When Robert Whiting arrived in Tokyo in 1962 at the age of nineteen the city was engulfed in a frenzy of construction as it prepared to welcome the world to the Olympics two years later. The “rickety wooden houses, scabrous shanties and cheaply constructed stucco-covered buildings” that had sprung up after the devastation of the Second World War were being torn down and new highways and high rises were springing up. It was, he writes, “the most dynamic city on earth”.
For Japan the Olympics were to demonstrate that the country was back on its feet, ready to take its place among the community of nations. Everyone was sure the city would not be ready in time. In fact, as Whiting recounts, the 1964 Olympics were a triumph. Sixty years later Whiting is still in Tokyo and another Olympics looms; this one too already had huge question marks hanging over it, even before the pandemic.
Few foreigners have spent as long in Japan or know the country as well as Whiting, and fewer still have had the many colourful encounters he has had. Tokyo Junkie is the hugely engaging and occasionally very funny memoir of a Tokyo insider who has grabbed all the excitement the city has to offer. He tells his story though various lenses – baseball, yakuza (Japanese gangsters), and the amazing ongoing development of Tokyo. As a sports writer he has a down-to-earth style with a laconic turn of phrase. He doesn’t waste words.
He depicts himself as an ordinary guy caught up in an extraordinary place and time. A lad from “the foggy backwater” of Eureka in rural California, he joined the US Air force and happened to be posted to Japan. Instead of staying at the base, a mini America, he set out to explore the intriguing new country he found himself in. At the time foreigners were a rarity and accorded special privileges. Whiting frequented nightclubs and bars, crossing paths with yakuza whose business cards gave their name, gang affiliation and rank. On one occasion, he relates, he answered a knock on the door of his tiny downtown Tokyo apartment to find “a young man in his late twenties, short, squat, muscular … assorted scars on his eyebrows and cheeks”. “Whiting-san”, the man growled, “I’m here for the money.”
Whiting had placed a bet in his local bar…
