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"Nine times out of ten, the reality is much more interesting and surprising than any lazy screenwriter can imagine," says

Jake Adelstein

via videoconference from his

home in Tokyo,

a flat that looks like a traditional Japanese house, futon on the floor and paper walls included.

The author of

Tokyo Vice

(Ed. Peninsula), the book on which the newly arrived series on HBO Max is based, speaks knowingly, since his own biography seems like the product of a screenwriter's imagination, in his case , the opposite of lazy.

His fascinating story is that of a Jewish boy from Missouri, a punk fan and a karate trainee, who ended up serving as the first

foreign investigative journalist

in the Yomiuri Shimbun, the newspaper with the largest circulation not only in Japan, but in the world.

In his years as a reporter embedded in the vice police, Adelstein stood up to

the worst enemy you can have in Japan,

the

yakuza ,

through exclusives .

The sinister network of criminal organizations that dominates prostitution, gambling and illegal loans in the Asian country has lost muscle and influence in recent years, but has also been able to

legalize many of its businesses

.

Meanwhile, he also maintains dark ties with Japanese political parties, the same ones that Adelstein has not tired of denouncing, even though it has cost him several death threats and living for years under the protection of the police and the FBI.

The murder of Chichibu's snack-mama, the serial murders of dog buyers in Saitama, the disappearance of Lucie Blackman... Many of the cases that Adelstein investigated for the Yomiuri Shimbun and that he collects in his book could be, for themselves, the beginning of a saga of black novels or the starting point of a series of several seasons.

However, the

eight

-part HBO series, with Ansel Elgort playing a fictional Adelstein, focuses on those first steps of the reporter in the 90s, with Michael Mann laying the aesthetic foundations of the series as director of the first episode.

“I have been very involved in the development of the series, much more than I originally thought.

Ansel Elgort, protagonist of Tokyo Vice.AP

What he narrates is not exactly what is in the book, but it is plausible, it fits with the moment, the setting and the characters, ”says the journalist, who now works as a freelancer for media such as

The Daily Beast.

Your greatest concern for him?

That what appears on the screen is

as credible and realistic

as possible, from the dialogues to the locations.

"As long as it fits with the Tokyo that I knew, and that has been ensured from the artistic direction, everything seems fine to me."

As an expert in the yakuza, Adelstein insists that one of the most useful resources of the criminal network to add an aura of romance to their criminal activity has been, precisely, to use popular culture to their advantage.

"In the old days, cinema was very influential in that regard," he stresses.

"Now, the average age of the

yakuza

is 50 years old, but in the past, movies, zines and comics about organized crime were instrumental in making it attractive to young people. Ten years ago you could go to the supermarket and buy these kinds of comics, where

the

yakuza

were the heroes and the cops were the villains

. It was a very effective recruiting tool."

If in the 1950s production companies like Toei made a killing with hundreds of low-budget films that glorified

the

yakuzas

as heirs to the samurai codes of honor

, in the 1960s a further step was taken: Noboru Ando, ​​head of his own crime family (Ando-gumi), was recruited by another production company,

Shochiku

, to star in several films and became an icon of the genre, taking advantage of his personal experiences to

more accurately portray his characters

.

"In Japanese, the only difference between

yakuza

and

yakusha

[which means actor] is a single character. All yakuzas have to be actors to survive," Ando once said.

“A lot of the actors in those movies were from yakuza-run talent agencies like Burning Productions,” notes Adelstein.

You don't have to dig too deep either, the connections are obvious: Ikuo Suho, current CEO of Burning Productions, worked for years as

a chauffeur for one of the bosses

of Japan's third-largest criminal organization.

It is a usual modus operandi.

Yoshimoto Kogyo, the business conglomerate from which most of today's Japanese comedians hail, was founded when the talent agency and entertainment division of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the country's largest

yakuza

clan , was shut down by police.

"The wife of the oyabun (head of a yakuza clan) bought most of the agency's shares, and for many years used it to control much of

the entertainment business in Japan

."

The

yakuza

were still considered glamorous at the time, so when the leader of the Yamaguchi-gumi visited the set of his own biopic, all he received was applause.

Tadamasa Goto, a close enemy of Adelstein after he revealed that he had

irregularly received a liver transplant

in the United States, had no such luck producing the hagiographic film about his life, Gudai.

"He has not been able to release it anywhere, nor has it been distributed on DVD at the moment. So these guys have power, but they also find many obstacles. Times have changed," says the author of Tokyo Vice, who is currently working on its sequel, Tokyo Private Eye.

After so many years in the eye of the storm, risking his fate against the most ruthless criminals in the country and burying his personal life to continue his career as an investigative journalist, Adelstein considers himself a new man since 2017, when he was

ordained as a Buddhist monk

.

"He has completely changed my life."

There's a little temple in Tokyo, where I lived when I was a student, that I go to help with ceremonies and stuff like that.

And then there are ten great precepts that you must keep, which include not lying, not killing, not stealing, not criticizing other people... "The latter is something that, as a journalist, is practically impossible, don't you think? My zen master It says that if you write the truth it can't be considered criticism, so I'm on my way. You can't engage in sexual misconduct either, which is very broad, especially in Japan, and you can't drink alcohol, because drinking clouds your judgment. I haven't I've been drinking again since 2017, I don't smoke either... so I only have one vice left. Luckily for me, sex is not a sin in Buddhism

!

"

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