How very little we knew about the evil that surrounded us when, at age 16, my friends and I constantly hung out around the yakuza gangster joints in Tokyo.  Our parents told us time and again to stay away from Nicola’s Pizza and Club Riki.  Naturally, that only encouraged us to hang out there all the time.  When Nick Zapetti of Nicola’s would welcome us and call us by name, we thought we were ultimate cool, because it was rumored he was a real Italian Mafia guy.  My friend “Covert” Carl even wore a sweatshirt with a Black Hand painted on it.  Really evil men, under the guise of restaurant or club owners, used their businesses as meeting places for people committing some really despicable acts .. the $800,000 diamond robbery at the Imperial Hotel, theft from the base exchange warehouses, extortion, graft, blackmail, embezzlement, fraud, assault and murder.

As teenage boys, we looked at Japanese gangsters then much the same as kids today look at gangster rappers  – with a mixture of awe and respect and fear .. and maybe a desire for the big money that they all flashed.  We wished that we could engender that same sort of fear in our own enemies.  In retrospect, though, we grew out of it and they didn’t.  We turned out okay and they’re all taking the Big Dirt Nap .. and no better off for all that money they stole or the people they hurt or killed.
 

This was one of the outdoor markets which were a direct result of Allied rationing, making everything scarce.  This Jan. 1946 photo courtesy of the WWII vet pictured above, LaVerne L. Dale, Wichita, KS.

What happened to Tokyo following the end of WWII was as much an American creation as a Japanese one.  The devastation following the end of the war brought about rationing, resulting in an almost immediate black market that sprung up around the railway stations of the Yamonote Line at Shibuya and Shinjuku and the other stops in the big circle around Tokyo. Yokohama has its own, as well.  Enormous warehouses of goods had been stored for the Self Defense Force in the event of a ground invasion of the island, which never came.  All of these warehouses were raided by the gangsters who knew how they could benefit from the confusion. These goods were on the street within weeks of the beginning of the Occupation.  The yakuza made a fortune from sales made from simple stalls or mats on the ground outside the railway terminals.  This was often the only place to find food and essentials. Hundreds of thousands of indigent former military men or factory workers were given jobs by the yakuza at these stalls.  It’s no wonder the people thought of the yakuza as a modern-day samurai, as opposed to the criminals they really were.

Gen. Douglas McArthur made sure that the Occupation forces were not combat veterans with a hatred for the Japanese, but fresh-faced youngsters eager for a safe foreign experience.  Most Americans were intrigued by the Japanese, and came to enjoy living in the country.
 

What they didn’t know, though, was that most of the “nice” Japanese girls had been shipped by their families far from the reach of the horny GIs.  What the GIs did see was the flood of prostitutes – government-sanctioned prostitutes – which awaited them.  The girls were organized by .. surprise! .. the yakuza. More money poured into yakuza coffers.  These same girls would make friends with GIs and ask them to get rationed goods, like sugar or tobacco or whiskey, either in exchange for services or for Japanese yen.  The yen was frozen at 360 to the dollar and stayed that way until 1973, in Tricky Dicky Nixon’s administration.  GIs would bring American goods to the girls, and these went directly to the yakuza, which had been ordering the girls to ask for the scarce commodities which, in turn, wound up being sold for enormous profits on the black market.  Eventually, the yakuza found higher and higher level American enlisted men, and then officers, who had access to huge storehouses of rationed goods that were broken into, stolen and funneled into waiting yakuza hands. Sugar by the ton.  Mattresses by the truckload.  Cigarette cartons by the thousands. American intelligence was kept busy finding and sending these corrupted types to courts martial. And the yakuza got richer and richer. Into this backdrop of a seemingly never-ending account of crime and corruption emerged two men who figured they could get their piece of the American Dream .. but in Japan.  One was Rikidozan and the other was Nicola Zapetti.

Japanese gangster and yakuza chief Kodama Yoshio (1911-84).  During WWII, he would barter heroin for war minerals and metals, but made he sure he got his piece, since his 1945 fortune was estimated at $175 million.  More than anyone in the nation, Kodama Yoshio was responsible for the resurgence of the yakuza in post-war Japan. The threat from communism, real or imagined, provided Kodama with legitimacy and the means to unify Japan's criminal gangs--the yakuza.

American wrestler Lou Thesz, a major star of the '50s, with Rikidozan.

First, Rikidozan.  Although his name might not be easily recognized by many U.S. fans today, Rikidozan was once one of the most influential men in wrestling...and perhaps the most important man in the history of "puroresu" (Japanese pro wrestling). It is widely acknowledged that had there been no Rikidozan, there would likely be no such thing as pro wrestling in Japan. He is known as “The Father Of Puroresu,” and is a legend in Japan. Rikidozan (which translates into “rugged mountain road”) was born Kim Sin-Nak on November 14, 1924 in North Korea. Because of the long history of discrimination by the Japanese against Koreans, Sin-Nak used the name Mitsuhiro Momota and claimed he hailed from Nagasaki. While growing up, he encountered that prejudice against Koreans often, and was known to have been quite bitter because of it. He kept his true identity a secret for his entire career, and his true nationality was not revealed until years after his death.

After training as a sumo, the man who would go on to rule Japanese pro wrestling began his career on October 28, 1951 in Tokyo, wrestling to a 10 minute draw against Bobby Bruns. Soon, the athletic and talented Rikidozan would (nearly) single-handedly establish puroresu as a sport for the masses.

After they lost World War II, the Japanese people were understandably in a state of depression, and looking for heroes that could help ease the pain of their everyday lives. The sport of wrestling was, literally, brand new to the Japanese public, and Rikidozan became the biggest wrestling superstar in the country.
 

In 1954, the Sharpe Brothers (Ben & "Iron" Mike), both 6’5” and over 250 pounds, the world tag team champions, come to Japan. The first day is aired by both NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation, the semi-govermental broadcasting network) and NTV (Nippon Television Network). NTV also aired the second and third days. The tag matches between Rikidozan & Kimura (6 inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter) and the Sharpe Brothers, main event of the first and the last days, are still talked about today. In front of the "street television" that NTV setup for people who couldn't afford television, there were hundreds of thousands of people just to watch Rikidozan.

Huge crowds view outdoor TV sets to  watch their idol, Rikidozan, kick some  serious evil gaijin American butt!

As we all know, pro wrestling is (ATTENTION: small children and wrestling fans .. do NOT read the rest of this paragraph!) rigged .. a fake! (Ahhh, too bad!! You read it anyway, huh??) But no one knew it then.  The plan was for the Sharpe Brothers to pull every dirty trick in the book against Rikidozan and Kimura.  The referee would turn his back, and both brothers would gang up on poor Rikidozan.  The crowd went crazy, wondering how the ref could be so blind!  The Sharpes would gouge and bite and kick, and the ref would be looking the other way.
 

The Sharpe Brothers - Ben and "Iron" Mike

Rikidozan and Kimura endured this for a quarter hour .. until .. Rikidozan EXPLODED in righteous fury with a flurry of karate chops and sumo moves that had the Sharpe Brothers (in some great acting that should have been preserved on video) reeling from the onslaught.  First the one inside the ring, then the brother outside the ring, would catch a (supposed) chop that would have crippled, had it actually been delivered.  Then, a Sharpe went down to the mat, Rikidozan pinned him, ICHI .. NI .. SAN .. and it was all over.  The arena crowd .. no, all of Japan .. went wild with ecstatic joy.  It was a morality play for the Japanese.  The humiliation of defeat to the bigger American armed forces had just been avenged, but in a non-threatening way to America as a whole. The Sharpe Brothers had “put him over” – wrestling parlance for letting Rikidozan win, because it created a bigger box office for the next match .. and the next .. and the next.

By beating American wrestler after American wrestler (who were portrayed as evil villians), Rikidozan helped win back some respect for Japan in the eyes of the Japanese people. In the process, he became a national hero. Rikidozan often expressed his contempt for American wrestlers, whom he saw as overweight cheaters, and he often claimed that they were “soft” compared with their Japanese counterparts. It might not have made him popular with American fans, but the Japanese loved him for standing up to the Americans. As for the American wrestlers who came to Japan for the express purpose of losing to Rikidozan .. they were paid a fortune to endure the humiliation. Aside from being Japan’s top pro wrestler, Rikidozan was also a successful businessman, and by the end of his life had acquired a vast empire which included his wrestling and boxing promotions, as well as hotels, golf courses, night clubs, and real estate holdings. However, those business interests would eventually bring him into contact with the violent “underworld” of Japanese gangsters.

12/22/54     Rikidozan defeats Masahiko Kimura to be the first Japanese Heavyweight Champion in a controversial  match.  Kimura, on his biography, explains this match was supposed to be a draw but Rikidozan suddenly started shooting on him during the match.

'50s star Bobo Brazil cringes in fear at the prospect of Rikidozan giving him one of his  trademark karate chops to the throat .. which, as we know, would have killed or seriously injured, had it been delivered correctly.  Ahh,  "puroresu" .. pronounce it .. pro wrestling.

My friends and I perfected the art of schmoozing with club owners like Riki or Nicola.  We tried to entertain them.  Here we were, 16 year old punks, trying to make Rikidozan laugh.  We found we were a lot more welcome as a result. While I was in Tokyo, I really didn't really realize how big he was.  He was a BIG STAR!   His location was close to a popular new restaurant, the first pizza restaurant in Tokyo, Nicola’s Pizza.  Its owner, Nicola “Nick” Zapetti, and Rikidozan became friends.  Club Riki and Nicola's Pizza were regular stops on our weekend schedule.  We talked to these two tough characters, never dreaming what was going on in the back rooms.  I remember that I used to copy Mad Magazine jokes, and memorize them to tell to Riki and Nick.  I was positive they never read my source material, and I was right.  They thought I was a natural comic; I knew I was using stolen joke material to try to get a laugh.  Whatever it takes.

On December 8, 1963, Rikidozan had an argument with one of those gangsters in the restroom of a fashionable Tokyo hotspot, The New Latin Quarter, and after having a dispute over mutual “territory”, Rikidozan was stabbed in the torso. He was rushed to the hospital, and the doctors told him that the wound was not life-threatening, and that he would heal properly with some time off.  But just one week later, he died of peritonitis after bleeding profusely. He was only 39.  The loss of Rikidozan was so shattering that the sport he loved so much nearly died along with him.

The stories of Rikidozan and Nicola were, in fact, so much bigger than life that a book has just been published about their intertwined tales, entitled, “Tokyo Underworld” by Robert Whiting, and it is a chilling account of those days.  Whiting graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo in 1969, and eventually wrote several books about Japanese baseball that brought him favorable attention from the underworld, thus gaining him access to Nicola and the yakuza itself.  Following is an interview Whiting gave not long ago regarding those dangerous times:
 

"It’s about the corrupt side of the U.S-Japan relationship. It revolves around the life and times of a guy named Nick Zappetti, a tough from East Harlem’s Italian ghetto who arrived in occupied Japan in 1945 as a young marine and stayed for 50 years, making a fortune in the black market, illegal banking, pimping, armed robbery and other nefarious activities, while earning the title “the Mafia Boss of Tokyo” in the process. He opened up Nicola’s Pizza, an Italian restaurant which became a popular Tokyo night spot for mobsters, diplomats and movie stars, and inhabited a niche in what was called the Underground Empire - a shady universe of crime lords, corrupt entrepreneurs, political fixers, financial manipulators, and intelligence agents, of both Japanese and American origin, who influenced the course of the nation’s postwar history and the state of U.S.-Japan affairs from behind the scenes, as those in official positions of power.

Click to see larger view of map.

"I wrote to a pair of books, “The Chrysanthemum and the Bat” and “You Gotta Have Wa,” which used Japanese baseball as a metaphor for the culture as a whole. The books were highly successful and, as chance would have it, opened yet another door into the Tokyo underworld for me, that of the swaggering, thickset Nick Zappetti. Zappetti was a huge baseball fan - all the American ballplayers dined at his main restaurant - and he had read my books. He took me into his colorful circle or underground denizens, which turned out to include members of both the Sumiyoshi and the Tosei-kai gangs, some of whom I recognized.

"It was at Nicola’s where that I met my first Keizai Yakuza (financial racketeer), a new breed of mobster cropping up in the then booming Japanese economy. He was a well-dressed Japanese gentleman of 40, who was fluent in 4 languages, owned expensive homes in Hong Kong, Hawaii, Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, as well as Tokyo, and was busy extorting one of the city’s banks - as I later learned when he was arrested. By this time, my education into the corrupt ways of Japan’s political and financial systems had become quite advanced.

"I was thinking of doing a book on Americans living abroad. I asked Zappetti, if he’d mind doing a series of interviews, as part of it. He readily agreed. In fact, he told me that since he had a bad heart, a bad case of diabetes, and didn’t think he had long to live, it would be a good opportunity to confess his crimes and brag about his accomplishments, which he did with a gusto and, at times, a phenomenal recall of detail. The interviews began in 1990 and ended in 1992. I found his life story so remarkable that it seemed a natural peg for an entire book. Zappetti, I’m sure, had experienced more of the Japanese underworld, and the Underground Empire, than any other American. That’s the real underworld I’m talking about: not the movie version where tattooed yakuza sit around in loincloths sipping ceremonial cups of sake and posing with their swords.

"To summarize the hours and hours of tape-recorded discussion, he’d been born into poverty in the East Harlem ghetto, a distant cousin of Gaetano Luchese, boss of one of the top 5 Mafia families in New York.
 

Nick Zapetti advertised in all the American military media, including this one in our high school yearbook!

"He’d been one of the first Americans in Japan after the war and one of the first deported, using Mafia connections to get him back in the country. He’d run a fake dollar check business in a bizarre partnership with American and Russian intelligence operatives and Japanese and Korean gangsters. "After a stretch in jail for his role in a diamond robbery at the Imperial Hotel, he’d gone into the restaurant business and quickly built it into an empire, with the help of two close friends: the boss of the Tosei-kai criminal gang and professional wrestling star Rikidozan, who also had extensive underworld ties. "He had become known as Tokyo’s “Mafia Boss” after surviving several violent encounters with unfriendly Tokyo yakuza and eluding attempts by the Tokyo police and the FBI to prosecute him for gun running, money laundering and black market whiskey sales. His flagship restaurant, Nicola’s, was enormously popular; it introduced pizza to the Japanese for the first time.  In addition to his underworld friends, Nicola's Pizza attracted the current Emperor when he was a young Prince, members of the Imperial Family, political big-wigs, CEO’s, touring musicians, basketball teams and practically ever hungry American GI .. and military brat .. within hailing distance of a taxi.

"The success of his restaurant helped transform the area of Roppongi in central Tokyo from a quiet residential area to one of the most famous nighttime playgrounds in the world. His private life was Shakespearean in its complexity - with four marriages and numerous other stormy relationships with Japanese women. Once, in a burst of jealous anger, he had ordered an unfaithful paramour to slash her wrists, which the mortified young woman did (coming, after all, from a culture which saw suicide as an honorable way out of a dishonorable situation). In the process, she almost died before he could get her to the hospital. After decades of booze, debauchery, gangland intrigue, corporate deceit and countless business-related lawsuits, Zappetti lost control of his vast empire - part of it went to his fourth Japanese wife. When he died, in June 1992, he was nearly bankrupt and consumed with rage at the Japanese, whom he now saw as arrogant swindlers, bent on gaining revenge for their defeat in war by the U.S.

Roppongi at night.

Roppongi today.  Nick helped to build its popularity, but he's not around to enjoy it (click for large view).

"His career, with its tumultuous ups and down, its deceits and betrayals and massive transfers of wealth, was a fitting symbol of the U.S.-Japan postwar relationship. His obvious love of the title “Mafia Boss” - even though he was never a made guy - symbolized as well the ersatz existence many western foreigners in Tokyo lived, trying to be something they were not. One of the last things Zappetti said to me was “any guy who leaves his own country to live in another land is an asshole, and deserves everything that happens to him.”

"It took me several years to check out everything Zappetti had told me, to track down and interview the people he talked about, friend and foe alike, to pore over the volumes of books that exist in Japanese on underworld life, and research the history of the postwar construction of Tokyo—not to mention boning up on politics, international trade and finance, and the aircraft industry, among other subjects.  In all, I interviewed more than 200 people, read over 100 books and slogged through countless magazine & newspaper articles - in English and Japanese.

When I was finished, I had a book that described a half century’s worth of little known history and a clear chronology of the corrupt side of the U.S.-Japan relationship, all set against Japan’s financial ascendancy over the U.S. and its subsequent slide into an economic malaise."

Nicola's in 1999,  thanx to Dr. Tom Elliott ('60)

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