Tokyo Year Zero

Happy Friday, everyone.

Tokyo Year Zero is a heavy read in terms of mental health; just saying as a precautionary for everyone. When I was telling my mom about it as I was drawing to a close, she got a little concerned, as moms do, that this would not be a little triggering for me because at the same time my mental health had been coasting downward for a few months. I am fine, we are ok.

So, it turns out that Tokyo Year Zero is the first book in a trilogy by Peace that goes into Japan from their day of defeat in WWII through the years that follow. Year Zero covers the first year and follows a Police Detective Minami as the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department proceeds to solve a slew of rapes/murders of young girls while dealing with not just a growing gang war, but the constant shadow of change brought by “Emperor” MacArthur. You find out right off the bat that Minami has seen some shit when he was in China during the war, which has growing repercussions as the slowness of the cases proves frustrating.

From what I saw on Goodreads, people either hated it, or they loved it with the dealbreaker being how Year Zero was written. There is an incredible amount of inner dialogue, with an incredible amount of repetitiveness in sentences. “Chiku-taku, chiku-taku, chiku-taku…” I can see where it would make the book a big waste of time. For me, I love it. You get the challenge of having to read someone’s mental decline and trying to figure out what the hell is going on around him, because clearly Minami is not going to tell you the straight and narrow of it.

I really enjoyed the ending; it was done well. I will not give away spoilers, or anything. I can see this becoming a movie, but at the same time it reminds me a lot of Shutter Island.

I would read this again, for sure, and now that I know that it is the first of a trilogy, it will be interesting to see if the other two books follow the same writing style, or if there will be something just as challenging to deal with. You can find it here if interested.

9/10