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