TOKYO JUNKIE: 60 YEARS OF BRIGHT LIGHTS AND BACK ALLEYS…AND BASEBALL - ROBERT WHITING

Another Japan book from the Lawrence Public Library knocked out. This one was not the history of Tokyo I believed it to be. Or, rather, not an overview of Tokyo but a memoir that, secondarily, tells the story of Tokyo’s last ~60 years. Primarily, it’s an autobiography of Whiting who moves to Japan in ‘62 with the Air Force, works with the NSA and CIA on the U2 program, goes to school in Tokyo after getting out, works in publishing/translation/teaching English, before getting published as a Japan-expert and sportswriter who specializes in Baseball. He briefly lives in NYC and seems to split, and to have split, his time between Tokyo and some other city where his UN wife is stationed, but otherwise he’s spent the years since the early Sixties in Japan, specifically Tokyo. Besides the aforementioned interests, he also hangs out with, writes about and quasi-works with Yakuza, who take up the main area of focus, after baseball. The Yakuza stuff is much more interesting to me than baseball, so I’ll have to check out Whiting’s Yakuza focused book, TOKYO UNDERGROUND, but the stuff we get in here is fascinating. I’m obviously most interested in the overlap between the USA (specifically the Armed Forces/Intelligence communities) and the Japanese underworld, in a mutual campaign to create a bulwark against communism in the country. There is some pretty juicy stuff about Yakuza bringing handwritten letters from McArthur, thanking him for all his hard work vs. communism, with them when entering the US to keep costumes and border patrol people from bothering them. As a quick aside, as part of the larger parapolitical story/sus-averse, he does mention getting to know Craig Spence and going on TV with him, since Spence was also a long-time Tokyo guy (at one point, Spence was a register forign agent for Japan in DC). Whiting does say he “consorted with homosexual escorts” and gave “illicit midnight tours of the White House,” which is one way to put it, I guess. The book goes through the 2020 Olympics and the COVID lockdowns, but he has the sort of insight that makes me wish I could get his thoughts on the recent Abe assassination. Whiting does seem to have made a good run at understanding another country. He’s been there a very long time, knows the language, is married to a Japanese person and professionally writes and thinks about Japan. There is the typical memoir lament that things were cooler and better when the writer was 25 and going out all the time. There are more knotty ethical questions about his time working along side the CIA and the Yakuza, including a brief interlude where he helps translate for forign girls working in Yakuza run bar/brothels, neither of which seem to be very positive influences on Japan. And, like I said, baseball isn’t my thing, tho Whiting clearly knows a lot about it and seems to have some insights into the differences between Japan and the US vis-a-vis baseball. Overall, it was helpful to get a history of Japan in the last half-century, even if it was refracted through the specific experiences of particular Boomer. He’s a good writer tho, I’m really interested in picking up TOKYO UNDERWORLD. ‘62 Rising Suns