Sumith Prasad
The fifth episode of Max’s crime drama series ‘Tokyo Vice’ season 2 ends with Hitoshi Ishida, the leader of the Chihara-kai clan, getting shot by a couple of masked men. Ishida meets Samantha Porter and the architect Masahito Ohno at her club to strike a deal with the latter concerning buying properties. Right after Ishida secures the deal, the masked men enter the club and kickstart a shootout. Despite Sato’s best efforts to safeguard his oyabun, Ishida gets shot at point-blank range. As far as the “cold war” between Chihara-kai and Tozawa-gumi is concerned, the attack on Ishida may turn out to be a significant turning point in the same! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ishida’s Death
Ishida is apparently dead. The fifth episode of the second season concludes with Ishida falling to the hands of Sato after getting shot multiple times at close range. Sato and Hayama will not be able to take their oyabun to a hospital fearing the potential involvement of the authorities. Especially after the arrests of several Chihara-kai members and Shoko Nagata’s efforts to hunt down yakuza leaders, Hayama will have to provide Ishida with medical care only at their headquarters. By then, the old man’s condition will worsen. In the sixth episode, the viewers can expect confirmation regarding the death of the Chihara-kai leader.
Unsurprisingly, Shinzo Tozawa must be the mastermind behind the attack on Ishida. The newly emerged yakuza boss tries to kill Ishida in the first season of the crime drama and fails to put an end to the latter’s life. The repercussion of the attack turns out to be unbearable humiliation for the master of the Tozawa-gumi, especially since he has to kneel before Ishida in front of their fellow yakuza leaders. To exact his vengeance on the man who made him kneel, Tozawa must have sent his men to eliminate the threat and nuisance of Ishida once and for all.
However, Tozawa is not the only suspect. The person behind the attack can be Hayama, Ishida’s second-in-command. As an experienced yakuza member, Hayama must have realized that his position in the clan is under threat due to the emergence of Sato as the perfect follower of Ishida. Since Sato is asked by Ishida to stay behind several times after the trio’s meetings, Hayama may have started to believe that the former will become his master if Ishida remains alive. After spending seven long years in jail for fighting for Ishida, the last thing Hayama may want is to lose his authority in the clan. If he is really the one who sent the killers, Hayama can be targeting the supreme throne of Chihara-kai.
Shun Sugata’s Exit From Tokyo Vice
Even though neither Max nor Shun Sugata has announced the actor’s departure from ‘Tokyo Vice,’ Ishida’s apparent death indicates that we are going to see the last of the latter in the crime drama. Ishida’s demise concludes the arc of Sugata’s character perfectly, leaving behind no scope for the actor to continue appearing in the show. The series hasn’t been relying on flashback sequences to expect him to potentially feature in them as well. After Tozawa’s return from death, it is unlikely that the writers repeated the same trope in the case of Ishida, which further leads us to believe that Sugata is no longer a part of the cast of the crime drama.
We can expect Sugata to feature as Ishida at the start of the upcoming sixth episode, confirming the character’s death. Even though Ishida’s murder succeeds in shocking the viewers, it is justified considering the arcs of Sato and Tozawa. The death not only opens a pathway for Sato to become more influential in the Chihara-kai clan but also establishes the ruthlessness of Tozawa, the main antagonist of the series. In the upcoming episodes, Tozawa’s merciless actions leave Jake Adelstein, who sleeps with his mistress Misaki, and Hiroto Katagiri, who wants to arrest the yakuza boss, in precarious states.
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