قصة الكتاب :
Shinchōsha, 2013. 327 pp. ¥1,700. ISBN 978-4-10-362208-6.
Shimada Masahiko
Born in Tokyo in 1961. He rose to fame when his novel Yasashii
sayoku no tame no kiyūkyoku [Divertimento for Gentle Leftists],
published while he was still a university student, was shortlisted for
the Akutagawa Prize. He won the Noma Prize for New Writers in
1984 for Muyū ōkoku no tame no ongaku [Music for the Sleepwalking
Kingdom] and the Minister of Education’s Art Encouragement
Prize in 2008 for Kaosu no musume [Daughter of Chaos]. His other
works include Eiyū wa soko ni iru [A Hero Is There].

Fujiwara Michinaga is an assistant branch manager for a major bank. He disappears
one morning after completing a major business negotiation and drawing up
a draft of the formal contract. His wife Kyoko and daughter Akiko are bewildered
by his disappearance. It then emerges that the more than ¥500 million that should
have been transferred to the other company’s account did not arrive. The bank
immediately notifies the police, which begins an investigation based on the possibility
of embezzlement.
It all began with an unlawful corporate acquisition. The branch manager,
Sukita, joined forces with a Chinese broker named Wu Fangtong to inflate the
buying price for a company that had engaged in fraudulent accounting and attempted
to receive the difference in price as a fee. Michinaga saw what they had
done and diverted the acquisition funds into donations and funding for disaster
recovery, taking away the original documents relating to Sukita’s and Wu’s concealment
of the truth and secret scheme.
Michinaga ends up homeless, running from the police and the clutches of the
underworld. He moves between the city and the suburbs, but after two months
he is caught by Wu’s subordinate, Suzuki Ryūhei. After squeezing the money out
of Michinaga, Wu buries him alive to destroy the evidence. And here the story
takes still another dramatic turn.
The work’s primary interest for readers lies mainly in its depiction of homeless
life. The tabloid-style plot and topical episodes are nothing more than devices for
achieving this. The novel vividly describes the places homeless people gather in
Tokyo, such as Ueno Park, Asakusa, and San’ya, and how they live with no fixed
address, whether using the Yamanote Line and other rail routes or sleeping rough
outdoors. It is a rare work that shines a light on those who live in the shadows of
the glamorous life of the city. (CK)