One Man's Justice - Hardcover

Yoshimura, Akira

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151006393 ISBN 13: 9780151006397

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001

Synopsis

Japan just after World War II is the setting for this searching and provocative novel. Takuya, an officer in the former Imperial Army, is only mildly surprised when he receives a postcard asking him to report to the U.S. Regional Command Headquarters in Tokyo. He assumes that the occupying authorities have learned of his involvement in the execution of American prisoners-of-war. Now he is a fugitive in his own country.

As he travels on crowded trains through a land of defeat, humiliation, and hunger, he is haunted by dark memories of the war. With newspapers denouncing the Imperial Army and widespread talk of prosecution for war crimes, he fears that his past will be revealed. And yet Takuya doesn't feel like a criminal. Why should an honest and dutiful man like him be prosecuted by the very people who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughtering thousands? As he soon learns, truth and justice have no place in a world where the victors determine the rules of the game.
One Man's Justice is an unnerving story of timeless relevance from a master of the psychological novel.

About this title

About the Author

Akira Yoshimura is the prize-winning author of twenty novels and short-story collections, many of them bestsellers in Japan. One Man's Justice is his third novel translated into English.

Mark Ealey translated Yoshimura's Shipwrecks, among other titles. He is a professor of Japanese language and modern history at Christ Church Polytechnic in New Zealand.

From Library Journal

The third of Yoshimura's works to be translated into English (see, e.g., On Parole, LJ 2/15/00), this work of historical fiction takes place in Japan shortly after World War II. In it, readers meet Kiyohara Takuya, a man who had served as a Japanese officer in the Imperial Army and is now on the run for his involvement with the death of an American POW. With money from his family, Takuya goes into hiding, creating for himself a new identity in another town. As Higa Seiichi, Takuya finds a job with a kindly employer and slowly begins anew. However, Takuya's mind is never at rest in this predominantly narrative piece, as Yoshimura describes his constant emotional and psychological battles with his past and his ongoing fear of being captured. The novel opens up a bit slowly, though readers interested in detailed descriptions of wartime operations may find it quite riveting. The climactic ending (which sheds light on the title of the work) seems a bit rushed, with Yoshimura covering the span from 1949 to 1957 in the last ten pages of the novel. Nevertheless, this work is a well-written one that pays attention to characterization and detail. Readers enjoying historical war novels and light suspense are likely to appreciate this title. For Asian literature collections and larger public libraries. Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0151006393
• ISBN 13: 9780151006397
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288