Heisei era

The Heisei era serves as the book’s time frame for investigations whose facts emerge slowly, through interviews, records, and retrospective reconstruction. The narrative’s chronology reaches from allegations of crimes beginning in 1973 to the publication of a major exposé in 2008, while its central disclosures trace the consequences of an arrangement involving Tadamasa Goto, the FBI, and a liver transplant in the United States.

A chronology reconstructed from fragments

The account does not present its history as a single, complete record. In one investigation, Jake Adelstein called a source after meeting with Kaneko and relayed what he had learned; the source suggested that an internal power struggle might explain the situation. The exchange shows how an apparent explanation entered the narrative as a source’s assessment, not an established fact. Elsewhere, a source cautioned that ground-level information could not safely be checked with senior officials before it had worked its way up the chain: premature verification might expose the person who had leaked it.

That distinction between event, testimony, and inference matters to the book’s treatment of time. A later prosecutorial account of Joji Obara’s crimes described a pattern beginning as early as 1973, while the case of an early victim who came forward served as a template for understanding the allegations. The historical record is thus assembled from later statements about earlier conduct as well as from contemporary investigation.

The 2001 disclosure and its longer aftermath

In January or February 2001, doctors at Showa University reportedly told Tadamasa Goto that he needed a liver transplant soon to survive. He had hepatitis C and a heart condition and was considered an unlikely transplant candidate in Japan. In April, he approached the FBI through a former political fixer with ties to the Liberal Democratic Party. These dates became consequential years later, when the circumstances of his entry into the United States and treatment were investigated.

In November 2006, a source within Goto’s organization told Jake Adelstein that the FBI had allowed Goto to enter the country and identified Jim Moynihan, the legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Japan, as the person who arranged it. A large collection of data subsequently supplied flight records, information about Goto’s associates, and details that helped establish when he went to UCLA for surgery and who accompanied him. After consulting sources in the U.S. Justice Department, Japanese police, and the underworld, Adelstein pieced together the account. The records also indicated that Goto’s control of Burning Productions could place pressure on television outlets and, indirectly, newspapers affiliated with them.

Publication, danger, and organizational change

The effort to publish the findings became part of the period’s history. After an editor at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan questioned whether the story was credible, Adelstein decided to write it himself in English. The anthology Heisei Japan Taboo Compendium 2008 was published on August 9. It included the names of three other yakuza who had received liver transplants, extending the disclosure beyond Goto alone.

The reporting carried personal risk. After being told that Goto might have him killed if found guilty, Adelstein was placed under police protection on March 5, 2008. An FBI agent accompanied him to the National Police Agency, and U.S. law enforcement arranged a watch on his home in America. He refused to identify his source inside Goto’s organization, despite being warned that this could make round-the-clock protection harder to justify. That decision reflects the book’s recurring conflict between the need to substantiate a story and the duty not to expose the people who supplied it.

Around October 14, Goto was officially expelled from the Yamaguchi-gumi. Police told Adelstein that publication of the anthology had been the tipping point, although the account presents that explanation as what police assured him, rather than as an independently demonstrated sole cause. Several associates were also suspended, expelled, or permanently banished, and the Goto-gumi split into two crime families. Goto ceased to be a crime boss. The sequence gives the 2008 publication a consequence beyond disclosure: it coincided with a major reversal in the standing of the organization’s leader.

Time, evidence, and responsibility

The era’s chronology is shaped not only by what became public, but by the risks and limits attached to knowing. The book notes that police officers who leak information can face prosecution or lose their jobs, while a yakuza source who reveals organizational secrets may face mortal danger. Protecting sources is therefore presented as a condition of historical reporting, not a matter of editorial polish. The narrative’s movement across years—from scattered leads to records, corroboration, publication, and protection—shows how the past becomes reportable without erasing the uncertainty or danger that accompanied its reconstruction.