No./15 How to build a criminal underworld
The creator of TOKYO VICE on crafting a deadly metropolis
Ansel Elgort as Jake Adelstein
Ken Watanabe (third from right) plays an organised-crime detective
Alamy
Criminal Sato (Shô Kasamatsu) with hostess Samantha Porter (Rachel Keller)
Vice cop Jim Miyamoto (Hideaki Itô) and Adelstein hit the town.
FEW SHOWRUNNERS CAN say that their series began with a threat from the yakuza. At first, Tokyo Vice creator J.T. Rogers wrote off the elusive text messages as a case of mistaken identity, until childhood friend Jake Adelstein, a journalist working in Japan, gave him a call. “He sombrely asked, ‘Have you been getting these threats in Japanese? Because I found out a secret about one of the worst gangsters in Tokyo and now he’s threatening the people I care about.’”