Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan

Written by Robert Whiting

Narrated by Oliver Wyman

A riveting account of the role of Americans in the evolution of the Tokyo underworld in the years since 1945.

In the ashes of postwar Japan lay a gold mine for certain opportunistic, expatriate Americans.  Addicted to the volatile energy of Tokyo's freewheeling underworld, they formed ever-shifting but ever-profitable alliances with warring Japanese and Korean gangsters.  At the center of this world was Nick Zappetti, an ex-marine from New York City who arrived in Tokyo in 1945, and whose restaurant soon became the rage throughout the city and the chief watering hole for celebrities, diplomats, sports figures, and mobsters.

Tokyo Underworld chronicles the half-century rise and fall of the fortunes of Zappetti and his comrades, drawing parallels to the great shift of wealth from America to Japan in the late 1980s and the changes in Japanese society and U.S.-Japan relations that resulted.  In doing so, Whiting exposes Japan's extraordinary "underground empire": a web of powerful alliances among crime bosses, corporate chairmen, leading politicians, and public figures.  It is an amazing story told with a galvanizing blend of history and reportage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780593286425

Reviews for Tokyo Underworld

[flap_dragon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An exceptionally well informed, impassioned and detailed study of Japan's post war development, the rise of the yakuza, and the problems of being a gaijin in an alien culture, all told through the lens of the life story of an American gangster cum entrepreneur. A brilliant book, remarkably well organised, penetrating, sad, nostalgic, and witty.

[stevenptrue · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A interesting piece of journalistic expose & biography, Whiting uses the life of Nick Zappetti (former American occupation soldier, small time hood, & pizzeria proprieator) as a through-line in which to tell the large story of institutionalized corruption that has taken root in Japan since the end of WW2.
It's a fast, interesting read that while presenting no overall thesis concerning organized crime or institutional corruption in Japan is quite informative on these thru the illustration of several running themes.

[mopedronin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Autobiographical account of an expat American's life in Japan. An interesting look into Japan after its defeat after the war, but nothing you can't live without.