Lady Joker: Volume 1: The Million Copy Bestselling 'Masterpiece of Japanese Crime Fiction'

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Mysterious and multilayered, [ Lady Joker] gives readers extortion and kidnapping as it critiques the dark corners of Japanese society and the human experience.” So also the board Shiroyama has to deal with in navigating how to deal with the kidnappers demands and the police, as, typically: Amusingly, the police officer who runs into him wonders after the brief encounter that is this first Goda-appearance: " Who was that guy ? Who was he to have materialized out of nowhere".) a b Seaman, Amanda C. (2004). Bodies of Evidence: Women, Society, and Detective Fiction in 1990s Japan. University of Hawaii Press. pp.14–16. ISBN 9780824828066. This book is also about Japanese corporate culture and how boardroom politeness and ass-kissing and ass-covering inaction result in tragedies such as suicide, murder, and organized crime ties! Sounds like a great book for me and all my people on Goodreads!

This is a hard book to rate. The translation and writing style is wonderful, to an extent. I find the story quite wordy yet the minute details are what shapes the characters. Skimming the text would have portrayed the characters flatter than they are. I can definitely understand readers finding the characters flat regardless but to me, they felt very much so as I'd expect for a Japanese translated work. The contrast to the lives of the other individuals -- those that make up the 'Lady Joker'-group, as they then call themselves --, which involve more personal struggle, is also intriguing as they have largely not benefitted nearly as much from the corporate success story of Japan Inc. over these decades.In it, Okamura writes about both his recent resignation from the company (along with some forty other employees) -- due to events surrounding the aborted general labor strike planned for 1 February (a significant incident in Japanese labor history) -- as well as that of one Katsuichi Noguchi several years earlier. Just in case, however, they insist Shiroyama be put under police protection, a bodyguard accompanying him the entire time he is not at his home. Despite its lengthiness and detailing, this was actually a straightforward crime plotted retelling to me. I know how it'll go as I have read the Glico-Morinaga case previously. No plot twists whatsoever, the tension was average and I actually don't really find their motive that convincing enough (except for Monoi and Koh, and Nunokawa for his family problems) but I digress on this as I remembered Handa said; “…to few crimes it could be the devil made me do it.” Still wondering on how they planned and initiated this huge and complex crime as none of the 5 men appeared in the post-kidnapping scene but I guess I need to wait for volume 2 later to know more about it. 3 stars to this first volume!

In 1947, Seiji Okamura wrote a letter to Hinode Beer describing unfair termination of employment. Okamura, like many other "resigned employees" was destitute. "My body always remembered poverty...I am sensitive to sounds and smells...when I inhale...they seep through me...settling in my empty stomach...a futile and unchanging past...". Okamura's threatening letter from half a century ago would resurface. Was the 1947 letter still relevant in the 1990's? Was Hinode Beer compliant with any sinister criminal behavior? Were there deeply buried secrets? Noguchi is a burakumin, from Japan's 'untouchable' community, born in: "a buraku village, one of the segregated areas where members of feudal outcast communities still lived". Kaoru Takamura ( 髙村 薫, Takamura Kaoru, born 1953) is a Japanese writer from Osaka. She has won numerous Japanese literary awards, including the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, the Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize, the Naoki Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, and the Noma Literary Prize, and her work has been adapted for film and television. Hinging on a kidnapping plot, Takamura’s prismatic heist novel offers a broad indictment of capitalist society.” For the time being, each executive held fast to his own argument, and the dearth of ideas -- an utter failure to see the big picture and make a commanding decision -- was nothing out of the ordinary.This isn't always the case, and at times the story really flies along. It's not even that there is more action happening, it just eases up on double and triple explanations.