Gilles Poitras has produced three books on anime: Anime Companion (vols 1 & 2) and Anime Essentials. He has written for magazines including NewType USA and Otaku USA and served as a member of the senior board of Mechademia. He has made presentations at various Japan-US friendship groups, public libraries, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, conventions, and workshops for librarians, has introduced films at the Smithsonian, and has taught a course on anime for Pixar staff. He resides in Oakland, California.
Jake Adelstein (Foreword) has been an
investigative journalist in Japan since 1993. He is considered one of the foremost experts on organized
crime in Japan and works as a writer and consultant in Japan, the United
States and France. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: A Reporter on the
Police Beat in Japan (Vintage, now a hit HBO series) and has written two other books published
by Marchialy in France.
Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993, reporting in both Japanese and English. From 2006 to 2007 he was the chief investigator for a US State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. He has been writing for The Daily Beast, The Japan Times, and other publications since 2011, and was a special correspondent for The Los Angeles Times. Considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan, he works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the United States. He co-hosted and co-wrote the award-winning podcast about missing people in Nippon, The Evaporated: Gone with the Gods in 2023. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (Vintage), which is now a series on HBO Max, and also The Last Yakuza: Life and Death in the Japanese Underworld (2023).
He has appeared on CNN, NPR, the BBC, France 24, and other media outlets as a commentator on social issues in Japan, as well as its criminal justice system, politics, and nuclear industry giant, TEPCO.