Tokyo Vice
The sordid side of urban life in Mukashi no kuni (the ancient country) through the eyes of a gaijin American expat. Also, Michael Mann's in the mix.
In American media, the portrayal of Japan, especially the culture of its people, is often imbued with exoticism, violence, and Romantic nostalgia. And by media, I mostly mean popular film: Mulan (1998), The Last Samurai (2003), Lost in Translation (2003), You Only Live Twice (1967), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), Memories of a Geisha (2005), Babel (2006), or Kurosawa via Tarantino (or just Kurosawa directly). We all have some level of exposure to these portraits of Japanese culture. This now clichéd aesthetic treatment of Japan seems to have a particular hold on the minds of a subset of young men. Whether it is the noble intransigence of the Samurai, the coy beauty of the Geisha, the primitive animal magnetism of the Nihon no ryū (Japanese mythological dragon), or the tranquility of Japanese spiritual traditions, I don’t know. But I do know it enraptures some young Western men. This seems to have been what propelled today’s protagonist, Jake Adelstein, across the globe to life as an expat in Japan.
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Tokyo Vice is the memoir of Jake Adelstein, a Jewish-American expat who worked as a journalist in Japan for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, starting in 1993. The memoir’s narrative spans a roughly 12 year period. It begins with Jake’s testing and interview process to earn a position at the newspaper, follows the trajectory of his gritty workaholic lifestyle, and then culminates with Jake breaking a bombshell story on Tadamasa Goto, the leader of the notorious yakuza gang Goto-gumi. This breakout story concerned Goto's liver transplant at UCLA, which exposed a complex web of corruption and international intrigue. In addition to some personal reflections and somewhat superficial sociological commentary on Japanese culture, the memoir is primarily populated with stories from Adelstein's beat. This includes reportage on the serial rapist and murderer Joji Obara, specifically the Lucie Blackman case, and several other lurid crime and vice stories, especially on the yakuza.
Adelstein cautions readers that he's altered some details in order to protect sources, which is a theme he likes to emphasize throughout the memoir. It is a code of honor for him that echoes the importance of honor in Japanese culture. It also seems like Adelstein leverages this to take a bit of license with the facts. There are just some implausible aspects of the memoir, which have not gone unnoticed by many readers. For instance, Jake’s platonic relationship with an Australian expat English teacher-by-day, prostitute-by-night, Helena, strains credulity, especially given this characters mysterious disappearance and supposed murder.
But okay, one has to admire Adelstein's commitment to his juvenile fantasies. By which I mean, there is something a little fishy about his eagerness to pursue the vice beat in Japan, and that's all I'll say on that. This Japanese interest of his did certainly drive him to some interesting accomplishments. It is something I wish he would have reflected more on in the memoir. He expatriated from Missouri at 19, learned Japanese, insinuated himself to some degree into the underbelly of Japanese urban culture (i.e. club/sex industry and organized crime) as a staff journalist, and then published a book about his experiences. I think by anyone's standards this demonstrates an appreciable amount of independence, persistence, and competence. However, I think it is quite evident to any cold-eyed reader of Tokyo Vice that Adelstein is at least a borderline fabulist and almost certainly exaggerates liberally for effect. His reported dialogue is bizarrely stilted and accomplishes quite a bit of exposition for him. He also has a penchant for the pulpy, sordid details that belie his attempts at building “good guy” credibility with his audience. And he has a decidedly inflated sense of his importance, often acting the crusader (or at least portraying himself as one), while quite obviously being an interloper at the margins of an idiosyncratic and insular culture. Although it is entirely unfair to classify Adelstein’s Japanese adventure as LARPing and call his entire memoir fiction, it is also true that Adelstein has quite an active imagination to accompany his serious reportage. So yes, read Tokyo Vice but not too credulously.
Michael Mann’s Tokyo Vice
“Tokyo Vice” is an American crime drama television series created by J.T. Rogers and based on the 2009 book of the same title by Jake Adelstein. It premiered on April 7, 2022, on HBO Max and stars Ansel Elgort as Jake Adelstein and Ken Watanabe as his cop mentor Hiroto Katagiri in lead roles. The show is executive produced by Michael Mann, known for his work on “Miami Vice” and other crime dramas, who also directed the pilot. Mann’s style pervades the show, adding an additional layer of intrigue on top of a compelling set of characters and plot-lines. In June 2022, the series was renewed for a second season, which I am anticipating eagerly.
Like the book, the series follows Jake Adelstein, an American young adult who moves to Tokyo and becomes the first foreign-born reporter for a major Japanese newspaper in 1999 (notice the timeline is shifted forward relative to Adelstein’s real-life experiences). He works on the police beat and investigates the dark and dangerous world of the Yakuza and learns the norms and mores of Japanese sociopolitical culture. He is mentored by Hiroto Katagiri, a veteran detective in the organized crime division, who helps him navigate the thin and precarious line between the law and the criminals. He also meets Samantha Porter (Rachel Keller), an American expatriate and former Mormon who works as a hostess in a club frequented by Yakuza members. She becomes an important source of information and a collaborator with Adelstein’s reporting-cum-activism. The combination of crime procedural, bildungsroman, setting, and excellent performance and authentic production work make “Tokyo Vice” a fascinating watch.
Having consumed both the book and the first season of the show, I once again have to admire the coup Adelstein pulled getting Ansel Elgort to portray him. To understand why this is a coup, check out Jake Adelstein on Google images. And despite all the not-so-subtle humble bragging in Tokyo Vice, Adelstein makes it clear that many of the Japanese he interacts with see him as a goofy and clumsy gaijin. Elgort has some of the goofiness, but let’s just say he cuts quite a bit more of a heroic figure.
The adaptation is also incredibly astute in that it has essentially distilled the most compelling and pulpy narrative lines into a single coherent narrative that revolves around Jake. The disconnected details of Adelstein's actual journalistic experiences coalesce into a single fictional narrative, and the fictional set of composite characters erected around Jake are more realized and complex that the figures from the memoir. The show’s heavy Shinzo Tozawa clearly echoes the real-life Tadamasa Goto, specifically in his ruthlessness and his need of a new liver. Samantha is a mixture of Adelstein’s contacts with white expat hostesses and prostitutes, but is most reminiscent of Helena, specifically the platonic connection Samantha shares with Jake. Katagiri is a flintier version of Adelstein's police informant and surrogate father figure Chiaki Sekiguchi. And so on.
Altogether, as is probably evident already, I find the television series significantly more compelling than Adelstein’s actual memoir. All the real life takeaways, especially concerning Japanese culture, are still embedded in the show plus a whole lot more narrative and psychological complexity. Plus, the pretense of depicting true events is honestly dispensed with. So if you have to choose between the two, opt for the television series.