Six Four

Realpolitik in the Japanese Police Force

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama recounts the story of a kidnapping and murder. The New York Times Book Review called it one of the best books of 2017.

Yokoyama provides a damning insight into the bureaucracy of the Japanese Police Force.

Synopsis

It was January 1989 (the sixty-fourth and last year of the rule of the Showa Emperor). Someone had kidnapped the seven-year-old daughter of a provincial Japanese pickle factory owner. Three days after paying the ransom, the police found her dead in the trunk of a car. Someone had bound her hands behind her back with a washing line, and tape covered her mouth and eyes.

The Japanese police never found the kidnapper. Thirteen years later, as the statute of limitations approaches, they try one last push to find the culprit. The police commissioner, head of all 260,000 policemen in Japan, decides to visit the child’s father. He plans to offer incense at the family altar and make one last plea for witnesses to come forward. It falls to Yoshinobu Mikami, the Director of Media Relations — and a detective on the kidnapping thirteen years ago — to organise the visit. It will be a P.R. coup for the beleaguered investigation.

Before the visit, Mikami decides to refamiliarise himself with the details of the case. He stumbles on something he hadn’t been party to before, the “Koda memo”. The more questions he asks, the more profound the silence becomes, so Mikami delves deeper. Whilst playing off the conflicting needs of criminal investigators, career bureaucrats, and the local media, Mikami uncovers a conspiracy. It shakes his faith in the police force, where he has made his carer. It is a cover-up that triggers a staggering act of revenge.

Review

Six Four was an overnight success for Hideo Yokoyama when first published in 2012. It still commands shelf space in Japan’s bookstores. It became the first of his novels to be translated into English.

Yokoyama was a crime reporter for 12 years in provincial Japan and serves up a feast of internal politics, power plays, manoeuvring, and manipulation. Six Four is unlike any other police procedural and lays bare the realpolitik of the Japanese police force. Yokoyama fuels his story with the petty desires and egos of the characters and not acts of daring-do. These are uncommonly light on the ground. He claims that “the greatest storms are the storms in teacups” and harnesses those squalls to provide 600 pages of clear, declarative prose.

As well as his astute insights into dysfunctional organisations, Yokoyama provides a glimpse of Japanese culture. The giving of presents, the desire not to lose face, the power of the apology, and the oppressive hierarchies. He also gives us a conclusive description of a cover-up, showing how they flourish throughout the bureaucratic world.

This is a dry novel with many characters with names that are hard for a western ear to distinguish. It will draw you in if you make your way through the first hundred pages. It builds a sense of dismay as the police strive to protect their positions rather than solve the crime. The final hundred pages will drag you through to the startling ending.

Excerpt

Hierarchy…

The reflection felt like it had come late. It wasn’t just the protest that was on his mind. Why hadn’t Captain Tsujiuchi come out of his office? There had only been a door between them. He must have heard a commotion. And Mikami doubted he’d have hidden, scared, behind his desk. He’d probably decided to ignore them. Whatever happened outside his office wasn’t his concern. Just another commotion in the provinces. He would have appeared untroubled, happy in his conviction. But how was he able to do that? It was because the captain’s office was more than just another room in the Prefectural HQ. It was Tokyo; it was the National Police Agency.

The Prefecture D Police had been diligent in the cultivation of the man’s near-divine status. They reported favourable information and insulated him from everything that wasn’t good news. They devoted themselves to ensuring that his time in the Prefectural HQ was spent in comfort. He was kept free from germs, sheltered from the troubles and worries of the local police, treated instead like a guest at a spa, and when he returned to Tokyo it would be with pockets full of expensive gifts from local companies. I enjoyed my time here, surrounded by the warmth of the local community and the officers serving it. They would feel relief as he recited the formulaic words during his departing speech, then, hardly leaving time for them to gather breath, they would begin to gather information on the personality and interests of the incoming captain.

Mikami lit a cigarette.

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama