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Move over, Jake and Katagiri: I think I’ve cracked the case. Yes, Shinzo Tozawa traveled to Minnesota for an illegal liver transport. Yes, he required help getting around his travel ban and into the country. Yes, the US Embassy’s FBI liaison Lynn Oberfeld (Geraldine Hughes) is involved, and is trying to cover it up. And yes, Oberfeld was bribed to make this happen.
But she wasn’t bribed the way Jake Adelstein believes she was bribed. This wasn’t a case of Tozawa handing a doctor a $250K watch to keep him quiet. Consider if you will the FBI’s sudden success with rolling up yakuza in America, a success achieved without any help from Japanese law enforcement. (Jake points out they likely wouldn’t have helped even if the Americans had asked.) Where are they getting this killer new intel, then?
From Boss Tozawa, of course. Think about it. The entire season has been about Tozawa-gun’s consolidation of power over the Tokyo yakuza groups. Giving up territory to Chihara-kai as a pretext for waging war to get it back later on. Taking advantage of Katagiri’s successes to further strengthen their hand as other groups get arrested and shut down. Killing his nominal boss to take over the entire Kansai-based syndicate. Exercising control of the Meichi through his pet editor, Baku. In this very episode of Tokyo Vice, Tozawa successfully blackmails the man who stands to become the next Prime Minister of Japan, fitting this entire economic powerhouse of a country snugly in Tozawa’s pocket.
And even this has the secondary effect of weakening the power of Tozawa’s wife and frenemy Kazuko. Her rich family funded his rise to the top, and through them she continues to enjoy considerable, even hostile, independence from the wishes of her otherwise dictatorial husband. Even when she’s cleaning up his messes — like how his mistress Misaki has been seeing the same gaijin reporter driving Tozawa-san crazy — she withholds vital information from him so she can gain vital information from her. Now this canny operator finds herself superseded. With political connections as powerful as the goddamn Prime Minister, her days of big-dogging her husband appear to be over.
So with all that in mind, what’s one more tricky, ethically dubious maneuver? All Tozawa needs to do to kill two birds with one stone — fixing his liver and fixing his enemies — is to cough up some information on some guys he wants out of the way anyway? It’s a no-brainder.
At least, so it seems. I don’t know what kind of prohibitions yakuza culture has about talking to the cops, since the relationship between the yakuza and the cops is so different between that of, say, the mafia and the cops or the cartels and the cops. Those organizations can enjoy relationships with the police, but it’s usually via open graft or intimidation, not the policy of détente the yakuza and the Tokyo PD had going before Katagiri, Nagata, and Tozawa all pitched in to screw it up. And they certainly don’t want you providing them actionable information on anyone, since they very much count as “anyone.”
By colluding with American intelligence to send his rivals to American prison, Tozawa may have gone too far. This Whitey Bulger/The Departed routine could spell the end for him if word ever gets out. And thank goodness we have a character who specializes in doing that very thing.
Ater Tozawa’s strikingly handsome right-hand man Yabuki (Kazuya Tanabe) threatens to kill the entire Adelstein family if Jake continues his work, Jake is encouraged by his friend Katagiri to go “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” mode anyway. Letting the cat out of the bag before Tozawa has him killed anyway is his only insurance, Katagiri argues. But time is running out and the obstacles are stacking up. Nagata has been transferred because her crackdown was too successful. The incoming Prime Minister works for Tozawa. The info about Jake and Misaki is just parked there in Mrs. Tozawa’s noggin, who can break it out on any given rainy day if she feels she needs to. Katagiri’s family has been reduced to hiding out in a hotel. Jake Adelstein’s dad may be the only person in the world with a sense of humor about just how dire things have gotten.
Meanwhile, reformed couple Samantha and Sato have some pretty intense criminal misadventures of their own. Sam tracks down Akira (Tomohisa Yamashita), the club host who stole all her money and thus got her friend Polina killed by landing her deep in debt. Despite the successful front he puts on in his newfound career as a TV personality, he’s actually cash-poor, wearing designer-donated clothes in a practically barren apartment. Sam doesn’t get her money back, though she does enjoy beating the shit out of him.
As for Sato, things with Hayama finally come to a head. After telling Sam he’s no longer in Chihara-kai, he heads to their bathhouse to rescue his kid brother Kaito from service to Hayama, who will almost certainly get him killed just to stick it to Sato. I don’t care how nude they happen to be: Waltzing into a room filled with two dozen hostile yakuza soldiers and a lot of hard tiled surfaces seems like a huge mistake.
But neither we in the audience nor Hayama in that bathhouse were counting on Gen, Sato’s one-time enemy turned protégé. When Gen complains to his old boss that Hayama is no good for Chihara-kai, it just sounds like two buddies venting. But though we don’t see it happen, Gen clearly communicates something else to Sato: The entire gang is willing to stand down and let Sato take Hayama out, thus honoring Boss Ishida’s secret wish that Sato take over Chihara-kai after he was gone.
Which is exactly what happens. In a bath fight reminiscent of Eastern Promises, albeit with way fewer visible dicks, Sato and Hayama go at it. With a little help from Gen, Sato wins, and the entirety of Chihara-kai helps him hold Hayama’s head underwater till he stops breathing. So Sato returns home to his mother’s to return Kaito and patch things up (though he warns them he can’t stay in touch with them lest they become targets), then returns home to Sam to settle in for the night. Neither tells the other what happened to them that day. I don’t think that bodes well.
I do think this episode bodes well, however, for the final act of the season. It’s not just that I’m patting myself on the back for (I think) cracking the case. It’s also just exciting to see both Tozawa and Sato achieve maximum power levels at the same time. Conflict there seems inevitable, and inevitably exciting.
But as driving as Tokyo Vice’s plot can be, it’s the look and atmosphere that keeps me coming back excited week after week. Carefully composed and illuminated nighttime street scenes. Vistas of the city seen through windows behind our characters, or our characters seen through a window from somewhere high in the sky above the city. Needlessly gorgeous interior shots. Seriously, if you look at my notes on the gifs that illustrate this review, the adjectives are all effusive: “Stunning elevator shot,” “really cool hotel hallway shot,” “incredible street scene with the green phone.” Even in a show this good-looking, director Eva Sørhaug and DP Corey Walter do memorable work here.
Actors, of course, can contribute to the look and the atmosphere of a show as much as anyone. All these handsome men in tailored suits. Ansel Elgort painstakingly lighting and smoking a cigarette as Jake guts his way through his meeting with Yabuki. Rachel Keller and Show Kasamatsu getting into bed at the end of a long day, looking exhausted and beautiful. The way actors look and move and sound is as much a part of the art of filmmaking as cinematography or editing, and in this case it’s all sumptuous stuff. This suits Tokyo Vice, the most sumptuous show on television right now, to a tee.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
