Inspiring Older Readers
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
Every now and then a book comes along that seems to unite critics through the choice of the adjective predominantly used to describe it. In the case of Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four, that word was ‘phenomenonal’. It seems the critics reached for this tag largely because of the sheer numbers the book sold in the author’s home country of Japan – it’s reported to have shifted a million copies in just six days.
This is pretty remarkable for a book that runs to 650 pages and moves at a relatively slow pace. But it is probably both its size and its dedication to the slow accretion of detail that has led to it being described by the critic, Mark Lawson as the literary equivalent of the television box set. There’s also clearly something culturally specific here that survives the translation process – a sense of something I’m calling ‘Japaneseness’ (I’m pretty sure there’s no such word but, hey, it’s the best I can do) which is tangible in the detail, the relationships and the physical environment. Actually, one of the highlights for me was the translation – stylistically the prose is utterly engrossing and envelopes you in the narrative.
Six Four looks in many ways to be the natural cousin of the Scandi-detectives that have been so popular in recent years. Larsson or Nesbo must have been inspirational for Yokoyama but this is by no stretch of the imagination just a literary knock-off or piece of formula writing because it also draws on the modern Japanese writing tradition – Ryu Murakami comes to mind here.
There are limits to how much I want to tell you about the plot here because as a cop mystery involving kidnapping and child murder, you’ll want to throw yourself into the plot without anything significant being given away by my carelessness. What I can say, however, is that it’s not really the plot that impressed me the most – I was, however, totally bowled-over by the creation of the central character, Yoshinobu Mikami. Mikami is in his mid-forties and has suffered something of a demotion to head of Press Relations for the police force when he had hoped to build his career as a detective. His personal and professional situation is dominated by two disappearances – the kidnapping and killing of the daughter of a prominent industrialist that has never been solved and the fact that his own teenage daughter has gone missing and whose whereabouts can’t be established. He has a special arrangement with his superiors to be alerted to any young women whose bodies are recovered from accidents or suicides to help rule out her death.
So this is, in many ways, the now well-established profile of the policeman who is dealing with his own disappointments, torments and demons and like any of these creations the success of the novel depends on how well you take to the central character. It’s also important here because the world of 'Six Four' (the code name for the unsolved kidnap and killing) is seen almost entirely through the eyes and sensibility of Mikimi. I really took to this and to him and he became, in the way fictional characters can, my guide through the book and on top of that he also provided a basic introduction to the mores of modern Japanese society.
Make no mistake; this is a big book and a big commitment. But it’s also an immersive read and once you’re inside it the pages slip by without too much effort. By the end of the book I could entirely understand the analogy Mark Lawson made with the television box-set and reading this book might well qualify as ‘binge reading’.
First editions of this book are both whopping big doorsteps and quite expensive to find in good condition and so this might be a case for checking out the paperback – something you can read in bed without the danger of dropping the hardback on your head if you fall asleep.
Terry Potter
May 2018