'Tokyo Vice' revisits a violent underworld

These days there are few visible signs of the yakuza in Kabukicho, the storied entertainment and red-light district in the heart of Tokyo. Aggressive laws have weakened Japan's organized crime syndicates and chased their aging, declining memberships into the shadows.

But not so long ago, the yakuza controlled the area, among others, and it wasn't shy about it.

"They were in your face," Jake Adelstein said, sitting in a jazz club across the street from what was Kabukicho's neon maze. He met sources and observed yakuza activity there back when he was covering crime for the Yomiuri Shimbun, from 1993 to 2005, as the first non-Japanese reporter to work at what is still the world's largest newspaper.

"I'd come here, an overt foreigner, read my English-language newspaper and eavesdrop," he said. "But today the yakuza are history in many ways."

This history gets a new airing in "Tokyo Vice," a new HBO Max thriller premiering Thursday. Based on Adelstein's memoir of the same name, the eight-episode series tells the story of a young American reporter at a Yomiuri-like paper in 1999 as he uncovers ties between the police, politicians and Tokyo's criminal underworld while facing cultural clashes, societal hierarchies and the challenges of forging his own path.

The pilot episode was directed by acclaimed crime filmmaker Michael Mann and Alan Poul, who is also an executive producer. Playwright J.T. Rogers, a childhood friend of Adelstein's, is the showrunner, and a lightly fictionalized version of Adelstein is played by Ansel Elgort. Ken Watanabe stars as Hiroto Katagiri, a senior detective who becomes a father figure to the budding reporter.

While it's not rare for TV productions to have complicated journeys, "Tokyo Vice" has traveled a particularly circuitous route. Challenges included an eight-month pandemic shutdown, along with bureaucratic red tape.

Adelstein received death threats after the article was published, during a time when gangsters were more tolerated — and even celebrated — by Japanese society.

"Sure, the yakuza still exists and maintains powerful connections," said the 53-year-old Adelstein. "But their ability to be a powerful force and their willingness to use violence has drastically diminished. Their membership ranks have shrunk from about 80,000 a decade ago to about 10,000 today. Most are in their 50s now, like me."

It has become trite to assert that a setting functions as "another character" in a series or film. But that would be a fair assessment of "Tokyo Vice," and the creators strove to credibly capture a side of the city that has rarely been seen on American screens.