Tokyo Underworld (38 page)

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 still 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.

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 Richard 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.

The process of piecing together a half-century’s worth of history was a laborious one. Because memories fade and play tricks after so many years, I relied, whenever possible, on multiple sources as well as documentation for the factual basis of the book. Particularly valuable in this regard was the Oya Soichi Bunko in Tokyo, a repository of Japanese-language magazines and periodicals dating from
the postwar era, which proved an enormous help in reconstructing a clear portrait of the city as it reconstituted itself. Also useful were the libraries at the International House, the Foreign Correspondents Press Club, the Foreign Press Center, and the National Diet in Tokyo, as well as the New York Public Library at 42nd Street. The archives of the
Asahi Shimbun
and
The Stars and Stripes
were an important source of newspaper articles, while other documents and information were provided by the Library of Congress, the US Senate Library, the National Archives, the US Marine History Office, the FBI FOIP Section, the DIA SVI-FOIA, the NYPD-FOIL, the Dudley-Knox Library in Monterey, California, John Neuffer’s informative Website ‘Behind the Screen’, and the LAPDOCID.

The vast databank of the
Rokka-kan Bunko Joho Senta
headed by Hiroshi Sasaki was especially useful in creating the lives of Ginza Machii and other characters in the book. A personal seminar Mr Sasaki conducted for me helped give me an understanding of what some people call Japan’s Shadow Government I otherwise would not have had. The books of Yasuharu Honda (
Kizu
), Eiji Oshita (
Eikyu No Rikidozan
) and Hidehiko Ushijima (Mo
Hitotsu No Showa Shi
) brought that world into even sharper focus with an immediacy and emotion it is difficult to describe. I can only hope these works will someday be translated into English so that others can enjoy them as I did. (The same goes, I might add, for Noboru Ando’s three-part autobiography,
Yakuza to Koso
.) Anyone who thinks the postwar history of Tokyo is boring would do well to seek these books out.

Lastly, the collections of John Roberts and Glen Davis proved to be an invaluable source of material on the ACJ, Lockheed, and the
Kodama Guntai
.

All the dialogue in the book that I did not witness personally is reconstructed from interviews and/or media reports and other documents. The bibliography lists the approximately 100 English and Japanese books I utilized in the research and preparation of
Tokyo Underworld
. A fuller, more detailed, section-by-section explanation of the sources I relied on, including the wealth of magazine and newspaper articles I consulted, follows.

1. THE FIRST BLACK MARKET

The Ozu notice was translated from the Japanese as it appeared in
Kizu
, a highly regarded biography of a postwar gangster by Yasuharu Honda, p. 132.