Tokyo Underworld (56 page)

Inside the Mikado, once described by an American visitor as ‘one giant glorious warehouse of sex’. The largest cabaret in the world, with 1,000 hostesses and lavish Las Vegas-style stage shows, the Mikado was a den of international intrigue, where a broad spectrum of female talent, from bare-breasted dancers to coquettish kimonoed companions, used their charms to soften up unsuspecting foreign clients for ‘Japan, Inc.’.
(Mainichi Shimbun)

Sojka ‘Maria’ Hannelore, also known as ‘The Queen of the Night World’, claimed to be the most successful foreign call girl in Tokyo history.

Maria plied her trade at the ‘Chanté Akasaka’, a ‘love hotel’ in demotic Japanese. The Chanté was a monument to a certain kind of Western-style, Disneyesque architecture that took root in postwar Japan. Maria was murdered at the Chanté in 1978, at the age of forty: she was found strangled to death in one of the rooms, the victim of an unsatisfied customer. Her life story was later made into a TV movie by the Tokyo Broadcasting System.
(Mainichi Shimbun)

Nick Zappetti, The Mafia Boss of Tokyo, on the day in 1982 that he became a Japanese citizen and changed his name to Koizumi. He is posing in a formal Japanese kimono at his Roppongi restaurant, Nicola.

Nicola, shown here renovated in 1998, was famous for helping to create the international night-time playground of Roppongi. The restaurant was a magnet for Hollywood movie stars, Tokyo gangsters and lawsuits.
(Gregg Davis Photos)

A 1988 ad for the Nicola restaurants lists Nick Zappetti’s restaurant holdings – which by then had divided to less than half of his former empire. His Japanese partner had taken the rest.

A menu from Nicola’s restaurant, under the proprietorship of Nick Zappetti’s former partner.

Yoshio Kodama was a man of many masks: feared right-wing fixer, founder of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, confidant to yakuza kingpins, CIA advisor and linchpin of the Lockheed Bribery Scandal. Kodama is shown on his way to the Tokyo District Court for his day of reckoning in 1977.
(Kyodo)

Kakuei Tanaka, Japan’s most powerful post-war politician, on the day of his arrest for accepting a bribe from Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. While out on bail, Tanaka continued to run the ruling Liberal Democratic Party from behind the scenes, as he fought his conviction in the higher courts. He died in a Tokyo hospital in 1993 at the age of seventy-five, while the Supreme Court was still hearing his appeal.
(Kyodo)

Tanaka’s disciples hard at work running the government for him in 1986. In the middle is his handpicked heir, Yasuhiro Nakasone, Prime Minister of Japan from 1982 to 1987. On the far right is Shin Kanemaru, who would soon be forced to resign his Diet post because of his relationship with a leading gang boss named Susumu Ishii. To the left of Nakasone is Ryutaro Hashimoto, who would oversee a variety of corruption scandals, first as Finance Minister in the early 1990s and then as Prime Minister from 1996 to 1998.
(Kyodo)

Susumu Ishii, boss of the second largest crime syndicate in Japan, in 1989. Among Ishii’s many business associates was Prescott Bush, brother of the then-president of the United States.
(Kyodo)

In Tokyo in March 1992, Japanese gangsters protest the passage of new legislation designed to limit their ability to formally organize and perform activities as a group. ‘Gangsters have rights too!’ says one placard.
(Kyodo)