TV Series Recommendation: Tokyo Vice (2022-2024)

Tokyo Vice is more or less a fictional adaptation from an autobiography written by Jake Adelstein (one of the many books I’m currently reading). Jake Adelstein spent 12 years as a journalist working for Yomiuri Shimbun, a major Japanese newspaper during the late 1990s through the early 2000s. It is one of the major newspapers and leans more conservative than liberal and based out Tokyo. The show is created by J.T. Rogers and has a great major and supporting cast. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after the second season which made the final episode of the second season end on a low note.

Ansel Elgort plays Jake Adelstein, the first non-Japanese journalist to work at Yomiuri Shimbun, where he investigates stories directed by his superiors including the yakuza. Ken Watanabe plays Hiroto Katagiri, a respected police detective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department with extensive knowledge about the yakuza. Rachel Keller plays Samantha Porter, a hostess at a club that caters to high paying clients including yakuza. Shô Kasamatsu plays Akiro Sato, an enforcer for the Chihara-kai yakuza. Rinko Kikuchi plays Eimi Maruyama, a senior journalist at Meicho Shimbun. Other cast includes Hideaki Itō playing Jin Miyamoto, Ella Rumpf playing Polina, Ayumi Ito playing Misaki, Kosuke Tanaka playing Tin Tin, Kōsuke Toyohara playing Baku, Shun Sugata playing Hitoshi Ishida, Ayumi Tanida playing Shinzo Tozawa, Eugene Nomura playing Kobayashi, and Nobushige Suematsu playing Gen.

Season 1 centers around the wanderings of Jake Adelstein and how he is trying to find himself in Japan. He clearly wants more than teaching English to the Japanese. Once he starts working for the Meicho, he realizes how he doesn’t have much time for anything else. He meets Samantha, a club hostess, who becomes his friend and fellow American who understands him ways others can’t. As he digs deeper into his story of Japanese killing themselves for honor, he gets closer to Chihara-kai yakuza and intrusive Tozawa yakuza trying to gain control of their territory. The successive episodes explore the origins of the major cast and what brought them to Japan or how they got into the trouble they find themselves in currently. Keep your enemies closer is one of the themes in the first season. No one really knows who is telling the truth or lying and the reason for all the dead ends.

Season 2 shifts to the war between the Chihara-kai and Tozawa yakuza, the struggle between the police and yakuza, and the power plays between Samantha and practically everyone in Tokyo. It goes more in depth of the hardships of living in Tokyo for those who aren’t highly educated or working for the yakuza. There’s more death in these episodes and Jake is inching closer to danger for what he is researching. He has to resort to more drastic measures to get what he needs for his stories and death threats against him and those close to him is a weekly reminder of the danger around him. As the secrets of the Tozawa yakuza come to light, the ending is positive for everyone except Shinzo. While the ending might have been a little drastic, rules and protocol mean everything to keep order. If there would have been a third season, it would focus on Sato as a major story line. The only thing left to say is there are six major yakuza clans today: Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai, Inagawa-kai, Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, Kizuna-kai, and Ikeda-gumi.

Watch the trailers below for both seasons.