Tokyo Underworld (55 page)

Stirring performances against larger American opponents turned the new
puroresura
into a wildly idolized figure and made him one of post-war Japan’s first multimillionaires. Rikidozan displayed his revamped public persona in this 1956 photo in front of his new home. Guard dogs and armed watchmmen kept the uninvited away, especially during secret night-time, illegal gambling sessions which Riki liked to organize for his influential political, corporate and underworld friends – members of the emerging ruling class in Japan.
(Mainichi Shimbun)

The repeated sight, however scripted, of foreign foes like Killer Kowalski being cut down to size by homegrown grapplers, never tired Japanese fans. Such displays helped restore the wounded national psyche bruised and battered by defeat in war.
(Kyodo)

Rikidozan’s wedding to the daughter of a police inspector in June 1963. In six months he would be dead from a gangster’s knife. Japanese historians would later hail him as one of the most influential social figures of the twentieth century in Japan because of his electrifying impact on the national spirit. At the time, however, the public was largely unaware of his non-Japanese origins (a fact intentionally kept secret by Riki’s handlers), as well as his clandestine honorary membership in one of Tokyo’s largest criminal organizations.
(Kyodo)

American John MacFarland, a popular professional wrestler in Japan known as ‘The Wild Bull of Nebraska’, is shown here being arrested by the Tokyo police for his role in the Imperial Hotel diamond robbery.
(Yomiuri Shimbun)

MacFarland’s escapade stunned a nation of neophyte wrestling addicts, who jammed public squares to watch matches telecast live on outdoor TV. Some cynics cracked that MacFarland was merely carrying to its logical extension the role of villain that was thrust upon the American wrestler as a foil for his purehearted and inevitably victorious Japanese opponent. These enormously popular morality plays did more than lift the country’s mood. Among other things, they sparked a huge nationwide boom in television sales, which helped to rejuvenate the post-war Japanese economy.
(Mainichi Shimbun)

The New Latin Quarter, one of Tokyo’s premier nightclubs, was a notorious watering hole for the foreign intelligence community and the Japanese underworld.
(Kyodo)

Katsushi Murata, a young foot soldier in the Sumiyoshi crime syndicate, fatally stabbed Rikidozan during a bloody encounter in the New Latin Quarter men’s room – a deed that earned Murata enduring fame in Japan. Some suspected it was all a part of a CIA plot.
(Kyodo)

Murata’s star power was evident in this March 1989 edition of the Yukan Fuji, Japan’s leading tabloid. With a great front-page flourish, it reported the arrest of Murata and his wife for extortion and for the assault of a nineteen-year-old woman. Murata, who by this time had risen high in the Sumiyoshi hierarchy, was released without being charged after he formally denied participating in any of the violence. Noticing how weakened Murata had become from a case of diabetes, the leading yakuza affliction, a police officer commented, ‘He doesn’t look like he is going to hit anyone anymore.’
(Kyodo)

Hisayuki Machii, the Crime Boss of Tokyo, in 1966. One of his many nicknames was Fanso or ‘violent bull’, in tribute to what lay underneath his calm outward demeanor. He is said to have killed at least two men with his bare hands. He once worked for American Intelligence.
(Kyodo)

Machii later became a successful international businessman and was made an honorary citizen of Los Angeles. Still, he continued to pay his respects at formal
yakuza
functions like this 1981 funeral of his blood brother Kazuo Taoka, gang boss of the Osaka-Kobe.