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Written competently by an experienced journalist who is a Tokyo resident thus ideally placed to do extensive interviews and research, but ruined by his desire to squeeze just about EVEYTHING he knows about contemporary Japanese culture into it; this could have been half its size. If you are the kind of true crime aficionado who wants to know who did what and how, and the author get to the point, then you will be disappointed. This is not that kind of non-fiction, for better or worse; but a "new" non-fiction which is annoying if you expect the non-fiction crime writer to spell out when where who and how. He is way too distracted by the wealth of material he had on his plate; non-fiction equivalent of Roy Hodgson who was over-whelmed by the collection of talented footballers at his command but didn't know what is his best team and unable to gel it to a coherent team. In parts, they are compelling read but uneven and contradictory. There are unnecessarily long chapters on the victim's childhood and upbringing in Sevenoakes. What the long pages dedicated for the history of Korean ethnic minority in Japan for? Probably he is right in thinking the fact that this serial rapist was ethnic Korean was important, but it's too much, so are lectures on the Japanese legal system. True, it accepts circumstantial evidences more readily than British criminal courts do. He criticises it for that, and then ridicules it when it acquitted the man at first for the murder charge for lack of direct evidence. When the victim is English and not a local, circumstantial evidence ought to have been enough, apparently. Lastly, it's an awful title; Clumsy, sensationalist and confusing: who are "people" here? It could be read that Japanese people in general are the one who "eat darkness". But that's not what the writer means. Cover is equally loud, exotic and crass. Did the author succumbed to the publisher's idea? Apparently the writer wanted the book to sell but still thinks it is beneath him to write a crime non-fiction per se. He wants to describe Japanese society, not the crime, but how comprehensive could it be if you only focus on sexual crimes. Are Japanese men so sexually oppressed that crime such as this is the best window? He himself denies it when he admirably asserts that to say Asian men are obsessed with western women are simple "racist stereotyping", that you would notice western men chasing local women unashamedly in the streets of Tokyo. There are over-sexed men anywhere in the world. Japan is no exception simple as that. This book is simply over-stretching itself in more sense than one. If you are interested in crimes AND the Japanse culture, read it. If you like straightforward crime non-fiction in general, then probably a pass.Read full review
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