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

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And, as it turns out, the kidnapping itself is a kind of feint and preamble -- just the beginning of the actual crime and plot the perpetrators have planned (which barely gets rolling in this first half of the novel in the slow and steady build-up of this story). Reputation and saving face are very important, and the obsequiousness of public performance is remarkable when compared to Western corporate behavior. Takamura ensures readers are firmly on the criminals' side before a single crime has been committed, and this sympathy is reinforced when the police and reporters take the stage. (...) This is a novel steeped in the unfairness upon which modern life rests. Japan's homogeneity hides a series of systematic discrimination: race, gender and, most importantly for Takamura, class. (...) Like all great fiction, Lady Joker informs and entertains." - Iain Maloney, The Japan Times Eventually' is the operative word here: if they come across as somewhat beaten down and frustrated -- some more than others -- they're not thinking anything of the criminal sort here yet. Hiroyuki makes a recording of himself reading it, and sends the tape to Hinode, which leads them in turn to begin to take the matter more seriously and call in the police, filing a complaint: "on the basis of defamation and obstruction of business" -- planning to drop the charges after they have sufficiently intimidated the dentist, whose reputation would suffer if it became know what he had done.

Shinran Prize]. Honganji Foundation (in Japanese). Archived from the original on November 18, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018. Anyone who wants to buy Lady Joker will definitely get their money's worth, it's the perfect book to read and mull over for a long period of time. If there was any book you wanted to completely surround yourself with and dive into, this would be a great selection.The Horse of the Sun: Synopsis". Books from Japan. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018. Volume I closes with Goda beginning his assignment, arriving early at Shiroyama's home -- just after Shiroyama received the message with the kidnapper's true demands. He had apparently set his mind to working for Hinode, but he had suddenly got up and left during his second interview with them, and they had declined to make him an offer -- surprising, in light of his outstanding qualifications.

Shiroyama's secretary is efficient and shows a bit of initiative, but is decidedly a subordinate figure, while the disabled Lady is little more than a prop; wives, if mentioned at all -- Shiroyama's, Hatano's (Monoi's daughter) --, also are pushed (or flee) very much to the fringes of the action.)What does it take to break someone? Debt, life-circumstances, tragedy? Life is more than just one bad day, it is the strains of injustices that the body sustains and remembers. From the latest Scandinavian serial killer to Golden Age detective stories, we love our crime novels! 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!

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. Much of the novel is also simply about process: the workings of a corporation, the police, and the press, which Takamura presents in considerable detail (indeed, at times the novel is arguably too detailed here). Oh man, I really, really wanted to like this one. I love Japanese literature, especially crime fiction in the vein of Keigo Higashino or Tetsuya Honda. Unfortunately this didn’t live up to books like those.Cinema Today (in Japanese). August 25, 2010. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018. Like all literature, readers will take what they want from Takamura’s critique of Japanese society, but at the heart of the epic novel is a gripping crime story where the actual crime itself is almost secondary to the psychological ripples it sends through the boardrooms, police stations, press offices and homes of anyone connected. This is much more of a whydunit than a whodunit — and one that was well worth the wait.” Shiroyama, meanwhile, has to deal with this continuing looming threat, and find a way to ensure that neither he nor his company are ruined by it.