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

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Hallelujah! Inspired by the real-life, still unsolved Glico-Morinaga kidnapping and extortion case that led to the nationwide hunt for ‘The Monster with Twenty-one Faces,’ Kaoru Takamura’s Lady Joker is at last available in translation; epic in its scale and vision, yet gripping from first to last, this is one of the great masterpieces of Japanese crime fiction and one of the must-read books of this or any year.” The cynical nature of the capitalist society is also represented through the actions of the police. Their determination to try to locate the missing CEO and find the kidnappers is equalled by their resolve to prevent any kind of deal behind the eyes of the public. It is very evident that the people already appear to hold very little trust in business and political leaders. Thirdly there is very much familiarity with the journalists who dedicate their resources to following the key men of Hinode. Their ambition to establish the truth is done with the sole intention of getting that scoop piece of news that they can break ahead of their competitors at other publications. While this novel was written in 1997 in Japan, it can be argued that it’s condemnatory views of the actions of powerful businesses, the police and the press hold a mirror to those of us in the west in the current age will equally recognise.

There's quite a bit about the complex ties between companies, finance, politics, and shady organizations in Lady Joker, and especially about the peculiar types of extortion practiced on even major firms like Hinode (as well as how they dealt with it), much of which can be rather confounding to readers not familiar with this system. 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. The police understand that there may be something more going on than what Shiroyama has shared with them -- "there's a significant possibility that the crime gang will try to shake down the president himself" -- and Goda is to be their inside man: "you must gain Mr. Shiroyama's trust and get close to him".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. 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. The reels are standard and the lines are all static, meaning that you don’t have the luxury of manipulating them for profit optimization. Experienced players might rue this fact, but it is justified, when we consider another parallel fact that this slot is basically aimed for the benefit of players who have little to none experience in iGaming. 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.”

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. Central to it, and much that follows, is an incident from even earlier, as the novel in fact begins with some prefatory material, specifically a lengthy letter written to the Hinode Beer Company in June, 1947, by a former employee, Seiji Okamura. Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case that terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines this watershed episode in modern Japanese history. Mystery Writers of Japan: Prose Writers Award Winning Works]. Mystery Writers of Japan (in Japanese). Archived from the original on January 28, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018.In particular, Hinode's long and complicated ties to the Okada Association -- "an enterprise composed of corporate extortionists, corporate raiders, loan sharks, and financial brokers, among others", and, in fact, the "corporate underling" of a large crime syndicate --, prove problematic; Okada has enough dirt on Hinode to cause them great potential harm, though by the early 1990s -- especially after the 1991 law against organized crime -- Hinode had done its best to extricate themselves from any possible obligations to them. 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. To have only the first half of a crime story may seem like a cruel tease, and readers may be tempted to wait out the year until the conclusion is available as well, but, as noted, Lady Joker is anything but your usual mystery. 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. A novel that portrays withdevastating immensityhow those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts.”

This is the first volume of work published by Kaoru Takamura in the English language, although the author has published 13 novels to date in her native Japan. Lady Joker is inspired by the true life crime kidnapping an extortion by “the monster with the 21 faces” in the early 1980s which saw a targeted campaign against confectionery companies where the perpetrator(s) were never discovered. 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!Takamura joins American writers James Ellroy, author ofAmerican Tabloid, and Don Winslow, author of several novels about the drug trade, to illuminate a society in which power and money matter far more than morality. All three write mysteries that also function as morality plays . . . Bravura.”