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Prefecture D #4
Six Four
THE NIGHTMARE NO PARENT COULD ENDURE. THE CASE NO DETECTIVE COULD SOLVE. THE TWIST NO READER COULD PREDICT.
For five days, the parents of a seven-year-old Japanese schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter’s kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. And they would never see their daughter alive again.
Fourteen years later, the mystery remains unsolved. The police department’s press officer—Yoshinobu Mikami, a former detective who was involved in the original case and who is now himself the father of a missing daughter—is forced to revisit the botched investigation. The stigma of the case known as “Six Four” has never faded; the police’s failure remains a profound source of shame and an unending collective responsibility.
Mikami does not aspire to solve the crime. He has worked in the department for his entire career, and while he has his own ambitions and loyalties, he is hoping simply to reach out to the victim’s family and to help finally put the notorious case to rest. But when he spots an anomaly in the files, he uncovers secrets he never could have imagined. He would never have even looked if he’d known what he would find.
An award-winning phenomenon in its native Japan—more than a million copies sold in its first week of publication, and the winner of the Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year award—and already a critically celebrated top-ten bestseller in the U.K., Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four is an unforgettable novel by a literary master at the top of his form. It is a dark and riveting plunge into a crime, an investigation, and a culture like no other.
576 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2012
About the author
Hideo Yokoyama
54 books283 followersHideo Yokoyama (横山 秀夫) worked as an investigative reporter with a regional newspaper north of Tokyo for 12 years before striking out on his own as a fiction writer. He made his literary debut in 1998 when his collection of police stories Kage no kisetsu (Season of Shadows) won the Matsumoto Seicho Prize; the volume was also short-listed for the Naoki Prize. In 2000 his story Doki (Motive) was awarded the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Short Stories. His 2002 novel Han'ochi (Half Solved) earned a Konomys No. 1 and gained him a place among Japan's best-selling authors. He repeated his Konomys No. 1 ranking in 2013 with 64 Rokuyon (64), his first novel in seven years. Other prominent works include his 2003 Kuraimazu hai (Climber's High), centering on the crash of JAL Flight 123 that he covered as a reporter in 1985; the World War II novel Deguchi no nai umi (Seas with No Exit, 2004); the police novel Shindo zero (Seismic Intensity Zero, 2005); and the story collection Rinjo (Initial Investigation, 2004).
Source:http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/authors/...
Source:http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/authors/...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,450 reviews
December 16, 2016
This is a long and unusually demanding read, set in Japan, requiring attention to detail from the reader. It does not adhere to many of the common expectations of crime fiction. Six Four is the code name for a fourteen year cold case in which a seven year old girl, Shoko, was kidnapped and never returned despite the ransom being paid. The case still remains open. The Press and Media Relations Director, Yoshinobu Mikami, is a cop and visits the girl's father to pay his respects. His own daughter, Ayumi, has run away and he finds himself drawn to the case wanting to know what happened. Another young person gets kidnapped where a ransom is sought.
This is not a conventional crime drama and there is little in the way of an investigation. What the novel does offer is an insight into the Japanese police, the conflicts, the politics, the departmental structures, corruption, the culture and the media. However, there are secrets and a twist. There are a wide array of characters, although for me the standout guy is Mikami, and you find yourself investing in him and rooting for him. This is complex and intricate storytelling that may not be for everyone. It has a slow pacing where much crime fiction revolves around a fast paced narrative. However, I find myself being drawn into the story and fascinated by the cultural differences to be found in the Japanese way of doing things. I recommend this book for those looking for a different take on crime and an intelligent read. Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC.
This is not a conventional crime drama and there is little in the way of an investigation. What the novel does offer is an insight into the Japanese police, the conflicts, the politics, the departmental structures, corruption, the culture and the media. However, there are secrets and a twist. There are a wide array of characters, although for me the standout guy is Mikami, and you find yourself investing in him and rooting for him. This is complex and intricate storytelling that may not be for everyone. It has a slow pacing where much crime fiction revolves around a fast paced narrative. However, I find myself being drawn into the story and fascinated by the cultural differences to be found in the Japanese way of doing things. I recommend this book for those looking for a different take on crime and an intelligent read. Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC.
March 15, 2019
"Turning, he saw the young girl, still half-concealed and watching him out of one eye. She had one hand over her mouth, trying to hold back laughter. An unspeakable emotion washed over him. He felt himself shiver. It was as though he’d caught a glimpse of himself through the girl’s eyes. The way he looked to other people, not the way he looked to himself in the mirror or in a photograph."
The way people see us is always different than how we see ourselves. No one has more information about us than we do about ourselves. What we know about ourselves can become part of our reflection which can have a positive or negative influence on the face we present the world.
I often want to say to people, “What do you see when you look at me.”
For Yoshinobu Mikami, this has even larger implications. He is not a handsome man, but he is married to a very beautiful woman named Minako. Their daughter, Ayumi, takes after him and suffers from the comparisons to her mother. Psychologically, this is more devastating to the family than they even realize. Ayumi suffers from Dysmorphophobia, a body dysmorphic disorder that leads to extreme behavior. ”Punching herself in the face. Using her nails to tear at it. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate this face. I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!”
Then she runs away from home.
Mikami is trying to adjust to his new job of overseeing Media Relations with the press. He misses being a detective, but he wants a job that will allow him to be more readily available for his wife and daughter. The pain of experiencing his daughter’s aversion to her version of his face is exponentially worse because of his own inherent self-consciousness about his own appearance.
”This unfortunate face.”
The police department is still investigating a kidnap/murder of a 7 year old girl that happened 14 years ago and is referred to as Six Four, designating the year in which the crime occured. The ransom was paid, but the girl was killed anyway. The visit of a high level official necessitates that Mikami visit the father of the murdered girl, Amamiya, to see if he would allow the official to visit him while in the area. A completely political event that shows the impact that this heinous crime had on Japanese society.
While talking to Amamiya, Mikami catches the fleeting hint that something went wrong with the early days of the investigation. He is embattled with a potential boycott by the reporters which is proving to be a distraction that may lead to his own removal, but he wants to put all his attention on the Six Four case. As he pulls the strings that lead him from investigator to investigator, he is starting to unravel bits and pieces of information that only encourages his continued pursuit of the truth. Something went wrong, but what?
Soon he is caught up in the politics of a high profile case, and investigators have instructions not to talk to him. His old rival, Futawatari, is showing up everywhere half a step ahead of him. Meanwhile, Mikami’s wife is getting phone calls that are silent, except for the sound of someone breathing. Could it be Ayumi? Or something to do with his unauthorized investigation?
When another kidnapping happens, modeled after Six Four, all 地獄 breaks loose.
This book was a huge bestseller in Japan and across Europe. Hideo Yokoyama is highly regarded in his home country, and I can see why. This book is certainly longer than the standard mystery. It is a slow burn, so if you are looking for Yakuza knife fights and running gun battles with evil kidnappers, you are going to be sadly disappointed. Through Mikami’s tenaciousness, we experience Japanese police procedures in depth and also how many layers there are in place to protect those at the top from the unsavory elements of police work at the bottom. Wrapped around all of that strife is Mikami’s own feelings about his job, his daughter, his wife, and his own place in the universe.
Whenever I open the pages of this novel, I feel like I am showing up to work at Media Relations to help Mikami battle the disgruntled press, his politically minded superiors, and the closed lipped investigators. I, too, feel Mikami’s growing unease as he starts to believe that he may be in the middle of a coup d’etat. His fortitude in bearing the burden of his existence through all the strife and strain of his professional and personal life is frankly admirable.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
The way people see us is always different than how we see ourselves. No one has more information about us than we do about ourselves. What we know about ourselves can become part of our reflection which can have a positive or negative influence on the face we present the world.
I often want to say to people, “What do you see when you look at me.”
For Yoshinobu Mikami, this has even larger implications. He is not a handsome man, but he is married to a very beautiful woman named Minako. Their daughter, Ayumi, takes after him and suffers from the comparisons to her mother. Psychologically, this is more devastating to the family than they even realize. Ayumi suffers from Dysmorphophobia, a body dysmorphic disorder that leads to extreme behavior. ”Punching herself in the face. Using her nails to tear at it. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate this face. I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!”
Then she runs away from home.
Mikami is trying to adjust to his new job of overseeing Media Relations with the press. He misses being a detective, but he wants a job that will allow him to be more readily available for his wife and daughter. The pain of experiencing his daughter’s aversion to her version of his face is exponentially worse because of his own inherent self-consciousness about his own appearance.
”This unfortunate face.”
The police department is still investigating a kidnap/murder of a 7 year old girl that happened 14 years ago and is referred to as Six Four, designating the year in which the crime occured. The ransom was paid, but the girl was killed anyway. The visit of a high level official necessitates that Mikami visit the father of the murdered girl, Amamiya, to see if he would allow the official to visit him while in the area. A completely political event that shows the impact that this heinous crime had on Japanese society.
While talking to Amamiya, Mikami catches the fleeting hint that something went wrong with the early days of the investigation. He is embattled with a potential boycott by the reporters which is proving to be a distraction that may lead to his own removal, but he wants to put all his attention on the Six Four case. As he pulls the strings that lead him from investigator to investigator, he is starting to unravel bits and pieces of information that only encourages his continued pursuit of the truth. Something went wrong, but what?
Soon he is caught up in the politics of a high profile case, and investigators have instructions not to talk to him. His old rival, Futawatari, is showing up everywhere half a step ahead of him. Meanwhile, Mikami’s wife is getting phone calls that are silent, except for the sound of someone breathing. Could it be Ayumi? Or something to do with his unauthorized investigation?
When another kidnapping happens, modeled after Six Four, all 地獄 breaks loose.
This book was a huge bestseller in Japan and across Europe. Hideo Yokoyama is highly regarded in his home country, and I can see why. This book is certainly longer than the standard mystery. It is a slow burn, so if you are looking for Yakuza knife fights and running gun battles with evil kidnappers, you are going to be sadly disappointed. Through Mikami’s tenaciousness, we experience Japanese police procedures in depth and also how many layers there are in place to protect those at the top from the unsavory elements of police work at the bottom. Wrapped around all of that strife is Mikami’s own feelings about his job, his daughter, his wife, and his own place in the universe.
Whenever I open the pages of this novel, I feel like I am showing up to work at Media Relations to help Mikami battle the disgruntled press, his politically minded superiors, and the closed lipped investigators. I, too, feel Mikami’s growing unease as he starts to believe that he may be in the middle of a coup d’etat. His fortitude in bearing the burden of his existence through all the strife and strain of his professional and personal life is frankly admirable.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
May 15, 2017
How do the police operate in Japan? This police procedural from author Hideo Yokoyama reads much differently than one would written by, say, Richard Price or Elmore Leonard. The usual human failings are on full display—incompetence, careerism, ambition, revenge, etc—but they are played out in a setting alien to the Western reader. That's what made this novel so very interesting to me. For we do not know how the specific cultural idiosyncrasies of Japan will impinge upon the story's development.
Anyone who's suffered the petty humiliations of office politics will feel this book deep in their vitals. Now add to that loathsome banality the following enticements: (1) the setting in a Japanese prefectural police HQ where mistakes covered up 14 years ago in a famous kidnapping of a 7-year-old girl are only now coming to light; (2) an arrogant press corps who wants the head of the HQ's media director on a pike for abstruse reasons of journalistic disclosure; and (3) the media director himself, one Mikami, recently exiled from the investigative side—at heart he's really a detective—whose teenage daughter ran away three months ago leaving his wife distraught—and we have the novel's basic propulsive means.
Mikami has many questions and no one is providing answers so he must work inductively. Slowly, painstakingly, he pieces the scandal together. The plotting is exquisite. The reader moves through the logical progression of his thoughts, reservations, doubts and discoveries. For 566 pages his is the sole point of view. I admire how Mikami queries facial expressions and body language, someone's absence or abrupt appearance, an overheard word or phrase. Each clue is puzzled over it until he has a logical option or two or nine. Then he must run around eliminating false leads. All the while the writing is flat and unadorned. This isn't literary fiction. It's a conventional if captivating thriller depicting police culture in Japan and it's dysfunctional relationship with the press. Nothing gets in the way of the storytelling. In that sense, the tale has a certain purity. One is reminded of Georges Simenon and Leonardo Sciascia at their best.
In the end the book is about storytelling. It's about who controls the narrative, how it's presented to the public through the Fourth Estate, and who can or can't be trusted with the facts. The police tell a deliberately false narrative to protect themselves. Director Mikami is caught between their closed ranks and the overweening arrogance of the media. In Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep Philip Marlowe controls the narrative that will be presented to the newspapers. At several points it becomes necessary to determine precisely what the public narrative will be. Consulted by the police, Marlowe decides what details are to be included, which left out, which modified. Like Mikami he is a man with his own moral code and he works outside the system; true, technically Mikami's part of the HQ administrative team, but this allegiance has little meaning as he plays the lone wolf hunting down the truth. Moreover, Mikami does not have the good fortune of working in media-comatose 1930s San Francisco. This is modern Japan where the technical capacity for storytelling long ago outstripped available content. Thus the shrill, almost rabid manner of the journalists. The journalists here are pissed off, loudmouthed, insulting and self-righteousness in the extreme. That is the procedural level on which the book functions. There is not a lot of cloak and dagger, nor much cutting up of corpses, blood-spatter analysis, long stakeouts, prisoner confessions, deathbed clues or romance. It's mostly about office politics and the relationship between the press and the police surrounding the blown kidnapping case. Moreover, it has a wonderful final twist. Enough for now. Do read it.
Anyone who's suffered the petty humiliations of office politics will feel this book deep in their vitals. Now add to that loathsome banality the following enticements: (1) the setting in a Japanese prefectural police HQ where mistakes covered up 14 years ago in a famous kidnapping of a 7-year-old girl are only now coming to light; (2) an arrogant press corps who wants the head of the HQ's media director on a pike for abstruse reasons of journalistic disclosure; and (3) the media director himself, one Mikami, recently exiled from the investigative side—at heart he's really a detective—whose teenage daughter ran away three months ago leaving his wife distraught—and we have the novel's basic propulsive means.
Mikami has many questions and no one is providing answers so he must work inductively. Slowly, painstakingly, he pieces the scandal together. The plotting is exquisite. The reader moves through the logical progression of his thoughts, reservations, doubts and discoveries. For 566 pages his is the sole point of view. I admire how Mikami queries facial expressions and body language, someone's absence or abrupt appearance, an overheard word or phrase. Each clue is puzzled over it until he has a logical option or two or nine. Then he must run around eliminating false leads. All the while the writing is flat and unadorned. This isn't literary fiction. It's a conventional if captivating thriller depicting police culture in Japan and it's dysfunctional relationship with the press. Nothing gets in the way of the storytelling. In that sense, the tale has a certain purity. One is reminded of Georges Simenon and Leonardo Sciascia at their best.
In the end the book is about storytelling. It's about who controls the narrative, how it's presented to the public through the Fourth Estate, and who can or can't be trusted with the facts. The police tell a deliberately false narrative to protect themselves. Director Mikami is caught between their closed ranks and the overweening arrogance of the media. In Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep Philip Marlowe controls the narrative that will be presented to the newspapers. At several points it becomes necessary to determine precisely what the public narrative will be. Consulted by the police, Marlowe decides what details are to be included, which left out, which modified. Like Mikami he is a man with his own moral code and he works outside the system; true, technically Mikami's part of the HQ administrative team, but this allegiance has little meaning as he plays the lone wolf hunting down the truth. Moreover, Mikami does not have the good fortune of working in media-comatose 1930s San Francisco. This is modern Japan where the technical capacity for storytelling long ago outstripped available content. Thus the shrill, almost rabid manner of the journalists. The journalists here are pissed off, loudmouthed, insulting and self-righteousness in the extreme. That is the procedural level on which the book functions. There is not a lot of cloak and dagger, nor much cutting up of corpses, blood-spatter analysis, long stakeouts, prisoner confessions, deathbed clues or romance. It's mostly about office politics and the relationship between the press and the police surrounding the blown kidnapping case. Moreover, it has a wonderful final twist. Enough for now. Do read it.
February 6, 2017
Superintendent Mikami, a twenty year police detective, has been transferred to Prefecture D in the role of new Press Director for Media Relations. Undesirable as this new position is to Mikami, he must learn to walk a fine line between the press, hungry for information, and the police desiring good publicity since undermining police tactics in the court of public opinion acts as a deterrent to criminal investigations. Suwa, as Section Chief of Mikami's small department , is a spin doctor who attempts, in tandem with Mikami, to oversee and control timely press releases, as well as maintain anonymity when instructed by the powers that be.
Mikami experiences life changing events when daughter Ayumi disappears. He and wife Minako exist in a sea of silence. Minako refuses to leave the house after having received three suspicious silent phone calls. Perhaps Ayumi is too upset to let her voice be heard by her frantic parents. Mikami's reaction to his daughter's disappearance has manifested itself in sudden attacks of dizziness. Mikami in his capacity as Press Director has been assigned an additional job by the Director of Administrative Affairs. The Commissioner General is coming from Tokyo to oversee a fourteen year old cold case for which the Statute of Limitations for Prosecution will soon expire. A seven year old girl named Shoko Amamiya was abducted, the ransom paid, but Shoko was murdered. Fourteen years have passed and Mr. Amamiya, a successful business owner, feels he has no reason to meet with the commissioner. He knows that mistakes made during the investigation have been covered up. Nothing will come from allowing the commissioner to meet with him and turn the meeting into a photo op. The Commissioner has his own agenda and vision for Prefecture D. Added to Mikami's duties, he must suppress the name of a pregnant woman who caused an auto accident. The woman has ties to the police department. By keeping the press at bay, the journalists retaliate by planning to boycott the commissioner's visit.
This police procedural follows several different story threads, the most important being the cold case of the murder of seven year old Shoko Amamiya. There is give and take between law enforcement and the press, as well as a window into the hierarchy of law enforcement. Author Hideo Yokoyama slowly and meticulously shines a light on character interactions while providing fascinating plot twists that are at times unsettling. "Six Four" is a lengthy, police procedural highlighting the interrelationship between Criminal Investigations, Administrative Affairs and the press coverage of crimes committed. A thoroughly enjoyable, well written tome.
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Six Four".
Mikami experiences life changing events when daughter Ayumi disappears. He and wife Minako exist in a sea of silence. Minako refuses to leave the house after having received three suspicious silent phone calls. Perhaps Ayumi is too upset to let her voice be heard by her frantic parents. Mikami's reaction to his daughter's disappearance has manifested itself in sudden attacks of dizziness. Mikami in his capacity as Press Director has been assigned an additional job by the Director of Administrative Affairs. The Commissioner General is coming from Tokyo to oversee a fourteen year old cold case for which the Statute of Limitations for Prosecution will soon expire. A seven year old girl named Shoko Amamiya was abducted, the ransom paid, but Shoko was murdered. Fourteen years have passed and Mr. Amamiya, a successful business owner, feels he has no reason to meet with the commissioner. He knows that mistakes made during the investigation have been covered up. Nothing will come from allowing the commissioner to meet with him and turn the meeting into a photo op. The Commissioner has his own agenda and vision for Prefecture D. Added to Mikami's duties, he must suppress the name of a pregnant woman who caused an auto accident. The woman has ties to the police department. By keeping the press at bay, the journalists retaliate by planning to boycott the commissioner's visit.
This police procedural follows several different story threads, the most important being the cold case of the murder of seven year old Shoko Amamiya. There is give and take between law enforcement and the press, as well as a window into the hierarchy of law enforcement. Author Hideo Yokoyama slowly and meticulously shines a light on character interactions while providing fascinating plot twists that are at times unsettling. "Six Four" is a lengthy, police procedural highlighting the interrelationship between Criminal Investigations, Administrative Affairs and the press coverage of crimes committed. A thoroughly enjoyable, well written tome.
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Six Four".
May 13, 2017
Unusual, long, methodical novel that is less thriller and more workplace drama, but is oddly gripping all the same. Yokoyama creates a whole ecosystem of police department intersections here, with Mikami, a likable hard-boiled protagonist, constantly moving between his job with the press, his former colleagues in criminal investigating, and the Tokyo bureaucracy, not trusted anywhere as he slowly unravels a departmental conspiracy and struggles to accept that his run-away daughter might not come home.
The book is much less lurid than its promotion would have you think. The first chapter is one of the great misdirects of all time; I wonder how many people buy the book after reading the back jacket and the lede (a kidnapped daughter! a corpse in a morgue!) and then slowly realize that this is really a 570 page novel about saving face in front of bosses. I suspect that this is probably not going to do it many favors - I picked it up expecting a bit of a vacation read and ended up getting a complexly peopled novel I liked much better, but too often reviews are based on failure of expectation instead of failure of craft. The marketing is not Yokoyama's fault, but I can already see a trend toward disappointment that might under-serve his accomplishment here.
SIX FOUR owes a huge debt to "High and Low," one of my favorite movies, whose kidnapping case is strangely similar to the Six Four kidnapping, which happened 12 years before the action of the novel but is a specter lurking in the background. I also can't shake the idea that Mikami is meant to be played by the late Takashi Shimura - it is like Yokoyama drew his lead looking at photos. The whole thing, really, is a window into another culture. I've never read so many scenes where characters in desperate rushes pull over to the side of the road to answer a phone call in "drive -mode." The obsession with bureaucracy and proper etiquette reminds me of Murakami's great UNDERGROUND, which examined the Japanese instinct to work within structures in times of crisis.
It's funny - my biggest complaint about the novel is something I can't even mention after the third-act twist, which pays off the problem. Or, it's not really a twist (another marketing failure), it's more of a wonderful development. And it's like everything else about this book, it's both mundane and unbelievable, and it kept me gripped. Despite the lack of resolution with sub-plots, I recommend SIX FOUR. Just know what you're getting into.
The book is much less lurid than its promotion would have you think. The first chapter is one of the great misdirects of all time; I wonder how many people buy the book after reading the back jacket and the lede (a kidnapped daughter! a corpse in a morgue!) and then slowly realize that this is really a 570 page novel about saving face in front of bosses. I suspect that this is probably not going to do it many favors - I picked it up expecting a bit of a vacation read and ended up getting a complexly peopled novel I liked much better, but too often reviews are based on failure of expectation instead of failure of craft. The marketing is not Yokoyama's fault, but I can already see a trend toward disappointment that might under-serve his accomplishment here.
SIX FOUR owes a huge debt to "High and Low," one of my favorite movies, whose kidnapping case is strangely similar to the Six Four kidnapping, which happened 12 years before the action of the novel but is a specter lurking in the background. I also can't shake the idea that Mikami is meant to be played by the late Takashi Shimura - it is like Yokoyama drew his lead looking at photos. The whole thing, really, is a window into another culture. I've never read so many scenes where characters in desperate rushes pull over to the side of the road to answer a phone call in "drive -mode." The obsession with bureaucracy and proper etiquette reminds me of Murakami's great UNDERGROUND, which examined the Japanese instinct to work within structures in times of crisis.
It's funny - my biggest complaint about the novel is something I can't even mention after the third-act twist, which pays off the problem. Or, it's not really a twist (another marketing failure), it's more of a wonderful development. And it's like everything else about this book, it's both mundane and unbelievable, and it kept me gripped. Despite the lack of resolution with sub-plots, I recommend SIX FOUR. Just know what you're getting into.
December 5, 2018
A GoodReads friend sent me this book 1 and 1/2 years ago and I put off reading it because it is 635 pages long(643 if you count the author interview). It is more focused on Japanese society than the mystery. The first 500 pages are about infighting/power struggles within the Japanese police and their difficult relationship with the press. The unsolved kidnapping/murder of a seven year old girl is always hovering in the background, and does not come into focus until near the end for a stunning, unexpected climax. The case is known as "Six Four."
The narrator and main character is Mikami, press director for Prefecture D, a regional police headquarters. Mikami has 3 people working under him. Prefecture D has several hundred police.
By way of contrast, Buffalo, NY, with about 700 police, has 1 PR person.
Mikami is caught in the middle between competing sides in the power struggle and between the press and his superiors demand that he withhold information that the press wants.
If you like a traditional mystery, this may not be for you. I started reading this book 6 months ago, and put it down, because of the interminable infighting/press demands.
This book was a bestseller in Japan and then in the UK, where my GoodReads friend bought it. Thank You Nancy!!
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
The narrator and main character is Mikami, press director for Prefecture D, a regional police headquarters. Mikami has 3 people working under him. Prefecture D has several hundred police.
By way of contrast, Buffalo, NY, with about 700 police, has 1 PR person.
Mikami is caught in the middle between competing sides in the power struggle and between the press and his superiors demand that he withhold information that the press wants.
If you like a traditional mystery, this may not be for you. I started reading this book 6 months ago, and put it down, because of the interminable infighting/press demands.
This book was a bestseller in Japan and then in the UK, where my GoodReads friend bought it. Thank You Nancy!!
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
November 8, 2016
Jesus, this is long book! Anyone who promotes it as a thriller needs to avoid taking up knitting as that would blow their mind. I am sure that there must be more to this, some subtle something that I am missing, but as far as I could tell this was 81 chapters of inter departmental bickering and power play amongst the Japanese police force. if you want to know the ins and outs of ridiculously melodramatic arguments about the power of the media then this is for you. if you fancy an actual crime novel then avoid this, there are far more thrilling and enthralling Japanese crime novels out there, try one of those instead.
April 28, 2016
This is an excellent instruction manual for Japanese policemen.
February 6, 2017
Six Four is a somewhat strange, slowly paced and bloated but nevertheless intriguing police procedural novel, following Press Director Mikami as he grapples with office politics, intersquad squabbling, hidden agendas and directives from Tokyo, and all against a backdrop of his own missing daughter and two cases, twenty years apart, linked by kidnapping for ransom. This is certainly a strange read, and it is dense and for my liking could have been more tightly edited and pacing hastened, and I don't think this is a fault of the translation as this level of minute detail and less action seems more likely to have come from the original novel in Japanese.
I did find my attention wandering in the early parts as the scene was set, and could have used more thrusts of activity and doing to break from the long paragraphs of explanation and backstory. But I ended up enjoying this far more than I had in the early parts, and once the stage was set I thought Yokoyama built a nice, confusing puzzle that wound up with higher stakes than just political infighting and power plays. There's definitely great insight into Japanese culture, law enforcement culture in Japan, and how people handle people in a general sense to get what they want or need. Although there are few traditional thrills, towards the end I found the layers of politics and personalities to be interesting, and found the resolution, though a bit open ended, satisfying in relation to the characters we've encountered.
Overall I'd say I liked this, though I started out a 2 star read, the intriguing parts were stronger than the boring bits, so I ended up a 3 star read. It's a bit trickier to recommend: I don't think readers of typical thrillers or crime fiction or Japanese fiction would necessarily enjoy this, and its bloat, slow pacing, and lack of real action are definitely demerits against it. But I did invest in many of the characters and by the middle was genuinely interested to see how all the disparate threads would pull together, and I couldn't put together the moves and reveals and twists as quickly as Mikami, so Yokoyama certainly had me guessing and in the dark until all was finally revealed. I don't know that I'd readily read another novel by Yokoyama, but my reading experience for this one ended up pleasant.
-received ARC on NetGalley thanks to FSG, in exchange for an honest review
I did find my attention wandering in the early parts as the scene was set, and could have used more thrusts of activity and doing to break from the long paragraphs of explanation and backstory. But I ended up enjoying this far more than I had in the early parts, and once the stage was set I thought Yokoyama built a nice, confusing puzzle that wound up with higher stakes than just political infighting and power plays. There's definitely great insight into Japanese culture, law enforcement culture in Japan, and how people handle people in a general sense to get what they want or need. Although there are few traditional thrills, towards the end I found the layers of politics and personalities to be interesting, and found the resolution, though a bit open ended, satisfying in relation to the characters we've encountered.
Overall I'd say I liked this, though I started out a 2 star read, the intriguing parts were stronger than the boring bits, so I ended up a 3 star read. It's a bit trickier to recommend: I don't think readers of typical thrillers or crime fiction or Japanese fiction would necessarily enjoy this, and its bloat, slow pacing, and lack of real action are definitely demerits against it. But I did invest in many of the characters and by the middle was genuinely interested to see how all the disparate threads would pull together, and I couldn't put together the moves and reveals and twists as quickly as Mikami, so Yokoyama certainly had me guessing and in the dark until all was finally revealed. I don't know that I'd readily read another novel by Yokoyama, but my reading experience for this one ended up pleasant.
-received ARC on NetGalley thanks to FSG, in exchange for an honest review
February 16, 2016
Six Four is really the most amazing read BUT you have to have patience. It is unexpected. I will be absolutely honest and say that at about 50 pages in (and this is a long one!) I almost gave up. If you get to that point kick yourself into continuing – it will reward you in many ways. From a little after that point I devoured it. It kicked in big time.
To clarify – the problem for me came with a bit of a culture clash – the names are all very similar and I was muddling up the characters and had to keep backtracking which was challenging.But then, like magic, suddenly all that goes away, you are bang in it. Another thing to note: Hideo Yokoyama has written a slow burner of a novel, with no clear investigative track and a very different approach to things. If you are expecting a standard Crime novel with a detective and clues and suspects and the like, no. You only kind of get that. What you actually get is a character and political study which has an emotional and very intriguing mystery at the heart of it.
I can’t really tell you too much about the plot because to know it is to spoil it – Ive not read a construction quite like this before in which a crime story has very few of the defacto crime elements but manages to be a completely marvellous crime novel none the less. It is baffling and extraordinarily intelligent, a character fuelled creative piece of genius with a twist in the tale that Agatha Christie would get writers envy over.
It is a reading experience this one – it will engage the little grey cells (yes another Christie reference) and offer the reader something different in the field – ultimately I can’t do anything except highly recommend this one for anyone that likes to think outside the box and if you fancy seeing a mystery story done in a very different yet highly credible way Six Four is definitely for you.
I loved it. Yes I did – despite having to engage high levels of concentration in the first little bit, because in doing so I ended up getting what I did out of it. A bloody tremendous read!
To clarify – the problem for me came with a bit of a culture clash – the names are all very similar and I was muddling up the characters and had to keep backtracking which was challenging.But then, like magic, suddenly all that goes away, you are bang in it. Another thing to note: Hideo Yokoyama has written a slow burner of a novel, with no clear investigative track and a very different approach to things. If you are expecting a standard Crime novel with a detective and clues and suspects and the like, no. You only kind of get that. What you actually get is a character and political study which has an emotional and very intriguing mystery at the heart of it.
I can’t really tell you too much about the plot because to know it is to spoil it – Ive not read a construction quite like this before in which a crime story has very few of the defacto crime elements but manages to be a completely marvellous crime novel none the less. It is baffling and extraordinarily intelligent, a character fuelled creative piece of genius with a twist in the tale that Agatha Christie would get writers envy over.
It is a reading experience this one – it will engage the little grey cells (yes another Christie reference) and offer the reader something different in the field – ultimately I can’t do anything except highly recommend this one for anyone that likes to think outside the box and if you fancy seeing a mystery story done in a very different yet highly credible way Six Four is definitely for you.
I loved it. Yes I did – despite having to engage high levels of concentration in the first little bit, because in doing so I ended up getting what I did out of it. A bloody tremendous read!
February 16, 2017
Let's just get this out of the way -- Six Four is not an average thriller, nor is it an average police procedural; there are no kick-ass heroines or scenes of over-the-top violence to be found anywhere in this book. I finished it in one go in a major overnight, insomnia-fueled reading session and my reaction was this: hooray (!) for something new, something delightfully different, and above all, for an intelligent mystery novel that goes well beyond the standard crime fiction fare -- in short, the sort of thing I crave but don't find much in modern mysteries and crime these days.
First, outside of the mysteries at the heart of this novel, Six Four tackles the issue of the relationship between the press and the police, which in my opinion is one of the best parts of this novel. Second, it takes a look at the Japanese police force itself, as Mikami finds himself having to try to navigate through, as author David Peace notes in the interview with Yokoyama at the end of the book (and do yourself a favor and save it for dead last), "their political machinations and rivalries, internal, local and national...", and deals with the naked ambition and the drive for power on the parts of some individuals. And finally, it looks at the human costs of crime from the points of view of both the victims and the police who work the cases.
(If you'd care to look at my nutshell briefing on the plot, you can do so at my reading journal. )
I've seen so many not-so-positive reviews of this book -- mostly by readers who were disappointed that it was less of a thriller than an insight into everything I've just mentioned above. Well, to each his/her own as I'm fond of saying. People looking for garden-variety thrillers or crime fiction should probably think twice about reading this one -- thrillers are a dime a dozen these days; books like this one are rarities and should be celebrated.
bravo.
First, outside of the mysteries at the heart of this novel, Six Four tackles the issue of the relationship between the press and the police, which in my opinion is one of the best parts of this novel. Second, it takes a look at the Japanese police force itself, as Mikami finds himself having to try to navigate through, as author David Peace notes in the interview with Yokoyama at the end of the book (and do yourself a favor and save it for dead last), "their political machinations and rivalries, internal, local and national...", and deals with the naked ambition and the drive for power on the parts of some individuals. And finally, it looks at the human costs of crime from the points of view of both the victims and the police who work the cases.
(If you'd care to look at my nutshell briefing on the plot, you can do so at my reading journal. )
I've seen so many not-so-positive reviews of this book -- mostly by readers who were disappointed that it was less of a thriller than an insight into everything I've just mentioned above. Well, to each his/her own as I'm fond of saying. People looking for garden-variety thrillers or crime fiction should probably think twice about reading this one -- thrillers are a dime a dozen these days; books like this one are rarities and should be celebrated.
bravo.
June 3, 2016
Wow. this is a truly bad book. I was intrigued by the literary phenomenon status it has garnered in Japan. I can only assume that Japanese readers adore exposition about police hierarchies and internal organisation.
For the first half of the book the narrative tension hinges on whether or not the press corps will make a complaint about the police or not. It's never made clear why we should care, so we don't. Then we discover, shock horror, that Tokyo may replace one police officer with another. Dull dull dull.
The twist is foreshadowed with all the subtlety of a drunk salaryman singing karaoke. The translation is clunky, so bad that times I thought the translator just hadn't understood the text. The twist is weak, but at least explains why we've had to trail our hero around three hundred pages of largely meaningless chats with other policeman. The set up is that laboured.
Recommended only for those studying for doctorates in police-media relations in early twenty first century rural Japan. And literary masochists.
For the first half of the book the narrative tension hinges on whether or not the press corps will make a complaint about the police or not. It's never made clear why we should care, so we don't. Then we discover, shock horror, that Tokyo may replace one police officer with another. Dull dull dull.
The twist is foreshadowed with all the subtlety of a drunk salaryman singing karaoke. The translation is clunky, so bad that times I thought the translator just hadn't understood the text. The twist is weak, but at least explains why we've had to trail our hero around three hundred pages of largely meaningless chats with other policeman. The set up is that laboured.
Recommended only for those studying for doctorates in police-media relations in early twenty first century rural Japan. And literary masochists.
February 15, 2016
When I first discovered Hideo Yokoyama’s crime novel „Six Four“ there were two things that immediately made me want to read it: The first thing was that it came with the praise of being „the Japanese crime sensation that sold over a million copies“ which even for a nation with a population of 128 million people is still quite impressive and I really don’t get to read of lot of crime novels or thrillers that are set in Asia. But what made me even more excited about the book was the fact that it was teased with the line „The twist no reader could predict“ and you can always bait me with the prospect of a shocking or mind-blowing plot twist.
A kidnapping that shocked the Japanese nation
But before you get to know about the big revelation there’s still a lot of work lying ahead of you because „Six Four“ is not only 600 pages long but also requires some effort to work yourself into the story. That’s mostly because Hideo Yokoyama’s novel is different than most of the other books in this genre, starting with the fact that there’s not really a case that needs to be investigated since the protagonist Mikami isn’t a real detective anymore but got against his will transferred from Criminal Investigations to the Administrative affairs department of his prefecture so that he has to deal with media relations instead of actual police work. For Mikami this means that he has to get involved with sensationalist and ruthless reporters instead of experiencing the thrill of catching criminals, for the readers it means that there’s not the kind of investigation that one might be used to: there are no questionings of witnesses, no interrogations of suspects, no analyses of pieces of evidence and most of the story takes places inside the police department complex. This might appear a bit weird when there’s such a big case as the Six Four kidnapping (the name derives from the fact that it took place in the 64th year of the rule of the Japanese Emperor Showa) but even though Yokoyama’s novel lacks most of the elements of a typical crime novel it’s far away from boring, even though the book might indeed drive some readers away with its very slow pace.
A crime novel that requires patience and concentration
I admit that it’s a bit difficult to find into the story not only because of the very slow pace but also because Western readers might have a bit of a hard time keeping track of all the different names since most of them sound very similar, for example there’s Mikami (the main character and „investigator“), Minako (his wife), Mikumo (his colleague), Mizuki (a friend of his wife) and Matsuoka (his superior) and it took me quite a long time until I didn’t confuse them with each other anymore. So this novel requires a lot of concentration and patience, especially for the first 200 pages that serve mainly as a introduction and make you familiar with the protagonist, the Six Four case and the structure of the Japanese police force. It definitely helps to think of „the twist no reader could predict“ in this phase as some kind of motivation and even though not a lot is actually happening Hideo Yokoyama succeeds in creating a feeling that there is this one big secret that needs to be unravelled and you always have a feeling that there’s something really huge going on behind the scenes. So once you’ve digged yourself into the story it just doesn’t let you go anymore and you’re beginning to feel like an old detective that had this one special case he could never solve and which haunted him for all his career and Six Four is exactly that kind of case.
No actual investigation, but still a lot of tension
I’m saying this again because it’s important not to face „Six Four“ with the wrong expectations: for most of the time there is no actual investigation going on and Mikami is dealing mostly with three different problems: can he make the police commissioner’s visit to the victim’s family happen against all obstacles? Can he calm down the press who is attacking Administrative affairs about the car accident of a pregnant woman that seriously injured an old man (which is not even „Six Four“-related)? And last but maybe most important for Mikami: can he find out about the whereabouts of his own daughter who ran away from home months ago? It’s really fascinating how most of the time the kidnapping itself isn’t really part of the story but how it’s still very difficult to put the book down once you’ve arrived in the story.
You definitely won’t see this ending coming
And of course there’s also this big plot twist that has been so prominently advertised and let me assure you that it doesn’t disappoint. I have conjectured the wildest things and the most unlikely developments but still haven’t been able to even remotely see THIS revelation coming – and the best thing about it is that even though it’s so completely unpredictable it seems totally believable and not even farfetched. In my opinion the plot twist alone is worth fighting through the 600 pages even though the ending is not 100% satisfying because some essential questions remain unanswered. Don’t worry, this book doesn’t leave you with an open ending and the most important part of the big secret is revealed but there are still some loose ends that Hideo Yokoyama leaves up to the readers’ interpretation which can definitely be a bit disappointing but somehow also fits to the character of the story.
A unique, intelligent and very intense crime novel
So if you’ve read through all this and the prospect of a slow-paced mystery with a long introductory phase and quite a lot of internal police politics instead of an actual criminal case investigation didn’t scare you away then there’s a good chance that Hideo Yokoyama’s „Six Four“ might thrill you as much as it did me. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this book to every crime fan because it’s so different than any other crime novel I’ve read before but if you’re looking for an intelligent story with quite a unique atmosphere then you should give this one a try. It might be challenging at times but when you’re in the middle of a press conference where the reporters are almost turning into a lynch mob or when you’re sitting in a surveillance car and get a minutely detailed account of the stages of a kidnapping then there’s so much tension that it almost makes you stop breathing and scenes like this are what made all the efforts so worthwhile.
A kidnapping that shocked the Japanese nation
But before you get to know about the big revelation there’s still a lot of work lying ahead of you because „Six Four“ is not only 600 pages long but also requires some effort to work yourself into the story. That’s mostly because Hideo Yokoyama’s novel is different than most of the other books in this genre, starting with the fact that there’s not really a case that needs to be investigated since the protagonist Mikami isn’t a real detective anymore but got against his will transferred from Criminal Investigations to the Administrative affairs department of his prefecture so that he has to deal with media relations instead of actual police work. For Mikami this means that he has to get involved with sensationalist and ruthless reporters instead of experiencing the thrill of catching criminals, for the readers it means that there’s not the kind of investigation that one might be used to: there are no questionings of witnesses, no interrogations of suspects, no analyses of pieces of evidence and most of the story takes places inside the police department complex. This might appear a bit weird when there’s such a big case as the Six Four kidnapping (the name derives from the fact that it took place in the 64th year of the rule of the Japanese Emperor Showa) but even though Yokoyama’s novel lacks most of the elements of a typical crime novel it’s far away from boring, even though the book might indeed drive some readers away with its very slow pace.
A crime novel that requires patience and concentration
I admit that it’s a bit difficult to find into the story not only because of the very slow pace but also because Western readers might have a bit of a hard time keeping track of all the different names since most of them sound very similar, for example there’s Mikami (the main character and „investigator“), Minako (his wife), Mikumo (his colleague), Mizuki (a friend of his wife) and Matsuoka (his superior) and it took me quite a long time until I didn’t confuse them with each other anymore. So this novel requires a lot of concentration and patience, especially for the first 200 pages that serve mainly as a introduction and make you familiar with the protagonist, the Six Four case and the structure of the Japanese police force. It definitely helps to think of „the twist no reader could predict“ in this phase as some kind of motivation and even though not a lot is actually happening Hideo Yokoyama succeeds in creating a feeling that there is this one big secret that needs to be unravelled and you always have a feeling that there’s something really huge going on behind the scenes. So once you’ve digged yourself into the story it just doesn’t let you go anymore and you’re beginning to feel like an old detective that had this one special case he could never solve and which haunted him for all his career and Six Four is exactly that kind of case.
No actual investigation, but still a lot of tension
I’m saying this again because it’s important not to face „Six Four“ with the wrong expectations: for most of the time there is no actual investigation going on and Mikami is dealing mostly with three different problems: can he make the police commissioner’s visit to the victim’s family happen against all obstacles? Can he calm down the press who is attacking Administrative affairs about the car accident of a pregnant woman that seriously injured an old man (which is not even „Six Four“-related)? And last but maybe most important for Mikami: can he find out about the whereabouts of his own daughter who ran away from home months ago? It’s really fascinating how most of the time the kidnapping itself isn’t really part of the story but how it’s still very difficult to put the book down once you’ve arrived in the story.
You definitely won’t see this ending coming
And of course there’s also this big plot twist that has been so prominently advertised and let me assure you that it doesn’t disappoint. I have conjectured the wildest things and the most unlikely developments but still haven’t been able to even remotely see THIS revelation coming – and the best thing about it is that even though it’s so completely unpredictable it seems totally believable and not even farfetched. In my opinion the plot twist alone is worth fighting through the 600 pages even though the ending is not 100% satisfying because some essential questions remain unanswered. Don’t worry, this book doesn’t leave you with an open ending and the most important part of the big secret is revealed but there are still some loose ends that Hideo Yokoyama leaves up to the readers’ interpretation which can definitely be a bit disappointing but somehow also fits to the character of the story.
A unique, intelligent and very intense crime novel
So if you’ve read through all this and the prospect of a slow-paced mystery with a long introductory phase and quite a lot of internal police politics instead of an actual criminal case investigation didn’t scare you away then there’s a good chance that Hideo Yokoyama’s „Six Four“ might thrill you as much as it did me. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this book to every crime fan because it’s so different than any other crime novel I’ve read before but if you’re looking for an intelligent story with quite a unique atmosphere then you should give this one a try. It might be challenging at times but when you’re in the middle of a press conference where the reporters are almost turning into a lynch mob or when you’re sitting in a surveillance car and get a minutely detailed account of the stages of a kidnapping then there’s so much tension that it almost makes you stop breathing and scenes like this are what made all the efforts so worthwhile.
May 3, 2018
Wow! Just... wow!! What a book!!
This was an incredible, engrossing read. A book of crime fiction ostensibly centering on a missing person/kidnap victim, but really a biography of a police department in crisis. Japan, the Japanese police system, and the main character of Mikami are clearly and sensitively portrayed in this volume of Japanese literature.
A 500+ page book it read faster than most shorter books. Intrigue, conspiracy, police procedure, as well as showing the pains that the people involved in an unsolved crime have to suffer. Wonderful.
This was an incredible, engrossing read. A book of crime fiction ostensibly centering on a missing person/kidnap victim, but really a biography of a police department in crisis. Japan, the Japanese police system, and the main character of Mikami are clearly and sensitively portrayed in this volume of Japanese literature.
A 500+ page book it read faster than most shorter books. Intrigue, conspiracy, police procedure, as well as showing the pains that the people involved in an unsolved crime have to suffer. Wonderful.
January 15, 2021
Parece un maual de jerarquías policiales y de organización interna.
La traducción es malísima.
Abandonado.
La traducción es malísima.
Abandonado.
March 25, 2021
Parece mentira que me haya entretenido tanto una novela que básicamente habla de la burocracia en la policía japonesa, pero así es. Tal vez porque cómo funcionan las cosas policiales en el país del sol naciente es un poco... surrealista. Las 150 primeras páginas consiguen crear tensión con lo que es, esencialmente, un "queremos hablar con el encargado" que los periodistas quieren plantearle al capitán de la comisaría.
Bueno, también está la vida privada del protagonista, policía encargado del departamente de Relación con los Medios, cuya hija adolescente huyó de casa y cuya ausencia vuela como un espectro sobre su matrimonio.
Si la gente espera que la novela vaya sobre la investigación de este secuestro que ocurrió hace 14 años, espera mal. No va de eso realmente. Es el tipo este intentando que el padre de la niña secuestrada (y luego asesinada) de su consentimiento para que el comisionado lo visite y las razones de esa visita y todos los tejemanejes de la comisaría y el funcionariado policial japonés. En serio que el autor te explica perfectamente cómo funciona la cosa t aun así suena a ciencia ficción.
Al final el libro habla sobre la corrupción (al estilo japonés), la lealtad y la pérdida de una hija, y dado que yo no sabía muy bien qué esperar del libro, a mí me ha entretenido bastante. No es para todo el mundo (a aquellas personas que prefieran grandes misterios o investigaciones policiales tal vez les aburra) pero a mí me ha parecido interesante.
Bueno, también está la vida privada del protagonista, policía encargado del departamente de Relación con los Medios, cuya hija adolescente huyó de casa y cuya ausencia vuela como un espectro sobre su matrimonio.
Si la gente espera que la novela vaya sobre la investigación de este secuestro que ocurrió hace 14 años, espera mal. No va de eso realmente. Es el tipo este intentando que el padre de la niña secuestrada (y luego asesinada) de su consentimiento para que el comisionado lo visite y las razones de esa visita y todos los tejemanejes de la comisaría y el funcionariado policial japonés. En serio que el autor te explica perfectamente cómo funciona la cosa t aun así suena a ciencia ficción.
Al final el libro habla sobre la corrupción (al estilo japonés), la lealtad y la pérdida de una hija, y dado que yo no sabía muy bien qué esperar del libro, a mí me ha entretenido bastante. No es para todo el mundo (a aquellas personas que prefieran grandes misterios o investigaciones policiales tal vez les aburra) pero a mí me ha parecido interesante.
June 23, 2021
Yoshinobu Mikami must be the world's most ineffectual detective. He meanders and broods, there are hundreds of pages dedicated to his labored reconstruction of what other people are thinking, feeling, conniving – yet he solves absolutely nothing. Hundreds of pages dedicated to the minutiae of police politics and media relations.
I'm mystified at the praise lavished on this book. The much-heralded final twist has all the excitement of dead air escaping a balloon. Apparently there's an untapped ardor for org charts and office protocol that I've missed completely.
I'm mystified at the praise lavished on this book. The much-heralded final twist has all the excitement of dead air escaping a balloon. Apparently there's an untapped ardor for org charts and office protocol that I've missed completely.
April 20, 2017
One of my goals this year is to read more fiction translated from Asian languages. So when I saw this at Dymocks - AND it had hot pink pages - I was instantly sold.
This...........took me forever and ever to read. Like, a solid week of reading. And partly it's because it's nearly 700 pages long, and partly because it's a slow, dense story.
Technically, this is a crime novel. But it's a crime novel in the same way that Broadchurch is a crime show where the crime is there but the show is also about the lives of the detectives and the interactions that they have with other members of the investigative team and their interactions with the press.
So while this IS a crime novel and it IS about the main character discovering that something in a police investigation 20 years earlier was done wrong and that leading to new clues about the case? It's predominantly about the main character - the head of media affairs - dealing with the press (which, I should add, was often BAFFLING and fascinating at the same time. Like...the press telling the police that they're going to go on strike unless the police give them the confidential information they want?!?!?! WHUT. Japan's system must be veeeery different to ours), dealing with his staff, dealing with the ongoing feud between the criminal investigation department and the administrative affairs department, dealing with his wife becoming a hermit in the aftermath of their daughter's disappearance.
It's slow and it's dense and it was often confusing for me because I do this thing where once I know the characters' names, I basically skim over any name once I see the first letter. Except that because probably 5 or 6 characters in this have VERY similar names, that backfired on me in spectacular faschion.
And based on my feelings for 75-80% of this book, I was anticipating a 3 star read. Except then the last 75-100 pages happened, and it basically made my head explode because it was UTTERLY AMAZING and I did not see any of it coming.
So. It's slow. It's complex. It's totally worth it.
This...........took me forever and ever to read. Like, a solid week of reading. And partly it's because it's nearly 700 pages long, and partly because it's a slow, dense story.
Technically, this is a crime novel. But it's a crime novel in the same way that Broadchurch is a crime show where the crime is there but the show is also about the lives of the detectives and the interactions that they have with other members of the investigative team and their interactions with the press.
So while this IS a crime novel and it IS about the main character discovering that something in a police investigation 20 years earlier was done wrong and that leading to new clues about the case? It's predominantly about the main character - the head of media affairs - dealing with the press (which, I should add, was often BAFFLING and fascinating at the same time. Like...the press telling the police that they're going to go on strike unless the police give them the confidential information they want?!?!?! WHUT. Japan's system must be veeeery different to ours), dealing with his staff, dealing with the ongoing feud between the criminal investigation department and the administrative affairs department, dealing with his wife becoming a hermit in the aftermath of their daughter's disappearance.
It's slow and it's dense and it was often confusing for me because I do this thing where once I know the characters' names, I basically skim over any name once I see the first letter. Except that because probably 5 or 6 characters in this have VERY similar names, that backfired on me in spectacular faschion.
And based on my feelings for 75-80% of this book, I was anticipating a 3 star read. Except then the last 75-100 pages happened, and it basically made my head explode because it was UTTERLY AMAZING and I did not see any of it coming.
So. It's slow. It's complex. It's totally worth it.
May 5, 2018
It all seemed so simple. Yoshinobu Mikami, newly appointed superintendent of Media Relations for the Prefecture Headquarters, has been ordered to prepare for the visit of the Commissioner General of the National Police Agency based in Tokyo. Mikami's assignment unravels in so many ways that it's difficult to boil down.
Mikami had hoped for a promotion within the Criminal Investigations Dept. Instead he is under the jurisdiction of Administrative Affairs. The two branches are wary of each other. However, that wariness is suddenly hardened by a directive from the top: Don't talk to anyone in Administrative Affairs. Even colleagues who served under him are tight-lipped. No one knows why. Although publicized as a crime thriller, SIX FOUR feels more like a Japanese political conspiracy novel. Mikami strives to “open a window” between the police and the public. Likewise, one might believe that author Hideo Yokoyama is seeking to open a portal into the Japanese puzzle palace by immersing the reader in a crash course in Japanese bureaucratic politics.
The first alarm bell that sounds for Mikami is when Director of Administrative Affairs Akama casually mentions “Six Four.” It was the short-hand reference the detectives used among themselves for a 14 year old kidnapping case that ended tragically. The crime occurred in January 1989, the final days of the 64th year of the Shōwa era. The failure to solve the case was a haunting beginning to the new Imperial era. Both Mikami and his wife Minuko worked on the detail that tracked the ransom drop. Mikami visits the father of the kidnapped child. The Commissioner plans to visit, a symbolic gesture of commitment to continue working the case. However, inexplicably, the father politely refuses to meet with the Commissioner. His refusal precipitates a crisis for Administrative Affairs. Mikami, still at heart the detective, becomes curious. Why would the Commissioner come all the way from Tokyo for a visit solely for a publicity display? Why the stone-walling in Criminal Investigations? Why is the father refusing to meet with the Commissioner? Why is the meeting so important to Administrative Affairs?
Readers like me will be struck by the feudal mentality of this highly militaristic heirarchy. Information flows one way: from the top downward. Loyalty is not only demanded; it is also enforced by the arithmetic of favors. When Mikami's own teen-aged daughter runs away from home, his superior, Akama, immediately alerts the entire force. His response is not due to sympathy. “Mikami couldn't forget the look of triumph in Akama's face. He had known immediately that it contained more than a simple look of superiority at having demonstrated his authority as a Tokyo bureaucrat. Akama's eyes had lit up with the expectation of change. They had become fixated on him, peering from behind those gold-rimmed glasses, desperate not to miss the moment this upstart regional superintendent who had resisted for so long finally capitulated.” (p.32) The response, Mikami's bow, conveys the unspoken message: “Thank you. I am in your debt.” (p.32) The debt is in direct conflict with his sense of personal integrity. He is now Akama's “guard dog” controlled not just by a tight leash but a choke collar.
I was also struck by the dynamics of dealing with the press. Mikami's job is to provide the press with details of all on-going investigations. Akama forbids Mikami from transmitting details of a recent auto accident resulting in the serious injury of an aged pedestrian. Bound by common resentment, the press resolves to submit a written complaint to Captain Tsujiuchi, the top Tokyo representative in the prefecture. Yokoyama does not explain the extremity of this action until several chapters after a near riot. “The Prefecture D Police had been diligent in the cultivation of the man's near-divine status. They reported favorable information and insulated him from everything that wasn't good news. They devoted themselves to insuring that his time in the Prefectural HQ was spent in comfort. He was kept free from germs, sheltered from the troubles and worries of the local police, treated instead like a guest at a spa, and when he returned to Tokyo it would be with pockets full of expensive gifts from local companies.” (p.135)
Without these explanations, Mikami often seems either paranoid or overwrought. His relations with the press grow worse when they decide to boycott coverage of the Commissioner's visit. At the same time his path keeps crossing that of Futuwatari, a school mate who is now a high level figure in Personnel. His reaction to Futuwatari amplifies that sense of paranoia. Futuwatari has been asking about a mysterious document called the Koda Memo, which everyone denies having ever heard of, and which seems to have nothing to do with Futuwatari's duties.
The reader will be struck by the almost total lack of trust between any of the characters. Even Mikami and his wife have erected boundaries between their true emotions and what they will say to each other after the disappearance of their daughter. Conversations almost always imply something unsaid. This is the reason Mikami's thoughts, indicated in italics, interpret the implied innuendos. Another technique for conveying hints without direct disclosure is “thinking out loud.” The problem for the reader is that Mikami is our sole guide. His unreliable conclusions leave the reader completely in the dark for long intervals.
The pace of this book is slow. The characters, even Mikami, feel opaque and emotionally distant. Moreover, there are a lot of characters. Despite a brief list at the front of the book, reader's are well-advised to note the names and positions of the characters as they read. (There are three major categories: the kidnapping detail from fourteen years ago; the officials in Administrative Affairs and the officials in Criminal Investigations). Nevertheless, I found the book mesmerizing. Despite the dubious and sometimes impersonal motives, I found this a real page-turner. Only exhaustion ended each night's session of reading. This book is recommended for anyone interested in Japanese society.
NOTES:
Interview with the translator:
https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan...
May 5, 2018: Discovered another interesting interview with the translator: https://fsgworkinprogress.com/2017/03...
Mikami had hoped for a promotion within the Criminal Investigations Dept. Instead he is under the jurisdiction of Administrative Affairs. The two branches are wary of each other. However, that wariness is suddenly hardened by a directive from the top: Don't talk to anyone in Administrative Affairs. Even colleagues who served under him are tight-lipped. No one knows why. Although publicized as a crime thriller, SIX FOUR feels more like a Japanese political conspiracy novel. Mikami strives to “open a window” between the police and the public. Likewise, one might believe that author Hideo Yokoyama is seeking to open a portal into the Japanese puzzle palace by immersing the reader in a crash course in Japanese bureaucratic politics.
The first alarm bell that sounds for Mikami is when Director of Administrative Affairs Akama casually mentions “Six Four.” It was the short-hand reference the detectives used among themselves for a 14 year old kidnapping case that ended tragically. The crime occurred in January 1989, the final days of the 64th year of the Shōwa era. The failure to solve the case was a haunting beginning to the new Imperial era. Both Mikami and his wife Minuko worked on the detail that tracked the ransom drop. Mikami visits the father of the kidnapped child. The Commissioner plans to visit, a symbolic gesture of commitment to continue working the case. However, inexplicably, the father politely refuses to meet with the Commissioner. His refusal precipitates a crisis for Administrative Affairs. Mikami, still at heart the detective, becomes curious. Why would the Commissioner come all the way from Tokyo for a visit solely for a publicity display? Why the stone-walling in Criminal Investigations? Why is the father refusing to meet with the Commissioner? Why is the meeting so important to Administrative Affairs?
Readers like me will be struck by the feudal mentality of this highly militaristic heirarchy. Information flows one way: from the top downward. Loyalty is not only demanded; it is also enforced by the arithmetic of favors. When Mikami's own teen-aged daughter runs away from home, his superior, Akama, immediately alerts the entire force. His response is not due to sympathy. “Mikami couldn't forget the look of triumph in Akama's face. He had known immediately that it contained more than a simple look of superiority at having demonstrated his authority as a Tokyo bureaucrat. Akama's eyes had lit up with the expectation of change. They had become fixated on him, peering from behind those gold-rimmed glasses, desperate not to miss the moment this upstart regional superintendent who had resisted for so long finally capitulated.” (p.32) The response, Mikami's bow, conveys the unspoken message: “Thank you. I am in your debt.” (p.32) The debt is in direct conflict with his sense of personal integrity. He is now Akama's “guard dog” controlled not just by a tight leash but a choke collar.
I was also struck by the dynamics of dealing with the press. Mikami's job is to provide the press with details of all on-going investigations. Akama forbids Mikami from transmitting details of a recent auto accident resulting in the serious injury of an aged pedestrian. Bound by common resentment, the press resolves to submit a written complaint to Captain Tsujiuchi, the top Tokyo representative in the prefecture. Yokoyama does not explain the extremity of this action until several chapters after a near riot. “The Prefecture D Police had been diligent in the cultivation of the man's near-divine status. They reported favorable information and insulated him from everything that wasn't good news. They devoted themselves to insuring that his time in the Prefectural HQ was spent in comfort. He was kept free from germs, sheltered from the troubles and worries of the local police, treated instead like a guest at a spa, and when he returned to Tokyo it would be with pockets full of expensive gifts from local companies.” (p.135)
Without these explanations, Mikami often seems either paranoid or overwrought. His relations with the press grow worse when they decide to boycott coverage of the Commissioner's visit. At the same time his path keeps crossing that of Futuwatari, a school mate who is now a high level figure in Personnel. His reaction to Futuwatari amplifies that sense of paranoia. Futuwatari has been asking about a mysterious document called the Koda Memo, which everyone denies having ever heard of, and which seems to have nothing to do with Futuwatari's duties.
The reader will be struck by the almost total lack of trust between any of the characters. Even Mikami and his wife have erected boundaries between their true emotions and what they will say to each other after the disappearance of their daughter. Conversations almost always imply something unsaid. This is the reason Mikami's thoughts, indicated in italics, interpret the implied innuendos. Another technique for conveying hints without direct disclosure is “thinking out loud.” The problem for the reader is that Mikami is our sole guide. His unreliable conclusions leave the reader completely in the dark for long intervals.
The pace of this book is slow. The characters, even Mikami, feel opaque and emotionally distant. Moreover, there are a lot of characters. Despite a brief list at the front of the book, reader's are well-advised to note the names and positions of the characters as they read. (There are three major categories: the kidnapping detail from fourteen years ago; the officials in Administrative Affairs and the officials in Criminal Investigations). Nevertheless, I found the book mesmerizing. Despite the dubious and sometimes impersonal motives, I found this a real page-turner. Only exhaustion ended each night's session of reading. This book is recommended for anyone interested in Japanese society.
NOTES:
Interview with the translator:
https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan...
May 5, 2018: Discovered another interesting interview with the translator: https://fsgworkinprogress.com/2017/03...
March 24, 2016
646 pages. Six four whichever way you look at it! A torturous book with about 400 pages of tedious boring detail of inter department squabbling in the Japanese police force. Given the amount of excellent reviews of this book I feel I have missed some subtle underlying theme in the story? It could have been a good thriller and parts do move along but overall the emphasis on department politics was just too much. Furthermore there are quiet a number of issues left unresolved. The author should seek the advice of a stronger editor.
March 29, 2018
Ein korrupter Polizeiapparat. Ein ungelöster Fall. Eine verschwundene Tochter.
Die Frage, welche Rolle man selbst in dem Ganzen spielt. Was zählt? Persönliche Sicherheit und Gewinn oder menschliche Moral und Anstand?
'64' ist ein gigantisches Werk, vielschichtig und packend, doch nicht reißerisch. Kein Thriller im gewohnten Sinne. Aber es lohnt sich auf jeden Fall, sich darauf einzulassen.
Die Frage, welche Rolle man selbst in dem Ganzen spielt. Was zählt? Persönliche Sicherheit und Gewinn oder menschliche Moral und Anstand?
'64' ist ein gigantisches Werk, vielschichtig und packend, doch nicht reißerisch. Kein Thriller im gewohnten Sinne. Aber es lohnt sich auf jeden Fall, sich darauf einzulassen.
August 6, 2017
Although his police career has been mainly as a detective, middle-aged Yoshinobu Mikami has been transferred sideways to become Media Relations officer of the police department in City D. Slowly, as he battles with the journalists on the one hand and his irrationally secretive bosses in the PD on the other, with everyone preparing for the arrival of a visiting police bigwig from Tokyo, it emerges that much of the oddness of the way his superiors are behaving can be traced to a notorious fourteen-years-old kidnap/murder case, called Six Four, that was never solved, and the official coverup of a logistics error the cops made at the time.
Much of this long book is taken up with the politics of Mikami's interactions with the journalists and the interdepartmental politics that is threatening to pull the PD apart. Weaving through it is a thin strand of plot following Mikami's realization that, if he is to set his world to order, he must solve both the issue of the coverup and, preferably, the cold case.
It's that thin strand that's the good stuff -- the stuff we came to the book for -- and unfortunately it's not until the long-delayed final act that it begins to take its rightful place as main pillar of the plot. Before then, although I enjoyed much of the writing (Lloyd-Davies's translation is very fluent and readable, with only the rarest of lapses that the copyeditor should have picked up), I was, to far too great an extent, bored by the subject matter. I really didn't give a whole heck of a lot of a damn if Mikami was able to make his peace, despite all the constraints imposed upon him, with the childish pack of reporters; and, if the reporters behaved with tiresome and often not wholly believable childishness, just don't get me started on Mikami's superiors, whose behavior was frequently like that of a schoolyard of pre-adolescents.
I did care about Mikami, though, and his wife Minako -- coping with a situation at home that their teenaged daughter ran away three months ago and hasn't made contact -- so I persevered. Some of the other characters affected me, too, such as Yamamiya, the dignified father of the seven-year-old who was murdered in the Six Four case, and Mikumo, Mikami's most junior staffer, eager to break through the glass ceilings of her age and her gender despite the conservative ethos of the PD.
The naming of Mikumo leads me to another, very prosaic, difficulty that I had with the novel. It may be that in Japanese the names Mikami and Mikumo read as very different, but in translation it's extremely easy to get the two names mixed up. If it were just this pair it wouldn't be too bad, but we also have Mikami's wife Minako, Mikami's colleague/antagonist Mikura, another character called Mesaki, a journalist called Mainichi . . . and I may have missed one or two, because the Dramatis Personae list at the start is woefully incomplete. On some pages my eyes were swimming as I strained to keep the characters straight. I'm not sure how this problem could have been solved, but solved I think it should have been.
Other readers are going to enjoy this novel more than I did, I'm sure. For me, though, it was a matter of too often and too long getting bogged down in bickering and petty politics between individuals and groups for whom I couldn't raise much sympathy or indeed interest.
Much of this long book is taken up with the politics of Mikami's interactions with the journalists and the interdepartmental politics that is threatening to pull the PD apart. Weaving through it is a thin strand of plot following Mikami's realization that, if he is to set his world to order, he must solve both the issue of the coverup and, preferably, the cold case.
It's that thin strand that's the good stuff -- the stuff we came to the book for -- and unfortunately it's not until the long-delayed final act that it begins to take its rightful place as main pillar of the plot. Before then, although I enjoyed much of the writing (Lloyd-Davies's translation is very fluent and readable, with only the rarest of lapses that the copyeditor should have picked up), I was, to far too great an extent, bored by the subject matter. I really didn't give a whole heck of a lot of a damn if Mikami was able to make his peace, despite all the constraints imposed upon him, with the childish pack of reporters; and, if the reporters behaved with tiresome and often not wholly believable childishness, just don't get me started on Mikami's superiors, whose behavior was frequently like that of a schoolyard of pre-adolescents.
I did care about Mikami, though, and his wife Minako -- coping with a situation at home that their teenaged daughter ran away three months ago and hasn't made contact -- so I persevered. Some of the other characters affected me, too, such as Yamamiya, the dignified father of the seven-year-old who was murdered in the Six Four case, and Mikumo, Mikami's most junior staffer, eager to break through the glass ceilings of her age and her gender despite the conservative ethos of the PD.
The naming of Mikumo leads me to another, very prosaic, difficulty that I had with the novel. It may be that in Japanese the names Mikami and Mikumo read as very different, but in translation it's extremely easy to get the two names mixed up. If it were just this pair it wouldn't be too bad, but we also have Mikami's wife Minako, Mikami's colleague/antagonist Mikura, another character called Mesaki, a journalist called Mainichi . . . and I may have missed one or two, because the Dramatis Personae list at the start is woefully incomplete. On some pages my eyes were swimming as I strained to keep the characters straight. I'm not sure how this problem could have been solved, but solved I think it should have been.
Other readers are going to enjoy this novel more than I did, I'm sure. For me, though, it was a matter of too often and too long getting bogged down in bickering and petty politics between individuals and groups for whom I couldn't raise much sympathy or indeed interest.
June 14, 2021
Una novela inusual vendida, cosas del Marketing, como un thriller apasionante con un gancho impecable: El secuestro/asesinato de una niña no resuelto, pero que en realidad es una historia en plan drama entre compañeros de trabajo. Entiendo que mucha gente se decepcione porque la contracubierta del libro es un auténtico engaño.
El libro trata de como un inspector veterano, relegado a funciones de relaciones con la prensa, lidia con las intrigas, puñaladas, corrupciones y ansias de trepar de sus compañeros policías. Un personaje afectado por la desaparición de su hija y que tiene la espina clavada del caso sin resolver de un asesinado de una niña 14 años antes.
Libro cocinado a fuego muy muy lento, donde aprendes toda la estructura de la policía japonesa mientras el protagonista se debate entre el cumplimiento de su deber, salvar el culo a sus antiguos compañeros de Homicidios o resolver el caso de la niña.
Al final se gana la tercera estrella por su tramo final, donde gana algo de acción y lógica la trama pero que solo puede interesar a los amantes/conocedores de la cultura japonesa y sus extraños (para nosotros occidentales) códigos de conducta y reacciones.
El libro trata de como un inspector veterano, relegado a funciones de relaciones con la prensa, lidia con las intrigas, puñaladas, corrupciones y ansias de trepar de sus compañeros policías. Un personaje afectado por la desaparición de su hija y que tiene la espina clavada del caso sin resolver de un asesinado de una niña 14 años antes.
Libro cocinado a fuego muy muy lento, donde aprendes toda la estructura de la policía japonesa mientras el protagonista se debate entre el cumplimiento de su deber, salvar el culo a sus antiguos compañeros de Homicidios o resolver el caso de la niña.
Al final se gana la tercera estrella por su tramo final, donde gana algo de acción y lógica la trama pero que solo puede interesar a los amantes/conocedores de la cultura japonesa y sus extraños (para nosotros occidentales) códigos de conducta y reacciones.
March 26, 2016
In the last days of the Showa period a little girl is abducted and killed even after her parents pay the ransom. The case has been open for 14 years, but they have no new leads. Six four was the code name for the case, as it took place in the 64th year of the Showa period (the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926, through January 7, 1989),
Mikami, Press and Media Relations Director for the Police Prefecture, takes an interest in the case when he is asked to visit the girl's father, in order for a high police officer to pay his respects. Mikami's teen age daughter has run away, so a missing girl is a matter close to him.
When another teenage girl disappears, and the kidnapper mimics the actions of the first kidnapping, must Mikami and the prefecture's police solve this case in order to solve the first one?
This is quite a long book, more than 600 pages, and personally I think many of the situations between the police and the press are repetitive. We also have Mikami running from one high officer to another, day after day.
What is so complicated is not only the relationship between the different police departments or divisions, but the relationship between the press and the police.
That said, it is none the less an amazing read, an educational one regarding Japanese culture and it has an ending that I couldn't have imagined.
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Mikami, Press and Media Relations Director for the Police Prefecture, takes an interest in the case when he is asked to visit the girl's father, in order for a high police officer to pay his respects. Mikami's teen age daughter has run away, so a missing girl is a matter close to him.
When another teenage girl disappears, and the kidnapper mimics the actions of the first kidnapping, must Mikami and the prefecture's police solve this case in order to solve the first one?
This is quite a long book, more than 600 pages, and personally I think many of the situations between the police and the press are repetitive. We also have Mikami running from one high officer to another, day after day.
What is so complicated is not only the relationship between the different police departments or divisions, but the relationship between the press and the police.
That said, it is none the less an amazing read, an educational one regarding Japanese culture and it has an ending that I couldn't have imagined.
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Read
February 10, 2017DNF-
So at just under the halfway point this book has beaten me. It just dosent seem to be going anywhere and we are just going round in circles. We are no closer to finding out who commited the crime or where the detectives daughter is. This book does start extremely weak and did take 100 pages before any kind of momentum picks up and its slow at that.
As a Thriller I need it to keep me engaged with the characters and really keep me on the edge of the seat to find out what happens next. The problem with his is nothin seems to happen next, combine that with characters whose names are extremely similar it becomes a real chore to read and not fun at all.
I would like to find out who was responsible and what has happened to the missing daughter its just a shame that this book has zero enjoyability for me.
So at just under the halfway point this book has beaten me. It just dosent seem to be going anywhere and we are just going round in circles. We are no closer to finding out who commited the crime or where the detectives daughter is. This book does start extremely weak and did take 100 pages before any kind of momentum picks up and its slow at that.
As a Thriller I need it to keep me engaged with the characters and really keep me on the edge of the seat to find out what happens next. The problem with his is nothin seems to happen next, combine that with characters whose names are extremely similar it becomes a real chore to read and not fun at all.
I would like to find out who was responsible and what has happened to the missing daughter its just a shame that this book has zero enjoyability for me.
March 27, 2016
Six Four is two stories - a teenage girl who has run away and a young girl abducted, held for ransom and brutally murdered. Both sets of parents looking for answers.
To start with it was a little confusing and not the most exciting – it felt like the author was setting the scene quite considerably but as I got immersed myself into the story, I realised how much it actually needed.
The story was quite an eye opener to cultural differences between the UK and Japan. The way the Japanese police force operates is very different to the UK force (or my understanding of it). In the UK we have trained individuals as press liaison roles whereas in Japan, it appears one day you are a detective investigating a case, the next you could be head of the press office. Six Four also shows the politics and hierarchy within the Japanese police force, it is very dominant theme in the story line and the press office is not viewed as a promotion or the department to work in! The Japanese press appear to have a very different standing and attitude.
I did get confused with names - Mikumo, Mikami and Minakon for example. The names used did feel very authentic but trying to read them as they should possibly be said slowed my reading down. So I came to the arrangement with myself that I would “pronounce” the names in my head in a way that would sound vaguely like they actual would but not necessarily precisely correct.
I couldn't fault the translation; I must admit, I forgot that it was written by a Japanese author and had been translated into English.
Six Four has conspiracy, office politics, kidnapping, cover ups and it’s not the sort of book you can pick up and put down. You have to expect to invest time into this tale – given, on kindle (which is the format I read) it is just short of 600 pages, it’s not a quick read. It is the first Japanese crime fiction I’ve read (I didn’t even know it was such a genre) but I will definitely try some other Japanese crime authors.
Many thanks to Quercus Books, Crime Files and Netgalley for giving me this eBook for my unbiased opinion.
To start with it was a little confusing and not the most exciting – it felt like the author was setting the scene quite considerably but as I got immersed myself into the story, I realised how much it actually needed.
The story was quite an eye opener to cultural differences between the UK and Japan. The way the Japanese police force operates is very different to the UK force (or my understanding of it). In the UK we have trained individuals as press liaison roles whereas in Japan, it appears one day you are a detective investigating a case, the next you could be head of the press office. Six Four also shows the politics and hierarchy within the Japanese police force, it is very dominant theme in the story line and the press office is not viewed as a promotion or the department to work in! The Japanese press appear to have a very different standing and attitude.
I did get confused with names - Mikumo, Mikami and Minakon for example. The names used did feel very authentic but trying to read them as they should possibly be said slowed my reading down. So I came to the arrangement with myself that I would “pronounce” the names in my head in a way that would sound vaguely like they actual would but not necessarily precisely correct.
I couldn't fault the translation; I must admit, I forgot that it was written by a Japanese author and had been translated into English.
Six Four has conspiracy, office politics, kidnapping, cover ups and it’s not the sort of book you can pick up and put down. You have to expect to invest time into this tale – given, on kindle (which is the format I read) it is just short of 600 pages, it’s not a quick read. It is the first Japanese crime fiction I’ve read (I didn’t even know it was such a genre) but I will definitely try some other Japanese crime authors.
Many thanks to Quercus Books, Crime Files and Netgalley for giving me this eBook for my unbiased opinion.
October 18, 2021
Los inspectores entienden el concepto de justicia, pero han perdido el odio instintivo al delito. Se han habituado a él. Su único instinto es la caza
Me siento estafada. Terrible este libro y lo peor es el precio que me costó para lo malo que ha sido. Tengo que aprender a no dejarme llevar y no comprar cualquier libro en el que vea escrito Japón.
Hace catorce años se produjo un secuestro de una menor que terminó con su asesinato. No encontraron al culpable, por lo que este caso, conocido como Seis Cuatro, es la vergüenza de la policía japonesa. A pocos días de que el delito prescriba, aparecen nuevas pistas que podrían aportar luz a tantos años de oscuridad. Hasta aquí todo perfecto. Me atrajo la trama.
El protagonista es Mikami, uno de los inspectores que trabajó en el caso y que actualmente es el jefe de Relaciones con los Medios. Mientras lidia con un trabajo patético y con su matrimonio que se desmorona cada día tras la fuga de casa de su hija adolescente, Mikami irá descubriendo qué pasó en realidad en Seis Cuatro. Sigue bien la trama. Este personaje me gustó; su situación como padre y esposo es lo único que salvo del libro.
¿A que parece que será una gran novela policiaca, donde el misterio te engancha desde el principio y cada nuevo descubrimiento te anima a intentar descubrir al asesino? ¡MENTIRA! Esto es de todo menos una novela de policías y eso que salen una barbaridad. Este es un libro de cómo la policía japonesa lidia con la prensa. Ya está.
90%: peleas con los periodistas.
6%: movidas mentales de Mikami sobre su familia.
4%: secuestro y asesinato de Seis Cuatro.
El caso apenas se toca y, en cuanto se toca un pelín en uno o dos capítulos, te tienes que tragas otros diez capítulos sobre los chanchullos de policía y prensa. Horrible. Iba leyendo y me preguntaba por qué seguía. No sé cómo he podido terminarlo.
Es verdad que, hacia las últimas 100 páginas, la historia mejora un poco, pero ya es demasiado tarde para que perdone las otras 500 páginas que me he comido. La resolución del caso Seis Cuatro me sorprendió (tampoco es que esperase algo, ya que apenas ahondaban en él), aunque, de haberse desarrollado más y no dejarse todo para el final, me habría gustado mucho más y tal vez le hubiera puesto 2 estrellas.
También en la sinopsis creo recordar que ponía que a través de este libro conocerás los entresijos de la cultura japonesa, tan diferente a las demás. No he aprendido nada que no supiera o que no pudiera imaginar. Tal vez lo que más llame la atención sea la desigualdad entre hombres y mujeres en el cuerpo de policía, pero nada nuevo teniendo en cuenta los años de la novela y cómo funciona la sociedad japonesa.
En resumen, aburrida, lenta, pesada y poca relación con la sinopsis. Es posible que sea el peor libro que he leído este año.
Por muy estrecho que sea, un camino no deja de ser un camino
Me siento estafada. Terrible este libro y lo peor es el precio que me costó para lo malo que ha sido. Tengo que aprender a no dejarme llevar y no comprar cualquier libro en el que vea escrito Japón.
Hace catorce años se produjo un secuestro de una menor que terminó con su asesinato. No encontraron al culpable, por lo que este caso, conocido como Seis Cuatro, es la vergüenza de la policía japonesa. A pocos días de que el delito prescriba, aparecen nuevas pistas que podrían aportar luz a tantos años de oscuridad. Hasta aquí todo perfecto. Me atrajo la trama.
El protagonista es Mikami, uno de los inspectores que trabajó en el caso y que actualmente es el jefe de Relaciones con los Medios. Mientras lidia con un trabajo patético y con su matrimonio que se desmorona cada día tras la fuga de casa de su hija adolescente, Mikami irá descubriendo qué pasó en realidad en Seis Cuatro. Sigue bien la trama. Este personaje me gustó; su situación como padre y esposo es lo único que salvo del libro.
¿A que parece que será una gran novela policiaca, donde el misterio te engancha desde el principio y cada nuevo descubrimiento te anima a intentar descubrir al asesino? ¡MENTIRA! Esto es de todo menos una novela de policías y eso que salen una barbaridad. Este es un libro de cómo la policía japonesa lidia con la prensa. Ya está.
90%: peleas con los periodistas.
6%: movidas mentales de Mikami sobre su familia.
4%: secuestro y asesinato de Seis Cuatro.
El caso apenas se toca y, en cuanto se toca un pelín en uno o dos capítulos, te tienes que tragas otros diez capítulos sobre los chanchullos de policía y prensa. Horrible. Iba leyendo y me preguntaba por qué seguía. No sé cómo he podido terminarlo.
Es verdad que, hacia las últimas 100 páginas, la historia mejora un poco, pero ya es demasiado tarde para que perdone las otras 500 páginas que me he comido. La resolución del caso Seis Cuatro me sorprendió (tampoco es que esperase algo, ya que apenas ahondaban en él), aunque, de haberse desarrollado más y no dejarse todo para el final, me habría gustado mucho más y tal vez le hubiera puesto 2 estrellas.
También en la sinopsis creo recordar que ponía que a través de este libro conocerás los entresijos de la cultura japonesa, tan diferente a las demás. No he aprendido nada que no supiera o que no pudiera imaginar. Tal vez lo que más llame la atención sea la desigualdad entre hombres y mujeres en el cuerpo de policía, pero nada nuevo teniendo en cuenta los años de la novela y cómo funciona la sociedad japonesa.
En resumen, aburrida, lenta, pesada y poca relación con la sinopsis. Es posible que sea el peor libro que he leído este año.
Por muy estrecho que sea, un camino no deja de ser un camino
April 18, 2022
3'5⭐
Es una novela policíaca? Si. Pero no es el tipo de novela policíaca al que estamos acostumbrados.
El libro se centra en las luchas de poderes que hay entre las distintas divisiones de la policía en Japón, así como en su relación con los medios de comunicación.
No se puede decir que haya un caso policial de fondo sino que son esas relaciones las que construyen la intriga de la novela.
La lentitud en la narración, que quizás puede echar para atrás, en el fondo acaba siendo una ventaja para poder centrar tanto nombre, tanta jerarquía...
Es una novela policíaca? Si. Pero no es el tipo de novela policíaca al que estamos acostumbrados.
El libro se centra en las luchas de poderes que hay entre las distintas divisiones de la policía en Japón, así como en su relación con los medios de comunicación.
No se puede decir que haya un caso policial de fondo sino que son esas relaciones las que construyen la intriga de la novela.
La lentitud en la narración, que quizás puede echar para atrás, en el fondo acaba siendo una ventaja para poder centrar tanto nombre, tanta jerarquía...
April 11, 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed this police procedural because the main character pulls you in. A 20 year detective is arbitrarily reassigned to head up the media relations unit. His office has to deal with 13 press representatives, who make his life miserable, since the active detectives refuse to 'play nice' with him, considering him a traitor. The higher headquarters, in Tokyo, are planning something big, and ask him to set up a walk through of the locale of an unsolved 14 year old kidnapping and murder of a 7 year old girl. Add to that, his teenage daughter ran away about 6 months ago, unhappy, because she looks like her father, and not her beautiful mother. I must admit, the book is long, but not bad for an audiophile like me. If you like Jo Nesbo, you'll like this one. I like to learn about different countries through books.
April 15, 2018
So sehr dieser Roman eine Fundgrube sein mag für jeden, der die Mechanismen, Rituale und Gebräuche kennen lernen will, nach denen die japanische Polizei und ihre Verwaltung arbeiten und mehr oder weniger funktionieren (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit), so wenig ist offensichtlich Spannung das Ziel des Autors. Ich würde sogar so weit gehen und sagen, dass "Thriller" wohl eher nicht die Schublade wäre, in die ich dieses Buch stecken würde.
Also: meine Erwartungshaltung war zwar eine andere, und hätte ich gewusst, was mich erwartet, hätte ich die 28 Euro vermutlich anderweitig investiert. Aber Reue überfällt mich hinwiederum auch nicht, dass ich es gelesen habe, denn aus einem ganz speziellen Blickwinkel war das durchaus eine hochinteressante Lektüre.
Also: meine Erwartungshaltung war zwar eine andere, und hätte ich gewusst, was mich erwartet, hätte ich die 28 Euro vermutlich anderweitig investiert. Aber Reue überfällt mich hinwiederum auch nicht, dass ich es gelesen habe, denn aus einem ganz speziellen Blickwinkel war das durchaus eine hochinteressante Lektüre.
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