Samurai Boogie (Paperback)

While the setting is pretty interesting, the characters aren't particularly subtle. Mori is a classic old-fashioned rumpled, wearily cynical PI from well within the Western detective tradition. Middle-aged, poorly dressed, and with a love for traditional jazz and constant ingestion of various foodstuffs, he's somewhat reminiscent of the title character in John Harvey's excellent Charley Resnik series. The yakuza guy dresses loud, loves the old traditions, and is bound and has bouts of extreme violence. The women throughout are mostly sexual objects, and even though some of them are "strong," they're still not particularly well-rounded. The sum effect is rather akin to reading one of Elmore Leonard's better novels-reasonably entertaining, but not anything that'll stay with you long after you put it down.

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Special to Asahi Evening News By PAUL SCALISE

March 19, 2000

`The whole of Japan is pure invention,'' wrote Oscar Wilde, who probably knew better than anyone else considering that he was pure invention himself. What he meant to say, of course, was that envisioning Japan-like any object of infatuation-was (and is) open to the same suspensions of disbelief, dramatic excesses and calls for poetic license as, say, recounting an Arabian love story or a Renaissance duel. Life and art merge. Substance takes a back seat to style. And the reader, who considers himself a well-informed, three-dimensional thinker, suddenly finds himself in nether realms imagined by the author-so indistinguishable from his own sensibilities that he begins to wonder where the author's imagination ends and the real world begins. A fair assessment of the craft, you might say. Yet despite these techniques, Wilde also reminded future writers that creativity-especially a creativity involving the land of cultural superficiality-should be tempered with a healthy dose of common sense: ``The actual people who live in Japan,'' he concluded, ``are not unlike the general run of English people.''

That issue, in a nutshell, forms the core of one subgenre of postwar literature: How different are the Japanese from you and me? Wilde certainly brings artistic perception back into the equation. But perception, you might recall, doesn't necessarily help us to understand the Japanese any better, let alone break down the envy, anger and resentment surrounding the ``Japan, Inc.'' mythos. Or so I thought.

Reading ``Samurai Boogie,'' the latest novel by former Tokyo-based financial analyst-turned-author Peter Tasker, left me wondering. Tasker first made his mark on area studies with ``The Japanese: A Major Exploration of Modern Japan'' in 1988. Studded with pungent epigrams, compelling stretches of narrative and insights indebted to his first-hand experiences of the country, Tasker soon went on to both entertain and instruct with page-turning thrillers (``Silent Thunder,'' ``Buddha Kiss'') and non-fictional best sellers like ``The End of the Japanese Golden Era'' (1991).

Of course, judging from this novel's cover, ``Samurai Boogie'' is the kind of tacky title readers tend to ignore-with a book jacket more befitting a cheap comic strip than a book-of-the-month-club poster. But you can forgive Orion publishers for this small marketing mistake, as the book reads like a sophisticated whodunit.

The heart of the mystery surrounds the sudden death of Masao Miura, a senior bureaucrat at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Mori-san, a down-on-his-luck private detective and recurring protagonist in Tasker's novels, is called in to identify and secure the arrest of the man likely responsible. Although the press reported Miura's death as karoshi, death from overwork, his mistress, Kimiko Itoh, suspects a cover-up. Why else would Miura's widow decline a proper autopsy?

Mori-san is on the case, employing the services of a motley band of has-beens along the way. But never mind who done it. As you quickly discover, the author's real villain is Western ignorance about the back alleyways of Japan, as one fateful meeting between Mori-san and Richard Mitchell, a foreign financial analyst, reveals: ``Mitchell talks about Japan and the Japanese all the time-comparing, summarizing, judging. And the Japan that he talks about is a place that Mori has never been to in his entire life.'' Indeed, Mori's Japan isn't advertised in travel brochures or highbrow university conferences. The scant amount of attention his world does receive is virtually determined by the language and investigative skills of the ``outsider.''

``That's because there's no crime on the street of this city,'' writes Tasker. ``The serious people are busy with fraud, extortion, blackmail, bribery, money-laundering, bid-rigging, loan-sharking, game-fixing, insider-dealing, trading in weapons, endangered species, spoilt meat, counterfeit software, forged currency, child pornography and immigrant laborers. And these things require a high level of public order to conduct properly.''

Sketching quickly, the author shows us a realistic snapshot of post ``bubble era'' Tokyo, where land prices, bullish stock markets and intellectual hubris about Japan's cultural and economic superiority all come crashing down at once. Sure, not everyone suffers. But for the denizens of back-alleyway Tokyo, tucked quietly away from foreign tourists and other inattentive eyes, suffering is relative.

In a 297-page multilayered plot with plenty of action, we meet Angel, a burned-out whore sucked into Japan's seedy nightclub scene; Detective Shima, a lazy cop more interested in shogi chess than his job; Taniguchi, a maverick, alcoholic journalist operating outside the traditional press-corps structure; and George ``the Wolf'' Nishio, an incompetent yakuza struggling to reconcile tradition with the ``New Japan.'' None of these people is depicted as enjoying Noh plays, traditional tea ceremony or geisha girls-if they even knew what they were, for that matter.

Which brings us to the point of ``Samurai Boogie.'' Unlike previous ``non-fictional'' fiction, like Michael Crichton's ``Rising Sun'' (1992) or Tom Clancy's ``Debt of Honor'' (1994), novels painting the Japanese in broad, unflattering brush strokes, Tasker sketches a Japan with real-life, credible characters confronted with-fancy this-real-life, credible problems. As individuals, they brood, question and doubt themselves as much as any Englishman would.

Of course, if you still object to the Japanese being portrayed as anything but unemotionally methodical ants bent on buying up America whilst infiltrating the highest reaches of the White House, then Tasker's opinion of some 125 million island inhabitants might disappoint a tad. But as the author himself explained in ``Inside Japan'' (1988), traditional stereotypes are the real enemy of creativity: ``The Japanese,'' after all, ``are the most innovative imitators, the hardest-working hedonists, the lewdest prudes, the most courteous and cruelest and kindest of people. Rich and yet wealthless, confident but confused, they have just staged one of the greatest comebacks in history.''

Indeed, isn't it about time we welcome the Japanese to the human race? Get hold of this timely book and keep it for that rainy day.

The reviewer is a research analyst for a Tokyo investment bank.

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