"The Dark Side" by Mark Schreiber

In "A Man With a Grudge," Schreiber recounts the tale of a Japanese-born Korean man, who in 1968 shot and killed two Japanese gangsters and took 13 hostages. He gained a national audience, demanding an apology from the police for their "humiliating" treatment of Koreans (the apology was later actually delivered on a major TV network). He told reporters who'd gathered at the hot springs where he held his hostages: "I'm risking my life to fight against Japanese persecution. This is a problem that every Japanese has to take responsibility for."

Non-Japanese may find the sociological implications in some of the stories rather baffling. For instance, there's the story of a man who abducted a schoolgirl and kept her in his bedroom at his mother's house -- for nine years. His mother claimed she'd never seen the girl, having been banned from her son's room for the past 10 years and busy working much of the day. Although this claim attracted skepticism here, it is more believable in the context of family relations in Japan than in the U.S., where it would seem preposterous. On a lighter note, there is the story of a man who posed as a police officer and pulled over a Nissan laden with over $800,000 in Toshiba staffers' bonuses, telling the bank employees driving it that there was a bomb planted in their vehicle. As they fled, he escaped with the car, poignantly illustrating the respect for authority and the quirky cash-based society that persist in Japan today.

In this sense, although this is ostensibly a book about crime, it also serves as an altogether agreeable window into Japanese culture. Even though Schreiber adheres to journalistic style, the stories he's chosen and his detailed descriptions of social interactions that take place in them drive home many key cultural themes in Japan. His accounts articulately demonstrate the country's rigid social structure, which historically assigns certain roles according to gender, class and race. That said, Schreiber is also careful to choose examples that show that exceptions do occur.

This is one instance in which being a foreigner -- Schreiber is American born but has spent 37 years in Japan -- has arguably worked in the author's favor. Schreiber doesn't treat his subjects as exotic, but he draws other foreigners into the material by giving cultural clues and context. One way he does this is by tossing in idiosyncrasies of language. For example, in "The Woeful Fate of a Poisonous Wife," he notes: "Poison is so associated with women who kill that Japanese commonly refer to a murderess with the sobriquet dokufu (poisonous wife)."

Schreiber believes that being foreign aided him in his research. "When I approached experts on the subject of crime, they were delighted to meet me. I think the sheer novelty of a foreigner digging through [Japan's true crime literature] so energetically sort of piqued many people's curiosity."

Schreiber's legwork makes what could be quite dry material from hundreds of years ago feel remarkably relevant. For instance, in one story he cites the tombstone engraving of a man believed to have been murdered in 1896, commenting on how the slightly altered version of a Tennyson poem found there could give clues affirming his convicted wife's guilt. Even in some of the older cases you get the feeling that, as Schreiber is prone to say, more evidence awaits discovery.

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