TOKYO VICE

LOOKING FOR THE BAD GUYS

TOKYO VICE IS THE SERIES ADAPTATION OF THE 2009 MEMOIR BY AMERICAN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST JAKE ADELSTEIN. AS THE FIRST NON-JAPANESE REPORTER TO WORK FOR YOMIURI SHIMBUN, ONE OF JAPAN’S LARGEST NEWSPAPERS, ADELSTEIN WORKED INSIDE THE TOKYO POLICE VICE SQUAD, HIS MISSION: TO EXPOSE CORRUPTION ACROSS THE CITY. JULIAN NEWBY REPORTS

Ansel Elgort walks through the neon-lit Tokyo night. Photo: HBO Max/Endeavor Content/WOWOW

THE TITLE, Tokyo Vice (2022-), off ers a hint as to what viewers might expect from this brand new HBO Max series.

Back in 1984 a new style of detective series arrived on our screens. Michael Mann’s Miami Vice celebrated 1980s music, 1980s fashion and perfectly encapsulated the danger and the glamour of the US city in which it was set.

Now, be prepared for this new series to do exactly the same: Michael Mann is back, ready to do for Tokyo what he did for Miami.

A co-production with HBO Max, Endeavor Content and Japanese Broadcaster WOWOW, Tokyo Vice is inspired by US journalist Jake Adelstein’s book of the same name, his real-life record of his time spent embedded with the Tokyo police, investigating the city’s underworld. The series is created and written by playwright J T Rogers, a friend of Adelstein, who also serves as executive producer and showrunner. Michael Mann, also executive producer, directed the show’s pilot, setting the tone for the series that shot almost entirely on location in Japan.

In Tokyo Vice, Ansel Elgort stars as Adelstein, the fi rst non-Japanese reporter to work for a major publication in Japan. The series begins with the fatal stabbing of a man in Shinjuku City, known for its skyscrapers, buzzing clubs, karaoke rooms, hotel bars and restaurants.

Adelstein’s investigation into the murder leads him deeper into a world that looks respectable and enterprising by day, full of neon-lit fun by night, but which he soon discovers is not all that it seems.

Elgort stars alongside Japanese movie star Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai/2003). Watanabe plays Hiroto Katagiri, a detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, who handles negotiations with the Yakuza, members of international organised crime syndicates that have their roots in Japan — mainly in Tokyo. A family man devoted to his work, he befriends Adelstein and guides him through the city’s underworld. A mentor to the young reporter, he also becomes a father-fi gure and protector.

As showrunner for the series, Rogers was a natural fi t. “Jake Adelstein has been my friend since childhood and I got pulled into the story because, when his nearest and dearest were being threatened by Japanese mobsters on the phone, to get at Jake, I was the person they came to,”

Rachel Keller as Jake’s friend Samantha, speeding through the streets of Tokyo. Photo: HBO Max/ Endeavour Content/WOWOW MICHAEL WANTED TO SHOOT DEEP DOWN, IN THE ‘BASEMENT’ OF TOKYO. IT REALLY GIVES YOU THAT

UNDERWORLD FEELING KEN WATANABE

he says. “And you’re always looking for a story and a story about gangsters, about loyalty, about struggling to fi nd the truth as a journalist, about what it means to be a detective and coming at it from late 1990s Tokyo — that seems insane enough to be impossible to do. So you’re drawn to it. And if you could pull it off , we could make something that hadn’t been seen before.”

And if Rogers was the right guy to write the series, he believes Mann was the only choice as executive producer for the series and director of the pilot. “That fi rst episode is so important in setting up the visual template for the world of the show. You know, having Michael’s sign-on, to come in and do that, was tremendous, because he’s justly lionised for [many] reasons. He built the visual infrastructure for the show, which we could then build on and continue after he went. It was great to have him for sure.”

“As a director, he wants everything to be so rooted in reality. It’s almost comical how obsessive he is over all the little details and making sure that everything is real and everything is authentic,” Elgort says. “He has this giant stack of notes with him. He’s tape recording what everyone’s saying. He said to me, you’ve got to write it down immediately, or get a tape recorder. Otherwise, you’ll never remember exactly the way someone said something. And in a place like Japan, where you get a lot of ‘No’s’ and there are a lot of rules that kind of have to be followed and a lot of boundaries that you can’t cross, well Michael is the kind of guy who doesn’t take no for an answer. So he was just like, ‘What do you mean? What do you mean we can’t do that? Of course we can.’ That kind of attitude was very helpful for making the show as authentic as possible and shooting in the best locations — all that kind of stuff .” Elgort decided early in the process to take a method-acting approach to his role, immersing himself in Japanese culture — and taking on the task of learning Japanese, which Watanabe describes as “the most difficult language in the world”. And he says that COVID actually helped this total immersion process. Six days into the production, the pandemic hit and fi lming of the pilot shut down as lockdown measures were put in place. “It was probably how Jake felt in the 1990s,” Elgort says. Because now, tourism there is crazy and I feel like the culture in that way has become more westernised — slowly, but surely. But in the 1990s it was more strictly Japanese and with COVID it was like turning back the clock, because I really did feel like, ‘Wow, I’m one of the only guys around here who’s not really someone who belongs in Tokyo.’”

Lockdown also helped with Elgort’s Japanese. “We got shut down and so we had a whole other prep period — two or three months, so I started taking Japanese classes again, for the pilot and the following episodes. Michael Mann said, ‘Great, we get to do a whole prep period over here. You can use that time to get better in Japanese’.”

Location shooting is at the heart of everything that Mann does. “I’m very inspired by locations. I love location shooting,” he says. “I like going to real places and immersing myself into a culture and doing research ahead of time — and then making that come alive for audiences in ways that inspired me when I was involving myself in it to begin with.”

However, it is well known among fi lmmakers — local and international — that Japan, and particularly Tokyo, can be a diffi cult place in which to fi lm. It’s an issue that the Japanese authorities are working on, but it’s a fact. And if you focus specifi cally on Tokyo, there are four key reasons for this: it’s crowded — a symptom of its success as a city; rules and regulations are stringent and so historically, permitting has been problematic; few people outside of Japan speak Japanese; and until now, there have been few fi nancial incentives in place there.

For Mann, “probably the biggest challenge is tranquility. There is such a wonderful respect, a cultural respect for tranquillity. But when you’re doing a fi lm production, tranquillity sometimes is not allowed. You need to get answers. And sometimes getting answers is very diffi cult,” he says. “And the kind of answers that serve us are a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’. The No’s are very valuable, because then you can move on to the next alternative. It was it was difficult sometimes to get to get answers on locations.”

Ansel Elgort as Jake Adelstein and Ken Watanabe as Hiroto Katagiri, in Tokyo Vice. Photo: HBO Max/Endeavor Content/WOWOW

I’M VERY INSPIRED BY LOCATIONS.

I LOVE LOCATION SHOOTING

MICHAEL MANN

But the various problems Mann and his team came up against did not put him off, principally because “the locations that present themselves are spectacular”. “Michael Mann wanted and needed to shoot in Tokyo,” Watanabe says. “Japanese critics sometimes say that foreign filmmakers only want to shoot Tokyo from above, like from the sky or something. But Michael wanted to shoot deep down, in the ‘basement’ of Tokyo. It really gives you that underworld feeling.”

Other cities were considered for Tokyo Vice, but Mann wanted the real thing. And he is quick to speak of the positives. “There are tremendous benefits to shooting in Japan,” he says. “The art department, the spirit and the energy and the commitment to the crews — to perfection — it’s fantastic.” At one time there were only 11 Americans on the team. The rest of the crew was Japanese, and “they were quite terrifc. The base expectation that crew members have for themselves is perfection. So that is very much a plus.”

Working with Japanese on-screen talent was another plus. “The work of the actors was extraordinary. And sometimes it was a little strange, because when you’re casting, or you’re directing, it takes you some time to make that connection where you’re really having an interior dialogue between yourself and the actor.” But working with the Japanese actors on Tokyo Vice, was “very easy” and he found himself working with “pure artistic talent. It was really exciting.”

Meanwhile, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Convention & Visitors Bureau are engaged in the business of creating a more film-friendly approach, initially by ofering grants for location scouting and the production of movies and TV dramas to be released overseas in fscal year 2022-2023. Around 10 projects will be selected this year for the scouting incentive, in which the Tokyo Film Commission is offering up to 50% of travel, accommodation and co-ordination, up to a maximum of JPY1m ($8,000).

And around three projects will also be selected for the filming incentives programme, in which the Commission will cover up to 50% of production expenses for shooting in Tokyo, to a maximum of JPY5m. Only Japanese companies can apply for this incentive, so overseas productions will be required to team with a Japanese partner to be eligible.

The Commission has also set up The Tokyo Location Box (TLB), which was established in April, 2001 as part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The TLB provides services “to ensure a safe and trouble-free filming experience in Tokyo with the co-operation of local governments, private companies, local communities, the TV/flm industry and its related industries”, its mission to support flmmakers “in making an impactful flm which conveys Tokyo as a fascinating place to viewers at home and abroad”.

Services on ofer from the TLB include help with authorisation procedures, for example with police and fre services; providing liaison between filmmakers and the owners or managers of locations and remaining on set during flming to help solve any problems that may arise; ofering general advice on flming in the city; and promoting flms and series through the Tokyo Film Commission website and promotional events.

For the Commission’s Mayu Sugaya, what’s important is that productions show an authentic version of Tokyo, as she feels that some foreign productions present “a stereotypical representation of Japan and the Japanese. But with Michael Mann, I didn’t get that feeling at all.”

Rinko Kikuchi as Eimi in Tokyo Vice. Photo: HBO Max/Endeavor Content/WOWOW