The novel certainly does bog down some in especially the Okada and related happenings, but the main point -- that Hinode has something (or a lot ...) that they have good reason to hide -- certainly comes across.

At the time the letter was received, the company had some concern about the possible ramifications (despite considering it: "incomprehensible in its argument and unclear in its purpose") but took no action. 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. Working the Earth: Synopsis". Books from Japan. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018.

They realize Shiroyama and Hinode may have things (and ties) to hide, and that they may be vulnerable to forms of extortion. Like all literature, readers will take what they want from Takamura’s critique of Japanese society, but at the heart of the epic novel is a gripping crime story where the actual crime itself is almost secondary to the psychological ripples it sends through the boardrooms, police stations, press offices and homes of anyone connected. This is much more of a whydunit than a whodunit — and one that was well worth the wait.” There's quite a bit about the complex ties between companies, finance, politics, and shady organizations in Lady Joker, and especially about the peculiar types of extortion practiced on even major firms like Hinode (as well as how they dealt with it), much of which can be rather confounding to readers not familiar with this system. Shinran Prize]. Honganji Foundation (in Japanese). Archived from the original on November 18, 2018 . Retrieved December 15, 2018.

This is the first volume of work published by Kaoru Takamura in the English language, although the author has published 13 novels to date in her native Japan. Lady Joker is inspired by the true life crime kidnapping an extortion by “the monster with the 21 faces” in the early 1980s which saw a targeted campaign against confectionery companies where the perpetrator(s) were never discovered. Takamura joins American writers James Ellroy, author ofAmerican Tabloid, and Don Winslow, author of several novels about the drug trade, to illuminate a society in which power and money matter far more than morality. All three write mysteries that also function as morality plays . . . Bravura.” One of the reasons the 1947 letter is still of concern to them is not so much because it is specifically related to any of these problematic dealings, but that any investigation into it and its claims might give the authorities an excuse to look into Hinode's other dealing, which they have good reason to want to keep secret.)

When the Joker is too Mainstream…

From the opening chapters, Lady Joker feels like two stories. The first is a tale of post-war hardship, told through news reports and letters referring to mass lay-offs at Hinode Beer, a fictional Japanese company whose name is a pun on one of Japan’s major brewers. The second is the story of a rag-tag collection of down-and-out men gathered at a Tokyo racecourse in 1995, partaking in one of the few types of gambling legal in Japan. Both these threads are really about people struggling against their society, the boom times Japan enjoyed forever lost. In both there is also a desire for revenge. As Noguchi had explained to Okamura at the time: "My employment has become a problem for the company". Having Shiroyama, both pawn and decision-maker, the only character who really appears throughout the entire (half of) the novel here is effective enough, and provides sufficient grounding continuity. The personal and the professional decisions were supposedly entirely separate, but obviously it wouldn't look good if anyone ever learned about them, especially since it involved a direct relative of the president of the company, his niece. Post-war Japan. Seiji Okamura is forced to resign from Hinode Beer, Japan’s largest beer conglomerate boasting the golden Chinese phoenix as their symbol, due to alleged disloyal political connections. He writes a scathing letter, to whom it may concern, claiming that corporate behemoths value profit more than human life and hinting at political interference and corruption. He compares the position of workers to that of soldiers in the war: ‘Second-class soldiers… act as bullet shields’ (p.7). In 1994 he dies in a special care home as a defeated man, suffering from dementia.

As soon as its clear how serious the situation is, the bigger guns come and take over; Goda remains on the case, but in a low-level capacity.

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