Tokyo Vice Recap: Missouri Vice
We open on the St. Louis skyline, the impressive shape and shimmer of the Gateway Arch front and center. It’s hardly Tokyo, but it suggests a parallel urban-sprawl environment. Zoom out further, and we’ll be at a dull, steadily bustling airport terminal. Jake has just landed, and his sister, Jessica (Sarah Sawyer), is there with a corny sign in hand to pick him up. Soon they are out on the wide-open American highway, welcomed home by a cascade of garish billboards and getting real about Jessica’s depression for just a second — all a cursed precursor to a long-awaited (and dreaded) Adelstein reunion that has all the makings of an Ari Aster movie.
And the cringe cranks up to 11 the second Jake and Sarah roll up on their childhood home. Jake’s mom (Jessica Hecht) meets them at the front door with a lilting, put-upon mother’s rasp in her voice and a passive aggressive “didn’t think you’d show” with her hug hello. Jake’s dad (Danny Burstein) is hanging lights in the backyard for the big 60th-birthday bash when Jake walks up on him for another warm but awkward greeting. “I passed over the international dateline, so it’s kind of like going back in time,” Jake says in a feeble attempt to keep the mood light. “If only such a thing were possible,” his dad replies.
Things go on like this for the rest of the night. Jake puts on a good show for his folks, drawing a crowd with jokes about “subway groping clubs” and “yakuza mob bosses getting thrown out of their windows” in Tokyo — all the while fielding pointed responses like “you’ve been missed” and a not-so-impromptu job offer from one of Jake’s heroes, a senior editor at the St. Louis Dispatch.
“When you lose track of who you used to be, it’s harder to get home,” he advises Jake. But maybe the reporters who get away from home are happier that way, Jake retorts. “Maybe. Or maybe they just got lost.” What might otherwise be a helpful invitation to keep one foot at home, to remember your roots as grounding for the path forward, lands more like a prophecy, even as Jake goes through the motions of a good eldest-son speech to close out his dad’s big night. He emphasizes his dad’s huge heart, “big enough for everyone,” and quietly undercuts it with a whole thing about being taught to “work with your full heart.” The old everything I am is what you taught me to be, so there type of thing you end up half-telepathically broadcasting to your parent at some point in your 20s.
Later on, Jake and his dad share the last beer of the night by the fire, and they both talk around what’s really nagging at them. Dad comes on strong with talk of moving home and raising a family, but the American suburban plan for happiness isn’t really his chief concern. Jake asserts he is happy in Tokyo, and that’s when it comes out. “That’s the whole thing, son,” his dad says. “It’s over there. And we don’t know because we’re not a part of it.” Jake says he wants to change that, but is that something he’s capable of when so much of his life is about running from his family’s baggage? From the minute Jake landed on American soil, he’s been looking for confirmation that Sarah is fine, her depression is under control, and his parents are gliding happily into their golden years. And the more he’s confronted with the realities of his family’s life, the harder it is for him to make space for them, whether at home or a million miles away.
Back in Tokyo, Ishida’s funeral draws all the major friends and enemies of Chihara-kai out into the light. A couple of yakuza in the crowd act as our Greek chorus, giving us the lay of the land, such as it is: Ishida was cautious. He kept things on the table. Hayama, not so much. The arrangement is temporary until Old Man Tanaka chooses a new oyabun for Chihara-kai. Meanwhile, Tozawa’s numbers are growing. “I feel we may have to bow our heads,” one says. “Or we will end as Ishida did.”
From day one, Hayama has been an exceptionally obtrusive presence, but all his swag and blunder are completely dwarfed in the face of Tozawa, who shows up to the funeral like he’s the thundering sky itself, dishing out rain overhead. “Take your hand off me or I’ll tear out your throat.” Hayama’s knee-jerk reaction to Tozawa’s thinly veneered, cool-as-ice threat clearly demonstrates to everyone in attendance that Hayama is an angry little boy in a serious man’s strategic brawl.
“That bastard!” Hayama exclaims at dinner later on. “We’ll return the favor at his funeral. Sato, tell the men to get their weapons.” One last time, Sato tries in vain to calm Hayama down and get him to take the logical route of action. Wait to attack when they have proof of Tozawa being behind the hit. Otherwise, they’ll alienate the other gumis. Never one to pass up on an opportunity to twist the knife further, Hayama calls Sato a coward in front of everyone and demands Kaito, in particular, agree with him. Sato cedes to Hayama’s authority immediately, but it’s time to get Kaito out of his crosshairs.
Later on, Sato gets a moment alone with his brother. “I know you want to be part of something that matters,” he tells Kaito. That seems to be enough to get him to listen. Sato fills him in on the incident with Ota in Nagano. “What’s more, he lied to you,” Sato says. “I was never Tozawa’s next target. Hayama said that to get you to attack him.” Kaito has turned to a surrogate brother who has no concern for his life. “If I find a way to get out, tell me you will go,” Sato says. Kaito barely nods in the affirmative. It is not exactly confidence inspiring, making it all the more inevitable when Hayama kicks Sato around on the roof later on and banishes him in front of the whole clan. It’s an aggravating moment, but also a sense of relief that we can cut to the chase with these two and get closer to the final showdown for the heart of Chihara-kai and the fate of Tokyo’s “floating world.”
Samantha is hanging back and plotting her next moves at home when Katagiri and Nagata show up with more questions. Nagata plays the heavy hand, asking why Sam never told them the gunmen at her club had matching tattoos. And why is the press saying she was in an affair with Ohno when she told them he was just a client? Katagiri comes in with the “good cop” pleasantries. Samantha is not under investigation; they’re just trying to fill in the blanks. They leave with confirmation of the tattoos, and Katagiri has a productive chat with their surviving shooter, now in custody. As luck would have it, he’s also the kid who had a shot at Katagiri and didn’t take it at their first yakuza raid. “That one’s on you,” the kid says of Ishida’s hit. “Once you and that woman busted my gumi, I had nowhere to go. No money. Nothing. You think someone like me can get another job?” Economic desperation makes criminals of us all, and Katagiri surely knows the difference between a predator and someone making the best of the cards they’ve been dealt in life, but he’s got some blanks to fill in and a Tozawa to bust.
“It only takes double homicide to get the death penalty,” he tells the kid coldly, between slow, luxurious drags of a cigarette. “Four people were killed. But if you cooperate, it’s possible to drop to manslaughter.” Twenty years or death. With that, Katagiri gets the location of the gun used to kill Ishida. Everything’s lined up to get an official statement from their witness; they just need to get him to the courthouse in two hours without a scratch.
Unfortunately, the best we can do is get the witness assassinated via hitman on motorcycle. With their witness gone and no one left in the department they can trust, Katagiri and Nagata’s last lead is the surveillance tapes. Against all odds, Katagiri catches a call from Marge in Accounts Payable at the Southern Minnesota Medical Center, inquiring about a past-due surgery bill for Mr. Tanaka.
Sarah is interviewing Jake for her school paper when the phone rings at the Adelstein residence. It’s Katagiri with their promising new lead and a huge favor to ask. Jake’s got to catch a same-day flight to Minnesota to see what he can see about this phone call to Tozawa. His family is visibly shook, but Dad’s going to put in a call to someone he knows at the SMMC, get Jake in with the head of hepatology over there. Jake gets in to see Dr. Walker at the SMMC immediately, and the conversation is pretty aboveboard until Jake notices Walker’s watch. Now, how does a frumpy liver doctor end up with a Vacheron Constantin?
“Here’s the thing,” says Jake. “I would like to write a story about how great you are and how great SSMC is. I’d rather not write a story about that watch and how it was a gift from a high-level Japanese gangster who flew in, jumped the waiting list, and went under your knife. But if you don’t help me, I will.” Cutting right to the chase, shooting from the hip, so to speak. Took that “Gateway to the West” thing a little literally this trip home, didn’t we, Jake?
And it works. Moments later, Jake lays out the whole scene on the phone with Katagiri. It turns out Tozawa was able to skirt his no-fly ban and get to America for a liver transplant (a central plot point of the real Jake Adelstein’s memoir, for those keeping score). Dr. Walker described Tozawa to Jake — covered in tattoos head to toe, barely spoke English, there were guards outside the OR and Recovery. The patient was listed as Spenser Tanaka (S.T.). After the surgery, the Japanese guys in suits gave Walker a quarter-million-dollar watch and told him they would “appreciate his discretion.” It was Tozawa, all right. The only question remains: Who helped him skirt the no-fly ban?
It’s a question that needs answering fast. With Tozawa closing in, Katagiri needs Jake back in Tokyo immediately, not four days from now, when he’s scheduled to fly back. It looks like he’s going to miss the big interview at Sarah’s school and disappoint his sad family once again. “Be safe,” is the last thing his exasperated father says to him on the phone as Jake breaks the news that he’s already gone.
Off the Record
• I can’t be the only one who was stoked to see Sato and Sam back together. And it seems like the post-coitus clarity they share at the top of the episode helps them both make some tough decisions and plot-moving steps forward. Those decisions don’t lead to great results for either of them, but hey, at least we’re getting somewhere, right? For Samantha, getting the club back up and running is going to be a lot harder than she thought. The insurance money isn’t coming anytime soon, and a meet-up with old Onyx pal Luna (to see about hiring her girls back at Onyx for a brief interim) turns to disaster when a bunch of photographers close in on them in public. The straights are coming up pretty dire here until Samantha’s old frenemy Akira, the host, shows up on her TV screen, bragging about his riches and connections as a newly minted TV personality. Is this a legit new source of funds or another bad idea doomed to sour into a raw deal?