The short-lived Taisho Era (1912-26) »å±ð³¾´Ç°ì³Ü°ù²¹²õ³ó¨© (democracy) was followed by a financial crash that gave way to poverty, desperation and creeping militarism, culminating in the Pacific War from 1941 to 1945.
¡°Shadows of Tokyo¡± portrays the somber zeitgeist of Japan¡¯s capital in 1931, where rightist assassins armed with swords, handguns and bombs stalk key political and business figures. Masaru Ryusaki, an ambitious rabble-rouser, is one of a number of false messiahs hoping to stage a putsch and bring about a ¡°Showa Restoration¡± to enable Japan to realize its Manifest Destiny.
The man with his finger in this collapsing dam is police inspector Kenji Aizawa, a survivor of the disastrous Siberian Intervention of a decade earlier, in which Japan lost some 5,000 soldiers to military action and sickness.
Ryusaki¡¯s mistress, Reiko Watanabe ¡ª a moga (modern girl) by day and geisha by night ¡ª disturbed by her lover¡¯s conspiratorial intrigues, telephones Aizawa anonymously with warnings of impending assassination plots. The cop, however, is hamstrung by self-serving bosses who secretly support the nationalists. After several harrowing run-ins with the rightists and their cohorts, Watanabe and Aizawa eventually meet in person and form an awkward alliance.
Legare¡¯s story reflects conscientious research into historic detail. Aside from James Melville¡¯s 1987 novel ¡°The Imperial Way,¡± few Western writers have set novels in this dark era ¡ª perhaps because they know that a happy ending won¡¯t be forthcoming.
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