Jake Adelstein was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, from 1993 to 2005. He has also written for The Daily Beast/Newsweek, The Independent, and The Guardian, and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic Wire. However, most of us will probably be familiar with the name from the hit TV series Tokyo Vice, which is based on his memoir.

In this conversation we talk about his pioneering career as a foreign journalist at a Japanese newspaper, his decades long reporting on crime, and also about the slow, but undeniable demise of the Yakuza.