Tag Archives: Tokyo

Geisha Confidential by Mark Coggins

Posted on by

Mark Coggins’s new Tokyo-based crime novel, Geisha Confidential, features middle-aged San Francisco private investigator August Riordan, who may be familiar to you from previous books in this award-winning series. Read this fast-paced story, and you’ll barely have time to feel any trans-Pacific jet lag. Almost as soon as Riordan’s plane lands, trouble starts.

He’s made the trip for a personal reason. The last boyfriend of his dead former assistant has reached out to him for help, offering to pay Riordan’s airfare, hotel, and expenses. Riordan, who has never traveled outside the United States before and speaks no Japanese at all, is dubious about how much help he can provide, but goes out of loyalty to his late staff member.

The Japanese-American boyfriend, whom Riordan knew as Ken Ono, is certainly a surprise. She’s called Coco now—highly attractive, with long black hair, a mischievous smile, and a fondness for big straw hats. Coco is well into her gender transition; in the local slang, she’s a new-half prostitute.

That is precisely where the trouble may have started. Her doctor is a prominent Japanese gender reassignment surgeon, and his nurse warned Coco not to go through with her next operation. Ever since, Coco’s been followed and an attempt was made on her life. But the Tokyo police show complete disinterest in the troubles of a trans resident.

There’s quite a bit of solid humor in this story, given the inevitable cultural gaffes Riordan makes and Coco’s lighthearted spirit, despite the dangers. On the whole, it’s an interesting peek at the seamier side of Japanese culture—the Japanese Adult Video industry, high-end brothels, and the lifestyles of sex workers—in details sufficient to the story, but not too shocking.

Riordan is a well-developed, crusty character, and Coco is a delight. She recognizes the danger she’s in, but she’s not backing down easily. I was intrigued by the police sergeant named Miyojima, exiled to a lowly outpost due to some bureaucratic flap. He and Riordan are both prone to bend a few rules, and they click.

Author Coggins is an accomplished photographer whose work has appeared in numerous galleries and exhibits and reveals itself in his eye for descriptive detail. His descriptions convey an intimate knowledge of the city that makes this wild and wacky story quite believable. It begins with the story of Hachiko, the loyal dog who waited outside a Tokyo train station for his dead master for more than nine years. A statue now commemorates his devotion.

One request of authors who write books with lots of characters in a complicated story: include a list of them. Particularly when their names are culturally different from what readers are accustomed to, it can become hard to keep track of who’s who—at least for me! Bottom line: a winner!

*****Blue Light Yokohama

Posted on by

Tokyo - Rainbow Bridge

photo: mytokyoguide.wordpress.com, used with permission

By Nicolás Obregón – What an entertaining debut! Told almost exclusively from the perspective of Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Inspector Kosuke Iwata, it’s a multilayered police procedural involving murder, official corruption, and dangerous secrets.

A brief prologue set in 1996 describes the death of a woman who jumped from a dangling cable car into the sea, despite the efforts of police detective Hideo Akashi to save her. Fifteen years later, Akashi is investigating the quadruple murder of a Korean family. In the midst of his investigation, he commits suicide by jumping off Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge (pictured above). No one knows why. This theme of falling pervades the novel and ties together many of its strands, past and present.

The brass at the police department asks their newest detective, U.S.-trained (and therefore highly suspect) Iwata to pick up Akashi’s investigation of the family’s murder. Iwata is aided by Assistant Inspector Sakai, transferred from the Missing Persons department to work with him. These two inexperienced homicide detectives are assigned such a complex investigation because the department is short-handed, having lost Akashi, and is focused instead on another of his cases, the mysterious death of high-profile actress. A little racism creeps in, as well; as Iwata’s supervisor explains, “The family were Korean, so not exactly front-page news.”

Iwata and Sakai manage to get along rather well, considering. He is haunted by memories of his childhood in an orphanage, and she is a feisty young woman whose reflexive prickliness provides a lively counterpoint of humor. (I loved her!)

Iwata and Sakai haven’t made much progress in their investigation when the lonely widow of a judge is murdered. Striking details at the crime scene are similar to the Korean family’s case. Though Iwata and Sakai energetically pursue multiple lines of inquiry, they cannot begin to figure out what links these deaths until he starts breaking rules.

The author, who has lived in Japan, not only evocatively describes the physical and social settings of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hong Kong, he also carefully explores Iwata’s complex interior life and motivations. The atmosphere he creates is dense with possibilities and a bit dreamlike.  This is in part because a dozen or so mysteriously poetic lines repeatedly float through the detective’s mind: “The lights of the city are so pretty”; “I walk and walk, swaying, like a small boat in your arms.” You don’t learn the origin of these lines until well along—a song that is the source of the book’s title (hear it here).

But Obregón is a more subtle writer than that, and the title also echoes other blue lights. A local suicide prevention program uses them, based on the supposition that the color blue is calming. The flashing blue lights of police cars, another recurrent Obregón image, would belie that assumption. Blue Light Yokohama is an immersive police procedural that uses its exotic setting and distinctive characters to great effect.