Sekiguchi

Sekiguchi is a Saitama detective whose influence on Jake Adelstein reaches beyond individual investigations: he teaches the reporter how to earn trust, how to treat people without reducing them to their offenses, and how to recognize the risks hidden behind a story’s surface. Renowned for his interrogations and marked by a manner that could make him look more like a yakuza boss than a conventional investigator, Sekiguchi combines toughness with sustained obligations to people on both sides of the law. His later illness and death make that combination—not simply his skill—as central to his legacy.

Identity and Investigative Method

Sekiguchi is described as an unconventional detective and something of an outsider within the police. He dislikes taking examinations, yet has a reputation for being able to break suspects more effectively than anyone on the force. His appearance reinforces the contrast between his institutional role and the world he investigates: he looks, in Adelstein’s description, like a yakuza boss rather than a junior gang member. He lives in Konan, and a colleague speculates that he may even have attended school with Takada, though this is presented as conjecture rather than established fact.

His ability is not limited to interrogating yakuza. In Saitama he is assigned to question Sugaya, and his reputation is such that yakuza suspects may confess quickly rather than risk revealing evidence about other crimes. He can also question white-collar offenders. The account stresses his reversal of expected deference: he treats yakuza with respect, as though they are important, while dealing harshly with bureaucrats and corporate criminals. His work unsettles the social distinction between respectable offenders and organized-crime suspects by applying pressure where he believes it belongs.

In Sugaya’s case, Sekiguchi says he can secure a ten-year sentence. He appeals to Sugaya’s sense of manly pride to elicit the truth, and Sugaya is ultimately prosecuted for attempted murder as well as firearms-law violations and sentenced to ten years. Adelstein later takes Sekiguchi’s family out for yakiniku, paying 30,000 yen for the meal. The result demonstrates Sekiguchi’s effectiveness, while the family dinner shows how the professional relationship with Adelstein extends into reciprocal personal regard.

Judgment, Trust, and the Sekine Investigation

Sekiguchi’s judgments are direct, even when the institution does not immediately accept them. He considers Gen Sekine responsible for Yasunobu Endo’s murder and regards the case as the strongest available basis for action. He argues that police should charge Sekine with murder from the outset, predicting that he will quickly break, but recognizes that investigators outside the elite murder-catching group are not initially listened to. His confidence is therefore paired with frustration at the hierarchy that determines whose assessment counts.

When Takada contacts him after secretly getting hold of Sekine, Sekiguchi already knows what has happened. Takada offers to let him listen while he questions the suspect. Sekiguchi declines the invitation, but sets a clear condition: Takada must not kill Sekine and must report what he learns. The exchange places Sekiguchi between official investigation and Takada’s private pursuit of justice. He neither joins the interrogation nor abandons his responsibility for what might happen to the suspect.

Takada later tracks down Shima, who has changed his name and married. Takada passes the information to Sekiguchi, who reports it to the Saitama police. Shima is arrested in December and, confronted with the existence of the tapes, confesses. The chain of action distinguishes their roles: Takada pursues the lead, while Sekiguchi carries it into police channels. In Adelstein’s account, Sekiguchi’s pursuit of justice is not merely a matter of forceful interrogation; it also depends on maintaining communication and moving information to the institution able to act.

Care Beyond the Case

Sekiguchi’s treatment of arrested yakuza does not end when they are sent to jail. He visits their families, checks on them over time, sometimes buys groceries or helps with house repairs, and contacts the imprisoned men to tell them how things are going at home. The account uses the contrast between the criminal’s sentence and the family’s continuing life to explain his practice: he does not make the crime and the criminal a personal matter. He does his job, while recognizing that those affected by an arrest remain people with needs and relationships.

That sustained attention becomes a lesson for Adelstein. The important work, Sekiguchi teaches him, may happen during the time that seems unimportant: the visits and practical assistance that do not look like investigation but preserve a human connection. This ethic complicates the image of the detective who can force confessions. Sekiguchi’s authority comes not only from his ability to extract information but from his refusal to treat a case as permission to disregard everyone caught up in it.

The bond with Adelstein is also familial in practice. A decade after Adelstein first knew him as a young reporter, Sekiguchi tells him that he is proud of how far he has come and urges him to be careful as he investigates sexual slavery. He warns that reporting on the yakuza’s actual sources of income—including trafficking, child pornography, and prostitution—threatens businesses and can provoke retaliation. He tells Adelstein to consider the people close to him as well as his own safety. Adelstein, in turn, visits Sekiguchi’s family in remote northern Saitama, where local schools sometimes have problems with wild boar in their yards. The family welcomes him as one of their own, and a giant Hello Kitty pillow intended for Beni becomes part of the visit’s affectionate domestic detail.

Illness, Work, and the Later Relationship

On that visit, Sekiguchi has recently been diagnosed with cancer but remains in good spirits. He takes pleasure in returning to real detective work, even though prosecutors have removed him from a case halted for political reasons connected with the governor. The interruption recalls the limits on police work that Adelstein sees recurring over the years. Sekiguchi can be eager to investigate and still find an inquiry stopped by forces beyond his control.

In January 2006, Adelstein arrives unannounced at Sekiguchi’s home with a duty-free bag of tobacco. Sekiguchi has had chemotherapy the day before and was too sick to work, although he says he goes in almost every day. His doctors estimate that he may have a year or two left. Even in this conversation, he directs attention outward: he warns that stories about gang wars or tattoos are not as threatening to the yakuza as reporting on their businesses and money. Trafficking, prostitution, and other high-profit crimes, he explains, are revenue sources; exposing them risks interfering with the criminal economy.

Adelstein recalls a separate encounter from when Sekiguchi was still in good health. Dressed in black jeans, a navy sweater, a long leather jacket, and gloves, Sekiguchi appears more like a yakuza than the people around him. His look is striking, but his role is clear when he turns to the investigation and his interrogation work. That remembered scene and the later house visit place his toughness beside the ordinary forms of care and counsel that define their relationship.

Death and Continuing Influence

After Sekiguchi dies, Adelstein describes him as a second father and recalls taking Beni to visit him before taking her to Adelstein’s own parents. Sekiguchi’s death also changes Adelstein’s investigative position: Sekiguchi had followed Shibata that autumn, leaving Adelstein without either his principal police source or his principal yakuza source. The prospects for his investigation of Masato Goto consequently look bleak. The loss is both personal and practical, severing a relationship that had offered instruction and access.

Sekiguchi’s wife tells Adelstein that he spoke with his family the day before his death, had positive things to say, and left the world at peace with them. Adelstein is glad to hear that account. He also remembers a small accommodation between them: a public explanation that Sekiguchi was merely borrowing a room allowed him to accept a gift that Adelstein wanted him to have. Adelstein understands the fiction as a way of maintaining a public facade while both men understood what was really happening. The episode preserves the tact of their relationship without turning affection into a declaration.

Sekiguchi remains present in the book as a teacher whose example continues after his death. He instructs Adelstein in interrogation, reporting, honor, and trust, but also in the less visible obligations that surround a case: care for families, attention to risk, and tact in intimate exchanges. His legacy rests on the tension between the intimidating detective who can secure a ten-year sentence and the mentor who remembers groceries, family conversations, and the safety of a reporter’s loved ones.