Tokyo Underworld: Naturalization Story

[This post has been edited and corrected to reflect input, feedback, and research received directly from Robert Whiting. The original post hypothesized that there was no evidence in the Official Gazette proving that Nicola Zappetti had naturalized.]

Robert Whiting is the author of the book, "Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan". The bestselling book in Japan is a combination history lesson about postwar Japan corruption and a biography of a Italian-American, Nicola Koizumi né Nick Zappetti, who came to Japan as a U.S. Marine, right after its defeat in World War II, and proceeded to use Japanese yakuza and American mafia organized crime connections and the black market to make a name for himself in the new rebuilding Japan. He supposably is credited with making American style pizza popular in downtown Tokyo and establishing Roppongi as the nightlife place to be. In the twilight of his life in Japan, he eventually loses everything due to bad marriages, bad deals, poor health, and bad lawsuits.

While a Hollywood-made movie was talked about, it never panned out. But, Martin Scorsese is currently working with the producers of "The Sopranos" and directly the pilot and serving as executive producer for a mini-series on the HBO television network. Whiting recently wrote a sequel to the book called "Tokyo Outsiders: Tokyo Underworld II", in Japanese and soon to be English, which is about foreign criminals in Japan.

Anyone who's lived in Japan as a non-tourist long enough knows to be wary of any tales or books that involve the yakuza. Like the popularity of the mafia, Japanese organized crime stories told by non-Japanese always seem to involve a lot of embellishment, if not outright fabrication, by people who have little real connection to that world. "Oh yeah, sure I know blah blah who's a yak. Asked me to teach him English. Real salt of the earth guys, those yakuza" is a overused line by expats who should know better — much like how out-of-touch lounge lizards think that claiming they work for the CIA will impress women.

Still, author Robert "Bob" Whitings credentials regarding the subject matter of Japan are impressive: over three decades of experience with Japan, he's the author of numerous lauded and award winning books and newspaper articles, written in both English and Japanese, about Japan, especially baseball. Additionally, the book in question is thick with sources: a 46 page section which describes 200 interviews, and three dozen interviews with the subject, Zappetti, stretching from 1989 to 1992.

Nevertheless, people who are familiar with the naturalization laws and their realities for Japan couldn't help but notice that Whitings repeated a lot of the common racial distrust focused "misinfo" regarding Japanese naturalization:

• The Minsiter of Justice "was not normally prone to granting such [naturalization] requests, especially where Caucasians were involved"

• "old foreign man who carried a Japanese passport with a Japanese name (as required by law)"

Indeed, when doing research looking at the naturalization records for 1982 and 1983 for this article, I couldn't help but notice not a few non-Asian names in the naturalization notices published in the Diet's National Gazette.

What set my own alarm bells off was the how the book claimed, when Zappetti was told by his lawyers that he'd have a better chance of winning his multiple simultaneous lawsuits if he naturalized to a Japanese citizen, he could bypass naturalization requirements such as needing more than a rudimentary slang knowledge of grammatically broken Japanese (not a disqualifier, but it makes it hard) and not having "a police file a foot thick" [pg. 218] — by using using a well connected lawyer who had represented LDP (Liberal Democratic Party)'s 中曽根康弘 {NAKASONE Yasuhiro}. Whiting couldn't help but also mention the to-be Prime Minister's alleged organized crime ties.

As naturalization requires signing an oath to the supreme law of the land, the Constitution (and its laws), the slightest legal transgression can disqualify you — no matter how well connected your lawyer is.

Additionally, it describes how Koizumi né Zappetti, after naturalizing, "went to the U.S. Embassy to surrender his passport … and verbally renounce his U.S. citizenship." Americans that have done the renunciation process, even traitors like Lee Harvey Oswald, know that the process for losing your U.S. nationality is not that simple. And it definitely cannot be done verbally.

The book says that "[i]n 1983 … he first filed his application for naturalization" [pg. 218], yet the next page says that he was approved in "January 1983" [pg. 219]. In other words, a month or less time! Surely that had to be a typo! Even for the most efficient and fastest governments in the world, naturalizing in a month's time is unheard of lightning speed for a bureaucracy.

Neither his sources & notes section, nor did his photo inserts, ever mentioned seeing or verifying "Nicola's" Japanese passport or family register. Verifying this myself would be difficult; Nick Zappetti passed away in 1992, and unless you're family or a public worker with official business, you can't easily look at someone else's family register.

On the other hand, there is a way for anybody who lives in Japan, regardless of whether they're connected, to determine if someone has naturalized to Japanese citizenship: Japanese nationality law requires that all people who become Japanese via naturalization (in other words, are not natural born citizens) have their details publicly published in the 官報kampō (Official Gazette) — which is the official publication of the Japanese government. This information is found in the 本紙 {honshi} (main paper) as a 告示kokuji (Notice), published by the 法務省hōmushō (Ministry of Justice). The details published always are:

• the new citizen's pre-naturalization legal name, transcribed into Japanese script — usually 漢字 {kanji} (sinograms) for Chinese and Koreans and カタカナ {katakana} (syllabet) for others
• their date of birth
• their residence at the time of naturalization; if a family naturalizes as a group, multiple names and dates of birth are listed under one address

All of this information is extensively verified during the naturalization process (you have to provide a map to your home address and a birth certificate among the dozens of documents), so it would be difficult to falsify this information.

Online and free access to the Official Gazette is only available for the latest few weeks. Complete access to the digitally searchable Official Gazette is not free to do from your home, but you can do it from public libraries in Japan if you have a library card. This is what I did. I searched all records from when they first started appearing for the new government of Japan (May 3, 1947) to present day, for any mentions of the name ザペッティ {Zapetti} ("Zappetti").

I got exactly one hit (including court cases and judgements): Issue #16714 (第 {dai}１６７１４号 {gō}), published Saturday, October 16, 1982. To be safe, I also searched for references to "Koizumi" (in case he changed his name prior to naturalization) in multiple script forms (『小泉／コイズミ』) for the range of days surrounding the claimed naturalization year & month.

I was surprised. The book specifically mentioned the naturalization was approved and successful "on a biting cold afternoon in January 1983" [pg. 219]. Impressive, I thought. Only a few months off. When I checked the actual text, however, I read something unexpected:

神奈川県藤沢市鵠沼桜が岡二丁目三番十二号
　ビンツ・ザペッティ　昭和二十三年五月二日生
　サオリ・ザペッティ　昭和五十七年四月二十七日生

Translated, this reads:

Kanagawa Prefecture, Fujisawa City, Kugenuma-Sakuragaoka 2nd district, Block 3, #12

• Vince Zappetti, born May 2, 1948

• Saori Zappetti, born April 27, 1982

The address matches the book's account of Nick's home, which described it as "a plot of land in the suburb of Fujisawa and [built as] a large American-style house" [pg. 29]. Looking at the address with StreetView, we see that there is indeed a large American-style house in the suburbs there, although these days it has been converted into a dental clinic:

(view in a large map)

The book describes the existence of Nick's son, Vince, who "had obvious Occidental features and, it seemed to Nick, mixed feelings about his American genes." [pg. 277] The book says that he is "[m]arried to a Japanese woman and the father of two girls … ." [pg. 277] The book mentions nothing about Vince's birth nationality, or anything about Saori and whether she may be the daughter of Vince (or Nick). When multiple entries under the same address under the same name at the same time are published in the Gazette, that means the family chose to naturalize as a unit, which strongly implies that Saori is (at least one of) Vince's daughters.

The Official Gazette placed Vince's age at naturalization to be 34, and Saori Zappetti's age to be less than six months old. No Zappetti naturalized in 1983, or any other year besides 1982. It is possible that Nick actually did apply for naturalization, but was turned down. According to the book, Nick supposably legally took the family name 小泉 {KOIZUMI} upon naturalization. The Japanese language version of the book says he closely adapted his given name to ニコラ {Nikora} for his new Japanese name, despite the English language book's ambiguous stance on whether or not you have to take a "Japanese name (as required by law)" [pg. 308] for your Japanese passport when you naturalize (false); another part of the book says taking his 4th wife's Japanese name was merely "recommended" [pg. 219] (plausible, especially pre-1985).

"Nicola" Koizumi né Nick Zappetti's remains have been at a Fujisawa cemetery since 1992.

---

So did Nick Zappetti actually naturalize, despite the criminal record and associations and the lack of entry in the proper Official Gazette under the correct date range and name?

YES.

To quote a personal email explanation received from Whiting himself:

"Here's evidence of Zappetti's citizenship. Zappetti got his dates confused; he very well may have confused his date of naturalization with the date he received his (Japanese) passport (among other things), which is quite common according to my lawyer here in Tokyo. Zappetti's brother-in-law was chief fundraiser for Nakasone in Gunma; Nick donated a lot of money to the Gunma Nakasone support group. Shortly thereafter, Nick and Nakasone had a meeting in which Nick assured Nakasone that he had reformed and would not cause trouble for the people of Japan. Bribery, if that's what you want to call it, of public officials has a long history in Japan." [Robert Whiting, 2013-Nov-5]

官報 {kampō} (Official Gazette) with ニコラス・ビンセント・ザペティ {Nikorasu Binsento ZAPETI} [sic] (Nicolas Vincent ZAPPETTI)

Some observations regarding the source page above:

• The date on this Official Gazette shows Zappetti's naturalization date to be Saturday, January 17th, 1981. This is two years different from the book (1983). The theory proposed by Whiting makes sense: he may have mistook the date he received his Japanese passport for his date of naturalization.
• His surname is spelled slightly differently from his own children who naturalized after him: 『ザペティ』 {"ZAPETI"} vs 『ザペッティ』 {"ZAPETTI"}. Whether this was intentional, a typo made by Nicolas Zappetti, or a typo made by the Ministry of Justice, is unknown. As there are birth certificates issued to this day in some countries where the name is spelled incorrectly, a typo is not unheard of. Indeed, even in my own old U.S. passport, the Japanese Consulate of Atlanta misspelled my name on my visa (despite my name being on the first page of the passport)! 『ザペッティ』 {"ZAPETTI"} is the rendering of the name that is prevalent in most Japanese language sources written about him.
• The address listed as his residence at the time of naturalization is not a place explicitly described in the book. The address refers to a luxury fifteen (15) story apartment/condo complex built in 1972 called 三田ハウス {Mita Hausu} (Mita House).
• His birthdate is listed as February 14th, 1921 (Valentine's Day). Thus, he was 59 years old when he naturalized. This is almost in sync with the book, which says he had "just turned sixty" when he naturalized.

The deviation between Zappetti's actual naturalization date (1981) versus the naturalization date listed in the book (1983) brings up an interesting chronology problem, though.

In the book, it describes his motivation for naturalizing being his lawyer's recommendations for winning a real estate property case appealed in 1982 at the earliest. To quote page 217:

     Zappetti filed suit over the Hokkaido property in 1982, just as the long awaited decision in his Nihon Kotsu case was handed down. After nine agonizing years in litigation, the judge deliberating that suit delivered a terse five-word verdict: "Mr. Nicolas cannot be believed." Period. Given all that he had invested, Mr. Nicolas had no alternative but to appeal that case, meaning he would now have three court cases going simultaneously—another first for an American in Japan.

…

     It was at this juncture that his Japanese lawyers, fearful he would lose again, twice, suggested he become a naturalized citizen and thereby increase his chance of winning, and in the hope it might help his cause, Nick took them up on the idea.

The problem with the bit of text is that we now know the naturalization was approved in 1981, which meant he probably applied in 1981 at the latest or more likely the year(s) before. However, if he applied for naturalization in 1981, then the motivation for his naturalization certainly could not have been to increase his chances of winning on appeal, as this event (losing the court case, appealing, and having "three court cases going simultaneously") did not occur until at least 1982 according to the book. So either the timeline for the court case — like the naturalization record — is incorrect, or his motivation for naturalizing, which was simply a business ploy to win a court case:

"Nick Zappetti … did not shed a single tear. … it was, [Zappetti] insisted, just another business day. After he had signed all the papers, he simply went back to work."

(pg. 219) can't be true.

Nevertheless, despite the ambiguities and mysteries surrounding Zappetti's naturalization, the book is still a favorite of mine and a fascinating and well written story about one of the most notorious naturalized American-Japanese to have lived in Japan.