‘Tokyo Vice’: Does Ansel Elgort speak Japanese?

Season two of Max’s hit crime drama Tokyo Vice just came out and the new season is better than ever, surpassing the show’s already impressive debut season.

Starring Ansel Elgort as American reporter Jake Adelstein and stars like Ken Watanabe and Rinko Kikuchi as detective Hiroto Katagiri and journalist Emi Maruyama, respectively, the show was an instant hit with audiences. Tokyo Vice, based on the real Adelstein’s memoir of the same name, takes place in Tokyo where Adelstein becomes the first non-Japanese reporter for the Meicho Shimbun newspaper. 

Viewers familiar with procedural crime dramas will find Tokyo Vice hits a lot of the same beats as other shows in the genre. That’s not to say it isn’t unique in its own way; you’re not going to see a character played by Ansel Elgort speaking Japanese on another show, for example. 

Elgort’s Jake speaks Japanese on both seasons of Tokyo Vice and sounds great in every scene. Given how fluent he seems on the show, it begs the question: Does Ansel Elgort speak Japanese?

Did Ansel Elgort learn Japanese for Tokyo Vice?

Before the show, Elgort had no experience speaking Japanese. He actually learned Japanese after booking Tokyo Vice, which is one of those things that sounds way more simple in writing than it is in practice. 

To play Adelstein — who had to pass a fluency test to land his newspaper job at a Tokyo-based newspaper— believably, Elgort spent roughly four hours a day studying Japanese. In an interview with Access Hollywood, the actor shared that he took classes while immersing himself in the language, which was easy since he was living in Tokyo at the time. 

His hard work paid off as Elgort sounds impressively fluent on the show. Japanese is a hard language to learn and it’s remarkable how far Elgort has progressed in such a short time. 

Tokyo Vice is streaming on Max.