Monday, November 9, 2009

Jew-Hating in Japan

So I'm listening to 60 Minutes on my Ipod, and there's a story about how a member of the Yakuza (that's Japanese Mafia, or so 60 Minutes says) bought a liver transplant at UCLA. The story was originally reported by an American journalist living in Japan named Jake Adelstein. It's an interesting report - nothing that surprising about the fact that people with money find ways to get what they need. But one quote caught my attention.
Adelstein wrote the story for "The Washington Post" and it eventually made its way back to Japan. The news infuriated the Yakuza bosses. For Goto, it was a humiliating blow from which he would never recover.
"I heard from someone very close to him that as he was leaving and getting in his car he said, 'That goddamn American Jew reporter, I wanna kill him,'" Adelstein said.
I wonder: why did the Yakuza boss identify him as a Jew reporter? Has he ever met a Jew, much less seen one in person? I don't know anything about Adelstein, but it seems difficult to imagine that he lives a religious life. Actually, if you read the interview about him on the Amazon page hawking his book it's pretty clear that there's nothing Jewish about him other than his name. Why then does he suddenly become the American Jew Reporter? What do the Japanese mafia have against the Jews?
Just wondering.

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