As someone who lived in Japan between 1994 and 2001 and worked for NHK, I must say that this seafarer tale of yakuza, bôsôzoku, mizu shôbai and the occasional murder is a borderline racist hodgepodge of stereotypes. Yet it's not a bad series, as long as you don't believe any of this to be true.
Tokyo is a mega-city of about 37 million people and its police force has over 40000 officers, so the suggestion that a foreign reporter would meet the same cops over and over again is utter nonsense. You wouldn't believe this in London or New York, why would you believe this in Tokyo? Yakuza membership was already declining in the early 1990s and then went into free fall from Chinese and Russian competition, decreasing to about one third of what it was, so the lifestyle relishly illustrated here was already a thing of the past - and Japanese films of the era reflect that (i. E. "Sonatine").
Jake Adelstein's book has been debunked as self-glorifying, albeit entertaining trash. Ansel Elgort makes a real effort to make his character work. A lot of us Japan nerds were somewhat like that. But the atmosphere at work was hostile, as a gaijin you are left in the loop, nobody gives you any serious work, anyone "showing initiative" like Jake here would be relegated to become a madoguchizoku, "someone staring out of the window". In a Japanese company, you have to run everything you do by your superiors, a realistic look at this would be the French film "Fear and Trembling". I suspect that this is pretty much what happened to Adelstein, and that his book was his response, a form of revenge on a culture he initially admired and then felt excluded from. That is exactly why the Japanese keep us foreigners outside, which is what the word foreigner literally means ("outside person").
However, once again - the series is good entertainment, well written and condensed, as long as you don't believe anything.
Tokyo is a mega-city of about 37 million people and its police force has over 40000 officers, so the suggestion that a foreign reporter would meet the same cops over and over again is utter nonsense. You wouldn't believe this in London or New York, why would you believe this in Tokyo? Yakuza membership was already declining in the early 1990s and then went into free fall from Chinese and Russian competition, decreasing to about one third of what it was, so the lifestyle relishly illustrated here was already a thing of the past - and Japanese films of the era reflect that (i. E. "Sonatine").
Jake Adelstein's book has been debunked as self-glorifying, albeit entertaining trash. Ansel Elgort makes a real effort to make his character work. A lot of us Japan nerds were somewhat like that. But the atmosphere at work was hostile, as a gaijin you are left in the loop, nobody gives you any serious work, anyone "showing initiative" like Jake here would be relegated to become a madoguchizoku, "someone staring out of the window". In a Japanese company, you have to run everything you do by your superiors, a realistic look at this would be the French film "Fear and Trembling". I suspect that this is pretty much what happened to Adelstein, and that his book was his response, a form of revenge on a culture he initially admired and then felt excluded from. That is exactly why the Japanese keep us foreigners outside, which is what the word foreigner literally means ("outside person").
However, once again - the series is good entertainment, well written and condensed, as long as you don't believe anything.