Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Tokyo Swindlers’ takes the audience into the underbelly of a crime that endangers people’s lives in unimaginable ways. The story focuses on a group of con artists who go to extreme ends to create an elaborate con and fraud people through real estate scams. Extorting billions of yens from unsuspecting companies requires skills of all kinds, which means at least six people are involved in the scam. But bringing those people together and making them work in tandem is a challenge not everyone is up to. This is where Harrison Yamanaka and Takumi Tsujimoto come into the picture. The show presents a very realistic picture of real estate fraud, but the criminals it depicts are entirely fictional.
The Fictional Crimes of Takumi and Harrison are Inspired by Real Fraudsters
‘Tokyo Swindlers’ is a fictional story based on the 2019 novel by Ko Shinjo. The author made up a story about a group of criminals, but he was inspired by real-life crimes, such as frauds and scams in the real estate market, to concoct this tale. It remains unclear whether he was inspired by a specific crime or a specific group of people, but it’s clear that he created criminals like Takumi and Harrison in the image of the people who plan and execute these elaborate cons.
Considering that it is a TV show, it is expected that ‘Tokyo Swindlers’ will exaggerate a few elements or dramatize some parts about the crimes and the criminals. Still, the crimes in real life have been so unbelievable that the show’s writers didn’t have to think too hard while writing the story. While there have been many real estate fraud cases in Japan, a more recent case that comes to mind was in 2020, when ten people were convicted of defrauding a company into buying land not listed in the market. The leader was a 60-year-old man named Misao Kaminsukasu, who received eleven years in prison for the fraud that was executed in 2017 in which a Japanese builder lost ¥5.5 billion (around $51 million) while trying to buy a 2,000-square-meter plot of land in one of Tokyo’s most sought out areas.
The plot in focus belonged to a person who ran an inn there. Reportedly, the owner died sometime in 2017 after being hospitalized for a while. The team brought in a woman named Masami Haketa, whose job was to impersonate the owner and sell the plot as if it belonged to her. The scammers pulled no stops when it came to forging documents, which were so well-made that the buyer company didn’t think twice about checking them for being forgeries. She, too, was arrested and convicted with the rest of the team.
Cases like these become the focus of ‘Tokyo Swindlers,’ and the writers try to reverse engineer the plan and how the scammers put things together to con not just small companies but also larger corporations that have endless resources at their disposal. The show’s creators did not approach any real-life criminals to study their methods and relied on their imagination to craft the characters that become the story’s driving force.
For the actors, Go Ayano and Etsushi Toyokawa, who play Takumi and Harrison, it was important to get to the core of their characters and figure out what they really want. Ayano tapped into the emotional weight of Takumi’s story and how, despite his crimes, he remains motivated by a tragedy from his past. Things were a bit more complicated with Harrison, as he remains an elusive figure, especially regarding his motivations. Toyokawa revealed that he enjoyed playing the character, and according to his fellow cast members, he did the job so well that they were afraid of him, at times, when he was in character. This is a testament to the actor’s dedication to this craft and proves why the actors, despite being fictional, resonate so well with the audience.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Tokyo Swindlers a True Story?
