A mystery with Japan at its heart

For cultural observers of Japan, the hoariest cliches have always been the ones about selflessness and group harmony. The samurai will die for his lord, the salaryman will work himself to death for his company, the bond with one’s peers is vital, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Reality has always been more complex, and in the context of economic recession and an ever-widening generation gap, never more so than now. Individualism and alienation, mirror twins, have crossed the Pacific.

Miyuki Miyabe is a prolific and award-winning mystery writer in Japan, but her true subject is the mystery of modern Japanese identity. Her first novel, “All She Was Worth,” was a tale of credit-card debt and identity fraud featuring a woman whose most frightening attribute was her fiercely solitary survival instinct. “Shadow Family” is superficially a much simpler story but no less emotionally complex. At its heart is another lonely individual whose self-reliance has morphed into something monstrous. Not to give too much away.

The novel’s action occurs on a single afternoon, in a single room. Etsuro Takegami, veteran desk chief of a criminal investigation squad for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, has been handling paperwork for an unusual double murder. A businessman, Ryosuke Tokoroda, has been stabbed at a construction site, and forensic evidence has linked his death to the strangling of a college student in a karaoke club three days earlier. The investigation reveals that they were linked -- romantically -- in life as well, one of many betrayals Tokoroda had inflicted on his wife and daughter, Kazumi.

To complicate matters, Tokoroda had also been part of an elaborate online game, playing the role of genial “Dad” in a warmly idealized virtual family of four. This enraged Kazumi, whose own relationship to her father was icy at best. As part of the investigation, Kazumi sits behind a one-way mirror as Takegami questions the surviving members of Tokoroda’s “shadow family”: “Mom,” little brother “Minoru” and big sister “Kazumi,” whose screen name is the sharpest insult to Tokoroda’s real daughter. What transpires on that afternoon is a revelation to everyone involved.

Miyabe is a master of small gestures, the precise geometry of meaning as it moves between people. Takegami watches as Minoru cases the room: “If each spot his gaze landed on was represented by a dot, and if those dots were connected by lines, probably the resulting figure would represent a constellation of some significance.” But only in cyberspace are the dots connecting; offline, these individuals are all essentially alone.

In Miyabe’s hands, the police force is part of Japan’s institutional past and is increasingly inadequate for contemporary crime. For all his nuanced skills, Takegami is still a man of that past, appalled by the younger attitudes around him: “Me, me, me. Everybody and his brother hell-bent on finding their ... ‘true self.’ People who think they know all the answers choosing to fulfill their self-assigned mission in life by any means available, with total disregard for the feelings of others.” A far cry from the myth of group harmony.

The novel’s original title was “R.P.G.,” Japanese shorthand for “role-playing game.” It refers, of course, to Tokoroda’s fantasy family, but it applies equally to the drama that unfolds in Takegami’s interrogation room and, by extension, to the world beyond. The roles that sustained Japanese society through the postwar economic resurgence are, for many, no longer attractive or even feasible. But the alternative is improvisation, a role-playing game on a national stage.

Miyabe is a subtle observer of a country on a cusp. Her American readers can only hope for more chances to see through her eyes.

Janice P. Nimura is a contributor to numerous publications, including the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune.