If the final episode of season two is the last of “Tokyo Vice,” the MAX series saw several storylines come to a fitting conclusion. Speaking to creator J.T. Rogers and executive producer (and director) Alan Poul, however, it’s clear the brains behind the period thriller believe there are still more stories to tell. But first, a major spoiler warning if you haven’t watched episode 10, “Endgame,” yet. Because, well, that’s the point of this post-finale interview.
The season finale saw a number of changes in the status quo for our hero Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) and his pre-smartphone life in 1999 Tokyo. The big twist was Jake and detective Hiroto Katagiri (Ken Watanabe), providing their gangster buddy Akiro Sato (Show Kasamatsu) the goods to take down the yakuza boss all the other members of his yakuza clan have had just about enough of, Kazuko Tozawa (Ayumi Tanida). Why Tozawa agreed to their demand and whether his wife, Kazuko Tozawa (Makiko Watanabe), will be a power broker in a potential season three are subjects both Rogers and Poul explore in our conversation.
And then there are more unanswered questions. Is Katagiri, really retiring? Is Adelstein somehow in a worse place at work and in his love life than at the beginning of the season? And will Samantha Porter (Rachel Keller), return to Tokyo after getting a payout from Ms. Tozawa? (And could she really only get $60,000 U.S. for her intel?). Perhaps more importantly, the biggest question of all: does “Tokyo Vice” financier Fifth Season need MAX to renew it to justify a third go around? Or is there enough international love (the show is now a hit on Netflix Japan), to keep it going?
Those are just some of the topics Rogers and Poul touched on during our conversation earlier this week.
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The Playlist: Let’s start with some of the more intriguing aspects of the finale. Tozawa’s deal with the FBI. Was that inspired by real-life events?
J.T. Rogers: Yes, it’s fictionalized, but this series is a very, very heavily fictionalized version of the book. But my dear friend from high school’s life, in real life, he discovered this deal between a Tozawa and the fact that he was getting a liver in LA. But I moved things around for legal reasons as well as just I wanted to make it my series and filter it through me. And you just want to up the stakes. You say, “O.K., well, what if he was actually having a deal as part of this larger series of deals that the FBI were having with the Yakuza?” These things exist in FBIs all over the world because you need to. You need to get people to flip other people. So, the pleasure was sort of layering in how that revelation would be for the audience.
The Playlist: And the other aspect of it is where Tozawa is bribing the future Prime Minister by making campaign contributions. It’s a fictional name of the Prime Minister in the show, but is that public record?
J.T. Rogers: No, it’s totally fictional. No evidence of an actual Japanese politician being in the pocket of the worst Japanese gangster.
Alan Poul: That never happened as far as we know.
J.T. Rogers: Because there’s no corruption in our government, in our country. So there couldn’t be anywhere else, but no, it’s all fictionalized. That’s just the world of the show.
The Playlist: There is also his colleague at the paper, Maruyama, who is shocked to discover that their boss has destroyed a videotape, which could have incriminated Tozawa. Everyone is seemingly doing something unscrupulous. Is that the big lesson of the season? Trust no one, at least in this era of Japanese politics and media?
J.T. Rogers: No, I wouldn’t use the word lesson. because I don’t watch TV for a lesson, but the theme or the larger idea that hopefully you’re enjoying as you’re being pulled on by the story is when you must choose between two terrible options, which do you choose? And who are you after you’ve made that choice? So, as her boss says to her, “One day he will sit in my chair, I want to promote you. One day you’ll sit in my chair and you’ll have to make these difficult decisions. Tozawa was a terrible man, but if we kept that videotape and ran that story, no one in the Japanese government would speak to anyone in this newspaper for two years, and then we would’ve no access to the facts for our readers, and we couldn’t support democracy.” So that’s a complicated place.
The Playlist: Except now at the end of the season, Tozawa’s widow is, obviously, upset because she was the person who sent Jake the incriminating tape in the first place. If there is a third season, does he have a bigger enemy in her now than he ever did in Tozawa himself?
J.T. Rogers: If there’s a third season, and we’d love to make one, and I have a very clearly mapped out, you’ll find out.
Alan Poul: At that moment, her animus towards Jake is that all of this stuff didn’t have to happen if you could have only protected the tape. So, it’s more like slapping a child.
J.T. Rogers: Yeah, “I didn’t want to make my husband cut his throat. I might not be deeply in love with him, but I could have just checked him, and humiliated him, and made him become unpowerful. But you made me do this.”
Alan Poul: Yeah.
The Playlist: But despite Sato becoming a new leader in the Yakuza, she seems to be, at the end of the episode, the true power broker left. Is that a wrong assumption to have?
J.T. Rogers: I mean, all I’ll say was what the writer left [us] with, which was here is a [woman] of incredible power in the world of finance who, clearly, is able to maneuver and work her way among the darker forces that her husband represented. We’ll see what happens. Not just for us, but also for her. Again, I’m not saying this to give away things in season three, but it’s always like “If I’m in the head of these characters, what would happen next? What do they do?” And that’s a complicated place for a woman to be in. So that interests me.
Alan Poul: Also, I think from watching two seasons the other thing we’ve learned is don’t ever count Sato out.
The Playlist: Very true. And by the way, what an arc for him from being near death to now being at the top of the mountain. I mean, he’s just one of the leaders, right?
J.T. Rogers: He has taken over Yashida’s job, so he is the of the oyabun [boss] of the Chihara-kai.
Alan Poul: You’ve seen several times these meetings of the oyabuns. So there’s a certain number of gangs, and each one has one boss, the oyabun. And so Sato is now that.
J.T. Rogers: For an American context, he is one of the heads of the five families now.
The Playlist: I know you don’t want to talk about future seasons that much…
J.T. Rogers: I mean, I’d love to, but I don’t want to curse it. How’s that? [Laughs.]
The Playlist: No, no. I was going to say, the one thing about Tozawa’s initial arc in this series is it does reflect what happened in history. Many of the Yakuza did their best to transition into legitimate businesses and to get out of the mafia. Is that a storyline that you would continue in some way in future seasons? Or was it just something that worked in this context?
J.T. Rogers: All I would say, all I would say is that what intrigued me about this invented character [who] is a composite of actual people, actual leaders, and famous Japanese Yakuza, he’s completely fiction, created by me. I love the idea that he and Sato share something in common, which is they’re always thinking ahead of everybody else. The level of power they’re at during the seasons, even by the end, is very different. As in real life, this started to happen. Yakuza are trying to figure out what they could do to do some sort of Michael Corleone on “The Godfather Part II.” But he was really in reality and in our show on the cutting edge. That really hadn’t become mainstream yet. Where that might go into season three? Thought has been put into it but we’ll just have to see if we get to do it.
The Playlist: I am sorry for these specific questions, but I was just so curious. Samantha also has a moment with Tozawa’s widow, and gets 10 million yen for some lucrative intel. It turns out that’s just $60,000 USD. If I’m incorrect, does Samantha really have to pay someone off just $60,000?
J.T. Rogers: To pay someone off? What do you mean to pay someone off?
The Playlist: She needs the money, and we assume that there’s something in her past she has to deal with. It’s an assumption you could make.
J.T. Rogers: She doesn’t. We don’t know what the money is going to be used for. The person that had her business is, and more importantly, life and vice is dead. Everyone that she was beholden to is dead by the end of season two.
Alan Poul: Yeah, she’s lost her money. That was stolen from her. She’s lost the club. It’s been destroyed. Who knows what she’ll recoup in insurance? So she’s really broke. I mean, her enemies have kind of disappeared, but if she’s going to, as the true entrepreneur that she has become, if she’s going to have a fresh start, she needs seed money.
J.T. Rogers: And in our obsession with making this show authentic, I had a number of conversations with the real Jake Adelstein, with our Yakuza consultants. What is a realistic amount you could bargain in 2000 with a Yakuza boss? What could you, because of course, as Americans, you wanted to walk away with 2 million, 2 million sterling, and you’re like, man, that’s not going to happen. But I dunno, 60,000 bucks in 2000 is pretty good.
The Playlist: But if there’s a third season, Samantha would return?
J.T. Rogers: Love that you want to know, but I think it’s just not knowing is more fun. Listen, when I’m in your shoes and when I’m watching, I’m always like, I want to know. But really, it’s better when I don’t know. So, I just think the grownup showrunner thing for me to do is just say, “I’m not going to say anything.” [Laughs].
The Playlist: Got it. So, Towzawa is told by his peers to kill himself for honor, but he doesn’t necessarily seem like the most honorable member of the Yakuza. Was there any thought to having him try to run?
J.T. Rogers: We talked through this. Alan and I and the director, Josef Kubota Wladyka did such a great job. And if you knew how many drafts I did of the speech that she says to him. But what she says is, and I’m going to misquote myself, forgive me, because Alan and I even went through it. And what about this was, which is a more elegant version of, “You can take care of it, but we’re all going to take care of it, so we’re going to give you the respect to take yourself out. Otherwise, it’s going to get really ugly really fast.”
Alan Poul: It’s not an honorable death. She says, “I’ll tell our sons, you died an honorable death, but it’s basically either you off yourself now sparing us the trouble, or we’re going to off you.” So it isn’t, and also this is not because I think some people can be misled. This is not the Japanese ritual of suicide. That’s a ritual that first of all, he would never do and wouldn’t pass muster with Japanese audiences because people don’t do it. But that’s a disownment, and that’s generally from the Samurai era. What he’s being offered is the chance to cut his own throat – quick and easy.
The Playlist: In the context of all this, and I am sure I’ve asked you this before, but when you’re working on the show, whether it’s you directing Alan or writing scripts J.T., how often are you going to your Yakuza consultant and making sure that Japanese audiences will believe what’s happening on screen?
J.T. Rogers: All the time. All the time we do it really. Jake’s given me the blessing to totally fictionalize, but it’s rooted in the reality of his book. He’s a great consultant, his granular knowledge of stuff, but we have consultants on set and reachable when they’re on set for the newspaper culture for the Meicho or nightlife for the gangsters. But yeah, sometimes it’s larger questions. “Is it believable that a character to this?” And sometimes you’re on set and you’re like, “Hmm, that seems to be, I just want to make sure that that teacup is something that they would actually offer to someone.” I mean, it can get that granular because, as Alan always says, the audience can, even if they know nothing about Japan, they can feel that it’s authentic. And you have that experience as a viewer. I have that experience as a viewer and shows that the rules I don’t know about and go, I can feel that there is an actual mountain underneath this. It’s not just a little polar ice cap. There’s actually a mountain underneath. And that was our job. So the short answer is, yeah, all the time talking to people all the time.
The Playlist: And just out of curiosity, whether it is ex-members of the Yakuza or members of the press that Jake worked with or police that he knew, do they think the show’s authentic? Do they have positive reactions?
J.T. Rogers: I mean, someone always, this is going to be an outlier, of course, as there should be. But I’ve certainly been very overwhelmed and thrilled at the response. Reporters will call me and say, “Hey, I have a colleague who was working for the Wall Street Journal in 1999, Tokyo,” or their friend who worked for this Japanese newspaper who’s a Japanese reporter, and they’re like, “Holy cow. It’s like I’m watching my life. It’s unbelievable how authentic it is.”
Alan Poul: We put so much time and effort into making it authentic down to every last detail, but also authentic to the spirit of how these characters would behave in a Japanese context. And that was our mission. And if season one had not been received as well in Japan as it was in the U.S., we would’ve felt a thing. But that wasn’t the case. We were embraced in Japan. It made shooting season two much easier. And I’ve had so many of, not just our colleagues on the show, but other Japanese friends say, this is the best show set in Tokyo that I’ve ever seen.
J.T. Rogers: Yeah. I would spend an hour with Kazuko Kurosawa, our genius costume designer just talking about tie clips, An hour. Just literally. “O.K., so the tie clips. So, were they here? Were they there? Then where should we put the tie clips?” It’s that kind of granular detail that it’s fun and hopefully pays off.
The Playlist: One last question for you both. Obviously, it appears the show does well on Max, but you never know what’s considered a hit in the WBD universe and what isn’t. Is the show a big enough hit in Japan with your Japanese partner to ensure a third season happens?
Alan Poul: Well, the show is a hit in Japan, but our Japanese partner, Wowwow, has a very high reputation and standard, the most literate of the streaming and satellite networks, but a relatively small audience share. But what happened in Japan last summer was that they sold a second window to Netflix, Japan. And, when the show hit Netflix, it exploded in a big way because everybody in Japan has Netflix, but the international rights for the show are held by Fifth Season our wonderful producing partners. So, Max will make its decision based on Max’s own and WBD’s own data, because that’s the part that matters to them.
“Tokyo Vice” season two is now streaming on Max.
