> Skip to content
  • Published: 10 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9781616957018
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 600
  • RRP: $47.99

Lady Joker, Volume 1



One of Japan’s great modern masters, Kaoru Takamura, makes her English-language debut with this two-volume publication of her magnum opus.

One of Japan’s great modern masters, Kaoru Takamura, makes her English-language debut with this two-volume publication of her magnum opus.

Tokyo, 1995. Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his race; a struggling single dad of a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who has died suspiciously after the revelation of a family connection with the segregated buraku community, historically subjected to severe discrimination.

Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers.

Inspired by the unsolved true-crime kidnapping case perpetrated by “the Monster with 21 Faces,” Lady Joker has become a cultural touchstone since its 1997 publication, acknowledged as the magnum opus by one of Japan’s literary masters, twice adapted for film and TV and often taught in high school and college classrooms.

  • Published: 10 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9781616957018
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 600
  • RRP: $47.99

Praise for Lady Joker, Volume 1

An Amazon Best of the Month Pick for April 2021 A CrimeReads Best International Mystery of April Praise for Lady Joker “Hinging on a kidnapping plot, Takamura’s prismatic heist novel offers a broad indictment of capitalist society.” The New York Times “[Lady Joker] is a work you get immersed in, like a sprawling 19th century novel or a TV series like "The Wire." It reveals its world in rich polyphonic detail. Inspired by a real-life case, it takes us inside half a dozen main characters, follows scads of secondary ones and enters bars and boardrooms we could never otherwise go . . . Yet for all its digressions, Lady Joker casts a page-turning spell.” —John Powers, NPR's Fresh Air “Like Ellroy’s American Tabloid and Carr’s The Alienist, the book uses crime as a prism to examine dynamic periods of social history . . . Takamura’s blistering indictment of capitalism, corporate corruption and the alienation felt by characters on both sides of the law from institutions they once believed would protect them resonates surprisingly with American culture.” —Paula Woods, The Los Angeles Times “Mysterious and multilayered, [Lady Joker] gives readers extortion and kidnapping as it critiques the dark corners of Japanese society and the human experience.” Ms. Magazine “A novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts.” —Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police “[Lady Joker] earns frequent comparisons to L.A. Confidential in its epic scope . . . Despite the enormous size of the work, there are enough turning gears and ratcheting tension to stay committed to finishing this one—and then salivating for its massive sequel.” —CrimeReads “Impressive, very large-scale crime(-and-more) novel of post-war Japan . . . Lady Joker is anything but your usual mystery.” —The Complete Review “Through the working class, and executives, the police force and media, author Kaoru Takamura brings to her readers a Japan which is complicated and often corrupt. The disenfranchised working class who commit a crime seem no better (or worse) than the corporate executives who commit crimes in their own, more subtle, ways.” —Dolce Belleza “Excellent . . . Takamura shows why she’s one of Japan’s most prominent mystery novelists.” Publishers Weekly, Starred Review “Takamura’s challenging, genre-confounding epic offers a sweeping view of contemporary Japan in all its complexity.” Kirkus Reviews “Centered around an extortion case involving a beer company, Lady Joker would ordinarily be categorized in the crime or mystery novel genre, yet the book deserves to be called an exemplary literary work that depicts contemporary society . . . A magnum opus . . . It requires extraordinary skill to fully depict the ambivalence of Japanese society, in all its detail. Reading Lady Joker together with James Ellroy’s American Tabloid and the drama behind the Kennedy assassination serves as an intriguing comparison. Viewing a society through the lens of a crime is like examining a disease or a corpse to get at the person: it exposes the foundations of human existence.” —Yomiuri Newspaper   “Using the relationship between individuals and institutions as its axis, Lady Joker attempts to depict the contemporary