Villain: A Novel [Hardcover]

Shuichi Yoshida (Author), Philip Gabriel (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2010

A young insurance saleswoman is found strangled at Mitsuse Pass. Her family and friends are shocked and terrified. The pass—which tunnels through a mountainous region of southern Japan—has an eerie history: a hideout for robbers, murderers, and ghostly creatures lurking at night.
 
Soon afterward, a young construction worker becomes the primary suspect. As the investigation unfolds, the events leading up to the murder come darkly into focus, revealing a troubled cast of characters: the victim, Yoshino, a woman much too eager for acceptance; the suspect, Yuichi, a car enthusiast misunderstood by everyone around him; the victim’s middle-aged father, a barber disappointed with his life; and the suspect’s aging grandmother, who survived the starvation of postwar Japan only to be tormented by local gangsters. And, finally, there is desperate Mitsuyo, the lonely woman who finds Yuichi online and makes the big mistake of falling for him.
 
A stunningly dark thriller and a tapestry of noir, Villain is the English-language debut for Shuichi Yoshida, one of Japan’s most acclaimed and accomplished writers. From desolate seaside towns and lighthouses to love hotels and online chat rooms, Villain reveals the inner lives of men and women who all have something to hide. Part police procedural, part gritty realism, Villain is a coolly seductive story of loneliness and alienation in the southernmost reaches of Japan.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Yoshida examines the lives of a victim and a killer in this subtle but powerful novel about collective guilt and individual atonement, his first book to appear in English translation. The police arrest Yuichi Shimizu, a 27-year-old construction worker from Nagasaki, for strangling Yoshino Ishibashi, an insurance saleswoman, with whom he'd gone on a couple of dates. Moving skillfully back and forth from the crime to its aftermath, Yoshida describes Ishibashi's boring job in Fukuoka, her fantasy dates and online boyfriends, as well as Shimizu's existence in Nagasaki, where he cares for his ailing grandfather and grandmother, and lavishes his attentions on his fancy white car. Multiple points of view reveal both slight and dramatic changes in a host of other people, including acquaintances and relatives, affected by the murder. Most impressively, Yoshida's complex portrait of Japanese society leaves no doubt as to his characters' actions, but tantalizing doubts about their meaning.
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From Booklist

Though Yoshida is the author of nine books and the winner of multiple awards in Japan (including two for this one), Villain is his first novel to be translated into English. Unusually structured, as much a character study as it is a crime novel, it begins with the murder of a young woman, Yoshino Ishibashi, on a remote mountain pass and then gradually reveals the circumstances behind her death. Was the killer Yuichi Shimizu, a quiet, car-obsessed young construction worker who paid for Yoshino’s favors? Or was it brash college student Keigo Masuo, to whom Yoshino lied about dating? But while the unfolding mystery holds our interest, Yoshida is really most concerned with exploring the alienation of his young characters and the lack of connective tissue between them. As the story takes a surprising turn toward the end, the author saves the biggest question for his readers: Who is the real villain: a killer who feels remorse, or a person who feels nothing at all? This starts slowly, but after 50 pages it’s hypnotizing. --Keir Graff

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (August 3, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030737887X
• ISBN-13: 978-0307378873
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #497,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The next Stieg Larsson?, August 15, 2010

By 

Patto (Vermont) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Villain: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is Shuichi Yoshida's debut in English translation. Some journalists are calling him the next Stieg Larsson - but I find both Larsson and Yoshida too utterly original to be compared to anyone else.

Villain could only have been written by a Japanese writer with centuries of aesthetic and philosophic subtlety to draw upon - and a keen eye for the scene in contemporary Japan. A bizarre love story is embedded in a net of interrelated storylines, all contributing to the astonishing denouement.

The main characters come together on the Internet, via online dating sites:

Yoshino, insurance saleswoman and amateur prostitute. Keigo, spoiled rich kid with a vicious streak. Yuichi, quiet young construction worker whose words flow only in his emails. Mitsuyo, a perfectly ordinary young woman about to be ruined (or ennobled?) by a rash and frenzied love.

People behave in the most unexpected ways. Respectable citizens go crazy. Nasty people show flashes of kindness. Circumstances push the characters out of character - and their reactions of desperation, love or fury seem perfectly understandable. Right and wrong take on a disturbing fluidity that leaves the reader aching with compassion for almost everyone concerned.

The murder takes place in an ominous setting chillingly described: a mountain road over the Mitsuse Pass, gloomy and lonely even in daylight. Crime has darkened this area before, and ghosts have been sighted.

Drivers only choose this frightening road to avoid the heavy expressway tolls. Avoiding tolls is something of a theme in this book. There's a sense that we can't really escape the effects of our actions, or those around us. The past takes its toll.

Oddly enough, this is not a depressing book. I was left feeling that life is amazingly rich, whatever happens, and that human beings are often heroic in ways that go unrecognized.

Not to be missed!

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful look at modern day Japan, August 7, 2010

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Villain: A Novel (Hardcover)

In 2002 in southern Japan, the corpse of Fukuoka insurance saleswoman Yoshino Ishibashi is found. Soon after the discovery of the dead woman's body, Nagasaki police charge twenty-seven year old construction worker Yuichi Shimizu with first degree murder.

The pair had dated a few times but the motive remains as elusive as the ghosts that allegedly haunt this region of Japan. The cops learn that the victim had numerous online boyfriends and went on mundane and cyber dates; as Ishibashi hated her boring job. Meanwhile Shimizu also detested his cramped lifestyle as he cared for his ailing grandparents; his escapism from ennui was with his extravagant car. Meanwhile as he and his girlfriend evade the police, the impact of the murder reverberates on three families and the communities where they reside.

Using a horrific homicide, Shuichi Yoshida provides a powerful look at modern day Japan through multiple perspectives. The discerning story line rotates effortlessly between the past of lead pair (killer and victim) and the aftermath of the killing on the couple on the run and the families. Readers will relish this tense thriller as murder is the mechanism used to enable the audience to feel they are on the islands observing contemporary Japanese culture.

Harriet Klausner

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alientation and Desperation as Crime Novel, August 27, 2010

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Villain: A Novel (Hardcover)

Crime novels are often the best kind of fiction for illuminating a society, and I've certainly found that to be the case with the Japanese crime fiction I've read. They really highlight some of the aspects of Japan that are so completely different from life in America. In this first of Yoshida's books to be translated into English, a sense of isolation and oppression hangs heavily over many of the characters, both young and old, and the overall effect is a portrait of a stifling society at odds with itself.

The story concerns the killing of a young inurance saleswoman along an isolated mountain road, and the people affected by her murder. Moving back and forth in time, we meet the victim and her workmates on the night of the killing, two men she had been involved with and their friends, her parents, the grandparents of a another character, and a few others. The cast of construction workers, insurance saleswomen, store assistants, barbers, and poor retirees is almost a neorealist slice of modern Japan, showing the decided unglamorous side of the country. Through their eyes and voices, the book shifts between the past and present, slowly building a complete picture of victim and perpetrator.

The author is not really concerned with the question of whodunnit, so much as whydunnit. There's only the merest nod to genre convention in terms of keeping the reader guessing as to who the killer is. The book is about the psychology behind the murder and conflence of influences that led to the act. One thing that's kind of nice about it is that it avoids both the familiar big city setting, as well as the really rural areas, instead finding a place of desperation among the medium towns, small cities, highways, and shabby love hotels of sourthernmost Japan. Desperation is probably the key to the novel, as so many of the characters are trying to escape the mundane routines they are stuck in, while the larger society sits ready to judge each and every one of them. It doesn't really work as a traditional crime novel, but as a portrait of modern Japan its well worth reading.

Note: The cover has a really arresting design, but it's kind of an odd and misleading one, since there's no sign or mention of a gun in the story, nor are any bones involved in any way. Doesn't really capture the tone of the story at all.