Freyburg

Japan, it has been noted time and again, is a weird place. One of the stranger aspects of their culture is the quasi-legitimacy of the organized crime organization known as the Yakuza. Reporter Jake Adelstein, who was the first gaijin to work at the Yomuiri Shinbun‘s Japanese edition, covered the Yakuza for more than a decade and is now under constant threat from the shadowy villains of Japan’s underworld. But that hasn’t stopped him from telling the Washington Post about the unique relationship between the Yakuza and the Japanese government, or how deep into Japanese society the mob’s tendrils go.