Tokyo Vice (44 page)

However, the critical piece of data came in the summer of 2007, when a detective, downloading porn on his computer at the Kitazawa Police Department, accidentally leaked onto a file-sharing network WINNY, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s entire file on Tadamasa Goto. All the major Japanese newspapers reported on the leak. I immediately downloaded the files.

It was an information orgasm. It listed all his flight records, the
names of most of his mistresses (at least nine of the fifteen), and other useful information. Now I knew the dates when he’d gone to UCLA for surgery and who’d accompanied him. There were other interesting tidbits in the files as well. One of his listed mistresses was a famous film actress. That was, of course, picked up and reported by the Japanese press, which loves celebrity gossip. What wasn’t reported was that in the list of front companies was Burning Productions, Japan’s largest and most powerful talent agency. Goto’s control over Burning Productions was a valuable tool in his surpression of unfavorable reporting. Any television station that crossed Goto risked being denied access to Japan’s top actresses, singers, and entertainers. This also meant that almost every newspaper affiliated with a television network, which is common in Japan, could also be indirectly threatened. Entertainment programming revenue beats news revenue every time.

In that gigabyte of data there were many things that confirmed what I had long suspected. After speaking with a source in the U.S. Justice Department and sources in the Japanese police and underworld, I was able to put it all together.

In January or February 2001, Goto’s doctors at Showa University told him that if he did not get a liver transplant soon, he would die. Goto had hepatitis C and a heart condition and was a very unlikely candidate for a liver transplant in Japan.

In April 2001, Goto approached the FBI via Hoshi Hitoshi, the former “fixer” for Nobusuke Kishi, with deep connections to the LDP. (Mr. Kishi had served twice as prime minister of Japan. Kishi’s grandson, Shinzo Abe, became prime minister in September 2006.) Kishi relayed Goto’s offer.

The FBI wanted the names of important yakuza because Japan’s National Police Agency refused to share that information with it, due to “privacy issues.” This effectively made it impossible for the FBI to monitor yakuza activity in the United States.

Goto promised to give the FBI (and possibly another intelligence agency) a comprehensive list of Yamaguchi-gumi members, related front companies and financial institutions, and information on North Korean activities.

In exchange for that information, Goto wanted a visa to the United
States so he could get a liver transplant at UCLA.
^1*
Goto had set up the UCLA deal on his own, there’s no doubt about that. The visa came when the FBI pressured U.S. Immigration and Customs to grant him one, which it reluctantly did.

If I had been Jim, I would have taken the deal. The intelligence potential was huge. The FBI wasn’t giving him a liver, it was just giving him a key to the door. UCLA did the rest. According to Manabu Miyazaki, a journalist, apologist for the yakuza, and close friend of Goto’s, in addition to the yakuza-related intelligence, the FBI was especially interested in the information Goto had on North Korea. It was at a time when North Korea had been implicated in making high-quality counterfeit U.S. currency, and this was also of great interest to the United States. Goto had always had tight connections to North Korea, which allegedly supplied him with drugs, guns, and money.

The surgery took place on July 5. However, Goto gave the FBI only a fraction of the information he had promised. Once he had his liver, he hopped back on a plane to Japan and never spoke to the FBI again. There were no records of Goto returning to Japan.

For the FBI, “the operation” was not a singular success.

For Goto, the operation was a tremendous success. Goto returned to Japan before the end of the year, no longer with jaundiced eyes but healthier than ever.

At the annual Yamaguchi-gumi New Year’s party that year, Goto was in perfect health. He was, as the Japanese say, “drinking and eating like a whale” at the festivities and smoking like a chimney.

Once he bragged to Chihiro Inagawa, another yakuza boss, “Ever since I got that new young liver, I have no trouble getting it up,” pointing at his crotch. Inagawa allegedly then said to Goto, “You’ve got the devil’s own luck. You get the perfect donor, a young teenager—dead in a car accident just two months after you’re on the donor list—unbelievable coincidence.”

Goto answered him with a chuckle, “Oh, that was no coincidence.”

Inagawa didn’t laugh.

I was never sure whether Goto was referring to the traffic death or his quick jump to the top of the donor list. Somehow I can’t imagine him not rigging the game in one way or another.

Inagawa himself would later try to get into the United States for a liver transplant, only to have his visa application denied. When he was granted a special interview to plead his case with U.S. officials, the special agent in charge told him bluntly, “If you want to know why we won’t let you into the country, go ask Mr. Goto.”

ICE wasn’t going to get screwed again. It had a dim view of the deal made with the FBI and felt that it had produced little actionable intelligence.

Goto told one of his associates that he’d paid a total of $3 million for the liver. (Police reports have the figure as $1 million and speculate that Goto’s doctor was paid $100,000 for each “house call” to Japan, usually conducted at the Imperial Hotel.) The only people who knew about the deal with the FBI were Goto’s inner circle. This was a good thing to know.

It was while first poring over the other Yamaguchi-gumi materials that I realized that Goto was probably not the only one to have received a liver transplant at UCLA. There were probably three others.

I thought I had a hell of a story, not just from an American perspective but from a Japanese perspective as well. Japan has a very stringent organ transplant system. Donors are few, and operations are rare. Most Japanese people who need an organ transplant either leave the country or die waiting for one. From an American perspective, it seemed deplorable as well. Why would Japanese criminals get precedence over law-abiding U.S. citizens? I had no idea.

I wrote up what I knew for a book, which was originally going to be published by Kodansha International, the English-language division of Kodansha, one of Japan’s oldest and best-known publishers. I tried writing the story for a weekly magazine and was told bluntly, “No way.” No reasons were given.

I decided to wait. And I would probably still be waiting if there hadn’t been a minor glitch.

Kodansha International ran a long introduction to the book on its European Web site without letting me know; I only noticed it in November 2007. It didn’t spell everything out, but it had enough, if you were Tadamasa Goto, to clue you in that trouble was brewing. I had Kodansha remove the page from its Web site, but I’d underestimated both the ability of Goto’s henchmen to read English and the possibility that they could use Google Alerts. One of Goto’s associates would later tell me that someone had probably managed to get a copy of the catalog description of my book, which might have confirmed
their suspicions. By December 2007, I was getting signals that I was in serious trouble. In January 2008, I got definite confirmation that Goto was again planning to kill me.

My source asked me to come down and visit him in Kabukicho. I went and met him at his favorite bar; he liked it because it had a good selection of bourbon. He waited until I was fairly drunk before he laid it out for me.

“Jake, you’re in a lot of trouble. Goto knows you’re writing a book. He’s not happy about it. I’d be really careful if I were you.”

I didn’t try to deny it. I shrugged. “What’s he going to do? Threaten to kill me? He’s already done that before.”

“He won’t threaten you. He’ll just do it. He’ll make it look like a suicide.”

“How? I’m not the suicidal type.”

“How do you think Juzo Itami died?”

“That was a suicide. I mean, of course, I thought he was killed the first time I heard about his death, but then I heard differently. He was depressed because the weekly magazine
Friday
was going to expose an extramarital affair. He jumped off a roof. If it had been suspicious, I’m sure the police would have investigated.”

“Did you see the article? Do you know he was laughing about it when the journalist approached him? He said, ‘Oh, she already knows.’ Does that sound like someone depressed and upset to you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know the details of that. He left a note, though.”

“Yes, a note written on a word processor. Anyone could have written that note.”

Suddenly my bourbon didn’t taste so good.

“Why?”

“He was planning another movie. It was going to be about the Goto-gumi and its relationship with the religious group Soka Gakkai. Goto wasn’t happy about that. A gang of five of his people grabbed Itami and made him jump off that rooftop at gunpoint. That’s how he committed suicide.”

“How do you know that’s true?”

“It’s rude to ask a question like that.” His fingers curled around his glass so hard I thought he would break it.

I quickly apologized.

“So what should I do?”

“Be careful. Write it now, if you can.”

“I know most of the story.”

“If you don’t know everything, no one will believe you. It won’t do any good. You’ll have to write about everything, the others too.”

“Yes, I’ve heard there are others. Who are they?”

“I don’t know. You should know. I can introduce you to someone who can help you with that. She doesn’t like Goto very much.”

“She?”

“One of the many. She has her reasons.”

“Isn’t that dangerous for her?”

“I don’t think she cares.”

He gave me her business card; on the back was her address. He gave me another one as well; I recognized her from the leaked police materials.

“Why these two women?”

“He confides in them, I think. You’re good with women. They’ll confide in you. They like you. I hear there’s a certain female cop you’re very friendly with.”

“I’m friendly with everyone. I’m a nice guy.”

I asked for the check and paid. As we were leaving, I asked him why Goto didn’t just have me removed right now.

“He’s waiting for something to make up his mind. I don’t know what that is. He probably doesn’t know how much you know or who you’ve shared your information with. He takes his time. He’s looking at you. He’s collecting information about you. Maybe he’ll try to discredit you before you get a chance to write anything—put drugs in your apartment and call the police. Have a woman claim you molested her on the train. There are a lot of ways to neutralize you without killing you, because killing you, well, that would bring a lot of attention. You know he’s still on trial?”

Of course I knew Goto was on trial. Here’s what had happened.

In May 2006, Goto, the president of a real estate company, and eight others were arrested on suspicion of illegally transferring the ownership of a building in Shibuya Ward. According to the police, Goto, CEO of the listed company Ryowa Life Create, and the other suspects had falsely registered the transfer of ownership of a twelve-story building, the Shinjuku Building, which was partially owned by a Goto-gumi front company. The arrest stemmed from an investigation that had begun more than a year earlier. In March 2005, Kazuoki Nozaki, a
fifty-eight-year-old adviser of a building management company and partial owner of the Shinjuku Building, was stabbed to death on a street in Minato Ward, Tokyo.

The police had nabbed Goto for property law violations because they wanted to pin him for the murder of Nozaki. Everyone knew this.

The slaying had been carried out with typical Goto-gumi efficiency: small group, no witnesses, little or no trace evidence. I imagined that this was probably how I’d be taken out if the time came, stabbed to death in some back alley and left to bleed to death.

I told him that I was well aware of the trial. I was curious as to why I already hadn’t met the fate of Mr. Nozaki.

“People know you. They think you’re working for the CIA. Goto does at least. You’re a Jew, too. He thinks there might be repercussions for whacking you.”

“What does my being Jewish have to do with anything?”

“You could be Mossad.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“I’ve given you what I can. You’re on your own. Good luck. Do not underestimate the man. He’s not underestimating you.”

I didn’t doubt that he was right.

Things went sour very quickly. I was told that Goto had decided that if he was found guilty—which in his condition would be a death sentence—he would have me killed.

I was placed under police protection on March 5, 2008. An FBI special agent accompanied me to the National Police Agency, and they discussed what measures they could take. The FBI contacted local U.S. law enforcement and had them put a watch on my house in America. At the meeting I was asked to clarify who my source was in the Goto-gumi, and I refused. I was warned that that would make it harder to justify twenty-four-hour protection on the part of the Japanese police, and all I could say was “Well, I’ll take what I can get.”

I was taken to the TMPD to meet the detectives from Organized Crime Control Investigative Division 3, which would be handling my protection. In the old days, those had been the guys I wrote about, not the guys I depended on to keep me alive.

Before I went to the TMPD offices, I sent a quick e-mail to the cops I knew there warning them to pretend they didn’t know me. One of the detectives quickly wrote me back, “In a time like this, when a good friend is in trouble, I don’t give a shit about how this would affect my
career. Me and the others, we’re going to tell the boss right now that we know you and you’re an upright guy. We still owe you for the Soapland intel. We’ve got your back.”

I wasn’t very close to those cops; I considered them casual friends. I felt honored. I was discovering that people whom I thought were good friends weren’t very good friends at all and people whom I considered acquaintances were some of the best friends I’d ever have. It’s not often in life that we get into a situation that measures the loyalty and dedication of our friends. The results are probably never what we anticipate.