Gangs, Crime, Corrupt Police: When Is the Action of ‘Tokyo Vice’ Set?

HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice has thrilled audiences by taking them into the dark underbelly of Tokyo’s organized crime. The series is set during a period when yakuza ran the streets of Japan’s capital city and beyond, but their time at the top is coming to an end. So when does all this take place? When is Tokyo Vice actually set?

Based on the novel Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by journalist Jake Adelstein and adapted for television by J. T. Rogers, the series follows Jake as he delves deep into his work, perhaps too deep. Though some major elements of the series come from Adelstein’s novel, much of the television series has been dramatized to add further story plots, characters, and twists and turns.

In real life, Adelstein started working for the Japanese paper Yomiuri Shimbun in 1993 as the first non-Japanese staff writer but it wasn’t until 1999 that he was assigned to work in Kabukicho, Tokyo’s notorious “entertainment” district where you’d want to be on your toes even today if heading there at night. It’s here that the series starts, though the show messes around with the timeline, dropping Ansel Elgort’s Jake straight into 1999 as a new, fresh-faced reporter.

Elgort plays Jake as a young naive journalist with a desperate need to prove himself while reporting on the police beat. Elgort plays opposite Ken Watanabe’s Detective Katagiri, a hardened cop who deals directly with the yakuza in many instances to keep the fragile peace. At this time, the yakuza were so powerful that in many cases law enforcement could not touch them, not unless they really messed up.

The series covers a period where the yakuza’s power has begun to wane, and the police and various authorities are beginning to crack down on the gangs that run the streets. This, of course, causes friction as the yakuza struggle to cooperate as territorial disputes occur. The whole struggle makes for gripping viewing especially when we see phenomenal performances from the likes of Ayumi Tanada and Shun Sugata as yakuza leaders Tozawa and Ishida respectively.

Today, yakuza in Japan still exists. They own and operate companies legitimate and otherwise and they are still a group you would not want to get on the wrong side of. If you are interested in Tokyo Vice and the world of Japan’s organized crime, then you can check out the spiritual sequel released by Adelstein just before the second season dropped, The Last Yakuza: Life and Death in the Japanese Underworld.

(featured image: HBO Max)