Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Six Four
WORK NOTES: trans by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1957
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Japanese
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/04/six-four-hideo-yokoyama-review-crime-thriller-phenomenon-japan * http://time.com/4664993/review-six-four-hideo-yokoyama/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1957, in Japan.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Jomo Shimbun, Gunma, Japan, investigative reporter.
AWARDS:Matsumoto Seicho Prize, 1998, for Kage no Kisetsu (Season of Shadows); Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Short Story, 2000, for “Motive”; Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year, 2003, for Han’ochi (Half a Confession); Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year Award, 2013, for Six Four.
WRITINGS
Writer of novels, including Deguchi no Nai Umi, 1996; Han’ochi, 2002; Kuraimāzu hai (title means “Climber’s High”), 2003; Rupan no Shōsoku, 2005; Shindo Zero, 2005; Rokuyon (64), 2012.
SIDELIGHTS
Born in 1957, Hideo Yokoyama was a Japanese investigative reporter for twelve years for Jomo Shimbun newspaper in Genma Prefecture north of Tokyo who turned to writing mystery novels. A workaholic, he was hospitalized in 2003 for a heart attack brought on by overwork. He puts that determination and obsessiveness into his fictional characters. Recipient of several awards, Yokoyama is one of Japan’s most acclaimed fiction writers.
In 2017, Yokoyama’s book Rokuyon was translated into English as Six Four by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies. The story follows an unsolved kidnapping case. In 1987, seven-year-old Shoko was kidnapped, but she was never returned or seen again and the perpetrators never caught. The police force at the time suffered a huge embarrassment for not solving the case. Fourteen years later it’s 2003 and former detective Yoshinobu Mikami is a police department’s press liaison. When his own teenage daughter, Ayumi, is kidnapped, he revisits the older case hoping to find a connection or overlooked clues, and perhaps in the process get himself promoted. As he investigates, he finds an anomaly in the old case and learns terrible secrets that should have been left uncovered.
In Library Journal, Ron Samul noted the book’s nearly 600 pages, saying it “is a complex procedural that takes time to get into high gear.” Despite the book’s length, reviewer Jane Murphy said in Booklist that it “succeeds on several levels: as a police procedural, an incisive character study, and a cold-case mystery.” Describing the book as pensive but overlong, a Kirkus Review contributor observed the book “takes leisurely twists into the well-kept offices of Japan’s elite while providing a kind of informal sociological treatise on crime and punishment in Japanese society.” According to Jeff Noon in Spectator, “The weight of the book is part of its appeal, and there are always fresh surprises to pull the reader along.” Noting the brilliant twist at the end, Noon added: “The novel goes beyond such games, intriguing as they are.”
Washington Post contributor Dennis Drabelle noted the book’s lack of femme fatales, serial killers, torture, and sexually repressed villains, saying, “Instead we have one-sided telephone calls (one party does nothing but listen), bureaucratic infighting, snarled relations between the police department…and the local media, and a strikingly original plot.” Drabelle added that Yokoyama “possesses that elusive trait of a first-rate novelist: the ability to grab readers’ interest and never let go.” Barry Forshaw online at London Independent commented: “For all its prolixity, this is an idiosyncratic and richly worked narrative, demonstrating that crime fiction can be freighted with the weight and authority of serious literature.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, Jane Murphy, review of Six Four, p. 33.
Library Journal, January 20, 2017, Ron Samul, review of Six Four.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016, review of Six Four.
Spectator, April 23, 2016, Jeff Noon, review of Six Four, p. 36.
Washington Post, January 29, 2017, Dennis Drabelle, review of Six Four.
ONLINE
London Independent Online, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (March 7, 2016), Barry Forshaw, review of Six Four.
Born in 1957, Hideo Yokoyama worked for twelve years as an investigative reporter with a regional newspaper north of Tokyo, before becoming one of Japan’s most acclaimed fiction writers. His exhaustive and relentless work ethic is known to mirror the intense and obsessive behavior of his characters, and in January 2003 he was hospitalized following a heart attack brought about by working nonstop for seventy-two hours. Six Four is his sixth novel, and his first to be published in the English language. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Hideo Yokoyama
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Hideo Yokoyama
Native name
横山 秀夫
Born
1957
Occupation
Novelist
Nationality
Japanese
Genre
Mystery
Notable works
Six Four
Notable awards
Matsumoto Seicho Prize, Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Short Story, The Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year
Hideo Yokoyama (横山 秀夫 Yokoyama Hideo, born 1957) is a Japanese novelist.
Yokoyama specialized in mystery novels. He worked constantly during the first three days of 2003 and received a heart attack and subsequent hospitalization on the fourth.[1]
He repeated his Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! No. 1 ranking in 2013 with Six Four (64). and this novel is nominated for 2016 CWA International Dagger
He is known for his career as journalist for the Jomo Shimbun, the regional paper in Gunma.
Contents [hide]
1
Works in English translation
2
Awards and nominations
3
Bibliography
3.1
Novels
3.2
Short story collections
4
Film adaptations
5
References
6
External links
Works in English translation[edit]
Novel
Six Four (original title: 64 Rokuyon), trans. Jonathan Lloyd-Davies (Quercus, 2016) – This is nominated for 2016 CWA International Dagger.
Plot synopsis
The action centres on the police headquarters in a region of Japan identified only as "Prefecture D". It follows a week in the life of a police superintendent named Mikami Yoshinobu, whose only daughter ran away a few months previously and has not been found. Formerly a detective, now reluctantly appointed as chief press officer, Mikami is caught up in two power struggles. One is with the local press committee, who are putting him and the police under pressure to reveal more information about current newsworthy cases. The other struggle is between the administrative department (where the press office is situated) and the criminal investigation department, where Mikami worked for most of his career. To achieve ascendancy, the leaders of the administrative department are trying to exploit a bungled case of kidnapping, involving the death of a seven year old girl 14 years previously, and still unsolved. (The case bears the code name "Six Four", since it occurred when the last emperor died, at the very beginning of his 64th year on the throne). The criminal investigation department in their turn are trying to thwart the administration through a campaign of concealment and obstructiveness. While seeking enough information from both sides in order to do his job of managing a hostile press, Mikami gradually uncovers troubling facts about the "Six Four" case. Increasingly, he becomes drawn into the role of detective within his own organisation, and aware of the potentially destructive effect of interdepartmental rivalries on the whole headquarters. He is also exposed to serious moral dilemmas about where his loyalties lie. At the climax of the novel, another kidnapping occurs with uncanny similarities to "Six Four". Although it is unclear at first whether this is a further abduction by the same perpetrator, a copycat crime or a hoax, its solution brings clarity about what really happened in "Six Four', and a sense that the factionalism that threatened to destroy the headquarters will now lessen. Although the book is intricate and challenging to read, with multiple interweaving plots and sub-plots, and a large cast of characters from the two departments and the press, Yokoyama manages his material tightly. There is a helpful diagram in the front flyleaf of the English edition, showing the different factions and their members, although it does not include many of the characters, including several retired officers who were part of the original investigation into "Six Four' and whom Mikami meets in the course of the book.
Short story
Motive (original title: Dōki), trans. Beth Cary (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 2008)
Awards and nominations[edit]
1998 – Matsumoto Seicho Prize: Kage no Kisetsu (Season of Shadows)
2000 – Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Short Story: Motive
2003 – The Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year (Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! 2003): Han'ochi (Half a Confession)
2005 – Nominee for Honkaku Mystery Award for Best Fiction: Rinjō (Initial Response [2])
2013 – The Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year (Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! 2013): Six Four
Bibliography[edit]
Novels[edit]
Deguchi no Nai Umi (出口のない海), 1996
Han'ochi (半落ち), 2002
Kuraimāzu hai (Climber's High) (クライマーズ・ハイ), 2003
Rupan no Shōsoku (ルパンの消息), 2005
Shindo Zero (震度0), 2005
Rokuyon (64), 2012 (Six Four, Quercus, 2016)
Short story collections[edit]
Kage no Kisetsu (陰の季節), 1998
Dōki (動機), 2000
Kao (顔), 2002
Fukaoi (深追い), 2002
Shinsō (真相), 2003
Kagefumi (影踏み), 2003
Kanshugan (看守眼), 2004
Rinjō (臨場), 2004
Rinjō Special Book (臨場スペシャルブック), 2010
Film adaptations[edit]
Half a Confession (2004) (Han'ochi)
Deguchi no Nai Umi (2006)
Climber's High (2008) (Kuraimāzu hai)
Rinjō (2012)
"Rokuyon (64) Part I" (2016)
"Rokuyon (64) Part II" (2016)
Translators Have Strange Google Histories" — Jonathan Lloyd-Davies on Translating 'Six Four'
Michael Barron
Books and Digest Editor
Updated: 24 February 2017
Earlier this month, the great publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux released the English translation of Six Four, a crime novel by Japanese author Hideo Yokoyama (we released an excerpt from it last week). A phenonmenon in its native country, Six Four is epic in scope and cinematic in scale, a crime novel that cuts to the very heart of Japan’s political infrastructure with icy perspicacity. To get a better sense of the novel’s success, we reached out to translator Jonathan Lloyd-Davies who was kind enough to answer a few questions.
Barcelona Finds Their Shining Star
Advertisement by Connatix
To my understanding, detective fiction has long enjoyed a readership in Japan. What qualities and tropes does the genre share with Western crime thrillers, and what aspects of it are unique to Japan?
Detective fiction, the “mystery” genre, is extremely popular here in Japan. I’m a little inexperienced with the market as a whole, so I can’t really offer much specifics — what is the case is while the genre shares many characteristics found in Western crime thrillers, Hideo Yokoyama’s work is unique even here in Japan, with an emphasis on internal politics, and the central characters generally working outside of Criminal Investigations. The political motivation of many of his characters, the tribal sense of loyalty, is particularly Japanese.
I’m trying wrap my head around how a Japanese crime thriller has sold over a million copies. Is this normal for a detective novel? Was Six Four highly anticipated before it was published?
Hideo Yokoyama had written bestsellers before Six Four, such as Climber’s High and Motive. There was a long gap between these novels and Six Four, and I think anticipation was very high. Some detective novels sell very well, but from what I understand Six Four‘s sales were exceptional.
How does translating detective fiction differ from literary fiction? Is there more emphasis on honoring the drama of the story rather than the poetics of the text?
For me translating detective fiction is exactly the same as translating literary fiction. In both cases the goal is to be true to the text, to convey whatever the text is trying to convey in any given moment. If that’s a blistering pace, then the translation should match. If the prose is poetic, I would try to bring across a similar feeling in the English. For me it’s all about taking a mirror to the text and asking how it should look in the other language.
Was this a breakthrough novel for Yokoyama or was he already a big deal in Japan? What was it like to work with him?
This was Yokoyama’s breakthrough in that it topped his previous works, but he was already a big deal: his books have been made into films and dramas. I didn’t have the chance to work with him during the process — sometimes translators have a relationship with their authors, and this can be a good or a bad thing depending on how much control the author wishes to exert. In my case I worked independently, and Richard Arcus from Quercus was incredibly helpful whenever I had questions on style or clarification.
The book is sweeping in its purview and Japanese nuances, but one facet I was fascinated by was the structure of the police force and relationship to the government, something that Yokoyama would have much insight into as a former investigative reporter. Did your translation require much independent research on your part into these organizations?
It’s safe to say I had very little knowledge of the structures of the police force and its relationship to the government and media before taking on this novel, so research was necessary to make sure everything came together properly in the translation. I combed through most of the prefectural and central police websites (I think all translators have very strange google histories), then government and media websites. There was a fair amount of note taking to keep things consistent in the work, too.
What’s next for you? What are you currently working on?
In my spare time, I’m currently working on a translation of short stories set in the Six Four universe, all prequels but featuring some of its main characters. I think it will go down well with fans of Six Four, as it will provide further insight into Yokoyama’s intricate world.
Six Four
Jane Murphy
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p33.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Six Four. By Hideo Yokoyama. Tr. by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies. Feb. 2017. 576p. Farrar, $27 (9780374265519).
This is Yokoyama's sixth novel, the first to be published in English. Yokoyama, the "James Ellroy of Tokyo," is known for an exhaustive and relentless work ethic. He once brought on a heart attack by working nonstop for 72 hours. This intense drive is reflected in his extremely detailed style and carefully wrought characters. Six Four succeeds on several levels: as a police procedural, an incisive character study, and a cold-case mystery. However, this takes almost 600 pages to accomplish. A seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl was kidnapped in 1989, the kidnapper never identified, the girl never found. For years the police felt the disgrace of their botched investigation of case Six Four. Eager for promotion, Superintendent Yoshinobu Mikami has taken on a press-director position, although his heart is still in criminal investigation. When he uncovers an anomaly in the crime reports, he digs deeper, and it doesn't take long for him to realize that some doors are locked up tight for good reason. Recommended for libraries with a devoted international mystery following. --Jane Murphy
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Murphy, Jane. "Six Four." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 33. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142836&it=r&asid=a128623610abe9f78c26766c7508af0e. Accessed 23 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142836
Yokoyama, Hideo: SIX FOUR
(Nov. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Yokoyama, Hideo SIX FOUR Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Adult Fiction) $27.00 2, 7 ISBN: 978-0-374-26551-9
A bestselling Japanese crime novelist makes his American debut with a pensive but overlong whodunit that sheds light on power relations in his native country.It's 1989, the final year of Emperor Hirohito's reign, a time of portent, and a young girl has gone missing. A kidnapper calls, the police flail about, and parents and child never reunite. Time goes by, and now, in 2003, Yoshinobu Mikami is still thinking about the case, for, in a plot convenience that demands ample suspension of disbelief, his own daughter has gone missing. As Yokoyama's grim tale opens, Mikami and his wife are in the morgue, hoping against hope that the teenager lying on the table is not their daughter. "This wasn't their first time," writes Yokoyama, "in the last three months they had already viewed two bodies of Ayumi's age." Mikami is able to take a synoptic view because he had been an investigator in the earlier case, and now, reviewing the files, he sees something he had not noticed before. It's not really his place to be poking around, though, since he has been transferred to the press relations office of the police department, a job that he fears is a subtle, politically motivated demotion and a move that has soured any enthusiasm he had for being a cop. The jaded investigator is an old trope in crime fiction, but Yokoyama steals a page from Stieg Larsson by using the mystery to probe the ways the powers that be work in an apparently orderly society that masks a great undercurrent of evil and wrongdoing, much of it committed by the powerful and well-connected. So it is in this story, which takes leisurely twists into the well-kept offices of Japan's elite while providing a kind of informal sociological treatise on crime and punishment in Japanese society, to say nothing of an inside view of the police and their testy relationship with the media. Elaborate but worth the effort. Think Jo Nesbo by way of Haruki Murakami, and with a most satisfying payoff.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Yokoyama, Hideo: SIX FOUR." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865669&it=r&asid=d010f8b35cadcec915efd15099ef0862. Accessed 23 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469865669
Two gone girls
Jeff Noon
330.9791 (Apr. 23, 2016): p36.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
Six Four
by Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies
Quercus, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 640, ISBN 9781848665255
The plot of Hideo Yokoyama's Six Four begins in 1989, with the murder of Shoko, a seven-year-old girl. Fourteen years later the perpetrator has yet to be apprehended, and the case is viewed as Tokyo's police force's most damning failure. The commissioner of police plans to visit the home of Shoko's father to pay his condolences, and to insist that the murderer will be brought to justice.
It's an empty promise. The job of persuading the still grief-stricken father to allow the commissioner into his home lands on the desk of Yoshinobu Mikami, the force's head of media relations. During this task Mikami comes across an anomaly in the old murder case, one that makes him realise that a police cover-up has been in place ever since.
Six Four was a major success in Japan, and is the first of Yokoyama's books to be published in English. In Mikami he has created a most unusual protagonist: we're used to detectives following clues, but a media relations officer? It gives the book a unique feel. We accompany Mikami on his dogged trek to interview one officer after another, as he meets blank stares, denials and outright lies.
But he never gives up, even as his personal life is tested by the disappearance of his own daughter, Ayumi. Layer upon layer of worry is added to the hero's back: panic attacks, the hostility of the press as they fight for their own freedoms, the powers that be holding him down. His back bends and begins to break. Whenever he weakens, his daughter's face hovers before him and he finds the strength to carry on.
This is a doorstopper of a book, crammed with detail, and the reader needs a bit of patience to get through certain passages. Could it have lost 100 pages? Probably. But the weight of the book is part of its appeal, and there are always fresh surprises to pull the reader along. Mikami's impassioned speech on the telephone to a silent man who hasn't left his room for 14 years held me spellbound. Yes, there's a brilliant twist near the end, but the novel goes beyond such games, intriguing as they are.
The final pages remind us that the real answers are hidden below the bloodstains and fingerprints, and lie further away than simple justice or revenge. Compelling, complex, insightful: a book to be savoured.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Noon, Jeff. "Two gone girls." Spectator, 23 Apr. 2016, p. 36. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450275851&it=r&asid=ecb14a15616fed43d79bf633d2c0412e. Accessed 23 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A450275851
Yokoyama, Hideo. Six Four
Ron Samul
(Jan. 20, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Yokoyama, Hideo. Six Four. Farrar. Feb. 2017. 576p. tr. from Japanese by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies. ISBN 9780374265519. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780374715793. F In 1989, a Tokyo schoolgirl is kidnapped, but the negotiations are botched, leaving the kidnapper at large and the victim dead. Fourteen years later, Det. Yoshinobu Mikami, who had been involved in the initial investigation and who is now working in media relations, is pulled back into the cold case, labeled "Six Four," when the top brass plan a photo op around the crime. In tracing the tragic events, Mikami talks to suspects, and even the victim's family, slowly realizing that police politics, the personal tragedy of his own missing daughter, and the old 64 case are connected. Uncovering the truth and delivering justice is hard fought.
Verdict A best seller in Japan, Yokoyama's English-language debut is a complex procedural that takes time to get into high gear as it follows its detective sifting through the evidence while mired in his department's bureaucratic intricacies and office politics. [See Prepub Alert, 8/16/16.]--Ron Samul, New London, CT
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Samul, Ron. "Yokoyama, Hideo. Six Four." Xpress Reviews, 20 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479299314&it=r&asid=6c4717ab80a5325aeb0ff7320568a55d. Accessed 23 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479299314
'Six Four' avoids every crime-fiction cliche. The reward is a gripping novel
Dennis Drabelle
(Jan. 29, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
Byline: Dennis Drabelle
Hideo Yokoyama's complex, ingenious and engrossing new novel, "Six Four," has no serial killers, no femmes fatales, no locked-room murders, no torture, no sexually repressed villains, not even much in the way of forensic evidence. Instead we have one-sided telephone calls (one party does nothing but listen), bureaucratic infighting, snarled relations between the police department of a Japanese prefecture and the local media, and a strikingly original plot.
There is one crime-fiction staple, however: a cold case -- so cold that it's freezing to death. The statute of limitations for murder, we are told, is 15 years, and the 14th anniversary of a kidnap-murder in Prefecture D in the Japanese countryside has come and gone without a solution. At the center of the action in all its forms is Yoshinobu Mikami, a cop with more troubles than anyone should have to contend with.
A detective by trade, Mikami serves as the prefectural force's director of media relations. His main duty -- feeding ravenous reporters as much information as possible while divulging nothing that could compromise an investigation or violate the privacy of innocent parties -- repeatedly embroils him in conflicts. The resulting tension gets to Mikami all the more because he regards media-wrangling as a demotion. If he fails to pacify those belligerent reporters, they will gripe to his superiors, possibly jeopardizing his return to detective work. And because crime-solving and public relations fall under separate divisions, he must avoid appearing to have split loyalties. Mikami's balancing act is further complicated when he discovers that some of his colleagues not only botched a trap they set for the perpetrator of the soon-to-be-15-year-old crime, but are still covering up their incompetence.
At home, meanwhile, Mikami and his wife must cope with a gnawing personal sorrow: Their teenage daughter, Ayumi, an only child, has run away. The disappearance did not come as a complete surprise, however. The unhappy Ayumi hates her ownappearance, especially her resemblance to her dad, who in his own words looks like "an exposed rock face." More than one ex-colleague warns Mikami that unless he is careful, Criminal Investigations will fail to give this particular missing-person case the attention it deserves. No wonder that the beleaguered Mikami talks only half-jokingly about trying for a new personal record of "thirty-nine hours without sleep."
"Six Four" (the title refers to a particular year in the Japanese calendar) is well seasoned with Japanese ways. There is a great deal of bowing, which is all but canceled out by a great deal of shoving (although not much hitting or shooting). An official who cannot spill a secret without violating his oath of office may resort to the hairsplitting tactic of turning his back on his interlocutor and talking to himself. When the mother of a murder victim dies some years after the fact, it is "all but compulsory" for a detective still working on the case to attend the funeral. And Yokoyama steps back to frame what he calls the con man's dilemma: You can hardly confess to the police, of course, yet who would better appreciate the brilliant crime you're dying to brag about?
Unfortunately, I can't say much about the cleverness of Yokoyama's denouement without becoming eligible for the circle of hell reserved for spoilers. Instead I'll imitate a practice beloved of several characters in the novel: making an enigmatic statement that won't be understood until it's too late. Never has a novelist made so much of the silences "heard" over the telephone.
Jonathan Lloyd-Davies has translated "Six Four" with unobtrusive brio, and the publisher has obligingly provided a Cast of Characters to help us keep straight a small multitude of cops, wives, reporters and victims. As for the author, he possesses that elusive trait of a first-rate novelist: the ability to grab readers' interest and never let go. Perhaps one chapter too many ends with Mikami making a flabbergasting discovery that throws a whole new light on the case, but those revelations really are flabbergasting.
Let me make two predictions about your response to "Six Four." You will find yourself caring more than you thought possible about the rivalry between Criminal Investigations and Administrative Affairs. And if not a bow, you will at least want to give Hideo Yokoyama a tip of your hat for writing such a highly entertaining book.
Dennis Drabelle wrote the Japan chapter for "Crimes of the Scene: A Mystery Guide for the International Traveler," edited by Nina King.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Drabelle, Dennis. "'Six Four' avoids every crime-fiction cliche. The reward is a gripping novel." Washingtonpost.com, 29 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479289322&it=r&asid=1c350aa31088089e651481d0fe025ca3. Accessed 23 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479289322
Six Four, by Hideo Yokoyama - book review: A giant kidnapping thriller from Japan
Translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies, this is an idiosyncratic and richly worked narrative
Barry Forshaw
Monday 7 March 2016 16:53 GMT
0 comments
39
Click to follow
The Independent Culture
Hideo Yokoyama's Six Four is the size of a small brick. But as this new elephantiasis in the size of crime fiction novels seems to be the new norm, we have at least some consolation with this book: those who stick with the complexities of Six Four beyond its first hundred or so pages will find themselves gripped, and complaints about its considerable extent will melt away.
Though he is as yet unknown in the UK, the 59-year-old Yokoyama made his mark as an investigative reporter with a Tokyo newspaper before turning (with great success) to fiction. Like Stieg Larsson, with whom he has been (unhelpfully) compared, he is a driven workaholic and, like the late Swedish writer, suffered a heart attack after working continuously without breaks for many hours). Six Four, which may be the author's magnum opus, is ostensibly about a kidnapping, but that is only one detail in a massive, sprawling campus.
For five days in January 1989, the anguished parents of a kidnapped child listen to the abductor's demands on cassette. The case becomes a cause célèbre and has the whole Japanese nation transfixed as the Lindbergh case did in the US. The child, however, is killed and the case is never solved. Fourteen years pass, and the case is reopened, with press director Mikami (whose fiefdom is police headquarters) finding himself at the centre of a maelstrom.
Offer of De Century, 2 BHK with premium amenities at Gore…
Sunteck City
The most addictive game of the year!
Forge Of Empires - Free Online Game
Explore The Costa Rican Nature That Evokes Joy And We…
CNN for Costa Rica
by Taboola
Sponsored Links
An old mystery is suddenly re-energised, and what follows is a dense and complex drama that yokes in the police, the media and governmental corruption, laying bare the dark heart of a city. Mikami, a detective-turned-PR man with a missing daughter, is a strong and conflicted protagonist, and there is a multilayered picture of the hierarchical nature of Japanese society.
But does the book justify its considerable length? Well, it is not a book for the casual reader. Yokoyama demands the closest attention, with a distancing narrative style (much of the plot is recalled after the event); then there's the multiplicity of names beginning with “M” (a glossary of characters might have been a useful addition; I kept turning back to find out which character I was reading about – Mikami, fine, but who was Mikuri and who was Minako?).
In the final analysis, though, Six Four gives back in abundance everything that the reader is prepared to give. For all its prolixity, this is an idiosyncratic and richly worked narrative, demonstrating that crime fiction can be freighted with the weight and authority of serious literature. The patient reader will find themselves handsomely rewarded.
Quercus £16.99. Order for £14.99 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 08430 600 030