Tokyo Year Zero

by David Peace

Book Overview

It's August 1946--one year after the Japanese surrender--and women are turning up dead all over Tokyo. Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police--irreverent, angry, despairing--goes on the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307263746
• ISBN13: 9780307263742
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 355 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Powerful difficult enthralling

I have recently read and much enjoyed two other popular and well-received mystery novels, Tom Robb Smith's "Child 44" and Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo". Having said that I think "Tokyo Year Zero" was superior to both those novels. The portrait of post war Japan is spectacular, devastating and terryifying. The plot held my attention until the very end in ways few mystery novels or other serious fiction for that matter have done. I agree with reviewers who find the prose can be a bit tiring but I gradually got into and came to appreciate the rhythm of it. I warn this is very very far from an easy read - those looking for "easy summer reads" will be deeply frustrated. But serious readers looking for a rivetting multiple murder mystery placed in fabulously renderred historical setting narrated by a frenzied, neurotic, yet engaging main character, may find "Tokyo Year Zero" will make for an unforgettable read.

Extraordinary study of a man's limits

Tokyo Year Zero is much more than a crime fiction. It is also a depiction of life in post World War II Japan a year after the horror of the bombings. The novel is a bleak, graphic and sometimes disturbing picture of the struggle to survive by the Japanese people. It is a time of "peace with no peace" where death is constant and the "survivors are the losers." Amidst all the chaos and destruction, the naked remains of a young woman are found stuffed in a closet of a former Navy factory just outside Tokyo. Detective Minami with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and his Murder Squad are called to the scene along with the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police. The Kempeitai find an old Korean man living near the murder scene. He is judged, executed and buried on the spot. Case closed - except two more bodies are found in similar circumstances and once again Detective Minami is called to the scene. Using only pad and pens, no money for uniforms or cars and not allowed to have guns, Minami and his team begin their investigations only to find many more murdered young women of similar circumstances. A dark subplot weaves throughout this story and is more a mystery than the crimes. Minami's diligence to the case becomes obsession. Always on the verge of starvation, eaten up with lice and fleas, wearing ragged clothes and shoes, he begins to sacrifice what little he has left to pay his "debt to the dead." Sometimes difficult to follow, David Peace uses a unique style in writing this novel and relies heavily on single Japanese words throughout, however, a dictionary is provided for translation. Peace, a British author, has lived in Tokyo since 1994 and has been an award recipient for his novels from Britain, Germany and France. This book is extraordinary in its study of a man who has seen too much, lost too much and perhaps, killed too much as a soldier only to be returned home to deal with more death and grief. Tokyo Year Zero is a must read. Armchair Interviews agrees.

Do Authors Dream of Electrifying Short Stories?

It has suddenly struck me, about halfway through Peace's superb novel, what it reminds me of: the movie Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford, and loosely based on the classic sci-fi short story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", by Phillip K Dick. I haven't read the original, though Dick is by far my favorite sci-fi writer (considering I'm not much of a sci fi fan). The movie, by Ridley Scott, was set in a futuristic LA that was so Tokyofied as to be indistinguishable from Tokyo. Lots of mixed-Asian criminal elements, as in Peace's occupied Tokyo, and very post-apocalyptic, as in Peace's historical context, and so noir that it only took place by night. Perhaps daylight had been extinguished, like hope. In an especially Phillip K Dickish touch, the protagonist of Peace's novel is addicted to a common sleep medication with the futuristic name Calmotin. Anyway, the crimes are completely different, since Peace's story follows the historical outline of a Jap-the-Ripper, and Dick's story follows rampaging androids and the bounty hunter who must track down and terminate them. Still, the narratives are highly reminiscent of one another, and like any good noir, each of the protagonists is deeply flawed, and involved with a "wrong" woman. I'm curious to know whether Peace was in any way influenced by Scott's movie, or if noir is so formulaic as to always remind us of any other memorable noir.

kafkaesce mystery

A strange but effective mystery set in early post-war Tokyo, this novel always seems a bit off-balance. There are murders, there is a police investigation (of sorts), but the primary interest is the portrayal of Japan under the Occupation forces and the desperation of day-to-day life in Tokyo. You will not get a feeling about being comfortable knowing what's going on. Wheels within wheels, the police at all levels work clandestinely with the criminal gangs, and the police at all levels often seem to be working at cross-purposes to each other. Only the top-level police have access to automobiles, and it is odd to see the day starting with the sergeant barking "Bow!" and everyone bows deeply to their superiors. When you finish the book, there's no sense of satisfaction--but this dark and disturbing work makes you feel as if you've been given a glimpse of hell--rather like Dante's Inferno. If you want a good, more conventional Japanese police novel, try Matsumoto's Points and Lines. If you want the classic police procedural, try Freeman Wills Croft's series. Tokyo Year Zero is unconventional, unsettling, and harrowing--and effective.

excellent historical police procedural

In the summer of1946 Tokyo, the ravages of the war permeate every aspect of life in the battered city. One year to the date of the surrender, two female corpses are found in Shiba Park. Both were rape victims before being strangled. Police Detective Minami leads the official investigation into the homicides. As he struggles with a drug addiction that helps him forget his ignominious past during the Chinese Occupation, Minami owes his allegiance to a drug lord who feeds his habit. Still he wants to solve this particular brutal case so in spite of a lack of running water, he is out seeking clues amidst the ruins of the city; that is when he is not with his mistress. When more dead females surface; each raped before being strangled, Minami knows he must concentrate on uncovering the identity of a serial killer even if he believes the victims deserve what they get as these prostitutes know the risk of picking up a customer. TOKYO YEAR ZERO is going to be considered one of the best historical police procedural of the year. The investigation is top rate and the depressing Minami is a fascinating lead character who readers will dislike once they learn he ignores his starving family for his drug needs and his mistress. However, with the American occupation led by the invisible emperor with no clothes and MacArthur occupying a country in ruins with only a thriving black market efficiently run by criminals, Japan especially Tokyo owns this dark whodunit. Harriet Klausner