Why a Booktrail?
1989, 2002: Japan’s police and media are put under the spotlight following a botched investigation – 6 4 .
Six Four
What you need to know before your trail
No one wants to remember the botched investigation of a missing 7 year old girl in Tokyo. She disappeared in 1989 and for five long days, her parents sat and listed to the demands of their daughter’s kidnapper. They paid the ransom, they expected her return. They never saw their daughter again.
The police never found out who that kidnapper was either. For fourteen years after, the Japanese public listened to the various explantations, apologies, and soul searching from the police. The botched investigation which was given the name ‘Six Four’. They would never forgive the authorities their failure.
2002: A press officer in the police department spots an anomaly in the case so does a bit of digging. What he finds however is something he nor anyone else is prepared for.
The press officer attached to the police department in question confronted an anomaly in the case. He could never imagine what he would uncover. He would never have looked if he’d known what he would find.
Travel Guide
More than a booktrail, this is a study and close look into the nature of the Japanese police and legal system. A detailed look into the workings of the press, the relationship between the authorities and the finer points of how an investigation which becomes so high profile can turn into such a disaster.
The investigation is code named Six Four as it took place in the 64th year of the Showa period (this period of Japanese history – Emperor Hirohito’s reign lasted from1926 to 1989) and it’s this investigation that hangs around the neck of all that which follows
The novel focuses on the work of Mikami, the Press Director of Prefecture D who is himself a former detective. He has problems at work and at home for his teenager daughter is missing. Something about the 64 investigation hits home and this trail around the corrupt and winding corridors of the Police force and its politics begins.
In Japan, hierarchy and honour rule above all else. How do you act and serve in a society where subservience is key and individuality is not. How does and can the police force work and what role does the media play?
Office politics and relations between press and police are a series of unbalances and slow moving work. How the police view and treat its citizens, how Japanese society operates and the effects of all of this. Of the effects of 6 4.
Where Next?
