It was a series for the least expected. “It had been almost a decade since an adaptation of Tokyo Vice was in preparation,” noticed the Japan Times last April. The eponymous book by American journalist Jake Adelstein on his experience with the yakuza (available in French from Editions Points) had just been put on the screen by the HBO Max platform in the United States.
“First envisaged as a feature film with Daniel Radcliffe, [l’histoire] has been revamped as an eight-episode series,” explained the English-speaking Japanese daily. It will be broadcast on Canal+ from September 15. Its first episode was directed by Michael Mann (Heat, The Sixth Sense)who is also the ensemble’s co-executive producer.
This dive into the ruthless world of the Japanese underworld is “based on a true story”, the trailer tells us. “Based on the Memoirs of Jake Adelstein, the series […] tells the story of a young American journalist who works in a newspaper resembling the Yomiuri Shimbun”, describe The New York Times. Originally from Missouri, Adelstein was the first Westerner to be hired by this widely circulated daily. It was in 1993, five years after his arrival in Japan. He was then only 24 years old.
The finger in the gear
Initially responsible for covering up theft, the young man gradually rubs shoulders with the workings of organized crime. He finally puts his finger in the gears by discovering that the leader of a large yakuza clan, Tadamasa Goto, had sold his followers to the FBI in exchange for a liver transplant in the United States. At least that’s what he says in his Memoirs.
The action of the series takes place in 1999, at a time when the reporter “discovers the ties forged between the police, politicians and the underworld of Tokyo, while doing