"Shadows of Tokyo" by Matthew Legare

It’s Tokyo, 1931. An economic depression is on, and times are desperate. Farmers sell their daughters into prostitution. Crime gangs are flourishing. Resentment is growing against the zaibatsu, the top corporate and banking czars. The Japanese army has staged an incident in Manchuria in China, prompted followed by a military invasion. Assassinations, and plots, are becoming common. Democratic government seems on life support. 

Inspector Kenji Aizawa of the Tokyo police has his hands full. He’s also something of an odd duck – he believes in democracy and enforcing the law, regardless of status and position. His boss, unfortunately, is not of the same persuasion.

 

Aizawa receives an anonymous phone call from a woman, saying that Baron Onishi, an aristocrat widely believed to be the next prime minister, will be assassinated. The inspector acts on the tip and foils the killing. But circumstances allow the would-be assassin to be released, and the baron is still under threat. More anonymous phone calls follow.

 

Matthew Legare

The voice on the other end of the phone belongs to Reiko Watanabe, a geisha who’s also the mistress of a fascist writer plotting to overthrow the government. The baron is only one target; the aim is to establish a fascist regime in Japan. 

 

Shadows of Tokyo by Matthew Legare is the story of Inspector Aizawa and Reiko the geisha, and the intense work they do to try to keep Japan from falling into fascism. The story has more action scenes than a Japanese (or American) video game, including narrow escapes from death for both the hero and heroine. And the tale is saturated with the history of Japan as the run-up to World War II begins.

 

Legare has written three novels in the Aizawa / Watanabe series: Shadows of Tokyo, Smoke Over Tokyo, and Treason in Tokyo. He’s also published An American Putsch, set in New York City in the 1930s, and Shanghai Twilight, set in the same time period. His web site includes a blog, where he reviews suspense novels and historical books about Japan, China, Korea, and the World War II period.

 

One of the appeals of Shadows of Tokyo is that Inspector Aizawa makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes should have been obvious. He tends to go off on his own, without proper backup, but then he’s in the predicament of never knowing when his backup might shoot him in the back. But he’s human, with human failings, and he’s pitted himself against the pull toward dictatorship. And he loves his city.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

In the City of the Dead – Wiseblood Booka.

 

Wendell Berry’s Epilogue – Nadya Wiliams at Law & Liberty.

 

Before We Make a Roux – Brian Miller at Hearth & Field. 

 

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy – A London Inheritance.

"A Man" by Keiichiro Hirano

Akira Kido is a lawyer in Japan. He handles a variety of cases, ranging from criminal to divorce and negligence. He represented a woman in a remote city in a divorce case whose life had taken on the tragic. After a younger son dying from cancer, she filed a divorce action against her husband. The decree was final a year later.

She contacts Kido again, a few years after the divorce. She remarried, but her second husband had been killed in a logging accident. The problem was not the man’s death; the problem was that the man turned out to be someone entirely different than he said he was. She had contacted his brother, who visited her, looked at photos, and said the dead man was most certainly not his brother.

Kido’s assignment: find out who this man really was, and why did he assume the identity of another man? Kido soon finds himself plunging into the world of family registries, exchanging identities, slimy middlemen, and old, almost forgotten crimes.

Keiichiro Hirano

A Man by Keeichiro Hirano may sound like a mystery or a thriller, and it certainly has some aspects of that genre. But it really is serious, literary fiction, exploring how fluid identities can become (even in this ago of digitized identification) and the deep desire people often have to change who they are. (To be clear: this isn’t a novel about identity and gender.)

Not only does the situation become more opaque as Kido investigates, he finds himself sometimes yearning to escape an unhappy marriage. Once, while traveling on business, he will try on having a different identity, and he discovers just how seductive that can be.

Hirano received a law degree from Kyoto University in Japan. In 1999, he submitted his unpublished novel Eclipse to a literary competition, and it won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to sell more than 400,000 copies. His novels include Farewell to the Departed, Ripples of the Dripping Clocks, Dawn, Fill in the Blanks, The Transparent Labyrinth, At the End of the Matinee, and others. He’s also published several collections of essays and interviews, and he’s been deeply involved in art and music. A Man won the 2019 Yomiuri Prize for Literature.

Hirano’s A Man, translated by Eli William, is a fascinating novel of identity and responsibility, juxtaposed against a culture that can easily embrace fluidity in both.

Cherry Blossoms

The air smelled
of cherry blossoms
but it was too soon,
too early for the soft
pink and white
to decorate the trees,
to wash petals on the street,
too soon.

Our pace was fast;
we did not run but
made quick steps,
quick steps, laughing
like the teacher’s song,
but we hurried,
you small hand
enfolded in mine.

The roar behind us
too sudden, too fast,
the noise a train
screaming in darkness,
darkness consuming
demanding crushing
suffocating burying
darkness.

I sit in the small chair
on the small porch,
waiting as always
for you to walk home
from school, remembering
your small hand
torn from mine
too fast, too soon.


This poem is taken from the story of one Japanese mother, who was running with her daughter to escape the tsunami when the force of the water tore her child from her grasp. The mother survived; her hope is that her child did as well and is being sheltered.

If you would like to help relief efforts in Japan, the Woodinville Patch (hat tip to Belief Net) has a list of several organizations working to help the Japanese people.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.n. Central time.

Photograph: Japanese Flowering Cherry by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.