LADY JOKER, VOLUME 2

The second half of Takamura’s compelling crime epic—following Lady Joker, Volume 1 (2021)—plumbs the connections between corporate malfeasance and social immorality.

There’s no attempt to pretend that Volume 2 stands alone. The opening section—Part 4, “The Threat”—opens in medias res during the summer of 1995. Chief Inspector of First Investigation Hidetsugu Kanzaki has just briefed the press about a poison gas attack on the subway perpetrated by a religious cult and evasively parried questions about Lady Joker, the crime group that had earlier kidnapped and released Kyosuke Shiroyama, president and CEO of the unscrupulous Hinode Beer. Lady Joker is now demanding 600 million yen in used bills from Shiroyama. Takamura’s explosive novel, based on actual events that are well known in Japan, persuasively depicts corruption at the heart of Japanese society in the late 20th century. The ethical center isn’t holding. Volume 1 highlighted the backstories of the five aggrieved men at the core of the kidnapping; Volume 2 also follows the police and the press corps, both closely monitoring Lady Joker. An extensive “Dramatis Personae” is invaluable in keeping track of the large cast of characters. At the center is a moral reckoning for Shiroyama, who’s forced to reevaluate his life and corporate tenure, eventually seeing the synergy in the personal, social, and political. Like Don DeLillo’s Underworld, Takamura’s sprawling saga situates its crime plot in the context of corruption. As it draws to a close, courtesy of multiple murders, abductions, fraud, blackmail, suicides, upheaval within law enforcement, and the inevitable coverup, city desk reporter Haruhisa Kubo, who’s documented it all on his Tokyo police beat, falls violently ill from this virus of societal decay.

A complex work of stunning breadth and depth by a master of the genre.