A tough read. A police murder investigation set in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War in Tokyo. A disturbing serial killer, a troubled policeman, a harsh economic and social setting all described in a highly stylised manner. Tough but worth it. ( )

Well this one certainly is different!
It's basically detective historical fiction - police solving a series of murders in Tokyo immediately after WW2. But the writing style belongs to no genre that I am aware of - lots of short repetitive phrases and sounds that do tend to paint a picture in the readers mind, but there is a lack of narrative to successfully stitch it all together. It's like reading a cryptic crossword crossed with a novel. It's normal for an author to deliberately withhold information for narrative effect, but this book goes far beyond that.
In the end, I was glad I read the book, but I'm not sure I will be coming back for the subsequent two volumes in the trilogy. ( )

Lingering over the words and pages of this novel is probably the worst way to approach it. Its effects accumulate and are best absorbed quickly. Reading Tokyo Year Zero, then, in one or two sittings is the best strategy. That way, it has some mild payoff.

The book's style and writing is neither as off putting as its detractors think or as brilliant as its advocates make out. In fact, it is largely derivative and unsurprising, except for the defining meter of its sentences, which are akin to those of nursery rhymes, which are then given the imagery of a machine gun, and then packaged in an atmosphere of despair and madness.

Dismembering and shattering are the themes. Restoration through ambiguity and identity, the goal. Emerging from the ashes, a world and society cut off from its prior centuries. All made anew. But to what end? ( )

Was habe ich mich mit diesem Hörbuch schwer getan! Dreimal habe ich stets auf's Neue begonnen, die bereits gehörten drei, vier, fünf CDs nochmal laufen lassen, bis ich letzlich doch noch das Ende erreicht habe. Nicht dass dieses Buch schlecht wäre - ganz im Gegenteil! Aber die Vielzahl der handelnden Personen mit den für EuropäerInnen so ungewohnten Namen verlangen größte Aufmerksamkeit. Eine zu große Pause zwischen zwei CDs - und schwupps, hatte ich schon wieder keine Ahnung mehr, wer Misuko Mitsu war (oder so ähnlich). Dazu drei, vier parallel verlaufende Handlungsstränge; das fordert schon den bzw. die ganze/n ZuhörerIn :-)
Erzähler ist Inspektor Minami, der sich kurz nach dem Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges in Tokio auf die Suche nach einem Serienmörder macht, der immer wieder junge Mädchen missbraucht und umbringt. Tokio liegt in Trümmern, es herrscht bittere Not und die Menschen haben kaum genug zu Essen und Trinken um zu überleben. Der Autor beschreibt das Umfeld derart präzise und detailliert, dass man die armseligen Verhältnisse in denen die Menschen hausen, deutlich vor sich sieht. Dreckige Tatamis (Reisstrohmatten), verschlissene Vorhänge, immer nur kärgliche Portionen Reis, ein Ei wird zum Festmahl. Ein weiterer Erzählstrang bildet Minamis Beziehung zu Senchu, dem Boss des Schwarzmarktes, der Minamis Schlafmittelsucht für seine eigenen Zwecke zu nutzen weiss.
In diese chronologisch berichtete Geschichte brechen immer wieder Minamis Gedanken und Erinnerungen ein, die vornehmlich mit seinen Kriegserlebnissen in China zu tun haben. Sie verfolgen ihn und lassen ihn nicht zur Ruhe kommen, weder Tags noch Nachts. An ihm wie auch an seinen Kollegen sieht man, wie tief das Ehrgefühl im japanischen Volk verwurzelt ist. Die Kapitulation wurde als die größte Schmach empfunden ebenso wie der darauf folgende Aufenthalt der Siegermächte in Japan.
Manfred Zapatka trägt das Ganze als Inspektor Minami vor und auch wenn ich zu Beginn äußerst skeptisch war (es klang recht monoton) - er ist eine hervorragende Besetzung. Die Hoffnungslosigkeit, die Resignation, die Wut, aber auch die ständige mühevolle Beherrschung und Selbsterniedrigung gegenüber Ranghöheren: Zapatka vermittelt diesen permanenten Kampf höchst überzeugend.
Auch wenn dieses Hörbuch 'nur' als Krimi deklariert ist: Tokio im Jahr Null ist ein Sittengemälde der Zeit unmittelbar nach der Kapitulation - ungewöhnlich geschrieben und anstrengend zu hören, aber nichtsdestotrotz spannend und an die Nieren gehend. ( )

Tales of disintegration

There’s nothing like an occupying army to stir desperation into the chaos of defeat. Just ask Detective Minami, chief of one of the two murder-investigation units operating in Tokyo during “Year Zero”—the first year after Japan’s surrender to and occupation by the United States.

David Peace, named by Granta magazine in 2003 as one of the best of the young British novelists, isn’t the sort of writer to gloss over grisly reality, whether it’s the gruesome task of identifying the remains of a murder victim or the madness that accompanies the complete destruction of the world in which his characters live.

Tokyo Year Zero might be, in the hands of a lesser writer, a pretty good crime book. On the day of Japan’s surrender (a situation unthinkable to most of its citizens, yet one that circumstance force them to wrap their minds around), the rapidly decomposing body of a murdered woman is found floating in the rancid water-filled basement of a bombed-out war factory. Faced with conducting an investigation while in shock, the detectives—including Minami—watch as an enraged Kempetai officer (the Japanese version of the Nazi SS) executes a Korean slave laborer found in the area, then declares the case closed. Simple enough. After all, it’s not as if one more outrage matters much in the face of all the outrages of WWII.

But a year later, as outrage upon outrage piles up for Minami, the bodies of two more murdered women are discovered in a park. His investigation is hampered both by the premature closing of the first case and by the presence among his superiors of an officer who has plenty of reason to keep the original murder from being linked to the bodies before them.

Minami reminds us, with one of several mental refrains, “No one is who they say they are.” The first mystery of the novel is the identity of the killer, but it is the novel’s second mystery that forms the narrative arc: Not “Who did it?” but rather “Who is it?” Finding the names of the dead women and making sure that they are all accounted for obsesses Minami, but he also is continually haunted by questions of identity and responsibility as he navigates the bombed-out, corrupt landscape of post-war Tokyo while struggling to hold on to his cobbled-together sanity.

He is also conducting an “unofficial” investigation into the murder of an organized crime chief, as well as questioning who is really in charge of the investigation into the women’s murders and what everyone might or might not be hiding—including who they really are. Plagued by plots and counter-plots (some of which actually exist), more than anything else he begins to suspect himself.

Peace adopts a break-neck pace, moving throughout the city and into the countryside. One day bleeds seamlessly into the next as the repetition of Minami’s thoughts and the passage of time by seconds (“chiku-taku,” the sound a clock makes ticking away) propels the reader along with him down a road that can only lead to destruction—because, quite simply, rubble is all that’s left of Minami’s Tokyo. The new city that rises in its place will never be what Minami seeks.

Tokyo Year Zero is a creditable murder mystery/police procedural, but the real power of the novel is in all the other tales of disintegration Peace threads throughout the detective story to form an indictment of both the defeated and the occupiers. This, then, is a city that doesn’t need crime to destroy it; war is enough.

Reviewed for Sacramento News & Review: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/tales-of-disintegration/content?oid=539231 ( )