Robert Whiting (born October 24, 1942) is a best-selling author and journalist who has written several books on contemporary Japanese culture - which include topics such as baseball and American
gangsters
A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from ''mob'' and the suffix '' -ster''. Gangs provide a level of organization and r ...
operating in Japan. He was born in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, grew up in
Eureka, California
Eureka (Wiyot: ''Jaroujiji'', Hupa: ''do'-wi-lotl-ding'', Karuk: ''uuth'') is the principal city and county seat of Humboldt County in the Redwood Empire region of California. The city is located on U.S. Route 101 on the shores of Humboldt ...
["More about Robert Whiting"](_blank)
japanesebaseball.com and graduated from
Sophia University
Sophia University (Japanese: 上智大学, ''Jōchi Daigaku''; Latin: ''Universitas Sedis Sapientiae'') is a private research university in Japan. Sophia is one of the three ''Sōkeijōchi'' (早慶上智) private universities, a group of the to ...
in
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
. He has lived in Japan for more than three decades since he first arrived there in 1962, while serving in the U.S. Air Force. He divides his time between homes in Tokyo and California.
Background since relocating to Japan
Whiting first came to Japan with U.S. Air Force Intelligence in 1962.
[Blair, Gavin and Whiting, Robert. "Robert Whiting,"]
''# 1 Shimbum'', Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, December, 2013 Whiting was assigned to work for the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
in the U-2 program in
Fuchu, Tokyo. He was offered a job working for the NSA when his tour with the Air Force was about to end, but he chose instead to study at Tokyo's
Sophia University
Sophia University (Japanese: 上智大学, ''Jōchi Daigaku''; Latin: ''Universitas Sedis Sapientiae'') is a private research university in Japan. Sophia is one of the three ''Sōkeijōchi'' (早慶上智) private universities, a group of the to ...
, where he majored in Political Science.
In order to supplement his income while studying on the
GI Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
, Whiting tutored
Tsuneo Watanabe
is a Japanese journalist and businessman. He is the Representative Director, Editor-in-Chief of the Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings company, which publishes the largest Japanese daily newspaper ''Yomiuri Shimbun'' and substantially controls the largest J ...
in English. Watanabe was a reporter for the ''
Yomiuri Shimbun
The (lit. ''Reading-selling Newspaper'' or ''Selling by Reading Newspaper'') is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are t ...
'' at that time, but is now (as of 2019) the Chairman of the Board of the newspaper - which has the highest circulation in the world.
Whiting wrote his thesis on the factions of Japan's
Liberal Democratic Party.
Whiting graduated from Sophia in 1969.
Whiting's research into the ties binding Japan’s leading politicians to ''
yakuza
, also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media, by request of the police, call them , while the ''yakuza'' call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ...
'' bosses gained him entrée into the
Higashi Nakano wing of Tokyo’s largest criminal gang, the ''
Sumiyoshi-kai
The , sometimes referred to as the , is the second-largest yakuza group in Japan with an estimated 4,000 members.
Outline
Their territories mainly consist of upscale districts such as Kabukichō and Ginza. Shops operating in these territories ...
'', where he became an “informal advisor.”
He worked for
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
Japan as an editor until 1972, until in his words, he "got bored of being a
gaijin
is a Japanese word for foreigners and non-Japanese citizens in Japan, specifically being applied to foreigners of non-Japanese ethnicity and those from the Japanese diaspora who are not Japanese citizens. The word is composed of two kanji: and ...
" and moved to New York City, where he wrote his first book, ''The Chrysanthemum and the Bat''. He later returned to Tokyo and worked for
Time-Life for a year before becoming a free-lance author.
Writing career
Whiting's works on baseball include ''The Chrysanthemum and the Bat: The Game Japanese Play'' (Dodd, Mead, N.Y. 1977), ''You Gotta Have Wa'' (1989 Macmillan, 1990, 2009 Vintage Departures), ''Slugging It Out In Japan: An American Major Leaguer in the Tokyo Outfield'' (1991), and ''The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastime'' (2004), all of which have been published in English and Japanese.
''You Gotta Have Wa'' is a work about Japanese society as seen through their adopted sport of baseball. It was a
Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members c ...
selection and a
Casey Award
The Casey Award has been given to the best baseball book of the year since 1983. The award was begun by Mike Shannon and W.J. Harrison, editors and co-founders of ''Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine''.
Casey Award recipients
*1983 – Er ...
finalist. While the ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'' described it as "one of the best-written sports books ever"),
it examines larger issues concerning Japan as well.
David Halberstam
David Halberstam (April 10, 1934 April 23, 2007) was an American writer, journalist, and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, Korean War, and later ...
stated that "What you read (in ''You Gotta Have Wa'') is applicable to almost every other dimension of American-Japanese relations."
The book sold 125,000 copies in hardcover and trade paperback and is in its 23rd printing. It was published in Japanese by Kadokawa under the title ''Wa Wo Motte Nihon To Nasu''. It sold 200,000 copies in hardcover and paperback editions.
''
Tokyo Junkie'' was published in 2021.
''The Chrysanthemum and the Bat'' was chosen by ''
TIME
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' Magazine editorial staff as the best sports book of the year.
Published in Japanese by Simul Publishing Company, as ''Kiku to Batto'' it was reissued in 2005 by Hayakawa Shoten Publishing.
Warren Cromartie
Warren Livingston Cromartie (born September 29, 1953) is an American former professional baseball player best remembered for his early career with the Montreal Expos. He and fellow young outfielders Ellis Valentine and Andre Dawson were the talk ...
's autobiography, ''Slugging It Out In Japan'' (Kodansha International, Tokyo 1991), was co-authored by Whiting. The book was the recipient of a
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
award for educational merit.
''The Meaning of Ichiro'', was published by Warner Books in 2004, and excerpted in ''Sports Illustrated''. It sold 25,000 copies. The Japanese translation, ''Ichiro Kakumei'' was published by Hayakawa Shoten. A revised and updated edition of ''The Meaning of Ichiro'', entitled ''The Samurai Way of Baseball'', was published in trade-paperback form by Warner Books in April, 2005.
Whiting’s most popular work is the nonfiction ''Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan'' (Pantheon, N.Y. 1999, Vintage Departures, 2000), an account of organized crime in Japan and the corrupt side of U.S.-Japan relations.
Mario Puzo
Mario Francis Puzo (; ; October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. He is known for his crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably ''The Godfather'' (1969), which ...
described the book as "a fascinating look at...fascinating people who show how democracy advances hand in hand with crime in Japan."
["Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan"](_blank)
randomhouse.com It was a best-seller on many lists in Tokyo when published in translated form by Kadokawa, selling over 300,000 copies in hardcover and paperback in Japan alone, and was chosen as one of the top ten books on Japan (at number two) in an article by the scholar Jeff Kingston, writing in the ''#1 Shimbun''.
''Tokyo Underworld'' was reported in 2009 and 2012 as being developed for film or television, with Whiting working as a consultant on the project,
but nothing had been produced as of 2018.
A sequel to ''Tokyo Underworld'', ''Tokyo Outsiders'' - about foreign criminals in the Japanese underworld - has been published in Japanese.
''The Japan Times'', August 1, 2009
His biography of the Japanese pitcher,
Hideo Nomo
is a Japanese former baseball pitcher who played in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and Major League Baseball (MLB). He achieved early success in his native country, where he played with the Kintetsu Buffaloes from to . He then exploited a l ...
, who played in the US
Major Leagues and was
National League
The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team s ...
Rookie of the Year in 1995. The book was published in 2011 by PHP in Japanese.
The English-language ''The Book of Nomo'' was published in January 2017.
Whiting's book ふたつのオリンピック、東京1964/2020 (The Two Tokyo Olympics: 1964/2020) was published in Japanese by
Kadokawa Kadokawa may refer to:
*Kadokawa Corporation, the holding company of the Kadokawa Group
**Kadokawa Content Gate and Kadokawa Mobile, both former names for BookWalker
**Kadokawa Future Publishing, a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation and the publis ...
in 2018.
Whiting has been published in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
'', ''
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
'', ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', ''
TIME
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'', and ''
U.S. News & World Report''. He is also one of very few Westerners to write regular columns in the Japanese press. From 1979-1985, he was a columnist for the Japanese language ''Daily Sports''. From 1988 to 1992, he wrote a weekly column for the popular magazine ''Shukan Asahi''. From 1990-1993, he was a reporter/commentator for ''News Station'', the top-rated news program in Japan. Since 2007, he has written a weekly column for ''Yukan Fuji'', a major evening daily newspaper in Japan. He has written extensively on current issues impacting both
Nippon Professional Baseball
or NPB is the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning ''Professional Baseball''.
Outside Japan, it is often just referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league can be traced back to the formation ...
and
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
, including a four-part series, which was published in the ''
Japan Times
''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo.
History
''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...
'', followed by an in-depth series on
Sadaharu Oh
Sadaharu Oh (Japanese: , ''Ō Sadaharu''; born May 20, 1940), also known as Wang Chen-chih (), is a Japanese-born former baseball player and manager Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Ō Sadaharu"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 758. who ...
,
Trey Hillman
Thomas Brad "Trey" Hillman (born January 4, 1963) is an American professional baseball coach. He has also served as the manager of the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan's Pacific League, the Kansas City Royals in the American League and the SK ...
,
Bobby Valentine
Robert John Valentine (born May 13, 1950), nicknamed "Bobby V", is an American former professional baseball player and manager. He also served as the athletic director at Sacred Heart University. Valentine played for the Los Angeles Dodgers (1 ...
and
Hideo Nomo
is a Japanese former baseball pitcher who played in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and Major League Baseball (MLB). He achieved early success in his native country, where he played with the Kintetsu Buffaloes from to . He then exploited a l ...
for the same paper.
In October 2011, he wrote a three-part series for ''The Japan Times'' on Japanese pitcher
Hideki Irabu
was a Japanese professional baseball player of American and Japanese mixed ancestry. He played professionally in both Japan and the United States. Irabu played for the Lotte Orions / Chiba Lotte Marines and Hanshin Tigers of Nippon Professiona ...
, who had died in California two months earlier of an apparent suicide. In his works he not only examines how different cultures have influenced the game of baseball, but how the game of baseball has helped influence and shape cultural identity across the globe. He is also a commentator on the influence of the ''yakuza'' on the Japanese power structure and the dark side of Japanese-American relations since the end of the Second World War.
In April 2005, Whiting was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Foreign Sportswriters Association of Japan.
''You Gotta Have Wa'' and ''Slugging It Out in Japan'' appeared in the book, ''501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read Before They Die'' (University of Nebraska Press, 2013).
In January 2022, Whiting launched his own Substack site “Robert Whiting’s Japan” which features both his regular writing and podcast. https://robertwhiting.substack.com/
Tokyo Giants controversies and banning from Tokyo Dome
Whiting was banned from the Tokyo Dome for two years in 1987 after publishing an interview with Warren Cromartie in the Japanese magazine ''Penthouse'', in which Cromartie criticized
Yomiuri Giants
The are a Japanese professional baseball team competing in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. Based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, they are one of two professional baseball teams based in Tokyo, the other being the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. They ...
front office executives.
He was banned again, indefinitely, in 1990, after writing an investigative report for the magazine ''Shukan Asahi'', which showed the Giants were falsifying attendance figures. The Yomiuri front office had claimed that every Giants home game played in the Tokyo Dome drew a capacity crowd of 56,000. However, Whiting counted the seats, which totaled 42,761, and then the standing room at several Giants games, which averaged 3,500, demonstrating that the maximum audience for a baseball game could not have been much more than 46,000. Whiting returned to the Dome for the first time as a reporter in 2004 to cover an Opening Day match between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays.
[Sloan, Dan. “If you still wanna have wa,” ''# 1 Shimbun'', Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, June, 2009]
Family
Whiting is married to Machiko Kondo, who retired as an officer for the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...
(UNHCR).
References
External links
"Tokyo Underworld 2012: An Evening with Robert Whiting,” The Japan Society of New York, New York City, February 16, 2012
"Interview with Robert Whiting, author of Tokyo Underworld,"by Don MacLaren, in autumn 2012 edition of ''
Wilderness House Literary Review''
"Robert Whiting's Japan"Weekly podcast with Robert Whiting
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whiting, Robert
1942 births
American sportswriters
Living people