Lady Joker, Vols. 1 + 2, by Kaoru Takamura

This story begins in 1947. An internal memo from Hinode Beer notes the reception of a letter from one Seiji Okamura, a former employee. The letter follows, detailing the departure of forty employees, intimating that discrimination against Japan’s segregated buraku community was somehow a factor. This rambling missive proves to be the tiny pebble rumbling into avalanche, the flap of the butterfly’s wing that sparks chaos. Over the next 1,200 pages, Takamura illuminates its slow and devastating impacts, from the five gamblers—a pharmacist, a truck driver, a banker, a cop, and a welder—it pulls into unexpected partnership nearly fifty years later, to the murky swirl of business, law enforcement, and media that coalesces around their crime. LADY JOKER is often compared to THE WIRE, and that’s apt—both are singularly ambitious in their attempt to capture the capacious complexity of a corrupt culture. Takamura, drawing inspiration from an actual crime, mesmerically depicts a world of men hemmed in by sclerotic culture of work, shame, and stasis. It took me about 300 pages to really get into it, but once I did, I could not put it down.