People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo—and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up

by Richard Lloyd Parry

The families of the missing are doubly burdened: first by the pain of their ordeal, and then by our expectations of them, expectations of a standard of behavior higher than we require of ourselves.

As humans, we seek naturally to help fellow creatures in distress. But most of us, whether we are conscious of it or not, expect something back—the flattery of helplessness and of need.

But there was a lot of freedom, because no matter what you do there, you’re a freak, aren’t you? People are going to stare at you anyway, so you can stop worrying about it and let your hair down.

It’s the people with ambition, who want to rise in society, they’re the ones who hit the glass ceiling. Most of the time they don’t realize they’re captive. It’s only the ones who try to escape who suddenly become aware of the cage. These are people who’ve grown up in Japan, speaking Japanese, eating Japanese food, never imagining that they are objects of discrimination. For people like this, in the second or third generation, the shock of discrimination is very great.”