Robert Whiting

Robert Whiting (born October 24, 1942) is an American 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 largely in Japan since arriving there in 1962; 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. 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. 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 graduated from Sophia in 1969. While the San Francisco Chronicle described it as "one of the best-written sports books ever"), It was serialized in Kodansha's Morning magazine from 1991 to 1994.

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. 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.

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. 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 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. 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. From 2007-2025 he wrote a weekly column for Yukan Fuji, a former major evening daily newspaper in Japan. He has written extensively on current issues impacting both Nippon Professional Baseball and Major League Baseball, including a four-part series, which was published in the Japan Times, followed by an in-depth series on Sadaharu Oh, Trey Hillman, Bobby Valentine and Hideo Nomo for the same paper.

In October 2011, he wrote a three-part series for The Japan Times on Japanese pitcher Hideki Irabu, 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.

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 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.

Family Whiting is married to Machiko Kondo, who is a retired officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).