TV Review: Tokyo Vice Season 1
Fancy suits, body bags, and cigarette butts in this journalistic viewpoint to Japan’s criminal underbelly
Welcome to Tokyo, 1999. This is a Yakuza’s world where, as the police and then in turn the media put it, there are no murders. We all know that’s not true, but to what extent? Enter Jake Adelstein, an American, who has abandoned life in his native USA for Tokyo and is the one to figure that out. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Jake spends his time sampling life as any American in the land of the rising sun would. Eating at a local ramen vendor, practicing karate, earning the rent for a single-flat-above-a-shop by teaching English to Japanese students. So far, generic traveller boxes are all ticked. But these are merely a means to his end, as every other moment in between those activities Jake is studying Japanese. Not just reading, either; glimpses of cram-session notetaking on Japan’s weather systems clearly annotated by Jake in fluent and perfect Japanese script. Why? He is studying to become one of them, or better put, to write like them and about them for Japan’s biggest newspaper publication: Yomiuri Shimbun.
Following Jake’s integration into Japanese journalistic dressing downs and isolated by his gaijin status, his eye for the city’s underbelly of crime can no longer be ignored. He ends up teaming with the undeniably handsome and dry-witted vice cop Ken Watanabe, a would-be peacekeeper with the Yakuza to keep the blood off the streets. And of course, it invariably does, in what quickly becomes a multifaceted outlook on the seedy side of Tokyo at the turn of the 21st century.
This premise, the man-out-of-country-but-with-a-purpose tale, would normally serve as perfect travel fiction. But Tokyo Vice, for the most part at least, isn’t fiction. And Jake Adelstein is a very real person, his namesake memoir the source of this Tokyo tale. Unfortunately for Jake, and in turn us the viewers, what is also very real is that this is a Hollywood production, and so the piquing interest of Jake attempting to find his footing in the world of controlled Japanese journalism is merely a prelude to yet another Yakuza tale. But this time around it is fortunately a steady-paced, intricate and absorbing one.
The Michael Mann-directed first episode lays down the series’ highest point, depicting the Japanese capital convincingly, although the use of an opening flash-forward scene cliché is in retrospect rather unnecessary. Jake spent time at Michael’s behest in setting up key scenes in the meticulous manner Mann is often lauded for. The scene of Jake’s qualifying exam is one of series’ most memorable feats. The envy of seeing the first ever American taking the Shimbun test, that is entirely in Japanese, and walking it, turns to shared despair upon the realisation that Jake misses an entire page of the exam until it is over.
Winning formula handed over, playwright J. T. Rogers’ creation’s consistency is tested from its tension-enveloped beginning, by the end remembering it is sometimes necessary, even in television, to take a breath from time to time. The results are interesting, and certainly intriguing; no matter what dark secrets of Tokyo are revealed to Jake, I would still jump at the chance to be in his shoes. The equally handsome but from a different generation Ansel Elgort, shaggy hair and all, plays Jake with a comfortable swagger. His looks manage to gain him entry into many a VIP area, even in seedy establishments, rather too easily in fact. But that can be forgiven even if just to keep the momentum going.
As the drama wears on, as does an apparent advocacy for cigarette smoking. As we are introduced to Samantha, another American resident who looks after a club often occupied by wealthy yet seedy individuals, she asks Jake if he smokes, and his renunciation is simply met with the response “You will.” And sure enough, he does just that. The inhaled vice is more of a rare occurrence in TV productions of recent years, reserved for the harder-hitting networks like HBO and Showtime. Tokyo Vice goes out of its way to depict how big a habit, particularly in the club and gang scenes, cigarette smoking really was in Japan at that time. You would be the odd one out if you didn’t, as opposed to the other way around today. In its remaining episodes it escalates as if I was watching on YouTube with five-second cigarette commercials interspersed. Or being stood outside a workplace of today with a fellow worker on a cigarette break. Some of the tension-building even resorts to Samantha taking a prolonged drag. If the Yakuza won’t finish you off my dear, the cigarettes might.
Ultimately, Tokyo Vice is an entertaining tale of good vs evil. The boundaries of both Japanese and American cultures intersect often and are often brilliantly handled for the most part. Its dynamic is constantly revolving, and admirable care is taken to ensure the pacing remains consistent with everything that develops. Tokyo Vice is a show that even with just eight episodes is in no hurry, but the world it is building has more than enough to keep you drawn in with plenty of monstrousness and melodramatic moments.