Tokyo Vice: Season 1 Premiere

   

Created by: J. T. Rogers 

Based on: Tokyo Vice, a book of the same name by Jake Adelstein

Executive producers: John Lesher, Michael Mann, J. T. Rogers, Alan Poul, Ansel Elgort, Emily Gerson Saines, Jake Adelstein, Kayo Washio, Brad Caleb Kane, Destin Daniel Cretton, Ken Watanabe

Starring: Ansel Elgort (Jake Adelstein), Ken Watanabe (Hiroto Katagiri), Rachel Keller (Samantha Porter), Hideaki Itō (Jin Miyamoto), Rinko Kikuchi (Eimi Maruyama)

This show is quickly becoming another of my favorites! 

And that's both bias and great storytelling. The bias is easy: I'm fascinated by Japan, and the protagonist, Jake, is easily my surrogate as I watch him navigate Tokyo life. I'm especially fascinated and envious of his ability to switch seamlessly between English and Japanese fluency depending on the situation. 

The story adapts real-life Jake's (the author of the original book) journey beginning a journalism career in Tokyo. More notably, a career as the first non-Japanese staff writer at Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, one of Japan's leading. Over this career, he exposed dealings of major yakuza bosses. 

Tokyo Vice introduces us to a Jake already established in Tokyo. In the first episode, he's on his way to a local entrance exam. The show uses this to display his fluency: he navigates the exam with expertise, reading and marking the exam papers even more rapidly than the locals around him. Soon after the exam he's noticed by the proctors, who call him back to praise his score and offer him a job at the paper. 

Jake walking with Ken, a detective who helps him understand the yakuza

Having assured the audience this is not a "fish out of water" show--Jake is 100% comfortable and adept at life in Tokyo--the show quickly reveals its true "whodunnit" colors. A death mid-episode is followed by Jake directly witnessing a suicide as the premiere ends, the burning corpse collapsing as the credits roll. The second episode dives deep into yakuza territory. 

Jake accompanies a potential source to a club in attempt to coax out information

It's all these ideas coming together that draws me in so much. I love the idea of an American fitting seamlessly into Japanese society. Although the gaijin (foreigner) slur is thrown at him about 100x/ep, he throws back a perfect understanding of Japanese language and culture that blends him in on every level that matters. I love his wholesome relationship with his coworkers, who respect him as a person and writer. One of them even admits that Jake can write better than him, a native. I love the supervisor Jake has who takes him seriously, ignoring the fact that he's white, and just views him through the lens of dedication to his work. I love that fact that Jake does take his writing seriously, and that his motivation in journalism is exposing the truth in stories that matter. This is a challenging enough conviction in America, where papers only care about what's population and sensational. I imagine it's far harder in Japan, with their own cultural biases. 

It's a very fascinating story to watch and I love that fact that it's base (however loosely) on a real person. I can't wait to see how much of Jake's story Tokyo Vice ends up depicting.