Tadamasa Goto

Tadamasa Goto emerges as both a formidable organizer of yakuza power and a subject of unresolved contradiction: a man whose network reached into business, finance, and international intelligence, who was eventually expelled from the organization he had helped expand, and who later took Buddhist vows while still facing legal jeopardy. Jake Adelstein’s investigation follows the connections between Goto’s influence, his medical crisis, and the dangers of making those connections public.

Rise and Reach

Goto’s importance first registers for Jake through the name of the Goto-gumi. A source associated the group with the Yamaguchi-gumi’s push into Tokyo, describing it as having built the infrastructure for that expansion. The same source suspected that Susumu Kajiyama, who had moved to Tokyo in 1983 after imprisonment, might have worked for Goto. That connection was presented as an informed suspicion, not a confirmed account of their relationship. Later, Jake learned that Goto had introduced Kajiyama to casino contacts in Las Vegas, helping explain Kajiyama’s status as a high roller at the MGM Grand and Caesars Palace.

The scale of Goto’s own position becomes clearer as Jake gathers information. Goto had spearheaded the Yamaguchi-gumi’s infiltration of Tokyo and owned more than a hundred front companies. His personal wealth was estimated at more than half a billion dollars; at one point, he was reportedly the largest single shareholder of Japan Airlines. Those details make his power more than a matter of rank inside an underworld organization: it rested on a broad business presence and financial resources that could cross borders.

A confidential National Police Agency report, compiled in 2001 with help from police organizations across Japan, supplied Jake with a more detailed account of the Goto-gumi’s methods. The report described retaliation as deliberate and planned, with roles divided among participants and precautions taken to frustrate investigation. It also described internal discipline: Goto could demote members whose actions created problems for the organization or have them punished before their peers. Jake obtained hundreds of pages about Goto and the group, using techniques learned at the Yomiuri and making moral compromises to learn what he considered necessary about his subject. The resulting portrait connects Goto’s personal authority to an organization designed to control its members and make its actions difficult to trace.

The Transplant and the FBI Arrangement

Goto’s international dealings came into focus through a bargain connected to his health. In early 2001, doctors at Showa University told him that he would die without a liver transplant soon. He had hepatitis C and a heart condition, and Jake’s account describes him as an unlikely transplant candidate in Japan. In April, Goto approached the FBI through an intermediary with political connections. The FBI wanted information about prominent yakuza because the National Police Agency would not share it, citing privacy concerns.

In exchange for cooperation, Goto offered a comprehensive list of Yamaguchi-gumi members, related front companies and financial institutions, as well as information about North Korean activities. What he sought was a visa to receive a transplant at UCLA. The FBI did not provide the medical care; it pressed U.S. immigration authorities to grant him entry, and UCLA performed the surgery. Jake reports that the transplant took place on July 5, 2001. Goto supplied only a fraction of the information he had promised, then returned to Japan and did not speak with the FBI again. The arrangement thus had an uneven outcome: Goto obtained access to treatment, while the agency received less information than he had offered.

The episode also connected Goto to the casinos where he had once been a regular. A source told Jake that Goto could no longer enter the United States after his transplant and had reportedly used a casino account to pay his hospital bill. The account linked his personal medical need to the financial and social access he had cultivated through gambling venues, while leaving some details as reported claims rather than independently established facts.

Reporting, Exposure, and Risk

Jake’s interest in Goto intensified after Helena disappeared. He had checked her apartment and her work as an English teacher; she had left everything behind and provided no forwarding address. Because the International Entertainment Association was associated with the Goto-gumi, Jake decided to investigate that connection and return to the transplant story. He did not know whether Goto had any part in Helena’s disappearance. His decision to resume the reporting was therefore an attempt to follow a lead, not a claim that Goto was responsible.

The risks were tied to the subject of the reporting itself. A source warned Jake that writing about yakuza finances and the companies they controlled was more dangerous than writing about gang wars or tattoos, because it could threaten revenue. The source identified human trafficking, child pornography, and prostitution as profitable areas for organized crime generally; the warning made clear why investigations into criminal business could provoke a different response. It did not establish that Goto personally directed each activity. The source also believed Goto knew Jake had left the Yomiuri and cautioned him that Tokyo was Goto’s territory, urging care about whom he contacted and met.

Jake’s research into the transplant deal eventually became a book project. A long introduction appeared on Kodansha International’s European website without his knowledge. Although it did not disclose every detail, Jake believed it gave Goto enough reason to realize that a damaging account was coming. He had the page removed, but later learned that Goto’s associates may have obtained a copy of the book description. By December 2007, Jake was receiving warning signs; in January 2008, he received confirmation from a source that Goto was again planning to kill him. The sequence shows how an incomplete public outline of the investigation could itself expose the reporter before the full story appeared.

Goto was also facing a legal case. In May 2006, he, a real-estate company president, and seven others were arrested on suspicion of illegally transferring ownership of a building in Shibuya. Police alleged that the transfer of the twelve-story Shinjuku Building had been falsely registered and that a Goto-gumi front company partly owned it. The investigation had begun more than a year earlier, after Kazuoki Nozaki, a partial owner and adviser to a building-management company, was killed in March 2005. Jake understood the property-law arrest as an effort to connect Goto to Nozaki’s killing, but the account presents that as the police’s suspected larger aim, not as a conviction for murder.

Exposure and Expulsion

The transplant story reached a wider audience through publication in the Los Angeles Times on May 31. Japanese outlets that covered it often attributed their reporting to the American newspaper rather than independently verifying or extending the story. Goto appeared unfazed, and Jake saw no visible effect on him. Yet public exposure changed Jake’s own position: he felt that becoming a visible target made it less likely that he or people associated with him would be harmed. He also concluded that a serious effort to bring Goto down would require publishing the full account in Japanese.

Jake and Tomohiko Suzuki then worked on a chapter for an anthology of forbidden news stories. The collaboration carried risks for Suzuki as well as Jake, and Jake was assigned a bodyguard, Teruo Mochizuki. Around the anthology’s publication, Mochizuki’s blood brother arranged for four cars to be parked in Jake’s neighborhood around the clock. Jake later understood this as a warning to the Goto-gumi that another crime group was protecting him. He had not asked for that protection and disliked becoming indebted to a Japanese mafia group, but acknowledged that he owed Mochizuki for taking the risk. At the same time, Kodansha International withdrew the book after a commissioned risk assessment judged publication unsafe.

Around October 14, Goto was officially expelled from the Yamaguchi-gumi. Police told Jake that publication of the Heisei Japan Taboo Compendium 2008 had been the tipping point, though the public explanation emphasized Goto’s partying and failure to attend obligations. Several of his associates were also suspended, expelled, or permanently banished, and the Goto-gumi split into two crime families. Goto was no longer a crime boss. Jake received congratulatory calls from police officers, friends, reporters, and sources, but the expulsion did not erase the danger or resolve the legal questions surrounding Goto.

Buddhist Vows and Uncertain Motives

On April 8, 2009, Goto took Buddhist vows at a temple in Kanagawa and began studying to become a Buddhist priest. Jake regarded the act skeptically, considering it possibly a publicity maneuver meant to influence a judge while Goto still faced another trial. He also noted rumors that senior Yamaguchi-gumi figures had ordered Goto’s death because he knew too much and had dealt with police. In that context, religious status might offer protection from bad publicity, or the vows might reflect genuine regret; Jake leaves both possibilities open.

That uncertainty gives Goto’s ending its force. His career had been built through organizational command, wealth, strategic dealings, and control over information. By the end of the account, he had been stripped of his position and was described as living under threat, yet his intentions remained unreadable. Jake found the vows troubling, but allowed that sincere repentance would be worth wishing well. Goto’s story therefore closes not with a settled judgment of his character, but with a stark contrast between the power he once exercised and the uncertain future of a man attempting, or appearing to attempt, a different life.