We’re all in the information business

We’re all in the information business is the principle Kaneko uses to connect journalism with the organized crime economy: both deal in information, but one sells disclosure while the other sells silence. The expression is not a claim that reporters and criminals perform the same work. It exposes a common market logic—information has value, and controlling whether it is revealed can be as profitable as revealing it.

The Phrase and Its Immediate Meaning

Kaneko presents this idea while explaining the Sumiyoshi-kai’s criminal operations to Jake Adelstein. He compares the reporter’s work of gathering information and selling it through a newspaper with the gang’s practice of being paid to keep damaging information out of the paper. In his formulation, scandal is not merely news: it is leverage over people and businesses that fear its publication.

The comparison gives the expression its force. Journalism can make information public; extortion can turn the threat of publicity into a source of income. Both depend on knowing what others want disclosed or concealed. The difference lies in who controls that knowledge and what they do with it.

Information as a Criminal Asset

Kaneko’s account places the expression within a broad portfolio of Sumiyoshi-kai activities. The group had profited from manipulating land prices, removing tenants so property could be sold, and obstructing public auctions. It also earned money through illegal waste disposal and protection payments connected to the sex industry in Omiya. These operations involved information about property, ownership, financial vulnerability, and the conditions under which assets could be acquired or resold.

Extortion made the information principle especially direct. The Sumiyoshi-kai could target businesses or businessmen with embarrassing secrets and demand payment to prevent their exposure. It also approached struggling companies with offers of assistance. Some companies and executives participated willingly, taking a share while the criminal operation stripped assets, secured loans against real estate, and left debts unpaid. When property went into seizure and auction, yakuza interference could help bring it back at a low price, after which it could be resold or used to generate a kickback. Information about a company’s weakness thus connected concealment, debt, property, and profit.

The organization’s other enterprises broadened this business model beyond extortion. Kaneko lists front companies in temporary staffing, loan-sharking, insurance, debt collection, ticket scalping, pawnshops, talent representation, retail, transport, security, and construction. These ventures could provide revenue directly or make criminal activity look like ordinary commerce. A fake political organization offered another channel: companies could be pressed to buy an overpriced newsletter subscription, turning what appeared to be a publication expense into less conspicuous hush money.

Who Controls Circulation

The book also shows information being filtered within formal news institutions. On the ninth floor of the police headquarters, press clubs served newspapers, television, radio, and local newspapers, while weekly and monthly magazines were excluded from the official list. Foreign media representatives had no place there either. The arrangement limited who could obtain information through the established press-club system, making access itself a form of control over circulation.

A later reporting episode shows the competing value of information outside that system. After Layla supplied information establishing that Lucie Blackman and Obara had met, with witnesses able to support the account, Jake Adelstein passed it to Yamamoto. The resulting report gave the newspaper a major scoop and upset the police, who had wanted to surprise Obara. The episode shows how information acquired through personal sources could outrun an official timetable—and how publication could alter what investigators were able to do next.

Suppression, Publication, and the Expression’s Reach

The same tension appears when Jake Adelstein tries to publish an article that editors and publishers fear will bring institutional or commercial consequences. Potential outlets describe the story as too old, worry that it would embarrass the National Police Agency, or doubt that the FBI would confirm it. A senior publishing editor is more explicit: publication could mean legal costs, increased security expenses, retaliation, and the loss of printing work connected to Soka Gakkai. The article’s fate is therefore shaped not only by whether its information is true, but by the costs that others associate with allowing it into public circulation.

Jake Adelstein sends a copy to Yomiuri Shinbun, which ignores it, as do the other newspapers in Japan. In this context, the expression reaches beyond Kaneko’s analogy between a reporter and an extortionist. It describes a wider contest over who may gather, withhold, verify, or publish consequential information. Criminal leverage and editorial caution are not the same thing, but both can keep information from appearing in print. The phrase’s enduring significance lies in that contrast: the information business includes not only the act of reporting, but also the power to block a story and the institutional choices that decide whether the public sees it.