scoop, my graduation thesis. It hadn’t worked out, and I didn’t plan to stick around for one more article that I couldn’t see getting published in the first place. The Yomiuri let me take most of my unused vacation time and sent me on my way. I had liked working for the Yomiuri, but by the start of 2005 the human trafficking stories had taken their toll, and my unpleaseant meeting with Goto’s enforcers was enough to send me packing. The Yomiuri was very understanding during the whole process and let me stay in the company insurance plan even after I left.

  After resigning, I returned home to the Midwest. I had enrolled in an LSAT preparation course and was getting ready for law school. I was diligently trying to make the transition to a new way of life. No cigarettes. No drinking until three in the morning. No friends calling after midnight. No yakuza cops or strippers or prostitutes to hang out with. Nothing more dangerous around than a lawn mower.

  And then I got an e-mail from a good buddy, Ken, who used to work for the CIA. The U.S. State Department was sponsoring a massive study of human trafficking in Japan. He said he had recommended me for the job and wanted to know if I was interested. I read the e-mail several times.

  I thought about it. I had cleared up things with Goto, ostensibly. I had a peace treaty of sorts. I wouldn’t want to bring my family, though. I didn’t trust those guys. The job sounded good; the remuneration not bad. It could do some good in the world. I might be able to do a lot more with the proper funding. However, taking the job would put me right back into the world of depravity that I had left behind.

  I thought about my plans for law school. I thought about my promises to Sunao. And then, without consulting anyone, I replied, “Yes. I’d love to take the job.”

  I felt as i
f it would be wrong to say no. It felt like a duty and an obligation. Maybe I should have seen it as a temptation instead.

  And so, before the year even ended, I found myself back in Japan, revisiting the same places I’d spent so much time before. I needed to see Sekiguchi. I think I wanted his approval more than his advice.

  I brought him up to date. He was satisfied with my answers.

  “You have a friend who used to be CIA? Always thought there was a little more to you than your goofy appearance. But every time I talk to you, I think ‘probably not.’ Well, it’s good work to be doing. And it’s important. And the pay sounds good. You’re going to keep the family in the States while you do this, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Because it’s dangerous stuff you’re doing. Let me tell you something about reporting about the yakuza. You can write all you want about their gang wars, their tattoos, their sexual exploits, but when you start looking into how they really make their money, what companies they own—you’re walking into scary territory. And make no mistake, human trafficking is a source of revenue for these guys. Child porn. Prostitution. Anything where the profits are high. It’s all about the money with these guys now, and that kind of reporting threatens to screw up their business.”

  I had a question. I wanted to know if my “truce” with Goto would hold.

  “I’m pretty sure he knows you quit the Yomiuri. Correction. I’m definitely sure he knows. So as far as he’s concerned, you’re an ex-reporter. What you’re doing now, as long as he doesn’t know about it, is fine. But you should be extra careful. Tokyo is his turf. You’ll be walking around his playground without permission. If you’re going to ask around for that report, be very, very careful. Be careful who you call, who you meet, what you say. Got it?”

  I nodded that I understood. Sekiguchi didn’t look so good, and I didn’t want to add to his worries. While we were chatting, Mrs. Sekiguchi came home and so did the girls, both of them now in their teens with crazy haircuts. It was hard to compute.