'Tokyo Vice' Season 2 Finale: Series Creator, EP Talk Tozawa's Death

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Tokyo Vice,” now streaming on Max. 

Season 2 of “Tokyo Vice,” the neo-noir crime drama set in Tokyo, Japan, and loosely based on a memoir written by journalist Jake Adelstein, has come to a close in an explosive finale that both sent off (or rather, killed off) the series’ main, two-season running antagonist — and laid the foundation for what could potentially come from the Max thriller if a third season were to be greenlit. 

The show stars Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, and tells the story of a Japanese-fluent American writer (Elgort) who works his way into covering crime for one of Tokyo’s most prominent newspapers. In the process, he forges an unlikely bond with a dogged local police detective, Hiroto Katagiri (Watanabe), with the duo sharing information and working together to untangle sordid yakuza activities. 

Before diving into the specifics of the finale, we have to address Tozawa, the bloody elephant in the room left to rot on the floor.

His fellow yakuza clan leaders force Tozawa to take his own life after he’s exposed for colluding with the FBI — informing the American government agency of yakuza activity taking place on U.S. soil in exchange for providing his passage to the states to undergo a liver transplant that would save his life.

After a mound of evidence is raised against him and he is scoffed at for having “no honor,” Shinzo Tozawa, played by Ayumi Tanida, makes one last ditch to save his life — offering to pay financial restitution to the other leaders for his transgressions. 

But the tables turn against Tozawa once more, as Kazuko Tozawa (played by Makiko Watanabe), Tozawa’s wife, financial guarantor and metaphorical puppeteer — previously revealed to have literally plucked him from the streets and brought him into this lavish and dangerous criminal underworld through marriage — denounces him, and warns him not to “make promises he cannot keep.” 

With Kazuko’s betrayal of her husband, and the yakuza leaders left disillusioned by their once-promising prodigy, Tozawa is left alone in a conference room with only a sword to do the deed, forced to end it all for betraying his brethren. 

“I always knew from the get-go that Mrs. Tozawa was the person who would be his downfall,” says “Tokyo Vice” creator J.T. Rogers. “To the point that when we cast her in Season 1 — and she had a very small part to play for who is otherwise a very famous actress in Japan — I told her, ‘I can’t tell you why or how yet, but if you trust me, you will have a really significant role. If you go on the journey with us, I can promise you it will be worth your time.’ And she graciously did join us on this journey.” 

Perhaps the only thing more satisfying than witnessing Tozawa’s gruesome demise is knowing who was able to deal the fatal blow, fan-favorite antihero Sato (Show Kasamatsu), who assembled the leaders after having presented to them evidence of Tozawa’s betrayal, which both Adelstein and Katigiri had acquired, following a chase and search of Tozawa’s yacht. 

Sato stans came out on top, as he ended the season avenging the Chihara-Kai clan oyabun’s (Ishida, played by Shun Sugata) death, ridding Tokyo’s gokudō scene of Tozawa’s corrosive influence and effectively becoming the new leader of the Chihara-Kai — closing off his season’s arc by being anointed in the same induction ceremony where we first met the character back in the series pilot. 

“The character’s arc was always part of the plan, but what a blessing to have Show take us on this journey. Some of the actors we already knew were going to be fantastic, especially because they had longer careers and were more established,” Rogers says. “I think Show is a classic example in the series of people who haven’t had as much exposure or who are younger, and it’s fantastic seeing them do such a great job.” 

Executive producer and director Alan Poul also added that Kasamatsu was an actor he and Rogers knew they could “throw anything at” from the very beginning. 

“He’s barely in the pilot; he’s only seen in the washroom with Jake, and at the final ceremony. But we quickly got to see what he could handle, and realized pretty quickly that, ‘Oh, we can throw anything at him. He can handle anything,’ and that helps you — it frees you to dream bigger about the character,” Poul says. 

Poul also commented on what he thought was a “delightful wave of revulsion” over the Season 1 finale, which saw Sato get stabbed and seemingly killed, his fate — at the time — left unclear until Season 2’s premiere. 

“We never had any intention of killing him off, and so it makes you want to say to people, ‘Do you think we’re that stupid, that we would actually kill off the golden boy like that?’ But in fact, it really opened our eyes to what a deep hold he had on the audience.” 

Though Rogers couldn’t reveal what future plans he has in store for Kazuko and Sato in a potential third installment of the series, he shared that he has a “very strong thread for her and all of our main characters” and that the “story is here; the story is on paper.” But he’s only created the first “layer” of what he knows will be a “seven-layer dip.” 

Season 2 ends with a familial scene: Adelstein and Katagiri sit on the latter’s porch, discussing what comes next now that their latest case has been closed. 

Katagiri teases Adelstein about his inability to rest and relax, daring Adelstein to count to 10, and challenging him to do so without being distracted or thinking about anything else. 

As predicted, Adelstein fails, and as the camera slowly pans away from Katigiri, the final shot shows him failing to make it to 10 himself, illustrating how hard it is to keep the ol’ detective down and teasing his potential return to the show. 

“I wanted to end the season on the relationship that started it all — that sort of mentor-mentee, father-son relationship. It just felt that that needed to be the place we came to rest and leave them in the reality of the world and the characters they’ve built,” Rogers says. “They’ve done this incredible thing, and yet there’s a restlessness and a query on both their parts, and I wanted to end there on that porch — the same porch where they had begun their relationship.”

Regardless of the show’s potential renewal, Rogers and Poul reflected on what they considered to be a very “satisfying” experience. Poul was grateful he was able to produce a show with an enticing plot and equally compelling characters that served as the show’s focal point, and he was equally impressed by the crew’s ability to film the entire show out of Japan. 

For his part, Rogers was “amazed” at the reception “Tokyo Vice” has received, especially considering how inaccessible he thought the show would be because so much Japanese is spoken throughout. To this day, Rogers is still surprised by the sheer number of friends, family and acquaintances who text and call him, begging him for updates and answers to the show’s biggest twists. 

“There’s that point when you’re making something, and you think, ‘You know, I think this is really good,” Rogers says. “That’s always a little dangerous to start thinking about, because you’re just hoping you’re not lost in your own hall of mirrors. But taking those risks and fleshing out this world has led to people resonating with this more than with anything else I’ve ever made. And that has been something really gratifying to see.”