Rating: 
Summary: good job explaining mafia's role in society
Review: I think this book does one thing very well - explain just how penetrating an influence the mafia have in so many aspects of Japanese society. In New York you would have to go looking for mafiosos in their lairs but walk into any decent hotel in Osaka or Kobe and you'll find 2 in the lobby; their business tentacles are in everything, not just sanitation & construction. While the fed government here has worked zealously (probably too zealously) to reduce the Italian mob to a few unglamorous rackets, it seems like every major real estate deal in jpn as some concealed mafia presence; even the gov't employs them for various unseemly tasks. I think whiting does a lot to unravel part of this mystery -- at least why the yakuza, who had been around for some time, flourished and became so visible. It's gross that the US helped.
Rating: 
Summary: An engaging expose of U.S.-Japanese corruption.
Review: Nick Zappetti sounds like a proper name for a Mafia boss. What is unusual about this particular capo is his territory-the Roppongi district of Tokyo-as well as the time of his ascendancy-the fall of 1945, in occupied Japan. Tokyo Underworld is a half-century survey of the dark side of the Japanese economic miracle, the criminal empire born of the corruption which riddled the Marshall Plan. Part postwar history and part gangster movie, Tokyo Underworld is unfurled by its author with a melodramatic flourish: It is an alternate, separate layer of reality, a shadowy universe of characters-gangsters, corrupt entrepreneurs, courtesans, seedy sports promoters, streetwise opportunists, intelligence agents, political fixers, and financial manipulators-who have perhaps done as much in their own right to influence U.S.-Japan affairs as their more refined and respected peers. Significantly, it has not always been easy to distinguish the latter from the former. Drawing on police and press reports as well as personal interviews (Zappetti himself was interviewed extensively for this book between 1989 and his death in 1992 at age seventy-one), Robert Whiting, one of the few western journalists to live and write regularly in Japan, depicts an awesome cancer of corruption metastasizing behind the rigid veneer of Japanese society. From the smoldering ashes of postwar Japan (where things were so bad the Japanese had to fight for scraps with the Korean slaves they'd imported during the war), to the CIA's backing of yakuza gangs in the '50s and '60s as anti-Communist thugs, to the ruinous scandals of the '90s, where prominent Japanese executives and politicians were implicated in vast criminal rackets as the economy plunged into a tailspin, crooked and straight men mingled freely across previously impermeable caste lines in an ever-expanding criminal sphere which Whiting calls "Japan's first experiment in democracy". And where was Nicola Zappetti during these halcyon days? Hailing from Prohibition-era East Harlem, Zappetti had chosen crime as a career during adolescence, skipping school to learn instead from thugs and racketeers like his cousin Gaetano "Three Finger Brown" Luchese. Whiting contends that Zappetti actually joined the Marines to give his budding criminal instincts room to expand, and delighted in the hell of postwar Tokyo, where he quickly made a stake running contraband whiskey, cigarettes, and military scrip to-who else?-Allied soldiers and small-time Japanese gangsters, the only people in Japan with money or goods to trade. Zappetti shrewdly played the gangs off one another, recognizing their tribal hatreds and the burgeoning Japanese market for narcotics. He did so on his own initiative, using his own brains and brawn, not relying on the American Mafia (except to get back to Japan after being deported by the authorities in 1950). Zappetti also made a smart long-term investment early on, introducing the Japanese to pizza in the up-and-coming honky-tonk district of Roppongi. He made some erroneous investments as well, including a fur factory, several Japanese wives, and Japanese citizenship, for which he sacrificed his U.S. passport, thereby stranding himself in Japan. Crime and politics make for interesting bedfellows, and Zappetti's circle read like a Who's Who of both worlds. There was the famous Rikidozan, a psychotic sumo wrestler who met his end on the point of a yakuza thug's knife in a men's room. There was "Killer" Ikeda, a notoriously violent thug with whom Zappetti once went knife-to-gun, and won. There was Hiyasuki Machii, head of the Tosei-kai, Tokyo's most powerful Korean gang, which controlled the clubs and rackets of the booming Ginza strip (Machii also worked for the G-2 intelligence unit of the occupying American force, as a strikebreaker and anti-Communist thug). There was Yoshio Kodama, right-wing political fixer and yakuza money man (also a onetime G-2 operative, rooting out Communist groups in Japan). Much of the mingling between these men took place in Zappetti's Roppongi restaurant, Nicola's, or at the New Latin Quarter, a nightclub straight out of a James Bond movie: "It was a favorite hangout of the international intelligence community, agents from the KGB, CIA and MI6 often vying with each other for the same hostess." Zappetti died alone and penniless, unable to return home, broken by alcohol and diabetes, the victim of a new order of corporate criminals who used Japan's laws against him and his empire (known as keizai yakuza). Zappetti, who had survived knives, guns, and bombs, was mortally wounded by the sort of white-collar criminals who would carry the lessons of the street all the way up to the highest levels of the Japanese government, using corporate cutouts, money laundering, bogus investments, and the like. Zappetti had come up as the Mustache Petes in the American Mafia were going out; by the time of his death in 1992, Zappetti himself was the dinosaur. An exchange between Zappetti and one such new-wave crook showed the writing on the wall: "What the hell is the point of being a yakuza," he asked one well-tailored mobster, "if you act like everyone else? You guys use electronic calculators instead of swords. You talk about derivatives. Your name cards say corporate vice president instead of captain or elder brother. You're trying too hard to be respectable." The mobster gave Nick a strange look and said, "What about you?" Then he asked for the wine list. Whiting's book often veers away from Zappetti himself, panning out to focus on the big picture of Japanese crime during a given period. A far more concise summary of Zappetti's life and exploits appears in the book's acknowledgments, along with a thorough source list and bibliography. But the story tells itself, and it is a disturbing, thrilling account of U.S.-Japan relations and Japan after the Second World War.
Rating:
Summary: insightful and fascinating
Review: The author draws convincing connections between the US occupation and the corruption in the Japanese business/political world. Some of the things that the author discusses are crucial to a full understanding of modern Japanese history, but you will not find them in "official" American or Japanese sources. Examples: US occupation rationing system giving yakuza their black market niche in all goods; Americans getting wealthy by illegal means during the occupation; and much info on minority-status Koreans in Japan and their relations with both North and South Korea. This is an excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating look at what's crawling around under the tatami
Review: The sub-title of Robert Whiting's fine book is a bit misleading. The American gangster in question often disappears from the narrative for long stretches while Whiting explains the long history of collusion between Japanese politicians and the yakuza. Nevertheless, the result is a fascinating social history with plenty of entertaining anecdotes and colorful character profiles. Chief among the latter are Nick Zapetti himself, the "gangster" who made a fortune with pizza parlors that became the hangout of choice for expatriates, entertainers, and, most significantly, those who make their living on the wrong side of the law, and then lost that fortune through a combination of stubbornness, bad luck, and ignorance. Another highlight is the career of Rikidozan, the former sumo wrestler who became a national hero and single-handedly established professional wrestling in Japan by defeating foreign wrestlers in scripted bouts, all the while hiding his Korean heritage. Often very funny, this book appeals to both a taste for the prurient and seamy and the desire for a serious, even-handed analysis of the role of organized crime, political selfishness, and short-sighted anti-Communism in Japan's rise to power and wealth.
Rating:
Summary: Illuminates what exists if reforms not implemented in Asia
Review: The well-researched book discusses the history of the Japanese gangs. If you read between the lines, you can get an idea of what still exists in Japan if the reforms are not implemented. Whiting offers many examples of how the Japanese gangs can lobby for rights to organize. Some say the current reforms are not needed since Asia is recovering. If they don't implement the needed reforms, there's no guarantee that Japan's traditional approach to contracts will change. Whiting does an excellent job of discussing the double talk of Japanese contracts that change if the circumstances change. He gives the example of how Japanese businesses threw out their western employers once the company had been sold to another company. If the reforms aren't implemented, what's to say this behavior won't continue once the West finds out there are hidden debts and resell the company at a loss? The author talks about loyalty to company. This means that people will commit fraud and hide debts in subsidiaries if it means the company will flourish. If the reforms aren't implemented, what ensures western companies that there aren't hidden debts? Whiting leaves this question unanswered. One is left with the feeling that the fundamental problems that drove the 1997 Asian financial crisis not only exist, but lay in hiding for the unsuspecting Western firms who can't wait to buy at the bottom. If it was such a good deal, why are the Japanese selling? Whiting invites the readers to ponder such questions with his illuminating travel through Japanese business culture. Without reform, the gangs are still there with hidden debts, payoffs, and cheaper prices to get market access. What we call crime, Japan considers "business as usual." Not much has changed in 1999. Well worth your time if you want to understand the real risks of doing business in an Asia that fails to reform.
Rating: 
Summary: pretty good--most of it
Review: This book intrigued me and bored me.
The vignettes Whiting spins were entertaining to read. He writes with an understated style thats suits each episode perfectly. In these instances, the people involved are not mere names, but people in action.
In the space between these stories, Whiting lost me. He endlessly lists names, places, and events in passing, that, while it may be important to someone interested in straight facts, didn't appeal to me. I was glad to get to the end.
But I have to say that after reading this book, I have a much better understanding of that side of Japanese history. Especially enlightening was the wounded nationalism displayed by the Japanese. They wanted to be the best in the world--at first militarily, then, after being defeated, the focus changed to business--to top the US (and the rest of the world) in something. All in all, a good book. Just get past the filler.
Rating:
Summary: More fun than a night at Pizza Hut
Review: This book is a hoot to read. The author got sidetracked on his expose of the yakuza and ended up focusing on the life and times of a second-rate US dimwit who made and lost a fortune in post war Japan through a string of pizza parlors. His fortune rode high on the money spent by the expanding criminal expansion of Japan's underworld, only to as quickly be lost due to his inept understanding of Japanese divorce laws. A real enjoyable book, the story was so amusing that I actually visited the locale while in Japan while on business. If you are looking for a compilation of the rise of Japan following the war, the expansion of the criminal underworld, and a personal touch from an American viewpoint, you will enjoy this book immensely.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent companion piece to "serious" analyses of Japan
Review: This entertaining book delves into the seldom analyzed large parallel underworld of Japanese gangs and their links to politicians and "legitimate" businesses. It does so through the remarkable life of Nick Zapetti, a small-time American hood who found his niche in post-war Japan. Whiting sometimes has to stretch to connect Zapetti with the various themes and events that he describes (Zapetti's links to the Lockheed bribery scandal that brought down a Japanese government are pretty tenuous, for example), but he manages both to describe institutions such as sokaiya (corporate extortionists) who are important to the workings of the Japanese economy, and give the reader a sense of daily life in modern Japan. The amazon.com website is replete with scholarly studies of Japanese politics and economics. This book is an interesting and important companion piece to "serious" analyses of Japan and would be an excellent addition to undergraduate syllabi on modern Japan.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent companion piece to "serious" analyses of Japan
Review: This entertaining book delves into the seldom analyzed large parallel underworld of Japanese gangs and their links to politicians and "legitimate" businesses. It does so through the remarkable life of Nick Zapetti, a small-time American hood who found his niche in post-war Japan. Whiting sometimes has to stretch to connect Zapetti with the various themes and events that he describes (Zapetti's links to the Lockheed bribery scandal that brought down a Japanese government are pretty tenuous, for example), but he manages both to describe institutions such as sokaiya (corporate extortionists) who are important to the workings of the Japanese economy, and give the reader a sense of daily life in modern Japan. The amazon.com website is replete with scholarly studies of Japanese politics and economics. This book is an interesting and important companion piece to "serious" analyses of Japan and would be an excellent addition to undergraduate syllabi on modern Japan.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars
Review: This is a consummate book about a part of Japan that can be somewhat shocking especially if one is only familiar with the Japanese for their formalities and etiquette. This book tells a story and is informative at the same time. I enjoyed the writer's style immensely.
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