U.S. Department of State

The U.S. Department of State is an important institutional ally in Jake Adelstein’s campaign to expose human trafficking in Japan. Through an embassy contact, public scrutiny, and later sponsorship of a large-scale study, it gives his reporting routes beyond the newspaper and police systems that had failed to protect exploited women. Its role is not presented as a substitute for local action: rather, the account shows how diplomatic attention and reputational pressure could make a neglected issue harder for the Japanese government to ignore.

From reporting evidence to diplomatic attention

In reporting on foreign women coerced into sexual services, Jake Adelstein encountered a sharp divide between what the law and official directives promised and what police said they could do. A National Police Agency directive called for serious efforts against trafficking and care for victims, but a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department officer told him that women working illegally would still be arrested and deported. Without a way to identify and shelter victims, he argued, the women would be removed before they could serve as witnesses, leaving cases against traffickers difficult to build. Adelstein judged that securing action might require exposing this gap rather than relying on the police to resolve it internally.

After publishing an article about the trafficking operation run by Viktor and Slick, Adelstein gave the material he had gathered to a U.S. Department of State contact at the U.S. Embassy. He hoped it could inform the department’s annual white paper on human trafficking. He also ensured that the article was properly translated into English; it spread across the Internet, and he later heard that Viktor was having trouble recruiting women. These developments extended the report’s reach, though they did not immediately end the operation: Viktor continued bringing women in, and Slick continued making money.

Watch-list pressure and public challenge

In June, the U.S. Department of State placed Japan on a watch list of countries doing poorly in addressing human trafficking. Japan ranked only slightly above North Korea in willingness to act. Adelstein regarded the ranking as a form of national humiliation capable of prompting a response. The account thus presents the watch list not merely as a diplomatic label, but as a way to turn a local failure into an international measure of government performance.

Later that month, the U.S. Embassy held a human-trafficking symposium at United Nations University and invited Adelstein as a panelist rather than simply as a journalist. A National Police Agency representative described Japan’s efforts to combat trafficking. During the question-and-answer session, Adelstein challenged that account with his experience of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s approach, arguing that the directive offered little protection when officers treated deceived women as illegal workers and returned them to their countries. The questions that followed were also pointed. The exchange brought the contradiction between official claims and enforcement practice into a public forum convened by the U.S. Embassy.

The following morning, Adelstein’s article on the symposium appeared under the headline “Japan: Kingdom of Human Trafficking? American Wants Japan to Criminalize Human Trafficking.” He had taken unusual care to secure the headline he wanted, even buying an 8,000-yen bottle of sake for someone in layout. That detail marks the newsroom work behind the public intervention: the Department of State supplied a consequential venue and international context, while Adelstein still had to shape the resulting attention into a published challenge.

Research, policy effects, and limits

Adelstein’s campaign also drew on a separate report by the International Labour Organisation, a U.N.-backed study funded by the Japanese government. The report concluded that Japan had failed both to punish traffickers and to care for victims; the Japanese government ordered it kept from publication. Adelstein obtained a copy and made it the subject of a Yomiuri Shinbun front-page story on November 19, 2004, followed by another article the next day. A source told him that the government had been preparing an action plan and that his reporting had prompted substantial revisions to strengthen victim protection. The account does not attribute the report’s production to the U.S. Department of State, but places the department’s watch-list pressure and symposium within the wider sequence of scrutiny surrounding Japan’s response.

The early results remained mixed. Some clubs dropped sexual services after the article, and some people avoided the Maldives trips, but exploitation continued. Adelstein was angry and frustrated, while Helena was unhappy with him; he had been unable to secure the immediate protection he wanted for women whose testimony might have helped prosecute the traffickers. Later, Slick’s clubs were raided after the drug squad took an interest in him, and he went out of business. Information reaching Japanese Customs officials and Dutch police contributed to Viktor ending up in prison. Adelstein credits the difference to their combined work, particularly Helena’s courage in contacting him and her substantial contribution to the first story.

A later return to the work

By the beginning of 2005, the trafficking investigations and a threatening encounter with Tadamasa Goto’s enforcers had helped drive Adelstein to leave the Yomiuri Shinbun and return to the American Midwest. He enrolled in an LSAT preparation course and began trying to establish a safer, different life. In that interval, an email from Ken, a former CIA employee, told him that the U.S. Department of State was sponsoring a massive study of human trafficking in Japan and that Ken had recommended him for the job.

The offer reopened a path he had deliberately left. Adelstein considered the possibility of doing more with proper funding, but also distrusted the men who had threatened him and did not want to bring his family back into danger. The work would return him to the conditions he had tried to escape, and accepting it would cut across his plans for law school and promises to Sunao. He accepted anyway, replying that he would love to take the job without consulting anyone first. The department’s role therefore extends beyond the earlier public campaign: its sponsorship brings Adelstein back into trafficking research, turning a difficult reporting history into the basis for a new, larger investigation.