Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Tokyo Swindlers,’ the ambition of a group of scammers soars as they set their eyes on a place that no one has been able to sell yet. It is a task too big for anyone going by legal means, and it becomes even more challenging for criminals to use it as bait to dangle in front of potential victims. It is precisely because of the challenge that the leader of the group, Harrison Yamanaka, sets his eyes on the place. Background information reveals that the plot is right next to a centuries-old temple owned by a nun. While the temple looks great in the show and serves as an excellent plot device, it doesn’t exist in real life. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Kouan-ji Temple in Tokyo Swindlers is Made Up
The Kouan-ji Temple in ‘Tokyo Swindlers’ does not exist in real life. According to the show, it is supposed to be located somewhere in Takanawa in the Minato City area of Tokyo. While there are several temples of different time periods all over Tokyo, the one mentioned in the Netflix series is not one of them.
There is a real Koanji Temple in Fuchu City, but its history and architecture are completely different from the one in the show. The temple, which was under the care of Natsumi Kawai during the show, was built during the Edo period. However, the one in Fuchu City was built in the 1800s, with several parts, including the temple gate and the bell tower, which were built much later after the main structure. Much like the temple in the series, the real-life temple is considered to have great historical value and is protected by the government. It’s possible that the creators of the show took inspiration from real-life temples in terms of their history and architecture to create the fictional Kouan-ji Temple for the show. Still, there is no specific reference that they used to connect Kawai’s temple to reality.
Because the story takes place almost entirely in Tokyo, the creators employed real-life locations across the capital city of Japan to film the series. A lot of the shooting of the Netflix series took place on location, as the creators of the show focused on making it all look as realistic as possible. Sets were employed for filming indoor locations, but when it came to the outdoors, they scouted suitable locations to give the audience a better sense of the extent to which the cons were being stretched to scam companies out of billions of yens.
The same approach was utilized for filming the scenes regarding the temple, where indoor sets were built to make the filming process a bit easier, while the crew relied on getting as much filming done on the outdoor sets as possible. It was incredibly important to pay all this attention to detail when it came to the temple because it serves as the most important location on the show. It is the temple around which the whole scam is concocted, and it is only after a whole tour inside it that the con can succeed. So, it makes sense that the creators of the show made it appear as realistic as possible, even though it doesn’t exist in real life.
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