The below is a copy of the content of an original rich text file shared by Bob with movie producers holding the rights for a Tokyo Underworld movie.
*****
For: Harry & Mary Jane & Martin Scorsese
From: Robert Whiting
TOKYO UNDERWORLD ZAPPETTI INTERVIEW SAMPLE A (2,589 words)
In researching Tokyo Underworld, which took several years, I interviewed nearly 200 people, read more than 100 books, half of which were Japanese, and combed through decades worth of articles in Japanese weekly and monthly magazines. My notes amount to more than a million words. I interviewed Nick Zappetti, who occupies about a third of the book, three dozen times between 1989 and 1991, when he died. I have some 40 hours of tape from these interviews alone, all transcribed. Here is a small sampling of the Zappetti material. It should give you some idea how he talks—and with an East Haarlem accent. (He looked a bit like Tony Galento as he aged and put on weight, resembled Ralph Macchio somewhat in his younger days, and sounded like Joe Pesci.)
YOSHIKO
(This is Zappetti’s first person account of his love affair in with a girl named Yoshiko, crica, 1951-55., during a time when Zapettiti’s black market check kiting operation in the Ginza collapsed and he hit bottom. It presaged his involvement in the Imperial Hotel Diamond Robbery, his arrest for that, and his subsequent establishment of his first restaurant. She was the one true love of his life. She got to him in a way that none of his 4 wives ever did. This tale was edited out of the English edition because the editor thought it threw the book out of balance. But I suspect that her husband’s suicide, which occurred at the time I submitted MS, also has some bearing on the decision. The Japanese language editors put it back in. It was always one of my favorite stories and would fit quite well into a movie version covering 1945-64. I also like the story of a 19-year-old beauty queen, whom he ordered to commit suicide over infidelity and who made a serious attempt to do so. This happened in the late 60’s and appears elsewhere).
I’d met a guy named Togo, a famous artist who painted pictures of white girls floating. Leo took me to Togo’s place in Setagaya, where he’s got his studio. And I met his daughters. Boy, I tell you, I wanted to fuck’em right there. Just hit’em and fuck’em right there. I didn’t care who was watching. My god, what luscious dames.
But then life has its compensations as well as its frustrations. Later that day, Leo took me down to Meguro Station, took me and introduced me to this girl Yoshiko Takaishi—this 18-year-old girl who became my mistress. Talk about a beautiful fucking broad. She was about 5’6”—rather tall, well-built with a beautiful body. Some say she was a Korean, but talk about a beautiful fucking broad. God damn, was she beautiful. And intelligent too. Now she speaks French. She’s a French buyer for Lillian boutiques. Anyway, I fell in love instantly. She may only have been 18, but, old enough to bleed, old enough to stick. That was my policy…
Yoshiko’s father had three operations going at one time, in one building in Meguro. Downstairs was a curry/udon place; in front on the street, they had a strawberry shortcake operation going, and then on the second floor, they had a little club—a little dingy club, a hostess bar, where you dance with the girls, pick’em up and take’em out and what not. A kind of whorehouse, basically.
I’d split up with my first wife. We had our problems—one being that I liked sex, and she didn’t appear to, at least not with me, cuz we only fucked twice a year. I’m just like any other red-blooded American. The other problem was that I like crime, while she didn’t. But she wouldn’t give me a divorce because we had two kids., She was Catholic and she took that stuff seriously. Catholics couldn’t get divorced, she would say. It was ironic. She was so fucking anti-white that it was ridiculous. I’d go down to Fujisawa to see her and the kids, but they didn’t appreciate me. They didn’t care for the fucking gaijin. The foreigner. Even my son didn’t like me. But my wife was a devout Catholic and she wouldn’t divorce me. How do you figure?
So anyway, I took her out a few times. Yoshiko. She was beautiful for foreigners. She was quiet, not shy, but quiet. And she spoke very little English, but you always found a way to communicate. Hand signs. She was just plain beautiful, knock out, drop dead beautiful. But love was blind. She could have had four fingers and I’d still have loved her.
She was everything you’d want. Some Japanese kept bothering her about entering the Miss Universe contest, but she always said no. But she liked me right away, I was different from the people that she knew. I was a dashing mother fucker then, who had a lot of money from the black market and slot machines.
She didn’t have much opportunity to go out; her parents watched her like a hawk. So I used to meet her at Meguro Bridge. She’d ride up on her bicycle to Meguro Bridge and I’d drive up in my Packard Patricia 400 and pick her up. I took her to American style restaurants, Chinese restaurants. And one night, I took her to the Green Hotel. We stayed overnight. I broke her cherry. And she was mine forever. If you break a girl’s cherry, if you stay with her every day, it will never end.
I met her all the time. I took her out to the clubs, the military clubs and the restaurants. I took her to visit friends in Washington Heights—the American government housing installation. I taught her to play golf and to play bridge. She caught on right away. We went everywhere—the beach, the mountains. Enjoyed life. Did everything you did with a woman you lived.
So I asked her to live with me. “You can’t keep living like this,” I said. So, on impulse, we jumped out the second floor, out the window of her room, and started a whole new life. She moved in with me in Takanawa. A house off a house. Like another apartment. Two big mat rooms, sliding doors, had a garden, a walkway to the main house., which had something to do with the Imperial Family. I really liked it.
But I had to make amends with her father. First of all, for one thing, he had been grooming her for the family business. For another thing, he hated gaijin—the foreigner. Her father was a typical, sneaky rat-eyed Japanese, couldn’t speak a word of English. Her brother, on the other hand, wasn’t anti-foreign. He liked drinking, fucking around, playing billiards—or tamatsuki, as the Japanese said. He also claimed he was impotent, which was weird. But then, Japanese dicks are so small, it must be hard to know when you have a hardon.
So I met the father and we talked and I suggested that “Why don’t you go change to Pachinko?”
He said “What’s that?”
And I explained to him about Japanese pinball, the big thing those days, postwar and all.
I called a Korean friend, and they came over and set it up. At that time, the Pachinko manufacturers and operators well all Korean. And he opened up “Hyakumon Dollar Pachiko”. Million dollar Pachinko. In front of the train station. And Yoshiko’s father became rich—with my help. Of course, now, he doesn’t talk to me anymore.
But back to Yoshiko. Yoshiko was a great piece of ass. Of course, they all are when they’re young. But that broad Yoshiko was a great fuck. She’d suck me and make my brains blow out. She was great. The greatest piece of ass I ever had. Make that ONE of the greatest pieces of ass I ever had. After all, let’s be reasonable, levelheaded, not get carried away. But then came the day when she wouldn’t cooperate anymore.
Part of the reason was that my Ginza check business had been busted by the cops and they confiscated all my money. I was temporarily without funds which affected my living situation. But there was more.
There was one particular day in Meguro, at Yoshiko’s father’s house. I was sitting in there talking to her on this day and I heard the dogs barking and there was this guy peeing in the doghouse—a fucking Japanese guy peeing in the doghouse. And, of course, I ran out there and hit that son of a bitch so hard, that was the end of him. I knocked that son of a bitch out in one punch. Then I got hit from behind, and boy, let me tell you, I went right on my ass, I got up and rolled over, got up again, groggy, dizzy and I started fighting with that mother fucker—the peeing guy’s friend. But he takes off his wooden geta shoes and used them to block my punches. Everytime I’d punch the guy, he’d block my punch with his geta. I’d hit those fucking geta and it felt like I had broken my hand.
So in the middle of all this fighting, the cops came and we all went down to the fucking police station. All of us. And the guy there in the police station, touched Yoshiko and so I punched him again, right then and there, in front of all the cops.
That was a bad scene. That was really the end of it for me with Yoshiko, because it was an embarrassment to her and the neighbors. It was touchy enough for her having a gaijin boyfriend. The neighbors thought she was a whore. But when her gaijin boyfriend starts beating up guys for taking a pee on the street—which was admittedly something Japanese did then—well, that was downright mortifying. And Yoshiko didn’t want to live with me anymore.
I got out of jail to find her waiting for me with her bags packed. She told me she didn’t want to be with me anymore. She said I was nothing but an animal. A savage. She wanted a permanent separation. Naturally, I tried to talk her out of it. But she was adamant. I talked to her until I was blue in the face, but it didn’t make no difference. She was going. So I blurted out, “If you separate, I’m gonna commit suicide. I’m gonna kill myself.”
Dumb. But that was the Italian male. Always saying stupid things he didn’t really mean.
I had a bottle of Japanese sleeping pills called BOROBIN in the medicine cabinet. There were 100 in a bottle. And I said, “If you don’t came back to me, I’m gonna commit suicide.”
And she sat there and she said, “Go ahead.”
She challenged me the bitch.
So I got the sleeping pills and drank the entire bottle.
And she sat there and watched me.
But I didn’t die.
I laid there on the tatami, time passed and nothing happened. She was still sitting there watching.
So I said, “Chotto Matte/Just a minute.” And I bought another bottle of 100 pills. A new bottle and I took that.
That was a lot of fucking pills, but Yoshiko was not impressed.
She says, “When are you going to die?”
How do you like that?
“When are you going to die?”
I said, “Well, I don’t know.” I mean, talk about not being dead. I’m not even down on the floor. I’m not out. My mind was just gone. So I opened the closet and took out a bottle of Seagram’s VO, Canadian Club. I chug-a-lugged the bottle. You know anybody who can chug a lug a bottle of whiskey? A full fifth? Well, I did. I drank it down the hatch. Chug-a-lugged the son of a bitch.
And Yoshiko is sitting there with a smirk on her face.
Then my old black market pal Joe Dibello walks in. And Yoshiko says, “Oh, he took some sleeping pills, but I think he’s full of shit.” And this, that and the other thing. And she gets up and walks out.
The next thing I know I fall asleep and I wake up the next morning. I’m still in the twilight zone. I climbed into my seven-cylinder Ford, with the one broken piston, and started the engine. I made a U-turn and crack into the car parked across the street. Didn’t bother me. I backed up and kept going down the road. There was a guy on a bicycle in front of me. I blew the horn several times for him to get out of the way. But he didn’t pay no mind, so I hit him too, and he went flying over my fucking car, and his bicycle went flying in another direction.
Then I smashed into a telephone pole. By the time the police had gotten to me, I was bleeding and unconscious. Slumped over the wheel. I hear some Japanese guy calling out to me in English, “Excuse sir, are you all right?” I’m out of it. I’m bleeding. My car is totalled and the guy is asking me if I’m all right.”
Then the next thing I know I’m in the hospital. Some guy from the police is trying to interview me. I gave him my wristwatch and asked him to please go the fuck away.
(Note: Policeman Mogami, who serves as Tokyo Metropolitan Police interpreter, is shocked at Zappetti, who, after having had stomach pumped, had been moaning about Yoshiko and killing himself while in unconcsious stupor. He had never seen anybody so depressed. He thought that all Americans were happy and well-adjusted, like the characters he watched in “Father Knows Best”, then playing weekly on Japanese television—albeit dubbed in Japanese. Moreover, he had never seen a broke American before—a fact he discovered some days later when the hospital called him up and asked him to remove the American from the premises because it was discovered he was penniless and could not afford to pay the bill.)
Note: Nick released from hospital, goes to pachinko shop at Yoshiko’s father’s building, starts another fight and is arrested again. Yoshiko refuses to see him. He commits Imperial Hotel Diamond robbery in bizarre attempt to win her back with newfound wishes. While in jail for that robbery, he hires Mogami to track down Yoshiko. Mogami finds her at ski resort with her new Japanese boyfriend. On release from jail, which Zappetti engineers with money wired from his father in NYC, Zappetti travels to ski resort to confront Yoshiko. He assaults young boy friend who flees in fear. Nick chases him upstairs. Youth jumps off 2nd floor landing into snow. Yoshiko flees too. Nick gets message. Hits bottom. Lives in abandoned Turkish bath. Turns to restaurateuring to reshape his career. Begs borrows and steals money to set up his Italian restaurant. Still can’t put Yoshiko completely out of his mind. Vacillates between lovesickness and anger that Yoshiko acted the way she did…
“You know somebody who could sit there and watch you take sleeping pills and kill yourself? What the fuck kind of person is that?”
*** *** *** ***
(Pills did not work perhaps because they were old and had passed the expiration date, which Zappetti may or may not have been aware)
Tokyo Junkie 
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