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

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Through the working class, and executives, the police force and media, author Kaoru Takamura brings to her readers a Japan which is complicated and often corrupt. The disenfranchised working class who commit a crime seem no better (or worse) than the corporate executives who commit crimes in their own, more subtle, ways.” 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. Post-war Japan. Seiji Okamura is forced to resign from Hinode Beer, Japan’s largest beer conglomerate boasting the golden Chinese phoenix as their symbol, due to alleged disloyal political connections. He writes a scathing letter, to whom it may concern, claiming that corporate behemoths value profit more than human life and hinting at political interference and corruption. He compares the position of workers to that of soldiers in the war: ‘Second-class soldiers… act as bullet shields’ (p.7). In 1994 he dies in a special care home as a defeated man, suffering from dementia. It's the first book I've read in a long time without a single non-cis-male main character. Takamura's female characters are wives, secretaries, nieces, daughters and they have no point of view of their own in her telling of the story. She seems deeply fascinating by a society made by, run by and destroyed by men and men only.

After Takayuki's tragic death, his father Hiroyuki sent two letters to Hinode, vaguely accusing them of impropriety -- going so far as to use the name of the Buraku Liberation League (BLL). Nevertheless, the letter and its clear suggestion of discriminatory practices would continue to haunt them -- and be perceived by them as a threat, as something that would cause potentially great harm to Hinode's reputation and standing if it ever became public. 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. Sankei Shimbun (in Japanese). December 4, 2017. Archived from the original on August 2, 2018 . Retrieved December 13, 2018.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. A)n excellent crime novel (.....) Readers open to delaying gratification will be hooked. Takamura shows why she's one of Japan's most prominent mystery novelists." - Publishers Weekly Cinema Today (in Japanese). October 29, 2012. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018.

List of Naoki Prize Winners]. Bungeishunjū (in Japanese). 日本文学振興会. Archived from the original on November 7, 2018 . Retrieved December 13, 2018. Lady Joker is, not least, also a corporate-workings novel of the sort popular in Japan, and the inside look as to how Hinode handles everything they have to deal with -- from a huge new product launch to the continuing pressures from their former semi-allies at the Okada Association to this unusual crisis -- is yet another fascinating aspect of the novel.Brokenness is incorrect, nor are they desperate: the fire of hatred has been lite and it desires action—so they kidnapped and extort the CEO of Japan’s biggest beer company, Hindoe.