Tokyo Underworld

by Robert Whiting

  Jiro took an interest in me because he had been given the task of overseeing a Sumiyoshi-owned nightclub in Shinjuku employing English-speaking hostesses from Southeast Asia. Because he couldn’t communicate with them, he offered me the job of assistant manager, six nights a week, for the monthly sum of 300,000 yen (then roughly about $1,000). Although I turned him down because of other commitments, Jiro and I developed a relationship of sorts, because believe it or not, of a shared interest in politics. I had studied Japanese politics while at Sophia and had written my graduate thesis on the factions of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. At the time I was one of the few Americans alive remotely interested in such an esoteric subject – Japan was not yet the world power it was destined to become. In the course of my research, I had even met a Young Turk named Yasuhiro Nakasone, then being touted as the ‘JFK of Japan’, who would become prime minister from 1982 to 1987. Jiro thought that was just great. He was a strong supporter of the LDP, and so were all his fellow gang members. At the time, the LDP was in the midst of one of its many scandals (this one called the ‘Black Mist’) and its nationwide approval rating had sunk to around 25 percent. Jiro said it was vital that he and his confreres help ‘get out the vote’ at election time.

  One of Jiro’s regular duties was collecting protection money from the nightclubs, bars and pachinko parlors in front of the Higashi Nakano train station. He frequently had envelopes full of cash in his coat pocket, but in all the time I knew him, I never ever saw him pay a bill. Periodically, he would invite me to one of the cabarets in the vicinity and casually offer me my choice of any hostess in the house to spend the night with, if I so wished – no charge involved. (Or, if I preferred, a tête-à-tête right there on the spot in a back booth.) Everyone seemed terrified of him and willing to do anything to please.

  Jiro was not the most psychologically stable person I had ever met. He had a razor blade secreted in his sleeve to be slipped between two fingers for use as a weapon in a fight, and a pair of sharply pointed polished ivory chopsticks contained in a case he carried in his inside coat pocket, which he explained could also be used in combat. After several drinks, he was apt to fly into a sudden, uncontrollable rage triggered by poor service or some unhappy memory, and overturn his table, sending beer bottles and glasses flying. Once, trying in vain to flag down a cab in the street around midnight – always a difficult task in a city like Tokyo – I saw him kick a dent in the side of a taxi which had slowed for a traffic light. When the driver got out to confront him, Jiro punched him in the mouth several times and kicked him in the groin. One memorable besotted evening, complaining that he was without friends or family, he pulled a jackknife out of his jacket and sliced his left cheek.

  ‘I’m human trash,’ he moaned. ‘Ningen Kuzu.’

  He said that foreigners and yakuza in Japan had one thing in common. They were outcasts from proper society.

  Jiro lived alone in a tiny six-mat room, but often he would wind up spending the night in some semen-stained back booth in a neighborhood cabaret, too drunk to move. Periodically, he would disappear from the neighborhood. Once, after an absence of several months, he returned with the tip of his little finger missing, which, he said, he had chopped off himself as penance for being arrested and sent to prison.

  I lost touch with Jiro when I moved to New York in 1972 and when I returned to Tokyo four years later to work for Time–Life, he had simply vanished. No one knew where he was and I never saw him again. This time around, I was living in the quarter of Akasaka, near the city center in a Western-style apartment complex known as Riki Mansion – my new lodgings a seventh-floor one-bedroom flat with a panoramic view of Tokyo Tower and environs. It was there that Phase II of my education in the ways of the Japanese underworld began.

  The complex – actually two separate buildings in one compound – ‘Riki Mansion’ and ‘Riki Apartments’ – was named after a postwar national wrestling legend, Rikidozan. By the time I came upon the scene, Rikidozan was dead, having met his fate at the hands of a Sumiysohi gangster in an Akasaka nightclub, the New Latin Quarter. My landlady was Rikidozan’s widow, a policeman’s daughter. My fellow residents and neighbors came from a wide range of Tokyo’s nightlife. There were nightclub hostesses from the high-class clubs like the Copacabana and the El Morocco, as well as foreign models and foreign prostitutes – tall, long-legged blondes from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America, along with assorted drifters, con artists, hustlers, smugglers and others. Frequently milling around in the lobby and outside in the parking lot were groups of dark-visaged, mean-looking, hard-bitten men wearing dark suits and sunglasses – men whom I later learned belonged to the Tosei-kai gang, a rival of the Sumiyoshi, especially in promoting professional wrestling. The parking lot through which I passed every day was the site of a famous bloody sword encounter in December 1963, involving foot soldiers from both gangs.

  From Riki Mansion, it was a five-minute walk to Roppongi Crossing, the center of the city’s nightlife. I usually spent my evenings there and, quite often, I wound up at an Italian restaurant called Nicola’s for a late-night meal. The place was always packed with a fascinating mixture of foreigners and Japanese – movie stars, athletes and others – and it vibrated with excitement. The proprietor was a bullish, arrogant-looking man in his fifties who was not infrequently in the company of underworld types. People referred to him in whispers as the Mafia Boss of Tokyo.

  I gradually came to know Nicola Zappetti, for it turned out we, too, had certain things in common. He was a baseball fan and he had read numerous books and articles I had written about the subject. The ballplayers I knew and wrote about frequented his restaurant. He was also a fan of pro wrestling, another subject I had written about. We were both acquaintances of Richard Beyer, otherwise known as The (Masked Man) Destroyer. Beyer, an NCAA wrestling champion at Syracuse, had performed professionally in Japan for several years and had also carved out an enormously successful second career as a comic on Japanese TV – appearing in Nazi helmet, polka-dot shorts, waving a Japanese flag and singing songs in fractured Japanese. Beyer had been one of the very few Americans to defeat Rikidozan and he was a close friend of Giant Baba, a 6′10″ 250-pound wrestler who lived directly above me on the eighth floor, in the luxury penthouse Rikidozan once occupied. From time to time I could hear Baba practicing his back flips, knocking loose tiny pieces of plaster from my ceiling as he landed on his living room floor.

  In time, I learned of the ties that had bound Nicola to Rikidozan and the Tosei-kai gang, as well as other elements of the Tokyo underworld, politics and big business. I began to understand what a remarkable life he had led, dating all the way back to the postwar black market era when he had been one of the first Americans in Japan after the fighting had stopped. He seemed the very embodiment of a certain type of relationship involving Japanese and Americans that had sprung up in the wake of the Occupation.

  In 1989, Zappetti, suffering from a heart attack that destroyed three-quarters of his heart and suspecting that he did not have long to live, agreed to cooperate on a vaguely defined book project about Tokyo I had started. In numerous tape-recorded discussions, he told me his life story in detail – which was so striking it turned out to be a substantial part of the manuscript.

  What struck me most was his total candor. He talked openly about having committed robbery and doing even worse things. He admitted that he preferred a life of crime to any other; growing up in East Harlem, New York, he said the Mafia men in his neighborhood enjoyed the most respect, while the police were despised – this was why he gravitated toward gangsters in Japan, putting his freedom, and even his life, in danger at times. He confessed that he stayed in Japan because he had a chance to be somebody – to be a ‘king’ or a ‘mafia boss’, to accumulate enormous wealth and have beautiful women at his beck and call – in the process of overcoming a complex about his size. (In high school he had weighed but one hundred and twenty pounds, filling out only after joining the Marines. He s
till walked with a chin up, chest out, shoulders back swagger not uncommon in shorter men.) He further confessed that decades of booze and debauchery and four marriages had rendered him impotent by the age of sixty-four.

  His life was almost Shakespearean – filled with passion, intrigue, betrayal and revenge. At the end he was left nearly bankrupt, broken in spirit as well as body, and consumed with hatred for the Japanese – even though by then he was a naturalized citizen of Japan, a white-haired, old foreign man who carried a Japanese passport with a Japanese name (as required by law), and who spoke the language so poorly, at times he needed an interpreter. One of the very last things he said to me before he died was that any man who left his own country to live in another was an ‘asshole’, deserving of everything bad that happened to him.

  It took me several years to check out the stories he told me, to track down and interview people in his circle who had known him, to read books on the era, wade through old newspaper and magazine files, and do other research. What I wound up with was not only a reconstruction of his bizarre, amazing life, but also a rare view of a half-century of US–Japan relations, a special subculture without equal in the world for drama and color.

  The result is Tokyo Underworld.

  A number of people helped me in putting this book together and I would like to thank them all here, with the exception of the ones who understandably wish to remain anonymous. I am indebted to Kiyondo Matsui, editor-in-chief of the Shukan Bunshun, who helped to start me on the road to a structured understanding of the Tokyo underworld. He supplied me with numerous articles and books to read and study, as well as police records and other documents, and made many key introductions besides. I am also deeply grateful to Midori Matsui, Mr Matsui’s wife, a longtime friend and collaborator (she translated Chrysanthemum and the Bat and Slugging It Out In Japan, among other works I did for the Japanese market). Midori-san helped out with my research, and among other things, taught me how to give a proper speech in Japanese. And I am further indebted to veteran crime journalist Hiroshi Sasaki, now head of the Rokka-kan Bunko Information Center, who provided a great deal of invaluable information and documentation on criminals and corruption in Japan.

  Next, I would like to thank friend and author Masayuki Tamaki, translator of You Gotta Have Wa and an established novelist in his own right, who gave me advice, materials from his personal library, and took time out from his busy schedule to personally show me the ropes at the Oya Soichi Bunko, Tokyo’s vast magazine repository. Thanks also to his wife Kyoko for her kindness and to Atushi Imamura of the Bungei Shunju, and Satoshi Gunji and Mr Nakanishi of Kadokawa Publishing for their help in getting me started. Also a very special thanks to Jiro Kawamura and Ichiro Tsuge of the Asahi Shimbun Co.

  I would like to express my appreciation to Takashi Shimada, a former Boston Consulting Group official, Kenichiro Sasae of Japan’s Foreign Ministry, and William Givens of Harvard University and director of Twain Associates, for helping to educate me in certain matters of trade, to author Glen Davis for educating me on Japan’s right wing and the activities of the American Council on Japan (few authors I have ever met have been as generous in sharing their time and information as Glen and his mentor, the late John Roberts), and to attorneys Thomas Blakemore, Rosser Brockman, Shin Asahina and Ray Bushell, who kindly spent hours patiently explaining Japan’s legal system to me. A special note of gratitude goes to Jim Phillips, ex-fighter pilot and Grumman executive who put in many afternoons at the exclusive Tokyo Club elucidating the complexities of the aircraft industry for me, and helping to put the Lockheed scandal in perspective. And another special word of gratitude to Fusakazu Hayano, PhD, vice president of Asahi Chemical, who explained technological differences separating Japan and the United States and to Professor Kan Ori of Sophia University and Tsuneo Watanabe of the Yomiuri Shimbun, who began my education in Japanese politics.

  In addition, I am especially beholden to Hal Drake, the great Stars and Stripes reporter in Tokyo, for allowing me to rummage through the Stripes morgue, and also to his wife Kazuko for her hospitality and their friend Toshi Cooper for her cooperation. Thanks also to Dick Berry and Jim Blessin for rummaging through their attics for me.

  Thanks to my old friend Kozo Abe, a longtime reporter and editor for the Yukan Fuji and the Sankei Shimbun who, over many drunken nights, provided information and insights and opened many doors. Thanks to yakuza expert Reikichi Sumiya of the Asahi Geinno for his informative conversation and his gift of the world’s largest gangster encyclopedia, and to a Brooklynite named Rick for his seminar on Tokyo con artists and grifters.

  Mark Schumacher helped out immensely in my search for old newspaper and magazine pieces. Mark also set up the Micron computer system I used to write this book. Also helpful were Willis Witter and Mieko Miyazawa. David Howell and Kagari Ando in Kamakura provided a friendly, sympathetic ear, useful advice, and countless weekend dinners. Thanks also to Joe and Leith Bernard in Washington, D.C., and Rosser and Yin-Wah Brockman in San Francisco. To attorney Richard Siracusa and Judge Edwin Torres for helping me understand the East Harlem (New York) mafia. And to David and Jean Halberstam in New York City. Also thanks to the Kawamura family of Denen-Chofu, Koichi, Machiko and Reimi, Bob Spenser, Elmer Luke, Robert Seward, Akio Nomura; Skip and Miko Orr; Yoshiko Takaishi; Jack and Toshi Mosher; Eduardo Sanchez; Tim Porter; Mayumi Nakazawa; Nobuko Sasae; Hide Tanaka of the Asahi Shimbun and his wife; Vince Izumi; Michi and Toshi Naito; Eide and Michiko Haru; Lucy Craft; Rick Wolff, JB Burkett, Takao Toshikawa; Velisarious Kattoulas; Naose Inoki; Kimberly Edwards and Robert Richards.

  My special appreciation goes out to Tom Scully for editing the first finished draft, and to Greg Davis and Randy Ulland for reading it and offering many valuable suggestions and comments. And finally to the author of ‘Chrysanthemum and the Thoroughbred’, David Shapiro, for putting his life on hold for a solid week in December 1997 when I needed a fresh eye and literary expertise to help nail down the final draft. I owe David a debt of gratitude and, knowing Dave as I do, I’m sure he will never let me forget it. I would also like to thank Greg Davis, the noted Time photographer and longtime pal, and his wife Masako Sakata, the president of the Imperial Press, for helping me get photographs. Yae Koizumi kindly supplied photos of her husband.

  I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my editor at Pantheon, the estimable Linda Healey, who deserves some sort of award for patience and perseverance. She never wavered in her support for me or this project, even though I kept missing deadlines. She was always willing and eager to set aside what she was doing to listen to my ideas, wade through extremely rough drafts, and offer clearheaded, incisive criticism of often unformed ideas. I spent many a pleasant evening with her and her late husband J. Anthony Lukas – something I will not forget. I would also like to thank Amy Gray for being right there all the time on top of everything, Paul Kozlowski for his support, and Kate Rowe for keeping me out of court.

  I also want to express my deepest thanks to my agent Amanda Urban, who played an exceptionally active part in engineering this project from its very inception to its conclusion. Without Binky, this book would never have happened.

  Finally, thanks to the Kondo, Kobayashi, Hayano, and Noble clans. And to Carmel Oendan, Mom and Dad, Margo and Buck, Ned and Joseph, Debbie and Tim, Matt, Gracie and Cody, Peggy and Glen, Ross and Tyler, Leslie Steve, Stevie, Erin, and Mary.

  And the highest arigato of all to my wife Machiko for not divorcing me during this project.

  Notes and Sources

  In researching this book, I conducted nearly 200 interviews with participants, eyewitnesses, and others with firsthand information regarding the characters, incidents, and episodes described in these pages. I had some three dozen intensive sessions with Nicola Zappetti alone between the fall of 1989 and his death in 1992, as well as numerous other recorded conversations with the people – friends, relatives, business associates and enemies – who went to make up his milieu.

  Among them was Ric
hard Roa, a fixture in Roppongi nightlife for the past thirty years and a man who has proved to be a fountain of information about the area’s bars and nightclubs. No other Westerner I have met in Tokyo has worked in such a wide variety of jobs in the mizushobai (‘water trade’), as the Japanese call it, ranging from part-time manager of Danny’s Inn, one of Tokyo’s most famous call girl operations, to business adviser in the gilt-edged inner sanctum of the TSK.CCC. Other sources included Katsuji Maezono and Akio Nomura, men with nearly a century’s experience between them working in and operating Tokyo restaurants, snack bars and pubs, Jim Blessin, the longtime military club manager in the city, and his wife Kyoko Ai, a famous TV personality in the 1950s who appeared in the first Godzilla film and who once dated Rikidozan, and longtime Nicola’s patrons Hal Drake and Tom Scully, both veterans of the Stars and Stripes Roppongi headquarters.

  Still other important interview subjects included attorney Thomas Blakemore, for fifty years the only American qualified to try a case in a Japanese court, his wife Frances Baker, a graphic designer who first came to Japan in the mid-1930s, commercial lawyers Raymond Bushell and James L. Adachi, aircraft consultant James Phillips, MPD official Yutaka Mogami, and Eugene Aksenoff, MD, one of the few foreigners ever to graduate from a Tokyo medical school. All of these people had lived and worked in Tokyo since the end of the war, and their recounting of their many and varied experiences in extensive talk sessions helped me recapture the atmosphere of the times.