Meanwhile, Goda only comes to the fore as the novel progresses -- though he clearly will be a major player in the second half of the novel. 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.” a b c "Jafa: 第9回（1990年）～ 第18回（1999年）大賞作品"[JAFA Grand Prize Winners: 1990-1999]. Japan Adventure Fiction Association (in Japanese). Archived from the original on June 25, 2016 . Retrieved December 13, 2018.

Lady Joker reads like Don DeLillo’s Underworld rewritten by James Ellroy, or perhaps LA Confidential rewritten by Don DeLillo? What I’m trying to say here is, Lady Joker is EPIC.” And while several deaths do occur as the story gets rolling, the actual, central crime is a long time in coming (with these deaths only tangentially related to it). The premise sounded so good - a plan to extort money out of a beer corporation - and I was glued to the book for about the first third of it. But once it moved away from the “Lady Joker” group who commit the crime and focused on the victim of the crime, the press, and the police - it just became very boring and moved painfully slow. I can’t allow myself to not finish a book (unless it’s completely terrible) - so I continued to work my way through it although it took way longer than it should have because I just kept getting bored. Eventually I started to speed read through it just to get it done. Translated by Allison Markin Powell and Marie Iida — Lady Joker, Kaoru Takamura’s 1997 epic and the first of her novels to be translated into English, is part crime fiction and part social commentary. The publication in Japan came at a turning point in the author’s career, moving from crime fiction to literary fiction. Lady Joker is so large in scale that it required two translators, and has been published in two volumes, with the second due in 2022. It’s epic. One of the great masterpieces of Japanese crime fiction and one of the must-read books of this or any year’ David PeaceMuch 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). Shinran Prize]. Honganji Foundation (in Japanese). Archived from the original on November 18, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018. I heard so much good things about this book and was so excited to be able to final read it, but it just didn't meet my expectations. I probably wouldn't have finished it, if it wasn't an ARC. I found it far too detailed and slow. And to make matters worse that detail did nothing to build a picture of the setting or give me much understanding of Japanese culture. Nor was there atmosphere or tension. It just felt like reams and reams of useless information. It was very long and only started to get going about 90% of the way in, which confused me, as I couldn't see how they could wrap up the story. Some how I missed that this was only volume one of the story! I don't think I'll ever find out how this ends. So also Goda senses, as the investigation progresses, that what truly motivates the criminals isn't the obvious: They realize Shiroyama and Hinode may have things (and ties) to hide, and that they may be vulnerable to forms of extortion.

Japanese fiction has grown in stature and popularity outside Japan in recent years, which has meant that translators and publishers have been able to produce and publish more ambitious works – books that are longer, deeper and weirder than the norm. Novels like Bullet Train add to a recent glut of Japanese crime fiction which stretches from the twisted, perfectly timed plots of Keigo Higashino to the social commentary of Hideo Yokoyama. Lady Joker fits somewhere in between, an ambitious work of carefully plotted crime fiction with a deep social conscience. Mysterious and multilayered, [ Lady Joker] gives readers extortion and kidnapping as it critiques the dark corners of Japanese society and the human experience.”that’s when you summon a force that attracts and then strikes. Yes, we are talking about the Lady Joker – a beauty that can kills as easily as it can seduce. But don’t get put off – she is here to help you with all her might and skills. In 1993 Takamura's mystery novel Mākusu no yama ( マークスの山, Marks' Mountain), about a boy who survives his parents' suicide and grows up to be a psychopathic serial killer, won the Naoki Prize as well as Takamura's second consecutive Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize. [1] [4] The book sold more than a million copies. [5] It was later adapted into a 1995 Yoichi Sai film and a 2010 Wowow television drama. [6] By the mid-1990s Takamura was seen as the "Queen of Mysteries", but in 1997, after completing a fictionalized account of the Glico Morinaga case titled Redi joka ( レディ・ジョーカー, Lady Joker), she changed the focus of her writing from mystery novels to literary fiction. [7] Lady Joker was later adapted into the 2004 Hideyuki Hirayama film Lady Joker and a 2013 Wowow television drama. [8] Takamura was born in Osaka in 1953. After graduating from International Christian University, she worked for a trading company, and did not start writing until her 30s. [1] [2] Career [ edit ]

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. From here on in, the book takes a different turn: for all that space devoted to 'The Men' and their stories, save Shiroyama himself they basically don't appear in the rest of this volume at all.The opening section of the novel takes place just two weeks after Takayuki died, in a car accident.

It is mostly character-study and stage-setting, presenting many of the central characters -- the handful of men who will eventually get together and organize the kidnapping of the president and CEO of the huge Hinode Beer conglomerate, as well as Kyosuke Shiroyama, their victim. 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. Gaga was shooting scenes at the New York County Supreme Court, with a reporter for Vulture getting all the goss from the second of the two days. Here, Gaga's Quinn was out of clown makeup, joined by Joaquin Phoenix as the clown prince of crime. One onlooker was reportedly disappointed to discover that the crowds formed at the Supreme Court were there to watch Gaga shoot her scenes — not the arrest of Donald Trump. The police are not naïve and are naturally suspicious about the unusual form this kidnapping took -- why would criminals free their victim without even making any demands ? Yomiuri Prize for Literature: 2009-2013] (in Japanese). Yomiuri Shimbun. Archived from the original on June 22, 2018 . Retrieved December 13, 2018.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. 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. Hinode rode the Japanese economic resurgence after the Second World War as well as any company; in 1990 it is: "a trillion-yen business that ranked among the twenty most profitable firms in Japan". One of Japan’s great modern writers, this second half of Lady Joker brings Kaoru Takamura’s breathtaking masterpiece to a gripping conclusion.