Robert Whiting

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 operating in Japan.

He was born in New Jersey, grew up in Eureka, California and graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo.

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.

Whiting first came to Japan with U.S. Air Force Intelligence in 1962.

Whiting was assigned to work for the National Security Agency 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, where he majored in Political Science.

In order to supplement his income while studying on the GI Bill, Whiting tutored Tsuneo Watanabe in English.

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 in 2018.

Whiting has been published in The New York Times, The Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, TIME, and U.S. News & World Report.

He is also one of very few Westerners to write regular columns in the Japanese press.

Whiting graduated from Sophia in 1969.

Whiting's research into the ties binding Japan’s leading politicians to yakuza bosses gained him entrée into the Higashi Nakano wing of Tokyo’s largest criminal gang, the Sumiyoshi-kai, where he became an “informal advisor.”

He worked for Encyclopædia Britannica Japan as an editor until 1972, until in his words, he "got bored of being a gaijin" 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.

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 selection and a Casey Award finalist.

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.

Warren Cromartie'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 award for educational merit.

His biography of the Japanese pitcher, Hideo Nomo, who played in the US Major Leagues and was National League Rookie of the Year in 1995.

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 described the book as "a fascinating look at...fascinating people who show how democracy advances hand in hand with crime in Japan."

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.

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.

Published in Japanese by Simul Publishing Company, as Kiku to Batto it was reissued in 2005 by Hayakawa Shoten Publishing.

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.

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 book was published in 2011 by PHP in Japanese.

While the San Francisco Chronicle described it as "one of the best-written sports books ever"), it examines larger issues concerning Japan as well. David Halberstam 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 Magazine editorial staff as the best sports book of the year.

The English-language The Book of Nomo was published in January 2017.

Watanabe was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun 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.