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Comment by Camillo | Hacker News Reader

> I was told by Jake Adelstein, one of the leading experts on drugs and crime in Japan, and the author of the book Tokyo Vice.

He must be _really_ good to rank above all the experts who are from Japan.

OTOH, while Japan may have failed to produce leading experts on drugs and crime in Japan, they seem to be doing pretty decently in terms of actual drug and crime issues. If you were Japanese, would you want to follow American advice on drug and crime policy? There are many good things about America, but would you say its drug and crime situations are the highlights worth imitating?

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It amuses me how Western media outlets continue to quote Adelstein, his entire shtick consists of spouting made up stuff about Japan to Western reporters with no means of fact-checking.

I guess it goes both ways though, the self-proclaimed "America-tsuu (US experts)" here aren't any better.

Is there some legit criticism on him and provable dishonesty? I don't know much but I seem to recall him publishing stories uncovering and/or reporting on what could be viewed as problematic or even embarrassing things about japanese culture.

This thread may be of interest:

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/3lnpt6/is_jake_adels...

It's not like he acts with any apparent agenda or malice, the guy just has no regard for facts. Everything he writes consists of a small sliver of facts mixed with tons of faux-noir, spiced-up BS that paints some exotic portrait of Japan tailored for Western audiences.

I guess we all want foreign countries to be more exotic than they really are — I remember when I first moved here from LA, my classmates seemed disappointed to learn that I'd never been involved in a gunfight :/

> (from wiki) In 1993, Adelstein became the first non-Japanese staff writer at the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper, where he worked for 12 years.

I'm fine with that. Also "one of the leading experts", not "above all".

Well, the thing is that most of Japan’s Japanese experts on drugs and crime don’t spend a significant amount of their time interacting with the English speaking world, and there aren’t many people interested in merely translating their work without adding their own take on it.

Jake Adelstein however has become very good at being a point of contact for English speaking non Japanese speaking people who wish to report on Japanese crime, independently of how qualified you might think he is or isn’t.

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