Tokyo Vice Recap: Houses Burning Fast

Jake Adelstein is out cold in a pile of bedding and luggage when Detective Katagiri and Superintendent Nagata knock on his door. No rest for this hot-shot gaijin reporter at the center of an escalating war between the police and the yakuza. Time is of the essence, and Jake’s back early from home with a story that could take down Tozawa for good.

Tozawa’s secret trip to Minnesota for a liver transplant presents new possibilities for extradition. Among the U.S. crimes he could be charged with are immigration violations and possible manslaughter. “People wait for years for transplants,” Jake tells Katagiri and Nagata. “Tozawa cutting the line means someone else died.” But why pursue this avenue and not just pursue charges here? Katagiri and Nagata are hip to “corrupt elements” in the department, protecting Tozawa. If Jake prints the story, they’ll have better recourse to issue warrants and make arrests. But where do we start with acquiring proof of Tozawa’s trip and surgery?

“How about the FBI?” Nagata suggests.

And back at Meicho, it just so happens that Emi’s got an FBI-related story for Trendy to run down. Some yakuza were arrested by the FBI in Hawaii the day before. A major bust. “Might resonate with the violence happening locally,” Emi says just as Jake shows up with a smile on his face and his floppy hair slicked back in an “I’m sorry, but charismatically so” quaff. He apologizes to the crew, both individually and as a group, gives Tin Tin a bottle of maple syrup for his newfound baking hobby, Trendy the baseball fan a Kirby Puckett jersey, and for Emi, he’s saved the best for last: “An amazing story from Minnesota.” But Jake’s findings can wait. For now, it’s time to swallow some more pride and assist Trendy with the “other” FBI story.

Over lunchtime cocktails, Trendy and Jake interview Jason from the American embassy. It turns out that the arrests in Hawaii were part of an ongoing yakuza operation in the U.S. According to Jason, the extent to which yakuza were operating in the States was a bit of a surprise to everyone. After some prodding from Trendy (“dude, you’re background; you can answer”), Jason also confirms more arrests are coming. If they want to know more, like if the U.S. government would try to extradite a yakuza in Japan who committed crimes on U.S. soil, they’ll have to talk to his boss, Lynn Oberfeld (Geraldine Hughes).

Jake met Oberfeld at the Embassy party and already has a rapport with her, so he offers to take the interview off Trendy’s hands. Things are cordial enough in Oberfeld’s office. Jake gets the expected lowdown on the arrests in Hawaii; then he jumps in with a “couple of hypotheticals” for Oberfeld to chew on. If a Japanese national entered the U.S., committed a crime, then returned to Japan, would the FBI try to have him extradited? Depends on the crime, Oberfeld responds. What if they jumped the line to get an organ transplant ahead of American citizens? What if they were Shinzo Tozawa? “All right,” says Oberfeld. “Give me what you’ve got. I’ll call D.C. when they wake up.”

Later on, Jake gets a callback from Oberfeld with an immediately suspicious story. She puts on a big show about having to pull some strings and track down the FBI’s Minneapolis field office to get to the bottom of it, but she’s found out that Spenser Tanaka is a genuine American citizen: “Male, 61, recuperating at home in Georgia with a shiny new liver.”

Queue the classic Dr. Evil “Rrrriiiiiiiiight.” Jake jumps off the phone with Oberfeld and hops over to Emi’s desk. Time to deliver that “amazing story gift” from home right now. Behind closed doors, Jake gives Emi the details of the Minneapolis liver-transplant situation. Tozawa leaves Japan for months, and while he’s gone, a man matching his description (with the same initials) gets a liver transplant in Minneapolis. Months later, the surgeon who did the transplant is wearing the same Vacheron Constantin that Tozawa wears. Now, the FBI’s trying to tell him Spenser Tanaka is an American schoolteacher, which immediately clashes with the surgeon’s side of the story, that his patient didn’t speak any English and was covered in tattoos. Did Tozawa bribe Oberfeld to get into the U.S.?

“Chase it,” Emi says. “Tell no one.”

Elsewhere, Katagiri is running a re-enactment of the witness shootout from last week. The exercise — caught very much from Katagiri’s POV, deftly cutting between the re-enactment in an airport hangar and Katagiri’s memory of the actual incident — proves more than effective. Katagiri figures out that Detective Funaki saw the oncoming shooter and ducked well before any shots were fired, without alerting anyone else in the vehicle. They’ve found the mole, and it’s one of the only people Katagiri still trusted in the department.

Every promising new lead is another roadblock waiting to materialize in this currently cruel-as-hell universe. The dirty hands at the levers of power in every institution are starting to make some big moves, from the FBI to Tokyo’s own police force. When Katagiri returns to the police station to report his findings, he finds that Nagata has been swiftly and unceremoniously replaced by an obvious “company man.” Katagiri protests to the assistant commissioner, but he’s just as curt with Katagiri as he was with Nagata. “Your colleague can’t start a war with the yakuza and not expect consequences,” he tells Katagiri coldly from behind his desk. “You know how we do things here. Don’t make me reassign you as well.”

A chaotic opportunity becomes a dead end for Samantha, too. Not that I don’t love the little exchange where Samantha gets Akira’s address from his former Mama-san. Sam appeals to their shared sense of financial aggrievement, gets that pen moving down real quick, and she’s gone the second she has the address in her hand. I’m also a big fan of Sam in gun-toting, biker-jacket-clad vigilante mode. It’s too bad Akira’s whole lavish lifestyle, as presented on TV, is just that: presentation. Samantha enlists an unwitting Erika to pose as a fan at Akira’s door, then busts in behind her and beats Akira’s ass for the money he took “from the yield of her labor” last season. When it’s clear this guy doesn’t actually have a penny to his name, she beats him harder. It’s a desperate shout into the void of another well run dry.

Thankfully it’s not all failed retribution attempts this week. In fact, it’s almost hard to imagine a season-two wrap-up down the line that’ll be more satisfying than watching all of Chiharakai drown their usurping dark oyabun in a bathhouse tub.

“This is not what Ishida Oyabun wanted,” Gen tells Sato earlier that day. “He knew Hayama wasn’t fit to be oyabun. But who would’ve guessed the house would burn so fast?” That seems to seal the deal for Sato. Our boy’s been the reluctant Jon Snow–ass ascendant to the throne this whole season, and now he sees the inevitable and immediate path of retribution only he can fulfill. When he shows up at the bathhouse to retrieve his brother, you get the sense he already knows it’s either him or Hayama leaving in a body bag. As soon as the rest of Chihara-kai hears Kaito divulge Hayama’s killing of Ota in Nagano, they back off of Sato. The real dishonor of their house is literally nude before them, and he’s destroyed at the hands of the entire gumi.

“My brother is safe,” says Sato at the end of the night, curled up next to Samantha in her apartment (the final form of “tell me about your day, honey” on Tokyo Vice). That’s not all that’s happened, but that’s the true mission-accomplished portion. And to do it he had to become the Oyabun of Chihara-kai. He wins back his mother’s respect and adoration when he returns Kaito home in one piece, but he’s also already sacrificed a return to the family heart for himself.

Did y’all feel that cosmic pinprick of déjà vu when Jake and Katagiri showed up for the meeting with Yabuki? If so, it’s because we finally came back around to that scene that opened up season one, right before we cut to “Tokyo — 1999, Two Years Earlier,” and the story kicked off in earnest. “We know what you are investigating,” says Yabuki. “We want you to stop. Walk away; it will be like it never happened. Publish it? There’s nowhere you can hide.” And before they deal with Jake, they’ll “visit” his family. Yabuki lights Jake’s cigarette while he “considers the offer.” They’ve got him dead to rights. He’ll respectfully back off. That’s what he says in the meeting anyway. But as soon as he and Katagiri are in the elevator, Katagiri’s got another edict to lay down. Now is the time to strike.

“Publish what you find,” he says. “Then there will be nowhere for him to hide.” But what about Jake’s family? “Other people are relying on you,” Katagiri replies; his own family, dropped off at a hotel somewhere to hide now that all institutional support is null and void, is surely at the forefront of his mind. “You are the way this ends. Swallow your fear and write fast.”

Later on, Jake calls home from a payphone outside his apartment and gets a more tender, loving parent’s version of the same advice from his dad. This seems to strengthen Jake’s resolve until he catches the news that Tozawa’s pocket politician, Jotaro Shigematsu, has been appointed successor to the prime minister. “Fuck,” Jake says in shock. “No.” Over at Meicho, Emi says something much more articulate as she watches the same news broadcast: “[Tozawa] holds the strings now.”

Off the Record

• But does Shinzo Tozawa really hold the strings? ’Cause from my seat, it’s looking more like Kazuko Tozawa is the real oyabun around here. “He has achieved a kind of greatness,” she tells Misaki in their secret meeting where you realize Shinzo is too blinded by boyish hubris to know shit about Misaki and Jake. But Kazuko sees the whole damn game board at all times. “But even great men require their business to be managed for them.” Quietly outraged over her patriarchal peacock husband’s overzealous interruption of her meeting with Shigematsu (making it known he wants to own the levers of Justice in the government, not Finance), she tells him as much in no uncertain terms. “You are like a little boy,” she tells him. “Hoping to avoid punishment but too foolish to understand how. Power in this country lies with those who control the markets.” But nothing’s stopping Tozawa from living his “I am the new LAW” fantasy. Numbers are boring, dude. But as the Tozawa’s watch the news of Shigematsu’s assent to the prime minister, it’s clear the true cogs of power are starting to turn in Kazuko’s mind.