Lady Joker: Volume 2: The Million Copy Bestselling 'Masterpiece of Japanese Crime Fiction'

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PDF / EPUB File Name: Lady_Joker_Volume_2_-_Kaoru_Takamura.pdf, Lady_Joker_Volume_2_-_Kaoru_Takamura.epub

Lady Joker, Volume 2 by Kaoru Takamura | Goodreads Lady Joker, Volume 2 by Kaoru Takamura | Goodreads

Like Ellroy’s American Tabloid and Carr’s The Alienist, the book uses crime as a prism to examine dynamic periods of social history . . . Takamura’s blistering indictment of capitalism, corporate corruption and the alienation felt by characters on both sides of the law from institutions they once believed would protect them resonates surprisingly with American culture.”

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The book starts with a letter from Seiji Okamura to the Hinode Beer Company written in June 1947. He was one of forty employees who resigned from the company’s Kanagawa factory. It transpires in his letter that he is a member of the Baraku people - meaning Hamlet people who are a caste-like minority and the largest discriminated against population in Japan. The letter alleges that these employees received discrimination for being at the bottom of the traditional social herirachy and also for their attempts to have union recognition. The story is inspired by the unsolved Glico-Morinaga kidnapping that took place in 1984. The narrative moves between the conspirators, the executives of the company, journalists, and the police.

Lady Joker: Volume 2 (Hardback) - Waterstones

A cast or dramatis personae is provided at the start of the book which becomes increasingly useful as following the initial chapters we follow the story from a range of perspectives.With respect to the audiobook, actor Brian Nishii has narrated a wide range of titles and has a golden, resonant voice that was a pleasure to listen to.

Lady Joker: Volume 2: The Million Copy Bestselling Lady Joker: Volume 2: The Million Copy Bestselling

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.” One of Japan’s great modern masters, Kaoru Takamura, makes her English-language debut with this two-volume publication of her magnum opus.My only gripe is that the female characters were relegated to minor roles as “the wife” or “the secretary”. This however may be a reflection of corporate life in Japan in the 90s where women did not have roles in executive. One of my gripes about the Japanese fiction we read is it is often simply weird – little plot in favour of portrayals of outsiders. Yes, there are outsiders in Lady Joker but their outsider status and their being apart from the corporate world is not the whole plot. I hope to read more Japanese fiction where this is the case. 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.” Impressive, very large-scale crime(-and-more) novel of post-war Japan . . . Lady Joker is anything but your usual mystery.” A novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts’Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police