( TAPE 5) Nicola Interview Sep 6, 1989 & Sep 13, 1989
(Includes: Nihon Kotsu Settlement, Rikidozan tales, Miss Hokkaido)
SIDE A
(Counter 000)
(NIHON KOTSU SETTLEMENT)
A:…There’s a meeting at the court for the “WAKAI” settlement. It’s already typed up. My other two lawyers, Mr. Ide and Mr. Hasegawa know nothing about it till they reach the courtroom. Then the lawyer, Mr. Watanabe, that I hired, …..Mr. Tanaka, a few years before that says, “Why don’t you fire your other 3 lawyers?? And I will do it all by myself. I don’t need them.” And I said to Mr. Tanaka, “I can not fire Mr. Ide, because he is a company lawyer. And he’s my wife’s lawyer. I can not fire Mr. Hasegawa because he is Mr. Ide’s kobun. And I can only fire Mr. Watanabe. Because he’s the moneylender’s lawyer. That’s how I inherited him. So I was paying each lawyer 50,000 yen a month. It’s a stupid thing on my part, because it’s the same shit I went through one time with bonuses.
You hire a lawyer in Japan and in general they will ask you for a certain amount of money and that’s all they get. They don’t get any money in between. But because I wanted my property back and I was not interested in a financial situation, I put them on a retainer fee of 50,000 yen each. 4 lawyers. Then when it came to get rid of the lawyers, I said the only one I can get rid of is Watanabe. So I’ll get rid of Watanabe. So I went over to Watanabe and I said, “I’m very sorry. But I don’t need you no more. So, I’ll give you one month’s severance pay. And sayonara.” Now, Watanabe, he’s not, how to you say it, a shyster lawyer. He’s a nice kid, you know. He’s just an ordinary person. Just that he went to law school and he got a license to be a lawyer. So there was no bad feeling between him and I. So anyway, he came to the courtroom once or twice and I said, “What do you want to waste your time?” He says, “I want to see what happens.” I say, “I don’t want you to come to the courtroom. I don’t need you. I don’t want to create no trouble. Tanaka is there and he is saying fire everybody.” And Tanaka doesn’t do anything in the courtroom. Everything is done by Mr. Hasegawa. Mr. Ide don’t show up. You know, I’m paying lawyers, for, who knows why. But when you look at it, it’s about 900,000 yen a year. And you can pay a lawyer 900,000 yen a year for a whole court case, it can take ten years. That’s all it gets.
But me being the American, making a lot of bucks, being the happy go easy guy, I made so much money I didn’t’ care about money. I says Ok, now, so anyway. The worm turned.
So now he gets that. So now there’s this meeting on August 31st. I am home. But everybody shelters me. I’m even sheltered today. You know that phone rings every fucking…always watching me, watching me. So I wife goes to this meeting. In Japan, you have a hanko (seal). God damn whoever invented hankos. So they put my hanko on the fucking papers. Or something like that. I don’t know what they use. I can’t find any hankos on the contract. I can’t even find the original contracts. So they made a WAKAI settlement. Who attended the WAKAI settlement? Mr. Watanabe the lawyer. Who invited him? Mr. Tanaka. Mr. Tanaka thought that because I fired Mr. Watanabe, he was my enemy. And he was not an enemy. I kept cordial relations with him. So, he invited this guy…and you know what privileged information is?
Q: Yeah.
A: Oh. Mr. Watanabe sitting down at a WAKAI meeting. My wife is there. My three lawyers are there. Watanabe’s there. That’s four. And they have their one lawyer. And everything is already typed out and made up. My wife is not in my category when it comes to thinking about things. She says, “5 oku yen. Gee that’s sounds good.” Who cares? Who cares we lose the restaurant? You know. So Mr. Watanabe goes back. The agreement is made in the court. The judge says you both sides agree? And they say yes. Mr. Watanabe goes back to his lawyer Mr. Sato, his boss, and says, there was a WAKAI meeting today and Mr. Nicolas is going to get 500,000,000 yen. The total figure is 525 million yen. That total figure which will be paid when he moves out of the office. And I’m gonna get 6 million yen for my shares that I paid 3 million yen for, 17 years before. With no restaurants. And today there’s 11 restaurants making tremendous money and my shares only went up 100%. And, it doesn’t pay to discuss the matter that deep.
But anyway, it came out that there was 460 million yen or something.
So 25 million yen is I don’t know what it is. 10 million yen I supposed to owe. 15 million yen is legal fees. 6 million yen was deducted from the stock of the “SHIN-NICOLAS CO.” (New Nicolas Co.) that I had a 30% interest in, which, they, by the way, brought the 30% down to 15% which in a joint venture is an unethical thing. It’s not illegal. It’s just unethical to change the ratios of a joint venture. So they changed the ratios, so now I’m worth 15% but it didn’t matter. So now of the 4 million yen, Mr. Watanabe spoke to Mr. Sato, Mr. Sato spoke to the moneylender Sugiyama. And he attaches me for 230 million. Half the payment.
Q: He’d already taken his money back?
A: Yeah.
Q: Was that interest. 2 days worth.
A: He’s got a contract that says he’s entitled to 50% of whatever the situation is. So he’s got a legal contract.
Q: Even though he took his money back.
A: It’s a contract. The details are not important. So now, he attaches me for 230 million yen. And here’s the dishonesty involved. My lawyer Tanaka knows this. Mr. Lawyer Tanaka calls Mr. Watanabe to come to the meeting, knowing that if Mr. Watanabe attends the meeting, he thought Mr. Watanabe was against me. And that this would be open the door, he invites Watanabe to listen, and Watanabe, because he don’t like Mr. Nicolas, because Mr. Nicolas fired him, would tell Mr. Sato and Mr. Sato would tell Mr. Sugiyama. And Mr. Sugiyama has, from the signing of the contract, August 31st. to the first payment, which is Sep 20, or something like that, 20 days—plenty time to file an application to attach the money.
Now, I don’t do things like that. I think that if you are going to sign a contract, put the money on the table. And if you put the money on the table, you can’t attach it. Be one check. See. But no, Mr. Tanaka made a lot of maneuvers, I mean, hey, you know…Japanese plan everything carefully. So now he got it. He wanted to know my private banking number. I sez “Why do you need my private account.” He sez “Because you own the shares of a company.” I said, “It’s my company money. Just send the money to the company. And we ourselves will distribute the money the way that we see fit. We don’t need a laywer to distribute our money.”
“No,no,no. It’s got to be done that way, that way.” So anyway he’s talking to my wife and she gives him my bank account number. She give him her bank account number. She gives him the company bank account number. So he disperses the money. Very shrewd operation. It shows up later on, why he did that. So anyway, now, I got attached for 230 million yen. I received 295 million yen. I don’t know what the hell happened to it. So, we’re not paying much attention to the situation. I got attached and my wife says, “oh, what’s the difference? So we lose 230 million yen. Who gives a shit? You know when you’re dying on a heart attack, you don’t care about money. So, I said, fuck it, who cares?”
So, anyway, the attachment went through. And I couldn’t do anything about it because the money had already been attached. It was attached almost before I got the money, as a matter of fact, the same day the money was paid, the attachment was in, so the court held the attachment and I received the balance. Sep 22, or 23 or something like that. And the final payment would be 60 days later. November. Move out of the office, I get 50 million yen.
Q: The office down there (in the Gazembo-cho building taken over by Nihon Kotsu)
A: Yeah. I was in the building. Now, on October 20, we had a meeting, all the lawyers. My 3 lawyers. Not Watanabe. To how do we get this money back. Now, here I am thinking about fighting, when actually, I’m the defense. I don’t have to do a god damn thing. All I had to do is defend myself to get my money back. The other guy is a plaintiff. To attach somebody’s money, you got to go to court to try to keep it. If he don’t go to court, then I got to go to court to get it back. So he went to court. So I gave my lawyers a million yen each. Kind-hearted Nick. 3 million yen to…where one lawyer would have probably taken a million yen…I gave 3 million yen. So Mr. Tanaka got a million yen. Mr. Ide got a million yen. Mr. Hasegawa got a million yen.
So, Ocotber 19th…But, nobody, Mr. Tanaka never said a word about the 15 million yen. As a matter of fact there was never any conversation after the hospital visit after the 15 million yen legal fees. So now comes, November 25th. They pay 15 million yen to my lawyer. He in turn, instead of sending the money to my company, or my account, he gives it to his wife. How do you like that for balls? Tanaka gives the 15 million yen check to his wife. She puts it in the bank. Now I’m raising hell. Where is the fucking money? I says, I gave it to my wife. I sez what do you mean you gave it to your wife? He didn’t even lie about it. I mean he might be lying that he gave it to his wife. But he said that and I said what the hell you’re wife ain’t got no right to that money. That money belong to my company. And I said Mr. Tanaka, on 5 previous occasions, we asked you point blank…My bookkeeper asked you three times. My wife asked you once.And I asked you once. When the 50 million yen comes in, make sure you send it to my company acount because that‘s company money and it has nothing to do with me and nothing to do with my wife. It’s company money. (raised voice, pou ds table) It’s a court case with the company involved. Not private people. So now, we call up. We say god damn, god damn it, you son of a bitch. And my wife can be a mean, mean bitch. Boy, she can be mean. Boy, she knows how to use that Japanese language. She can cut you up very easy. She does a good job in English to me. You can imagine what she can do in Japanese. And her English vocabulary is limited.
She says to me, “What do you mean by I’m a pain in the ass?” She asks everybody what does a pain in the ass mean? Yesterday I said “Stop harassing me.” She says “What’s harass mean?”
But then Japanese, she’s good at it.
So, Tanaka sends to my private account. At the end of the month, about a week later. The 30th of the month or so. 37, 900,000 yen. Now, I don’t know about it, but the bank calls up and says you got 37,900,000, which came to your private account. So, Monday, or Tuesday, I called up Mr. Tanaka, I said, “You son of a bitch, you’re supposed to send 50 million to my account, what do you mean by sending 37,900,000?” he says, “That’s my 15 million yen that I deducted. Now 2.1 million is the tax you owe.” I said “Tanaka, I’m not gonna pay your taxes, you send that 15 million yen back to my company. That’s my company money.” He says, “I’m entitled to 15 million yen.” I says, “Who in the hell says you are?” He says, “You and I agreed.” I says,”Where did I agree? You mean that day in the hospital? I don’t even believe what you are saying.”
Anyway, so then he says, “the only way I send back money to you, is, you write me a check.” I says, “My check is no good.” He says, “You write me a check.” I say, “My checks no good.” He said, “You send me a check by hand. Hand carry a check to my office. For 9.7 million yen. And I’ll send 9.6 million to your account.” I said “What the hell is the difference between the 100,000 yen? And why don’t you send the 12.1 million.?” He said “No, I will only send you 9.6.” All right, beggars can’t be choosers. So I says “Send it.” So I write a check for 9.7 mill. I give it to my son. I say “take it to Mr. Tanaka’s office. He took it to Tanaka’s office. He took it to Tanaka’s office and Tanaka received the money on the first. And on the 2nd of December, he send the check to my bank account. On December 3rd or 4th, I took the money out. And I put it in my company account. I went to the bank. I said “I’m very sorry I wrote a check for 9.7 mill. I don’t want no money in my account. I’m canceling my account.” He says, “Well, you know, you’re gonna have trouble.” I says, “I’ll take the trouble.” I lost the checking account that I’d had for some 20 odd years. 30 years. My private name, Nicolas Zappetti. And you know how hard it is to get a bank account in this fucking country. So I had to lose my bank account. So I lost my bank account. I gave it up. So I told Tanaka, the check is no good, it will never be any good, you can do what the fuck you please, it will never do you any good. So, of course, he writes letters, and he’s gonna sue me for the 15 million yen. I said sue.
So one day I just wanted to show him how vulnerable he was. I went to his office after 5 o’clock. And I opened the door slowly. And he’s got customers in there see. And I figured I’m gonna scare the son of a bitch. Cutthroat bastard. So I closed the door again and I rang the bell.
And he came out. And there I standing there. And I think every ounce of blood drained out of him. He turned white as a sheet. Can you imagine meeting Mr. Nicolas and you’re cheating me out of 15 million yen. And I said to him “Tanaka. How do you like the way I come in front of your door and you don’t expect me? “ I said “One of these days, “somebody’s gonna stand in front of this door and kill you. So be careful how you open the door after 5 o’clock at night. And I left. I’m still planning that.”
I got a lot of plans. Put me in jail and they’ll probably hang me before all my plans work. But who cares. How do you hang a man that can’t see, can’t walk and has got a bad heart? Shit.
So now I’m in court against Mr. Tanaka. And my two lawyers, honorable bastards that they care, feel that if they can beat me in court….they are going to be his witnesses by the way…How do you like that? He says “fuck them.”
If he can beat me I court, I’m going to be sued by my other two lawyers for 15 million each.
Q: Eventually you got 200 out of the 500 million. Plus the 50?
A: I got everything except the 230 million yen. So when December came around. We like to clean all our bills by December, you know that system. We decided that because Tanaka kept 2.5, we’ll pay the lawyers one per cent each. So I gave Mr. Ide and Mr. Hasegawa 2.95 money. 2, 950,000. So Tanaka is writing them letters asking them to help him collect his money. His money. How do you like that? So now I’m being sued by Tanaka for 15 million yen. He’s using my check as a reason.
But, I got a new lawyer, named Murakami. Murakami says the only reason that you wrote the check was because you wanted a guaranteed payment to the other lawyers, that if you didn’t write the check, you can’t get the money back from the guy, so you wrote a check and you’re gonna pay the lawyers one per cent each. So that’s my defense.But you know what the Japanese judge will say. Americans, you can’t believe them, they’re liars, they’re all bullshit and this that and the other thing. And I’ll lose the court case.
But I hope by the time I lose the court case and I appeal it that I’m either dead, out of the country, completely broke, and he has no claim. I’ll even get divorced. I’ll do KANDO to my whole family. You know what Kando is?
Q: No.
A: It’s either Kando or Kondo. (it’s Kando). It means you disown somebody….
Q: …(sigh) This is awfully complicated.
A: (laugh) It’s going to take you 6 months to straighten it out.
Q: Next time , I want to talk about, you said you got divorced and your wife took all this stuff. Talk about that. And you said the police raided your house, once.
A: Oh, many times. They raided my house on an average of every two weeks.
Q: Also. Did you know about Rikidozan?
A: Oh, yeah. I knew Rikidozan very, very well.
Q: Talk about him. And divorce from wife 2 and you married the Hokkaido girl, & the courts took away all your stuff. They gave everything to her. Everything you owner to her?
A: No, no, no. They gave her my Roppongi house. My Yokota restaurant. That’s my #2 wife. The one I got now. My Hokkaido wife…I made my Hokkaido wife pay me. How do you like that.
Q: Next time.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1989
(RIKIDOZAN)
A: (re Rikidozan) And I used to go out quite often. As a matter of fact, there used to be 3 of us. The other guy was Mr. Machii. Crime Incorporated, you know. And we’d go out. And we’d make typhoons. We’d go in a club and we’d just tear it up. Not me. But Riki and Machii would fight with each other. The purpose would be to destroy the club.
One day I went to Leon Greenberg’s office. He’s a lawyer. And I had some problems.Which I always have. Or used to have. And I said something in the office and somehow, it came back to me. And I couldn’t figure out, talking legally, who the hell would be interested in what I said to the lawyer. So I went back to Leon Greenberg’s office, and he used keep a record of everybody that came in the office. So I looked at it. And it showed Leo Prescott was running Club 88. He’s a Britisher. And then I put everything together. Leo Prescott said something to somebody, and that’s how it got back to me.
So I called Riki and Machii and we went to Club 88, which was down the street here. So I took out my big fat cigar. And my brandy and ginger drink or something like that. And these two guys proceeded to have an argument and a fight. Now Machii is 6’1” or 6’2” or 6’3” and he weighs a good 220 pounds. And Riki is not as tall as him, but he’s as heavy. So these two guys started fighting, throwing punches at each other and missing and hitting the customers. Throwing chairs at each other. Missing and hitting the customers. And when they got through, the back of the bar, every bottle of whiskey was broke, the piano was broken, the place was a mess.
And I in the club smoking my cigar, away from the action. And Leo came over and he said, “You instigated this two guys to come over and break up my place.” And I said, “You went to Leon Greenberg, and you overheard my conversation and you said it to somebody. The name is Joe Dibello. You spoke to Joe Dibello. It came back at me see.”
Q: What did he say?
A: I can’t remember. I was in a legal argument with Joe Dibello, so I was going over there for legal advice and how to I handle this matter. And Prescott was in the office there and he heard it and he informed Joe Dibello what I spoke to Leon Greenberg about. And I was very surprised. It came back at me the next day. So I ran over to Leon Greenberg’s office and who else was there? Leo Prescott’s name was there. He was in the next room listening to the conversation. By accident, he heard it. So I had Machii and Riki break the fucking club up. They really broke it up.
Q: Any details about that?
A: No…we did that quite often. You go in a club, you make out like you’re arguing with each other and the object is to break up the club. (exaggeration) [M. Alexander verified Club 88 fight, however). I did it twice to Leon Prescott. Not once. I did it twice. And that caused him to go out of business and change his location. The second time I did it to him, he used to buy Nicola’s pizza from me and he used to sell it in his club, which was across the street from my first, first restaurant. Andnonen day a customer came over to me and said, “boy, you’re pizza tastes terrible.” And, of course, I don’t appreciate that kind of conversation. I sez “When did you eat it.” He said, “yesterday.” He said, “Where did you sit?” I said, “I wasn’t in your place, I was in Leo Prescott’s Golden Gate. Club 88. Club 88? Or Golden Gate. It was one of those two names, I can’t remember. So I says, Oh? So I went back to my little office. And I checked to see how many pizzas we sold yesterday to Leo Prescott. Well, it turned out that we didn’t sell any pizza to them. So it was obvious that they started buying pizzas from me, and then their cook, ala Japanese style, thinks he can always make a better pizza than the other Japanese guy. …So they started making a pizza and saying it was Nicola’s pizza. Of course, they don ‘t know how to make pizza. So I got the complaint. So I did it again. I called up Machii. I called up Riki. So I got the complaint. So I did it again. I called up Machii. I called up Riki. And we went again in that place.And that was the end of that place. Just tore it up again, completely. And I was standing there with a cigar in my mouth and Leo Prescott came over again and he says “Nick you’re doing it to me twice.” And I says, “First, you spoke too much to Joe Dibello. And then you started copying my pizza, saying it’s Nicola’s pizza.” So Leo Prescott closed his restaurant. Closed his club. And moved to Toranomon.
A: I was with Riki. Did I tell you about the time he was playing games with me and his wife? His girl, his wife-to-be…….
(Well, before that)….Riki and I went to some club in Shimbashi…some movie star. I think her name was Aoyama. She opened a sort of a coffee-shop/club type affair in Shimbashi area. Riki and I went there. And Riki asked her to bring out all the dishes. And they brought out a lot of fucking dishes. And when Riki asked for something, you just listened and do it. Because he was just too big and too mean a guy, not too. To ignore him would be dangerous. They lined up all the dishes, one on top of the other, Riki’s got to show his karate ability. And he hit that first dish on the top with a shot and every dish on the pile broke. That’s Riki.
Q: Bring out every plate.
A: Stack them up and he went “dong” and he broke every plate in the pile. And, of course, that poor girl was opening the place. And those plates are very valuable to her. And she has to serve people on plates and she ain’t got no plates. It took him one second to break all the plates in her house. And then of course Riki laughed. He thought it was all a big joke. And then he says how much the dishes are worth. And, of course, he paid a lot of money. But it was the thrill of breaking all the dishes in one place that…that was Riki’s way of thinking.
You know in your baseball book you talk about these guys grabbing peckers. That’s a Rikidozan habit. He does that to everybody. He meets you, you stick your hand out to shake hands he goes right down there and grabs you by the balls. In front of everybody. In the club. You know. And instead of shake hands, your hands are up there and you say Riki please stop. Itai. (ouch) Itai. Itai. Itai. And this guy has got you by the balls. That’s another trademark of Rikidozan. And he’d be laughing and you’d be screaming.
Riki came up one day and he says, “Come on, Nick. Let’s go for a drink.” We always did that. And I said, “Let’s go.” He’s got the Mercedes Benz with the gull wings. You ever see those old cars? Doors open this way. Gull wings? And he says “Come on, let’s go for a drink.” OK. We get in the car. And the son of a bitch is going like 100 miles per hour. And he’s flying down the road and I say, “Where we going to go for this drink?” He says, “Atami.” (100 miles south). I sez OK. Cuz with Riki, you don’t argue with him. If he wants to go to Atami and have a drink. You go to Atami and have a drink. And he flew down the road to Atami, the first place over the, the second place, he walked in. You know he likes to drink bourbon. In a Manhattan glass. He orders two straight bourbons in a Manhattan glass. There must be about six ounces in each fucking glass. So he and I drank it. Neat. Down the hatch, like that.
Q: 6 ounces of bourbon.
A: You know how much fits in a banana glass. 6-8 ounces? Then we had two each. And he says “Let’s go.” He got in the car and he flew back to Tokyo. Rikidozan….Straight. No water….The car was about a 300 Benz. That was a fucking fast automobile….But Riki always did that. He drove down the road and if you were in the way, god bless you….
Anyway, after he got through breaking all the dishes that night. We go to the Riki Club. Riki had a club (gives complicated directions). He probably owned the whole building. Anyway, he had a Rikiclub there. And after he got through breaking all the dishes, he said, let’s go to his club. And we went to his club. We go in the club and there’s this nice looking girl. And I said, “Jeez, that’s a nice looking girl.” And he say, “yeah.” And being the bad bastard that I am, I ask the girl to come sit at our table. She says “Yes.” Very friendly. Very sociable. Very open. Very pretty. And here I thought, I says, god damn it, I got that Casanova beat. I got everybody beat. Look at this broad coming over to me. And, of course, I say “You’re very pretty.” She says “Thank you.” She didn’t say I was very pretty. But she was very pretty. And so I have a drink with her and I say, “Are we going to go to bed tonight?” She says “yes.” Riki’s sitting there, politely. Getting a big kick out of everything. And then he says, “Can I watch?”
Paa!
I said, “Riki. Get out of here. You can’t watch. What’s the matter with you?”
He says, “I wanna watch.
And I said, “No, you can’t watch. Can’t watch.”
And I told the girl, “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of Riki by the end of the night.”
And by the way, we’re driving my car. I had the first Buick Riviera that came here. So, anyway, so, we drink and drink and talk and, of course, no more filthy language. It’s a known thing that we’re going to go to bed together.
I says “Come on, let’s go.” And Riki says, “I wanna go with you.” And I said, “Riki, please, this is not a …I don’t like two boys and a girl. I’m sorry, you know. I like two girls and a boy. Not two boys and a girl.”
He says, “I gotta go. I gotta go. I gotta go.”
And I says to this girl, “Come on. We’ll get rid of Riki somewhere along the road. I’ll open the door and kick him out.”
So anyway, we get to the Cosmopolitan club which is straight up the road here. It’s no more there, now, but it was straight up the Roppongi road. Nogizaka Jinja. (Nogizaka Shrine) So it’s about 5 o’clock in the morning and the sun is almost shining and I stop the car and I hear the noise of a fist hitting a face. You know that, it’s got a certain sound to it. And I said, “Jesus Christ Almighty. I’m not exactly sober. But nobody hit me. There’s only 3 of us in the car. I’m driving. Then girl’s in the middle. And Riki’s on the right. I get out of the car. And I figure Riki hit the girl. And I open Riki’s door and I sez “Riki get out. What are you crazy? Hit a girl?”
Well, now he gets out of the car. We got a lot of respect for each other cuz I was not afraid of Riki. And he reaches in and kicks the girl in the fucking face with his karate kick.
Jesus Christ Almighty. I said “Riki, what the hell is the matter with you? I never seen you this drunk or this wild.”
(interrupted by phone call from Hayashi, a meat importer)
(discussion of Tokyo Giants baseball player Warren Cromartie wanting to buy Nick’s Roppongi restaurant, Cromratie’s contract)
A: You think Cromartie can stay here 2 more years?
Q: Don’t know. He’s 36. It’s harder to stay in shape. He’s single.
A: Fucking all day long. Which is a great habit. Great hobby.
Q: He doesn’t get up until noon.
A: He’s got that broad.
Q: He’s in good shape. Doesn’t drink or smoke. But. (Etc.)
A: But look at Boomer. (Orix Blue Wave player Boomer Wells. Inre news story about his ‘imminent” release.) It happens to him. When he first came in at the start of the season, Jesus Christ, he looked like Adonis. Skinny, everything. I said, Jesus, when you get a million dollars a year and the boss tells you lose weight. You lose weight. And already, it looks like the end of his career. He gained weight back again. He drinks too fucking much. He’s always in the Hard Rock Café drinking. And he can’t catch the ball no more. And he’s hitting into too many double plays. They got a record of how many double plays he hit. Is this why they’re on his back?
Q: Yeah. I think he got forty-three.
A: What does a normal good player. What does an asshole get for double plays—the most. What’s the record?
A: 39 I think.
Q: And he’s already passed the record?
A: That just means he’s not hitting the ball up into the air. That gives him a Ken Macha swing. I used to tell Macha…this is the way to make money…Macha always wanted to hit behind the ballplayer….If it happens to Boomer that in one year. Now he’s got the most rbi’s. He’s the 3rd leader in the league, in average. He’s pretty close to the top in home runs. But if they win the championship, who’s the most MVP? He might wind up with the most MVP. He’s only got one guy in fron t of him. Matsunaga.
Q: You talk to Boomer about this?
A: No. not yet. He’s been in here but…
Q: There’s always the possibility they put that story out as a way of shaking up. him up. To scare him.
A: We call that “long eyes.”
Q: Anyway, ok. So he kicked the girl in the face.
A: He kicked the girl in the face.
Q:: He got outside the car and kicked the girl in the face.
A: He was outside and she was sitting in the car.
Q: The door was open.
A: Of course, I opened the door and he came out. And he kicked her in the face.
Q: This is in your Buick Rivera. The new one, that just came out. I always used to buy the first car that came out. So, he reaches in and grabs the girl. Pulls her down on the the fucking…standing up…He picks her up and throw her over the fucking car. Now that’s not difficult for him to do because what does a girl weigh? 107 pounds? And there she lands on the other side of. The fucking car, on the sidewalk. Of course, I ran over to the sidewalk. I think he’d killed her. I pick her up. She’s all right. She’s shookn up. And I says “Riki, you own me an apology. You owe me an explanation. If not, you can I are going to have fucking trouble here. This is my girl. She wants to go to bed with me. She’s in my car. And she’s under my protection. And you’re abusing my friendship. And I’m not going to tolerate it.”
He says “Nick. You know who this girl is?”
I said, “No, I don’t know who this girl is. I just met her.”
He said, “This is the girl I’m supposed to marry.”
I guess you know he didn’t marry her. And she was only teasing him. She had no intention of going to bed with me. She was just playing games with me. And he was really fucking So I think he went down to Chigasaki and married the chief of police’s daughter or something like that.
Rikidozan.
Q: You didn’t have a sense of humor about that kind of thing.
A: Oh, you know. She was humoring him. She was teasing him. She was humoring me. I guess, ne.
Q: What about Keiko Momota. (Riki’s widow) You know her?
A: Keiko Momota could be the one in Chigasaki. His wife? I don’t know. I don’t know that much about the names of the people. I know he said he was supposed to marry her. He never did marry her. (the model) She was a fashion model. And you know, it turned out that even though he punched her and hit her, and threw her over the car and kicked her, she wasn’t…she sez I got to work today. You know? But the girl is relaxed. And I learned at that particular time that if you hit a person that is relaxed, you can’t hurt them. It’s only the person that stiffens up and sees the blow coming that you can hurt. This girl, she was just relaxed.
One day I went to Rikidozan’s house to play uchikabu (ochikabu?)
You know what ochikabu is?
Q: What month and year was the Riki incident?
A:: It ws summer. The year…I remember the car. It was …..1964. About that time? (note: Riki died December 1963.)…Ochikabu. You know what the numbers are. 8-9.…It what you call (garbled) baccarat?…It’s a sort of a baccarat. What it is…Now it ain’t. I don’t know how to say it. What it is is a game played with hanafufu cards.
Q: Hanafuda. (flower cards)
A: Hanafuda. (They got a little circle with a number in it.) Like 6-5-4-3-2. Like htat. That’s why it’s like baccarat. They draw a line down the table. It’s a long skinny table. And use it on neither side that you want. It doesn’t matter. So the table is full of people and its got a line down the center. And then they get these cards, and they put three cards on one side, and three cards on the other side, face down, after the cards are face down, people bet. So the first time I played that game, I don’t know nothing about the game. But I went there, of course, I don’t bring no money with me. So Riki gave me a million, you know the house game, with a million yen, to play with. I got a million yen. And in those days, a million yen was a lot of mizzoula. Eh. So anyway, everybody is putting money down. And there are quite a few famous peoples there.
Q: This is an organized game at his house?
A: This is his private home. He lived in Omori. It was a big piece of property. The property was guarded by dobermans and sheperd dogs. Vicious dogs. You don’t go outside in the yard. You don’t go outside in the property. So anyway, I don’t know nothing about the game….I take out….I don’t want to mention the names of some of the people, but, everybody sitting at the desk had between 20 and 30 million yen in front of him. And I’m the piker.I got a million yen. And I’m looking down the line. There could have been 20 people at that table. And you never saw so much fucking cash in your life. Everything was cash. There was no bullshit with anybody. And behind each player was a bodyguard, with his jacket off, with his gun in a holster, because it’s a crime to gamble in Japan. A very bad crime.
Q: Men and women?
A: Now, all men. All big businessmen. All with artillery. Visible artillery. Nobody’s trying to hide it.
Q: What kind of guns?
A: You name’em. They got them in the holster. 45’s. 38’s. .357’s. God only knows what they got. Me, I’m bare ass. Uh. I aint’ got no gun.
Q: Both gambling and guns are illegal.
A: And that’s why the dogs are outside. The police couldn’t raid the house. There’s no way anybody can get in the house. No way. Maybe by helicopter. But I don’t think they had helicopters then. And I doubt if they can get out of the helicopter. The dogs would tear them up. So the first bet I made was 50,000 yen. Now, 50,000 yen was like 3 months pay—for some people. And I was politely informed…I sat next to Riki. And he says “Nick…Nobody bets 50,000 yen. So I said, “I don’t know. What do I bet? The minimum bet is 100,000 yen. Shit. God damn it. That’s a lot of fucking money. 100,000 yen. Jesus. And I sez ok, so I put 100,000 yen down. I lost ten consecutive times. I never won once. Because you could play either side of the line.
Q: So you were out a million yen.
A: I lost a million yen. Like that. So then first time I put 50,000,, he said, “Nobody bets 50,000.” So, I says ok. What’s the minimum bet? He says “A hundred.” So I put a hundred thousand.
And then they count all the money on the side. Cuz it’s so easy to count the money. Most of ‘em playing million yens, you know. OK. They count the money and then Riki’s the boss. He sits at the head of the table. And Riki, you know the table’s this way. And Riki’s, he’s like sitting over here. The head of the table. He could see both sides. And they tell him, this side has got like 20 million yen. And this side has got like 12 million yen. And Riki says “Shobu.”
“Shobu” means “go.”
Riki would bet the balance of either table. Either side. It was 21 and 13. He’d bet 8 million yen on the side that’s got 13 to balance it out. He was the balancer. Because both sides have to be equal in order to make a bet. And this, in ten times, I lost a million yen. And I’d say that Riki bet a probably hundred million yen in that same period that I lost a million yen. And, of course, Riki won and Riki lost. And Riki won and Riki lost and like that. But I’m not the lucky guy. And all these players, they got a book, and they put x’s. Circles. And red and blue. The guys next to me, they all had these books and and they’re all planning, you know. One on the left side, then maybe the right side is the next time, you know like that kind of figuring out. And I said “shit, I don’t know.”
And Riki says “You want another million yen?” And I said “Fuck no, I can’t win in this game. I don’t know the mathematics of the game. I don’t know what the percentages of the game are.” I said, “These guys are all pros.”
And there was one guy there. I will tell you his name, but don’t write it. His name was Shinjuku Wada. Anyway, so . I sez, “Well, I don’t want to play now more.” Now when you win, you don’t get a hundred thousand. You get 95,000. So these guys with their bodyguards, flick up the 95,000. You lose 5%. The bodyguard would take 5% and add 5 more to it like that. And keep them packs. So when you’re talking about a million yen, they lose 50,000 yen. They win, they get they get 950,000 yen, you see. So the guy up there behind him always had a stack of money. And keeping everything in million yen bundles. So anyway, I said, “Riki, I’m sorry. I can’t play this game. It’s a waste of time. I don’t know nothing about it. So call the dogs off and let me go home.”
He says “Ok.” The game stops. Security takes over. Because, to leave that house, you got to bring all the dogs back in. And these guys with the guns, I think they’re all out there. I think if the police would have raided that house when somebody was leaving, I think they would have shot all the police dead. Regardless of how many policemen would be there. They’d shoot them dead. These people were too important to be playing that kind of game with visible gunmen around. So anyway, so I left the thing. Of course, I got chauffeurs going there. They drive me there. They drove me home.Then to my restaurant. I says, “I need a million yen. And I took a million yen and paid them off.” Cause they wouldn’t even wait until tomorrow to get their money.
(Note: Yae was most unhappy about Nick taking the money from the till. As she put it, “it was company money. Not Nick’s. So even then, before they got married, she had a proprietary interest in the business.)
Now Rikidozan made a bowling center in Shibuya. The Riki Palace. It was the only bowling center, I guess, in Japan, that has the strings on the pins. You ever see that kind pin? And it has got a rope on them to haul them up. Then when you hit them, they fly away, but the rope holds them. So he had that kind of a bowling center. And one day when I was visiting him, before he built the bowling center, he had all the blueprints and everything. And he says, “What do you think, Nick?” And I says, “You’re being conned. You’re gonna get hurt. Don’t ever be involved in that thing. That’s a bad deal. Riki.” I sez, “if you’re going to go in the bowling center, for god’s sake, don’t go in the one with the strings on it.”
Q: Why?
A: Because Brunswick and AMF is in the bowling business and they’ll kill you by propaganda. They can bad mouth your business. And then the association, the bowling association will say “we don’t like to be involved, with the bowling alley that had got strings on the pins, and all that, the politics would be too dangerous.” But anyway, he did it. And, of course, he took a beating. He wind up, I don ‘t know what the hell he did, but, you know how he died, don’t you?
Q: Yeah. I heard the story. He got stabbed in the Latin Quarter. He was in the john, right.
A: Well, what happened was Riki was sitting in the club, at the Latin Quarter, and he was going to go to the toilet, and some punk was in his way, and Riki is not the kind of guy you stand in front of. You stand in front of Riki, you got to be prepared to be hit. Because Riki always hits. He is a mean…He is a Korean you know….And this bum gangster was in the way and of course Riki just wiped him completely out.
Q: Punched him or shoved him?
A: Flipped him.You know. Kadong! But Riki, you know, he weighed 240. He was non fucking sissy. So he went in the toilet and took he leak or whatever he wanted, and when he came out, this kid was waiting for him. See. The kid’s got a knife. Riki never sees it. And the kid flips the knife in Riki’s belly. Right…like here. What would you call over here. The appendix place. Like that. Bang. So, Riki, of course, clobbered him again, but this time Riki must have really hit him. The kid didn’t wake up. (Note: TU account of this is the accurate one.) And Riki went in the club.He gets up on the stage. And he says to the bandleader “Play Mack the Knife.” And when Riki says “Play Mack the Knife.” I don’t care what you are playing, you play Mack the Knife.
Q: Were you there?
A: No. Thank god. Because I was always with Riki. Anyway, so, they are playing Mack the Knife and Riki is up on the stage. Or on the dance floor. And he opens his jacket. (note: actually it was a sweater). And there’s a bloody shirt, with blood coming out. And he says, “Some punk just stabbed me.” Nonchalant, like it was nothing at all. And the fucking people in that club, they went flying over tables and chairs, they’re running like a thief. You know, how often do you go in a club and see a guy bleeding over there. Like you know, a knife stuck in him. And that was the end of that. Temporarily.
Q: Proudly, right?
A: Proudly. Like, he says, “hey look at this.” Mack the Knife. Somebody just stabbed me.” You know, of course, he’s more eloquent than I am. Than I’ll ever be.
Q: He punched this guy and the guy was unconscious.
A: Knocked him out. 2nd time, he knocked him out. Ok. So the ambulance comes and they take Riki to the hospital. They brought him right over here to the Sanno. You know the Sanno hospital at the end of this road here. They brought him there. And, I think then gangster’s name was Noguchi, Noguchi went to where this kid that stabbed him, and Noguchi stabbed him. This Noguchi belongs to the Tosei-kai.
A different Noguchi than before. And, of course, they stabbed him. I don’t know whether they killed him or they didn’t kill him. This that and the other thing. And it was a big hullabaloo. And it must have been in all the newspapers.
Q: Where’d they stab the kid, in the Latin Quarter?
A: No, they went right to the house or the gangster office or what not. (See TU. It was Riki Mansion) They don’t fool around you know. When they gotta do something, they don’t plan it, they just go out and do it. The kid stabbed Riki. Riki’s a friend of Machii..And Machii is the crime boss of Tokyo. You don’t do that….so they stabbed the kid back. There was a lot of stabbing. I know Noguchi was stabbed too. So…I don’t know details.
Anyway, Riki was put in Sanno Hospital. And he didn’t believe that this little knife wound, no more than one inch deep, one inch wide, could hurt him. So he didn’t listen to doctor’s orders,,,and he ate apples, and he got petrincin, petrinosis?
Q: Peritonitis.
A. And it killed him. He died. And that was the end of the most fabulous career in Japan….He was a kid. He was a Korean. He went into sumo. And he went up to Ozeki. And seems they wouldn’t let him become Yokozuna. So he went over to Frank Scolinas. We all knew each other. And Frank introduced him to Sharpe Bros. (etc. see TU. It’s more accurate.) Scolinas was still in GHQ…Then Riki came back, became pro-wrestler, started karate chop, became multi-multi-millionaire….Of course, this is recreation and
Entertainment, Because if Riki really hit anybody with a karate chop in the ring, he’d hurt you. But they’re not allowed to kill anybody in the ring. They’ll hit you hard enough to knock you on your butt.
(Talk about Richard Byer, Destroyer. An American wrestler who was popular in Japan in the 70;s Put Figure 4 leglock on Riki. Riki held it for 20 minutes. Gave up. Went to the hospital.)
SIDE B
(Counter Side B)
A: Talk about pro-wrestling. They can put you in a grip you can never get out of. But that would kill the sport. So they play a game. I get you in this grip, you come out this way, …if they put a real grip on you, you’re not going to get out of it. I don’t care who you are…
Q: You still get hurt.
A:.They get hurt…But they, like a lot of guys get mad at columnists, ..I hears pro wrestlers ask the columnists, why don’t you put our story in the paper? Guy says, I write the sports thing. You belong in the entertainment section….And I’ve heard them say that quite a bit to the pro-wrestlers.
Q: I’ve seen films of Riki, back in late 50’s when Rikidozan became a symbol of emerging Japan. And he would always beat up the gaijin. People standing in front of the department stores watching Rikidozan and the Destroyers.on tv. You see that
\A: I was probably there and I saw.…but there were so many fucking things were happening to me that I can’t recall small things like that. I know Pepper Martin came here. He was a pro-wrestler. He became a movie star. He played in “The Mean Machine.” With Burt Reynolds. Pepper Martin and me, we were very, very good friends, …there was another guy Stan Kowalski, these were all pro-wrestlers. You know everybody came to my restaurant.,I get to know them all. And I remember Pepper Martin, one day, brought him up to Hokkaido to my fur place and I was riding in the car with him and he was sitting in the back seat and I was driving the car. And he started pounding the back floor with his foot, the Nazi stamp, stomping your feet, and I could swear to god that my car was falling apart because the rhythm was so beautiful. And I stopped the car and I tried to figure out and I got back in again, and he kept that pounding up with his foot, until finally he couldn’t hold it no more and he started laughing. And he told me what the hell he was doing. Because I thought the car was falling apart. That was Pepper Martin.
Q: What kind of car was that?
A: It was an Opel. I always had Opels in Hokkaido. Pepper Martin. When he gave up he gave me all his clothing that he used in pro-wrestling , all his black tight and black sweatsuits and what not. And I thought it was a good gesture. But what am I going to do with it. I’m not going to be a pro-wrestler. But those days, I know, he used to get $800 bucks a night to wrestle. I the 50’s. Boy that was good money. And regardless whether he worked or …he was on a $5,000 a week salary.
Q: I hear they really try hard when they’re on tv…nationwide tv.
A: Well, you know….It’s a business and you got to keep the customers employed., happy. They got packed houses but you can’t go out and destroy somebody, really..
*******
The last time the Destroyer was here, I think I made a faux pas? I says, “Hello, ugly?” Jesus Christ Almighty.
Q: Beyer?
A: Yeah. And he used live in the same building I’m lived in. you know, Mita House? He used to live there with his wife before she divorced him. He had two kids, little kids but they were all six feet tall. And he had a 16 year old daughter at the time. I swear to god she could pass for 22. Oh, she was a beautiful girl. She was on 15 or 15 or like that. And his wife. Glasses. He’s a math teacher. And she was a teacher also. And she was a good-looking woman. But I could never figure. She divorced him and married a Japanese….
Q: Wife was artist. Beyer was PE teacher, I thought. With a masters.
A:Something about teaching. You know his son Kurt works for the Mainichi in the round table, where the read the stories and correct the English or some shit like that.
And he’s another …6’3” 240 pounds. And the last time he was here , Kurt, he had an earring on his right, left ear. And I said, “What the hell, are you queer?” And he said, “No, it’s on the left side.” I said, Jesus Christ, he’s not a small guy. You don’t want to call him a queer.
************
A: What else do we know about Riki….I would always say that Riki was a hell of a nice person. Mean. Nasty. But boy, if you’re his friend, you’re his friend. Friends forever. …I think, I don’t know how to say this but I think there’s a guy by the name of Vichne. I think Vichne was trying to con him. I can’t be positive about it, but it was some kind of…I think it was on the bowling center deal. And Vichne left the country, like in a hurry. And he went to London. And now I think Vichne is the vice-president of a big bank in London. This guy has a brain on his shoulder. Boy he was smart. He was in the car business. He went to Italy to escape troubles in Japan. He came back he spoke better Italian than I did. He was only there a short time. A very smart guy. He was somewhere in the banking system in London. But in those days, there were a lot of people running around. They had qualifications by they were miscategoried. Because after how many opportunities. But Vichne was by far a very, very smart son of a bitch. Very smart. I’m sure he got involved in the money business in London and he’s way up there now.
But that’s all I know about Riki. I can’t remember anything else.
(MISS HOKKAIDO)
Q: Tell me about the Hokkaido girl. You divorced your second wife to marry her. Tell me that story.
A: Now, my second wife. You know, I have to explain this to you, because it’s so true. I been saying it lately and it’s why I can remember it. You know I’m anti-Japanese. But the truth of the matter is why am I anti-Japanese. I’m anti Japanese because I married this woman. Twice. Not once. And she’s such a mean, son of a bitching bitch. But being a woman, as soon as you call them a bitch and a son-of-a-bitch, they change and they become sweet and lovable. So I know so many Japanese people that I know. I can’t say I hate them. But I say I’m anti-Japanese and the reason is my women. This particular woman is something special.
But I enjoy sex. I think it’s great. But this woman, I would go there and she would say, “What again?” I said, “Shit, I’m Italian. We fuck everyday. You know, why not. I’m healthy. I’m strong. I eat good. I drink good. I, I fuck good too, you see. So I could tired of that crap.
So I was up in Hokkaido one day and I was up there with a guy named Shafer. He was a Jewish guy. He was in the insurance business. But he was also a movie star. He worked in Spain as a movie star. Good lookin’ mother. And I was walking down the street in Sapporo with him and we’re going to the train station to go to Oshamambe. Because that time we used fly up to Chitose, then fly up to Sapporo, then take a train back the other way. And enjoy a little bit of Sapporo life.
….as a matter of fact in Sapporo, I hate a seaweed salad one day.,..You know I don’t like anything about the ocean. Of course, they have kegani (hairy crab) there. And, of course, I knew a lot of people in Sapporo. Clubs people. Bar bands. Ai Jun.The Korea guy that what, married Patty Kim? One of the Kim Sisters. Jim Strong was another guy that married the Kim Sisters. Patty Kim. You know the Korean singer.
So I was walking down the street with Shafer. I can’t remember his first name. Jack. Or Ken. Shafer. Or Shaker. Something like that. And this beautiful girl comes up. She’s walking. And hye, I tell you. She was really good looking. And she looked at us, because we were gaijin. And you don’t see many gaijins in Sapporo. Let’s see. She was born in Showa 22. They that would be Showa 40. (1965)(Actually, no, it was Showa 44, 1968). About. She just won the Miss Hokkaido contest. “Jun Suzuran” I think they call it. So, I thought, you know she was looking at us.Of course, I’m with Ken Shaker. Good looking son of a bitch. And I figure she’s looking at him. Eh? So she said I says uh…me, I’m very aggressive. I said “Where you going baby?” or words to that effect. And, of course, she didn’t understand any English. So I sez “Doko iku no?” And so she looked at me and she sez right back, “doko iku no.” So I sez, “we’re going to Chitose Station. Sapporo Station.” So she decided to walk with us. So I think she’s looking at this good looking guy. And I must have been wrong. Because she asked me for my name card. And I says OK, I gave her my name card. And she gave me her name card. And I put it in my pocket. I didn’t pay attention. I couldn’t read it anyway. It’s in Japanese. And she told me her name and of course I instantly forgot it. And she was dressed in a black suit and believe me she was a good looking fucking broad. I mean good-looking. But I never thought I was the target for her. Because I run around in Sapporo and I know a lot of people. And I met a lot of people and all that crap.
Q: Long hair?
A: Yeah, just plain beautiful. Anyway, I could tell you she looks like (the popular actress) Rumikyo Koyanagi. Same type. Big tits. Nice…I mean Miss Sapporo was something really nice. And, of course, I don’t pay that much attention. We talk a little in my Japanese-English language, which is terrible. So we got to the train station, we said sayonara and we took the train to Oshamambe.
And in Oshamambe, I never forget it, we took a pig, we killed a pig, slit it down the middle, put some steel rods in it, and rotisserated it. And I says to Ken “I don’t know why you come over here, you’re Jewish. You’re not gonna eat pig. He says, “I’m only Jewish when I’m in the synagogue. When I’m at a dining table, I eat anything.”
It’s like the joke about the lesbian who saw her girl friend and she says “hello, honey brunch.” Not honey bunch, but honey brunch. (laugh) But anyway, a little humor goes a long way. So anyway, I had a picture of Ken and me by this pig barbecue. And I said “Ken, I’m gonna send it to your rabbi. He’ll excommunicate you.
But anyway, then, I went up to Sapporo. And I was having trouble with my present wife. My #2 wife. So I went to one kid over there and I said I want to meet Miss Hokkaido. I said, if I gotta be married, I might as well have the best girl in town in Miss Hokkaido. I said “You find her for me because when I come back I want to meet her.”
So, sure enough. You know I used to go up there twice a month. And I went up there and I went to this hotel, the manager was there. And I says, “Find Miss Hokkaido for me?” And he says, “Yeah.” I said, “That’s good.”
Q: Did you know this girl was Miss Hokkaido?
A: I didn’t know it was Miss Hokkado.
Q: You just decided you were going to marry her?
A: I didn’t give a shit who it was. I’m gonna marry Miss Hokkido. I’m gonna marry the beauty queen of Hakkaido. I got enough fucking money. There’s no competition with anybody with money. I beat everybody with money at that time. So, he said OK. And I took out this card and I said “I met this very pretty girl.” He says, “Yeah. He says, that’s the girl you’re gonna meet today.” I says, “You’re kidding.” He says, “Yeah, that’s Miss Hokkaido.” I said “God damn it, she was a pretty girl. Beautiful girl.”
So sure enough. She’s got my name card. My name card at that time, I got about 7 or 8 fucking companies.I had everything you can think of on the name card. I had a double name card. With all different companies on it. I was in the meat processing business. I had a farm in Hokkaido.Stores. I had stores, restaurants. I had a lot of bullshit. Supporting a lot of companies. But anyway,
But anyway, the girl came. I sat down and had lunch with her in the Royal Hotel in Sapporo.
Q: What year was this?
A; Showa 42. (1967) (Note. It was Showa 43. 1968) She was bout 20 years old and she’d just won the beauty thing there. So I told her, “I’m not looking for a piece of ass, I’m looking to get married. And if you qualify. I’ll marry you.”
Q: How in the hell did you say this…with the language?
A: I don’t know how the hell I do it, but anyway she says “What is qualification?”
“Moshi anata wa tottemo ii josan.” (If you’re a really nice girl.) Or something like that.
She says “What’s a ‘ii josan.”(nice girl)
I says “Shojo” (virgin).
So she says, “I’m a shojo.”
And I said, “Very good. Let’s find out.”
And she says, “Not today.”
And I says, “Why not?”
And she says, “That’s my mother over there. And my mother’s sister. And they’re watching us.” They’re sitting at a different table.
And I says, “Jesus Christ, you’re mother’s younger than I am.”
I was a terrific 46 years old then.
So anyway, I said I’m going to go down to Oshamambe to my ranch and I’m gonna come back on a certain date. Can we meet? Yes. And we made the meeting. And like I said, I’m a brash, arrogant bastard when it comes to sex. So I proceeded to take her, meet her in the hotel, take her upstairs, and we had sex. And she was a virgin. And I fell in love. I hate to say it. This was the second virgin. The first one got away, This one I’m not gonna let get away. First it was Takaishi. Meguro. The pachinko girl. She was a virgin too. But, anyway, so. We started going to Sapporo. Sex all over the place. And when I went to this girl’s house, even though I always rented a hotel Royal room, she didn’t want to wait to go to the hotel, she said “Let’s screw right here.” I said “This is your private house and your mother’s downstairs. And your grandmother’s there.” And she says, “That don’t mean nothing.”
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get a hard-on, knowing that those people are downstairs and and this girl is gonna start saying, “Ohhh. Ooooooh. And all that shit.” And I said, “Jesus Christ. No thank you.”…
Q: She really got to like it then.
A: Oh, she was great. She was the greatest….oh, I know now that when you break a cherry and you’re screwing her, you’re the greatest guy in the world. Until that first, what do we call it, sun rise ends. Then baby, believe me, that girl, I used to shack up with her, never stopping. Never stopping. I felt like it was a 24-hour ordeal. And I decided that this is so good, so beautiful and so young and so clean…everything was in her favor…that, fuck it, I’ll get divorced.
That was the biggest mistake I made. I let sex get involved in my fucking
Q: Hotels were western style? Her house was Japanese style.
A:. Yeah. Tatami room. I just can’t see that. Because she was on the second floor and everybody was on the first floor, I know they’re gonna hear. Japanese houses. Christ almighty. But anyway, so.
And I married her.
I got divorced from this Yae Koizumi. And to divorce her. I gave her 275 tsubo in Yokota.
Q: The Judge ordered you to do that, right.
A: Of course, it was an agreement. I mean, she went for it, she got it. You know, wives, when they want something, they get it. So I gave her 275 tsubo in Yokota with the restaurant on it. I gave her Roppongi property, across the street from Azabu Keisatsu. 75 tsubo. And I gave her 50 million yen in cash. (note: Yae denies receiving 50 million yen cash).
And it was the biggest mistake of my life. The complete biggest. That young cunt fucked me all up terrifically. Of course, it was not her fault. It was my stupidity. Today, if you add that property up in value, forgettaboutit. There ain’t enough spaces on the page to put the zeroes down.
Q: I thought you said you went court and the judge gave all the stuff to her because you weren’t Japanese. He said you weren’t Japanese and you couldn’t own land, and youn can’t keep it, if you were going to be divorced.
A: No, no, no. You can own land, but you can’t own farmland. I owned the land over here, right across the street (across Roppongi Crossing) where the Clover is. It’s a back street where TSK.CCC is. But I had the (garbled) house there. You can own commercial property.. You can own private property. But you can not own farm property. There’s many countries in the world, but they don’t allow you to own farm property. There’s many countries in the world, but they don’t allow you to own farm property.
Q: The judge didn’t order you to…
A: It was a court…I mean how do you say it, the judge didn’t order, but it was a …a what do you say, when the judge says you got to give…this that and the other thing, and she’s asking for it, and her lawyer’s pushing for it, and it’s a settlement in court for the divorce and you got to pay.
Q: So you don’t think the judge was picking on you because you were a foreigner…
A: No, no…I wouldn’t…well, of course, who knows his attitude. But I didn’t give a shit. I’m gonna get divorced and whatever it costs me I’m gonna get divorced. And, believe me, it cost me a tremendous amount. But at that time, who cares, you know? The pecker is stronger than the fucking brain. The only time you’re sensible is when your pecker is limp. And won’t stand up. Then you become a sensible person. By that time, it’s too fucking late. So that’s what I paid to get divorced.
Then, I started getting reports that my wife in Sapporo was enjoying sex with everybody. How about that? Her name was Mayumi…what was her last name. Jesus Christ I can’t remember her last name. Hori. You can write her name down. So one day I got a report that she was shacking up with Fuse Akira. (popular ballad singer in Japan. Later married and divorced Olivia Hussey.) You could put his name down. But it didn’t dawn on me, because I was in the house one day and she had his picture. Just a little 3×3 picture that she cut out of a magazine. It wasn’t a private or personal picture. But her cousin, which was her mother’s sister’s daughter, they were buddy-buddy. They were living in the same room. Kazuko.So I couldn’t.
Q: They were living in the same house. With you?
A: No, no. I lived in a hotel. When I married her I rented my own house. I tried to build a house on the property there. But I got nowhere.
Q: You didn’t live together.
A: Well, we lived together in another house. I can’t even say where it is, because I don’t know. But it’s in Sapporo. So I rented a place and I stayed with her. A new house. I think the rent was like 50,000 yen a month. In those days, 50,000 yen a month was an astronomical price, but then again, I’m a gaijin. I was very rich. It was a 2-story new house. It was a nice place. Western style. It had like one-tatami room. But I remember the first day we went there and looked at the house, I says, “You want to live here?” She says, “Ok.” And she had a phobia. I had to laugh, but then again, I don’t know. You know, Japanese…in the genkan (foyer) was a toilet. You know with a door. And next to then toilet, wide open, was a pisser. You know a urinal, where you can pee. It was wide open. I mean anybody who comes in the house through the front door, they can see the urinal. And this must have drove this Miss Hokkaido crazy, because she covered that thing up and she wouldn’t let nobody even see it, that there was a urinal over there.. And I could never figure it out. You know they all take baths together, all that shit that they do together. Why worry about a urinal?
So, anyway, we rented the house. Paid the money.I’m still staying at the hotel. I could be living in the house that the grandmother built for the family, her family, for her daughter. I could have been living there. Sleeping there. Yeah, I was living on the street level. Anyway, I was living there. So we went there. Of course, I always had cars. You know, normal things there. So, the first day we rented the house. We paid all the money. And now we have to figure out how to furnish it. What to put in it. What not. She said “let’s go to the house and look at the house.” And we went to the house and looked at the house. It was in Kita-Sapporo. They got the ski-lifts up in that area there. So we go in, we open the door, we go inside. And the house, the garden outside, was not really completed yet. And she says, “Let’s break the house in.”
I said, “Of course. Good idea. How do you want to break the house in?”
She says, “Let’s fuck.”
Nice girl, you know.
And I said, “Good idea.”
And we proceeded to strip ourselves down nude and start fucking all over the living room. Which was the first room in the house. There was nothing in the house except two nude bodies fucking. Initiation, you know.
Q: You mean you did it in every different room?
A: No, we didn’t go to all the different rooms. There was too much trouble to move to another room… go to all the different rooms. But anyway, that was a pretty big house. That was about a 50 tsubo house. And much to my regret, I must say now that when I look at it all, and the sun has settled, or what do you call it, I was not the only guy that fucked her in that room. Even as my wife, I was not the only guy.
So anyway, I go back and forth. And one day, I came to that house and I don ‘t know, maybe ESP, what is it, and I said “Gee, there’s something funny about this place. There’s a feeling in this house. And I couldn’t figure it out. It was a feeling. There was something telling me that something happened in this house. And it happened to me yesterday, yesterday. So I started asking her, “What did you do here yesterday?” And, of course, the guilt complex came out. Man, she shit green. Like as if I knew. And I didn’t know, I just had that inner feeling that something happened in this house yesterday. And I was up in Hokkaido with my son. And my son was at the other house where the mother lived. And I just felt that there was something happened. So anyway, so, she finally confessed. That she shacked up with somebody in that house, yesterday.
And, of course, you can’t do that to me. I proceeded to beat the living piss out of her. And knocking her all over the fucking place. And then somehow or other, I fractured her skull, with either a punch or something. And, of course, she was out like a light. Gone. And I called my son up. And I says, “This fucking bitch. She butterflied on me yesterday.”
And he says, “So what’s new about that?” You know.
Cuz I gotta take her to the hospital because I just knocked the shit out of her. So I brought her to the hospital. Nakayama hospital or something like that. She had a fractured skull. Thin. Thin. But it was fractured. Anyway, she stayed in the hospital. And I left her there. And I got my son and we went back to Tokyo. Fuck it. You know. And that was the end of me and her.
Q: This was Fuse Akira? That was the guy?
A: No, this guy was…he worked in a host club. And you know I used to give her 1,700,000 yen a month, to spend, to enjoy life, give it in the bank, you know. And I put it in the bank and then she had to show me what she did with the money during the end of the month. Can you imagine that?
Q: Why that particular figure. Why not 2 million?
A: I don’t know. I can’t answer that. A million three-quarters. Anyway, she had a new car. Hey, you name it. I even bought her a sapphire mink coat. A beautiful fucking mink coat. And, anyway, I used to call her Cinderalla, because let me tell you, she was Cinderella. She had more fucking money that 20 people combined in Sapporo. And I didn’t care. I was in love. And I thought it was great. I thought she loved me. But then I found out she didn’t love me, she just loved sex. Not me, I had nothing to do with it. All I was was another pecker. And when I’m not there…..
So, of course a little questioning here and there and I find out that she goes to a host club and probably everybody in the host club had her.
Q: Did you go there?
A: No, I didn’t have to go.I know everybody in the hotel business and that shit. And, of course, I got reports that she was shacking up here, she was shacking up there. This, that and the other thing. I sez, I don’t care. No more. Because she and I are finished.
Anyway, I did beat one of her boy friends. And he sez to me, “I have no love for me. It’s just a business. My job is to fuck girls and I get paid for it. And the girls pay me. And it’s a good business.” He was a good-looking guy. You know he was honest about it see. I didn’t know how to react to such a thing. Because it’s hard to react to such…you know, because, he’s not wrong. And uh,…she’s wrong. He’s not the one who’s wrong. She went there and she decided that she wanted to shack up with somebody. So how can I blame him? But then of course I didn’t appreciate the fact that he knew that that was my wife. So I clobbered the son of a bitch. I beat the shit out of him. And, of course, you can’t live in Sapporo, because now I knew where he lived. So he did the worst thing in the world. He came to Tokyo. Can you imagine coming to Tokyo? My hometown? And he went to work at a place called Himeji. You don’t know Himeji, right. Himeji is owned and operated by a woman named Yamamoto. She is a book writer.
Q: Oh, yeah. She’s a poet. She won the Naoki-sho (literary prize) a couple of years ago. Yamaguchi is her name. Yamaguchi Yoko.
A: Right. And she had the Himeji, which is down in Nishi-Ginza. And I got a report that he was working there. So I went to see her. And I know here. And I guess she knows what kind of bastard I am. And she told the kid to disappear. Don’t ever come back to that place again. Because if Nick catches you in here, he’s gonna beat you up again. So that was the end of that guy. He disappeared from sight. And, of course, Yoko Yamaguchi, she comes in her quite often. She was….oh, I guess you can write it, fuck it…Noguchi, the pro-boxing promoter, that was one of his mistresses. Probably still is, today.
But my ex-wife, she was fascinated by Yamaguchi, because one day they showed in the Sapporo Shukan (Weekly) magazine, all the women that owned bars. And Yamaguchi’s picture was there in the white suit, white shirt, and a white tie and white pants. And I sez, I know she’s not a lesbian because she shacking up with Noguchi. And sure enough my wife says, I gotta have a club. I gotta have a bar. So,ok. I’ll buy you one.
Q: Miss Hokkaido.
A: So, I bought her one. I got her a place like that. And instantly. Without even batting an eye, she instantly says, “I got my wardrobe ready.” And I says “What’s your wardrobe?” And she takes out of white suit, with a white shirt and a white tie. She’s gonna copy Yamaguchi. Shit.
Anyway, that was a terrible, terrible mistake I made. She was 26 years younger than me. I thought it was love. But it was only sex. Sex. Sex. Sex.
Q: What about Fuse Akira? Is there a story there?
A: Oh, yes. Now what happened, she shacked up with him in the Royal Hotel. Or one of them. I imagine it might be the Royal Hotel. I can’t remember. But I got a phone call in Tokyo from the front desk manager or whatever you want to call it. And he says, “Your wife is upstairs in Room so-and-so with Fuse Akira.” Jesus Christ. That was like hitting me with a ton of bricks. Because everybody in town knew her. I went with her dancing and all the other ….I was a big…what do you call these guys who run around? Playboy? I even forgot what the fucking words are. But anyway. So I got the phone call. I called up the mother. Called up her house. Her mother says she sleeping. I said I know she’s sleeping. But she’s sleeping in the Royal Hotel in Room so-and-so with Fuse Akira. And, of course, the mother was “Oohhh.” So I got annoyed. But then again, I’m..fucking everything in Tokyo too. So sometimes I say to myself, “How can I criticize her when I’m doing the same fucking thing.”
So anyway, I brought her back to Tokyo to live in my big, big house. My 10,000 square foot home with only 4 bedrooms. And I said, “I don’t appreciate what you did. I think it’s wrong. But love is strong. And we sort of made peace. Uhmm? As, you know…And I got this guilty conscience because everyday I’m sleeping with a different broad. Or when I’m lucky, 2 broads in one day. Anyway, so I had a Red Opel again. And I had a chauffeur. And of course I had a Cadillac. But the Cadillac, I used….my private house. I had a lot of land there. I could have parked 20 automobiles. I had a swimming pool. Everything. So she calls the chauffeur. The chauffeur picks her up and takes her someplace. And she tells the chauffeur to wait. So the chauffeur waits outside. And what’s she do? She had a sex meeting with Fuse Akira. In Tokyo. With my car and my chauffeur. The Red Opel. You know, how crazy can you get?
Q: Parks it outside Akira’s house?
A: Yeah. And the kid reads the name on the wall. Fuse Akira. Or Akira fuse. Which ever way they write it. Or what ever name he used because he’s a popular …he’s a Korean too, by the way. Anyway, I think he’s a Korean. Anyway, when she got through, she came in the car, she went back to the house, and the chauffeur reports to Miss Koizumi that he’s positive that she shacked up with Fuse Akira.
Q: The chauffeur tells your second wife?
A: “Sugoi Tomodachi” (Great Friends). He used that expression. So, of course, my ex-wife couldn’t wait to tell me.You know, tell me what a bitch she was. She called her a “Young Cunt.” “You divorced me to marry a young cunt.” Anyway, that woman is now 42, my wife is 56. There’s 14 years difference between them. She calls her a “young cunt.” So, of course, I got the report, I went to my house. And I says to her, “What did you do? You went to Fuse Akira’s house. You shacked up with him again. You used my car. My chauffeur. You used my telephones. I got a telephone operators who writes down every fucking thing that’s done on the telephone. Cuz I got my own switchboard. How the hell can you do such a thing like that where everybody in my company knows what you’ve done?”
I sez, “I can not forgive you.”
I sez, “I’m not gonna hit you. Because hitting you don’t mean nothing. I put you in the hospital the last time. Don’t mean nothing. So I sez, “Go upstairs and cut your wrists. Commit suicide because that’s the only way. You’re gonna go out of this house in a box. No other way. You’re never gonna get in that car again. You’re never gonna go out and shack up with anybody again. You’re gonna be a dead woman. So go upstairs and kill yourself.
Q: What was that. She can’t go out again..
A:You can’t go out again unless she goes out in a box. She goes upstairs and kills herself. She don’t. I’m gonna do it. Because every…I have maybe over 100 employees. By that time, before you can hang up a telephone, everybody in the company will know that that my wife is now shacking up in Tokyo, with Fuse Akira. Who doesn’t know it? How do I stand with employees? How do I stand with anybody? You know.
So anyway, so she went upstairs and she proceeded to cut her wrists. Both hands.Both wrists. And my daughter Patricia came home. And I’d say that girl, she might have been about 23 that time. So that would be 18 years go. My daughter was about 20. So my daughter came home.And she said to me, “Where’s Mayumi?”
Q: What year was this?
A: 18 years ago. I met and married her in Showa 42 nen. That means I divorced Miss Koizumi in Showa 42 nen….So I told my daughter she’s upstairs cutting her wrists. And my daughter thought I was crazy because I said it in a nonchalant manner. And my daughter went upstairs and then my daughter came running downstairs. She says, “She cut her wrists. There’s blood all over the rug.”
I said, “Omigod, my poor rugs. Goddamn it. Those fucking rugs were very expensive. Those rugs.”
So she says, “What are you going to do?”
I sez “Nothing. Let her die.”
“No you can’t let her die.”
I sez, “Why not? I didn’t kill her. She did it herself. You saw her wrists. She cut her own wrists.”
So anyway, my daughter called the hospital, or called Dr. Aksenoff. I don’t know who the hell she called. But anyway, the ambulance came and took her away.
And the bitch lived. Son of a bitch.
So, of course, she lived. She went back to Sapporo.
I gave her a maid. I gave her that big money I was giving her. And that was the end of her. And we just drifted apart. And I wanted a divorce.And she sez “Yes, of course.” Cuz I ain’t gonna sleep with her no more. And I ain’t gonna do nothing with her no more. I’m finished with her.
She sez, “Give me 30 million yen.”
And I said, “Fuck you. I ain’t about to give you 30 million yen.”
She sez, “But you gave your wife a lot of money?”
I says, “Yeah, because I was wrong, I wanted to get married. I wanted to get divorced. Now you want to get divorced. You want to get divorced from me?”
She sez “Yes.Give me 30 million yen.”
I said, “No, you gotta pay me.” And you know that was the biggest fucking joke in the world. Whoever heard of a girl paying a guy? For a divorce.
You know. And I said, “You’re gonna be my wife until you die. Because I will never divorce you. I will never pay you. So, if you want a divorce, you pay me.”
Anyway, the situation stayed status quo like that. I never bothered with her. I ignored her completely. She was gone. And I wouldn’t give her a divorce because I ain’t about to pay her.
Now, I got pressure from Miss Koizumi, who, also I was shacking up with everyday and every other day. And in between girls and all that other shit. Now, Yae starts pushing me. Divorce her. I sez “Why should I divorce her? She’s young. Why should I divorce her? She’s the only one that can suffer. I don’t suffer because I don’t give a fuck whether I’m married or divorced. You know, you and I are together. She says, “No, I don’t want to stay with you unless you marry me. Now I got pressure. From that same fucking woman that never stopped giving me pressure. Anyway, so. I got the pressure. Divorce her. Divorce her. So finally, I said OK. And I decided OK, I’m gonna get divorced. So I went up to Sapporo or I used the telephone. Anyway, I got in touch with her, and I agreed to give her a divorce. She was very, very happy. And she was thinking in terms of receiving 30 million yen. But I said, “I don’t pay you nothing.. But I gave you 1,550,000 yen to open a bar. And I want you to pay me 1,550,000 yen.” Now that’s a lot of fucking nickels and dimes.
She says, “I ain’t got no money.”
I sez, “You got a bar. I bought you a bar. My money bought it.” I said, “You want a divorce, I want my money back.”
She sez “No, you want a divorce. You give me 30 million yen.”
I said, “Fuck it. Forget about it.”
“I give you an divorce. You pay me back.”
So she agreed to pay me back. I got her mother to sign a piece of paper that they would pay me back. And we go to the Kaitei Saiban (Katei Saiban). And we get a divorce. See.
So, the first payment I got was 400,000 yen. The Divorce Contract. And every month I got 40,000 yen until she paid me the whole thing, the remaining 1.2 million, which was 30 months.
I know Kaitei Saiban so well, I been there 3 times.
Q: Katei Saiban.
A: I always pronounce the words wrong. Because nobody corrects me. And if they do correct me, I don’t remember it anyway. So anyway, so, the divorce went through. I got 400,000 yen cash & every month she sent 40,000. And the money went to my company. And I never saw her. And I made her pay.
So I think I’m then only foreigner or anything, the woman paid for a divorce.
Not big money, but to her it was big money.
No matter how much money I sent to her. I looked in the fucking chokin (saving account deposit book) and there was no money in it…5,000 take out. 10,000. 20,000 take out. Of course, she’s buying sex. Good-looking broad. She didn’t have to buy no sex..
But, anyway. I guess she’s very rich now. It’s always the same story. In the beginning they give it away. Then they get paid for it. I don’t think she’s reached the stage where she’s buying it back.
Q:How old is she now? She was born Showa 23. Now it’s Showan 64. So she’s 41 now. 42 maybe.But I haven’t seen her. I used to go visit her, even after we separated. Say hello. I can’t carry grudges forever. And, of course, I always had the object of fucking all my 3 wives in one day. I always had that object….I always got 2. I couldn’t get 3. Always one would balk. Son of a bitches. But anyway. When my wife reads that part, she’s gonna shit.
Do you know what she had the nerve to tell me? “Don’t you dare talk to him about me.”
Talk about a guilty conscience. The son of a bitch.
Do you know what she did they other night? Driving me home. I told her what a shithead her sister was. Her sister works for me in Chuo Rinkan. Stupid fucking broad that she is. She’s a nice girl, but we’re talking in the business world. In the business world she’s a zilch. My wife got mad and stepped on the fucking gas, mind you I’m on a small road going past Shibuya, and then slammed on the brakes. Somehow or other I’m lucky. I almost went flying through the fucking window. I’m in the dead man’s seat, you know. And, of course, I laughed. I sez “You can’t kill me.” And she was so fucking mad.
So that was Miss Hokkaido.
Tokyo Junkie 
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