This is a quick but well-researched read into the life and times of one Nick Zappetti, ex-pat New Yorker and would be yakuza/mafioso. The book deals with the half-century after the war in Japan, and Zappetti’s activities along the way to becoming one of the most successful (and heavily investigated) foreigners in Japan. Along the way, it delves deeply into the ties that exist between the Japanese government and organized crime, the question of who really runs the country, and the way that a person like Zappetti, who spent most of his life in Japan and took Japanese citizenship but never bothered to learn much of the language, could rise and fall so dramatically.
The political stuff is covered in far more detail in Karel Van Wolferen’s seminal The Enigma of Japanese Power (probably the most impressive book of its sort that I’ve seen), but only those with a very intense interest in Japan will be able to wade through the whole thing. Tokyo Underworld is far more accessible, and sketches a quick line-portrait of how things work in Japan for the more casual reader.
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