Crime and the Criminal #8: Tokyo Vice’s Neon Noir
A journalist's journey into Japan's criminal underbelly
Warning: spoilers ahead
Back in the 1990s, I was investigating a drug ring at the notorious New York nightclub, Limelight. The man who ran the ring was a mob-connected techno promoter named Michael Caruso, better known as Lord Michael. Caruso was a techno music pioneer. He was also one of New York clubland’s biggest drug dealers.
The stories I wrote for the Village Voice upset him so much that he begged me not to write any more articles. When that didn’t work, his goons left death threats on my voicemail. A black SUV with tinted windows would follow me in the streets. Once, I was leaving the Tunnel nightclub on the West Side of Manhattan. I spotted the SUV parked across the street. I suspected Caruso’s goons intended to kidnap me, so I ran to a nearby housing project and lost them.
Not long after, the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested Caruso, who cut a deal to avoid prison by ratting out Limelight owner Peter Gatien. Caruso left the rave scene and later turned up as a manager for the Wu-Tang Clan.
Flash forward a decade, and I’d moved to Miami Beach. One night, my partner returned from a party and asked me if I knew someone called Robert Gordon.
“Yeah, I know him. He’s one of the motherfuckers who tried to kidnap me. He was Lord Michael’s right-hand man.”
“Well, he moved to Miami Beach, and he wants to meet you.”
Fearing I was being set up, I met him in a public place, the rooftop pool at the Gansevoort Hotel. Gordon promoted fetish parties for a living after leaving behind his criminal career. He was using the name Robert Frost, unaware that Robert Frost was a famous poet.
Gordon told me he and Lord Michael intended to kill me. But Mafia higher-ups nixed the idea. Whacking a journalist was bad for business. So they came up with another plan: snatch me from the street, drive me back to Staten Island, and then cut off my thumb to prevent me from writing any more stories.
I pointed out to Gordon I had ten fingers, so chopping off my thumb would not stop me from writing. I also said his plan sounded like a scene from the movie The Pope of Greenwich Village. In the movie, Paulie, played by Eric Roberts, convinces his cousin Charlie, played by Mickey Rourke, to steal a large amount of money from a safe. It turns out the money belongs to the local Mafia boss who sends his henchmen to punish Paulie. In the movie’s most memorable scene, Paulie stumbles into Charlie’s apartment clutching his bloody hand and says: “Charlie, they took my thumb.”
“Yeah, that’s where we got the idea from,” Gordon replied.
All of which is a roundabout way of introducing HBO Max's gripping and gorgeous-looking neon noir crime show, Tokyo Vice, starring Ansel Elgort and loosely based on the true story of American journalist Jake Adelstein’s experiences as a crime reporter in Tokyo in the late 1990s.
As an expat Brit who covered crime in America, I was drawn to the story of Adelstein, who moved to Tokyo, got a job as the only American at a prestigious newspaper, and befriended a local police detective who helped him probe the dangerous world of the yakuza, the Japanese version of the Mafia.
The show begins with Adelstein and the detective, Hiroto Katagiri (the famous Japanese actor, Ken Watanabe), strapping on bullet-proof vests to prepare for a meeting with yakuza bosses.
Adelstein asks Katagiri will the vests stop a bullet. “They will not shoot you in a public place,” says Katagiri. “These are for knives.”
During the meeting in a private room of a restaurant, a stone-faced gangster warns Adelstein: “We know what you’re investigating. Walk away. It will be like it never happened. Publish it? There’s nowhere you can hide.”
The narrative then rewinds to 1999. Adelstein gets a job as a crime reporter at Japan’s best-selling newspaper, the fictional Meicho Shimbun. He works in a racist newsroom where foreigners are called by the pejorative “gaijin.” Adelstein finds out an editor called him “half-ape, half-Jew” behind his back. He responds, “I’m a full Jew.”
But it’s not just Japanese racism that Adelstein has to navigate, it’s also Japanese conformity and deference to authority.
Eager to make a name for himself, the overconfident Adelstein makes a serious mistake when covering a stabbing incident. The police find a dead man on a rooftop with a large blade protruding from his chest. Adelstein does some digging and finds out the man owed money to loan sharks. Figuring the victim didn’t stab himself, he writes up the story as a murder. But his superiors chastise him for referring to the incident as a murder without getting the police’s permission.
“You will follow the rules and write what you’re told to write like everyone else,” his editor tells him. “Or you will be gone.”
Later, Adelstein meets a sleazy cop in a nightclub who explains: “There is no murder in Japan. Unless you have a witness, it’s not murder.”
Adelstein meets veteran detective Katagiri. The pair forge an unlikely bond. It frustrates Adelstein that all his editors want him to do is rewrite police press releases. Katagiri is just as frustrated. As he explains to Adelstein, the yakuza has become so entrenched in Japanese society, it’s impossible to eradicate, so instead of arresting gangsters, his actual job is to maintain calm between rival yakuza families.
When the calm is threatened after a gangster from the Tozawa clan gang stabs a member of the rival Chihara-kai clan and threatens to shoot a bar owner, Katagiri allows Adelstein to accompany him on a raid of the Tozawa headquarters. There, the Tozawa family apologizes for the incident and hands over three low-level gangsters to the police as a peace offering.
At the end of episode three, members of the Chihara-kai clan kidnap Adelstein. But rather than chopping off his thumb, the head of the family wants Adelstein’s help. Someone has been spreading the rumor he’s a police informant. He wants Adelstein to use his police contacts to find out who it is.
Adelstein is driven home by a family underling, who is a Backstreet Boys fan. While “I Want It That Way” blares out of the car stereo, the two engage in a spirited discussion about the song’s meaning and the relative merits of Backstreet Boys versus NSYNC.
I don’t want to give away too much, but Adelstein eventually discovers a rat in the top ranks of the yakuza, a revelation that puts his life in danger.
I know how that feels.
Tokyo Vice is currently streaming on HBO Max in America. BBC will air the show later this year.