Shining a spotlight on Japan’s dark underside

“Tokyo Vice’’ is about Japanese subculture. Adelstein instructs us in the vagaries of Japanese journalism and provides a gamy, colorful tour of the morally flexible areas of Japan, particularly in Tokyo. He also shows how Japanese police work and interact with journalists.

Adelstein shares juicy, salty, and occasionally funny anecdotes, but many are frightening.

The police trusted him because he learned how to time the release of a story so the “scoop’’ wouldn’t upstage or shame them. He even worked in one of the host and hostess clubs that are key to Japan’s adult entertainment industry. These venues provide “the illusion of intimacy and the titillating possibility of sex,’’ Adelstein writes.

“In the United States, we pay psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, and life coaches to listen to our problems, raise our self-esteem, pretend to like us, and give us good advice. Friends used to do these things for free, but friends have been known to retreat when the water gets too deep. Japanese tend to believe that going to a shrink is a sign of weakness and an admission of mental illness, so there’s still a tendency to avoid those types of paid friendships.’’

Eventually, his reporting led to Lucie Blackman, a British woman who quit her work as a stewardess on British Airways to become a hostess in Japan. She disappeared; Adelstein was assigned to the story because as a Westerner, he could “blend in’’ with Blackman’s social set.

His adaptability led him deeper into the Japanese sex trade - and the human trafficking at its core.