“Life may not have a purpose. But death requires clarity-not to prove that death occurred but for the benefit of those who survive.” And Yuichi Watanabe a Japanese soldier and prison guard during WWII, who is now charged as a low level war criminal by the US military is determined to get clarity and to make sense of what he saw and heard during his years at Fukuoka Prison.

It all started the morning that Sugiyama Dozen, Watanabe’s superior officer, was found murdered. It wasn’t just that he was killed, but it was the public and brutal way they found him; strung up naked from the high beam of the ceiling in the middle of prison ward three, his arms outstretched and blood dripping to the floor below making a sunburst pattern as it splashed. It had snowed the night before, making it clear from the lack of footprints that the murder was an inside job. Someone in the prison had murdered Sugiyama, one of its most tough and brutal guards.

Inexplicably, Watanabe, only a 20 year old new recruit, is assigned to investigate the murder and to report to the warden what he finds. One of his first clues is a poem that he finds in an inner jacket pocket. Written by hand the poem’s last stanza says:

I will not disturb you in your dreaming,

It would be a pity to disturb your rest:

You shall not hear my footsteps

Softly, Softly shut the door!

On my way out I’ll write

“Good Night” on the gate,

So that you may see

That I have thought of you.

Watanabe finds  the poem cruelly ironic given the way Sugiyama was found, but with nothing else to go on, he begins his investigation by focusing on one of Sugiyama’s duties which was as censor for any outgoing mail sent by the prisoners or guards. Eventually this leads him to Prosner 645,  a Korean who had moved to Japan in 1942 to enter the University to study English Literature and whom he suspects of having written the poem that he found in Sugiyama’s jacket.  But as he uncovers the connections between Sugiyama and Prisoner 645, Watanabe finds that he himself is drawn to this man with his facility for words and understanding of great literature, like Tolstoy’s, War and Peace and the poems of Rilke and soon finds that he is making up reasons to interrogate the prisoner just so that he can have an opportunity to talk with him.

Lee is masterful as he slowly reveals the treachery and greed that are at the heart of the murder of Sugiyama, even as he exposes the brutality of the of Japanese towards the Koreans who were imprisoned during the war. Based in part on a true story of the famous Korean poet Yun Dong-ju, this is an uncomfortable and unflinching look at the brutality of war, the loss of empathy that occurs when we see only “other” in faces of those we are told to hate, and the redeeming nature of art, music, literature and poetry, to help us retain our humanity even in the face of degradation and isolation. Thought provoking, challenging and inspiring, this was a book that was hard to put down!

Brenda’s Rating: **** (4 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Keith, Ken, Sharon and Marian

Book Study Worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format