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Last Winter We Parted, by Fuminori Nakamura
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Instantly reminiscent of the work of Osamu Dazai and Patricia Highsmith, Fuminori Nakamura’s latest novel is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that philosophically explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity.
A young writer arrives at a prison to interview a convict. The writer has been commissioned to write a full account of the case, from the bizarre and grisly details of the crime to the nature of the man behind it. The suspect, a world-renowned photographer named Kiharazaka, has a deeply unsettling portfolio—lurking beneath the surface of each photograph is an acutely obsessive fascination with his subject.
He stands accused of murdering two women—both burned alive—and will likely face the death penalty. But something isn’t quite right. As the young writer probes further, his doubts about this man as a killer intensify, and he struggles to maintain his sense of reason and justice. Is Kiharazaka truly guilty, or will he die to protect someone else?
Evoking Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s “Hell Screen,” Last Winter, We Parted is a twisted tale that asks a deceptively sinister question: Is it possible to truly capture the essence of another human being?
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #508312 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-01
- Released on: 2015-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.50" h x .62" w x 5.01" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
Review
Praise for Last Winter, We Parted
"Crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its own nightmare realm . . . For Nakamura, like [Seichō] Matsumoto, guilt or innocence is not the issue; we are corrupted, complicit, just by living in society. The ties that bind, in other words, are rules beyond our making, rules that distance us not only from each other but also from ourselves."
—David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
"This slim, icy, outstanding thriller, reminiscent of Muriel Spark and Patricia Highsmith, should establish Fuminori Nakamura as one of the most interesting Japanese crime novelists at work today."
—USA Today
"Some of the darkest noir fiction to come out of Japan—or any country—in recent years . . . Nakamura's stories, however labeled, are memorable forays into uncomfortable terrain."
—Tom Nolan, Mystery Scene
"A tense, layered story . . . [Nakamura's] stripped-down prose and direct style drop the reader straight into his nightmare."
—The Japan Times
"His most ambitious novel . . . Nakamura is still pursuing the notion of the dark, existential thriller, but here we find him delving into even more twisted territory."
—Grantland
"Truly unsettling."
—The Strand Magazine
"A coldly sophisticated, darkly disturbing logic puzzle written in the style of the great ice queen of the genre, Patricia Highsmith."
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Deeply erotic and haunting... climaxes with a shocking twist."
—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
"Extremely dark and certainly twisted."
—Suspense Magazine
"Stands out as a chilling, philosophical look at murder and the nature of guilt."
—Ozy.com
"One unexpected punch after another."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Elegantly crafted . . . As the shadow of a second writer begins to cloud the picture, and the story accelerates down the slippery slope separating love and obsession, the twisty—and twisted—turns it takes ambush narrator and reader alike.”
—Publishers Weekly
"[Feels like] exploring the minds of characters in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood or Werner Herzog's documentary Into the Abyss. It's a creepy feeling."
—BookPage
"With an economy of prose and pages, Nakamura has created a work that one can read during the course of a long afternoon and will remember for a lifetime."
—Bookreporter.com
"Nakamura’s writing is as psychologically astute as it can be while also representing a vision of the world twisted and screwed, without joy or happiness. In other words, Last Winter, We Parted is the epitome of literary noir."
—Mystery People (Austin, TX), Pick of the Month
"An engrossing, original mystery that does not neglect the element of surprise."
—LitReactor
"Nakamura reveals not just the complexities of artistic representation, but our wish that it were not so—our desire to remake events as if they had occurred right before our eyes."
—Words Without Borders
"An old-fashioned house of mirrors . . . Nakamura's book requires (but also rewards) close attention: it is in a way a Postmodern revival of some of the tropes of classic noir and hard-boiled fiction, with a specifically Japanese sensibility."
—International Noir Fiction
"A maddening merry-go-round, a twisted story of just how far some will go for their art, or for love."
—Crime Fiction Lover (UK)
"Enjoyably twisty."
—The Complete Review
"A murder mystery that will keep you guessing at every turn, as it is never really clear who the victims and the criminals are, until the ending that you will not see coming . . . A dark and wonderful psychological mind-screw that forces the reader to question their own capacity for evil . . . The subjects of love/hate, abandonment, obsession, revenge and sexual deviation are all touched upon in a manner that reminds me of Camus, or Kafka with a pinch of Dashiell Hammitt. Recommended for fans of crime pulps, Freud, Jim Thompson, Albert Camus and Japanese Noir."
—The Thugbrarian Review
Praise for�The Thief
�
Winner of Japan’s Prestigious Ōe Prize
A�Los Angeles Times�Book Prize 2013 Finalist
A�Wall Street Journal�Best Fiction of 2012 Selection
A�World Literature Today�Notable Translation
An Amazon Best Mystery/Thriller of the Month
“I was deeply impressed with�The Thief. It is fresh. It is sure to enjoy a great deal of attention.”
—Kenzaburō Ōe, Nobel Prize-winning author of�A Personal Matter
�
“Fascinating. I want to write something like�The Thief�someday myself."
—Natsuo Kirino, bestselling author of Edgar-nominated�Out�and�Grotesque
“The Thief�brings to mind Highsmith, Mishima and Doestoevsky . . . A chilling�existential thriller leaving readers in doubt without making them feel in any way cheated.”
�—Wall Street Journal, Best Book of the Year Selection
“An intelligent, compelling and surprisingly moving tale, and highly recommended.”
—The Guardian
�
�“Nakamura's prose is cut-to-the-bone lean, but it moves across the page with a seductive, even voluptuous agility. I defy you not to finish the book in a single sitting.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch�
“Fuminori Nakamura’s Tokyo is not a city of bright lights, bleeding-edge technology, and harajuku girls with bubblegum pink hair. In Nakamura’s Japan, the lights are broken, the knives are bloodier than the tech, and the harajuku girls are aging single mothers turning tricks in cheap tracksuits. His grasp of the seamy underbelly of the city is why Nakamura is one of the most award-winning young guns of Japanese hardboiled detective writing.”
—Daily Beast
“It's simple and utterly compelling - great beach reading for the deeply cynical. If you crossed Michael Connelly and Camus and translated it from Japanese.”
—Grantland
“Surreal.”
—Sacramento Bee,�“Page-Turner” Pick
“Nakamura’s writing is spare, taut, with riveting descriptions . . . Nakamura conjures dread, and considers philosophical questions of fate and control . . . For all the thief’s anonymity, we come to know his skill, his powerlessness and his reach for life.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
�
“Nakamura’s memorable antihero, at once as believably efficient as Donald Westlake’s Parker and as disaffected as a Camus protagonist, will impress genre and literary readers alike."
—Publishers Weekly
“Compulsively readable for its portrait of a dark, crumbling, graffiti-scarred Tokyo—and the desire to understand the mysterious thief.”
—Booklist
�
“Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime fiction,�Thief�resonates even more as a treatise on contemporary disconnect and paralyzing isolation.”
—Library Journal
“Nakamura’s dark imagination gives rise to his literary world . . . the influences of Kafka and Dostoyevsky are not hard to spot.
—The Japan Times
“Fast-paced, elegantly written, and rife with the symbols of inevitability.”
—ForeWord
"The Thief manages to wrap you up in its pages, tightly, before you are quite aware of it."
—Mystery Scene
�
“[An] extremely well-written tale . . . Readers will be enthralled by this story that offers an extremely surprising ending.”
—Suspense Magazine
�
“Nakamura succeeds in creating a complicated crime novel in which the focus is not on the crimes themselves but rather on the psychology and physicality of the criminal. The book’s power inheres in the voice of the thief, which is itself as meticulously rendered as the thief’s every action.”
—Three Percent
�
“Both a crime thriller and a character study, it is a unique and engrossing read, keeping a distant yet thoughtful eye on the people it follows . . . It’s a haunting undercurrent, making The Thief a book that’s hard to shake once you’ve read it.”
—Mystery People
�
“The drily philosophical tone and the noir atmosphere combine perfectly, providing a rapid and enjoyable ‘read’ that is nonetheless cool and distant, provoking the reader to think about (as much as experience) the tale.”
—International Noir Fiction
�
Praise for Evil and the Mask
�
"Karma runs thicker than blood in�Evil and the Mask, the thought-provoking and unpredictable new novel by the Japanese zen-noir master Fuminori Nakamura."
—Wall Street Journal
"This literary thriller steeps the reader in humanity’s dark nature and the struggle of those who try to resist their own moral corruption."
—Library Journal
“Deals with basic questions of good and evil, guilt and remorse. Cryptic detectives, smoky nightclubs, and murky streets in Japanese suburbs add to the noir sensibility. At times bizarre, at times hallucinatory, the story is always provocative.”
—Publishers Weekly
"Evil and the Mask�is a hard-to-put-down novel of ideas and a savage comment on nihilism, both Japanese and global . . . Shouldn't be missed."
—Booklist, Starred Review
"Deliciously twisted . . . Nakamura bend[s] the line between what is good and what is evil until it nearly breaks. It’s impressive how a book so dark can be so much fun."�
—Grantland
"This literary thriller steeps the reader in humanity’s dark nature and the struggle of those who try to resist their own moral corruption."
—Library Journal
"Evil and the Mask�is concerned with a twisty sense of morality: is Fumihiro born evil, and can he escape the cruelty associated with his surname?"
—Omnivoracious
"Evil and the Mask�is a brilliant novel from one of Japan’s most current authors . . . If you love Patricia Highsmith, you’ll love Nakamura."
—Globe and Mail
�
"Evil and the Mask�is an engrossing account . . . The story is violent, revengeful, and often disagreeable but it still contains that hypnotic voice that makes you want to read more."�
—Midwest Book Review�
“Evil and the Mask�delves even further into the dark . . . [It] grapples with murder, war and a deep distrust of society that manifests itself in disturbing ways.”
—The Japan Times
“Evil and the Mask, the second book of his to be available in English, is undoubtedly the narrative that will help cement him as the new master of Japanese noir . . . an absolute must-read."
—Out of the Gutter Magazine
"[Evil and the Mask�is] full of themes that everyone can appreciate . . . Nakamura blurs the line between light and dark, good and evil. He illustrates that nothing in life is completely black and white."�
—Tulsa Books Examiner
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the Ōe Prize, Japan’s largest literary award; the David L. Goodis Award; and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other novels include Evil and the Mask and The Gun.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
“It's safe to say you killed them . . . Isn’t that right?”
������� The man’s expression does not change when I say this to him. He is wearing a black sweat suit, his body leaning lazily in his chair. If the transparent acrylic glass
weren’t between us, would I be afraid? His cheeks are hollow, his eyes slightly sunken.
������ “I’ve had my doubts all along but . . . why did you . . . after the murder, Akiko’s . . .”
������ —Don’t jump to conclusions, he says.
������ He remains expressionless. He seems neither sad nor angry. He just seems tired. The man had been born tired.
������ —I think I’ll ask the questions, for a change.
������ I can hear his voice quite clearly even through the acrylic glass.
������ —Are you . . . prepared?
������ “Huh?”
������ The air suddenly grows chilly.
������ —I’m asking if you’re prepared.
������ The man is looking straight at me. He hasn’t shifted his gaze once, not for some time now.
������ —You want to know what’s inside my mind. Isn’t that right? . . .Why I committed a crime like that. You want to know about the deepest reaches of my heart. But up till now, nobody has come to see me in person . . . Do you know what that means?
������ He moves only his mouth—otherwise not a single muscle in his face shifts.
������ —That I would talk to you. And probably eagerly. Loneliness can turn a person into a great talker. You seem like you can manage to sit with me as long as you’re on the other
side of this acrylic glass. But here’s what it feels like to me. Like we’re sitting face to face in a small enclosed room, having a chat. Try to imagine it. Having a conversation with a person who committed a bizarre crime, and at such close range, listening to everything that’s inside his mind . . . It would be as if I were putting myself inside of you.
������ “. . . Inside me?”
������ —That’s right. Whatever’s inside me, it would end up inside you. Whatever’s inside you would probably be activated by the process . . . As if I—a man who’s going to be executed—as if I could go on living inside of you. Are you okay with that?
������ “I don’t know,” I say honestly. “But I’ve decided to write a book about you.”
������ The room grows chilly again. The place must be cleaned daily; although the floor is worn, there isn’t a speck of dust on it.
������ —Why? . . . Because you’re also a member of K2?
������ The guard in uniform behind him is staring at me. The walls of the room are starting to get to me. It’s as though, little by little, the room is closing in around the
man. I draw in my breath. I am conscious of the acrylic glass in front of me. It’s all right, I murmur inside my head. This is surely an opening in the conversation. But the gap is small. We aren’t even alone. And there is a time limit.
������ “. . .I’m just interested in K2.”
������ —Interested . . . That could be dangerous.
������ The guard in uniform stands up and informs us of the time. I let out my breath. The man is aware of my relief. He is watching me. He sees the state I am in.
������ —Okay . . . You can come back again, he says in parting.
������ The door behind him opens.
������ —But I’m still not sure whether I’m going to tell you anything. I’m not too good at analyzing myself. So.
������ As the man is led away, he continues.
������ —Together, I guess you and I can think about things . . . I mean, like why I did what I did.
AS I LEAVE the prison, dusk is falling.
������ I take in a breath. But there is no freshness to be had in the exhaust-choked air. When I realize that I am fumbling around in my pocket, I still my hand. In the distance I can see the lights of a convenience store. The man’s voice still echoes in my ears.
������ I cross a wide road that is wet from rain and go inside the convenience store. I stare at the cigarette display for a moment, grab a pack, and set it along with a lighter on the counter by the register. When I touch the gloss of the plastic-wrapped package, my fingers feel a trace of warmth.
������ The thin cashier takes the scanner and starts reading the barcodes with distracted movements. For some reason, I feel oppressed by the cashier’s gestures. I go outside and light a cigarette. Even though I quit smoking.
������ My throat feels parched. This thirst is not likely to be quenched by water.
������ I scan my surroundings futilely and start walking. My notebook and recorder are in my bag. They feel terribly heavy all of a sudden. I hadn’t been able to bring the recorder into the visiting rom.
������ A hard rain begins to fall. The ground is already wet so this must have just been a temporary lull. People run to get out of the rain. They glance at me, standing there
getting wet, as they pass by. Like they see something bizarre that they don’t want to have anything to do with. I hold my hand over my head and start to trot. The fact is, it really doesn’t matter to me whether I get wet.
������ Take another look at me, I want to say, but to whom I don’t know. I’m running like this, to get out of the rain. Just like you all.
������ At the edge of my vision, I can see that the lights are on in a small bar. In the evening dusk, the lights seem tentative as they flicker off and then dimly back on again.
������ Just as a shelter from the rain, I try to tell myself. I draw closer to the lights of the bar. I open the glass door, which has no trace of fingerprints yet, sit down at the counter, and order a whiskey on the rocks. Bartenders are wary of customers who arrive just as the bar is opening.
������ “It’s raining.”
������ “. . .What?”
������ “Uh, the rain.”
������ I am at a loss for words. He serves me the whiskey, and I bring the glass to my lips. I put the liquid on my tongue, and the moment I feel the expanse of sweet warmth, I gulp it down. It is as if my throat has no patience, and needs to hasten it down all at once. The man on the other side of the bar is watching me. He must be used to seeing the moment when someone who abstains decides to give up.
������ “Are you . . . prepared?” The other man’s voice floats through my mind. Prepared? I attempt a smile. I bring the whiskey to my lips again. As if I’m a ravenous insect.
The warmth of the alcohol spreads to my brow and into my chest.
������ I don’t need to be prepared. I have nothing left to protect.
Archive 1
Dear Sister,
������� Prison is not as bad as you’d think. But it’s been quite a long time . . . I hope you’ll forgive me for writing another letter like this. I can’t help but get introspective in letters. I
don’t want to upset you all over again.
������� But I wonder why that is—why do people feel the need to reveal things? I don’t know. Stuff about me has probably been wrongly reported out in the world. That doesn’t matter. Because I don’t even understand it myself—I mean, why I did such a thing. And why I’m going to be executed.
������� I hope you can forgive your brother. Well, to be more precise, I hope you can cope with it. But here, there’s no chance of me coping with it all. I know I just wrote that prison isn’t so bad, but there are exceptions. Like the nights. When I can’t sleep, I get very frightened by this place. In solitary confinement in prison (those of us who commit incendiary crimes are thrown into solitary) the concrete walls and the iron doors that shut me off from the outside world seem only to heighten that feeling of terror. Every sound echoes coldly against the concrete and iron. It’s the heaviness and the indifference of such hardness that scares me, more than being locked up in here. I wonder if you can understand.
������� Images of my own actions drift before my eyes. The heat of the moment, the sensation in the air—I experience everything as if I were reliving it. Down to the last trivial motions—even rubbing my eyes and swallowing my saliva. But in these visions, there are butterflies flying around me. I’m sure they’re not real. But it’s as though the butterflies are trying to disrupt the images I remember in my madness . . . It’s almost as if they have come to save me.
Do you remember the first time I ever held a camera?
������� As far as everyone else is concerned, perhaps that was a fateful encounter—me and a camera. But a camera meant everything to me. Literally, everything. That’s because I interacted with the world through the lens of a camera.
������� My first camera was like a toy, a black Polaroid. The first photographic subject in my life was you, my older sister. “Take a picture in case I disappear.” You were only twelve years old, and that’s what you said to me. I could sense the danger then too. If Father were to kill
us, I wanted to leave evidence that we had been alive in this world, otherwise . . . No, that’s a lie. That’s not it. It didn’t matter to me whether I lived or died. What I used to think was, “Even if he kills you, this way I can still see your face every day.” You were always so concerned about what would happen if he killed you. What would happen to your little brother if you died. That’s why you said, “I want you to take a picture of everything about me. Put all of me into this photo.” Back then, sis, were you really just thinking of me when you said that? That wasn’t all, was it? Of course it’s true that you worried about me, but you—still a child yourself—you couldn’t help but find it strange, the phenomenon of having your image appear
on the page as a “photo,” and maybe you were thinking that your self could be transferred into the picture? By doing so, you could find a safe place to go. Like inside the little locked closet in your room, or in the openings of the refrigerator or cupboard that no one paid any attention to, or outside, in the niches between the concrete blocks in our park, behind the flower beds . . . Maybe, if you could have, you would have left me and gone off somewhere.
������� Now I’ve grown up and won all kinds of awards for my photographs, but it’s because of what happened back then. Because I was so serious about trying to get all of you into the photo when I was clicking the shutter. Over and over again, I wanted to rob you of yourself . . . Even if what was left was nothing more than an empty shell. I was trying to capture the entirety of you in a photograph.
������� It wasn’t until much later that I realized what I really wanted was neither you nor a photo of you.
Sorry for bringing up bad memories. Thanks for getting me a lawyer. I’d just figured I’d have a court-appointed lawyer, so I am grateful. I don’t like him much—even the watch he wears is hideous—but I guess he’s better than nothing.
������� . . . Why is that? What’s better than nothing? . . . No matter what I do, I’m going to be executed.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Last Winter We Parted
By S Riaz
A writer visits a convicted murderer, photographer Yudai Kiharazaka, in prison. He is awaiting execution for burning two women to death and photographing them as they were on fire. Now, the author wants to write a book about him and his crimes and begins to investigate what happened. During his investigation, the writer is constantly warned off. He discovers that the photographer and his sister Akari were raised in an institution, the children of neglectful parents; one of which abandoned them. When he finally meets Akari, he finds she is a promiscuous woman, who seems to bring tragedy to her lovers.
We follow the story through interviews, meetings, letters and even through twitter, as the story jumps from character to character. There is the first victim, Akiko, , the photographer and his sister, Yudai’s friend Katari and the rather creepy ‘doll creator’. This is a dark and disturbing crime novel, dealing with obsession, stalking and fantasies. As the story unfolds we wonder whether Yudai’s confessions are actually true, for nothing in this book is straight forward.
Although I enjoyed this book, I felt slightly distanced from the characters. That may have simply been the style of the writing, or it could have been due to the translation. However, it was certainly an intriguing read. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publishers, via NetGalley, for review.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
dark and thought-provoking murder mystery about the measurable price of human life
By Patricia Loftfjeld
So short! So wonderful! Definitely a one-sitting book, and a very dark one at that. The book starts off on what feels like familiar ground--a writer is investigating a convicted killer, but begins to think the killer is innocent--but any sense of familiarity is blown away as the plot unfolds into one of the strangest and most thought-provoking books I've read in a while. It asks questions about the value of art (is perfection worth a human life?), about imitation (can a picture of a person be better than the person themselves?), and about more traditional crime fiction topics like the price of obsession and the value of revenge.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A novel of philosophy, psychology, and crime
By TChris
The crime novels of Fuminori Nakamura explore the psychology of the criminal mind while making the point that the criminal mind is difficult to distinguish from the noncriminal mind. Guilt is often a fluid and ambiguous concept, easily shared and spread, not always understood by those who refuse to look beyond the superficial.
Yudai Kiharazaka, a photographer, has been sentenced to death for the murders of two women who were incinerated in separate fires. The narrator of Last Winter We Parted has been commissioned to write a book about the murderer. Some people the narrator interviews speculate that Kiharazaka burned the women so that he could photograph them in flames, thus replaying a version of the climactic scene in a classic Japanese short story called "Hell Screen."
The narrator begins his project after becoming fixated on a photograph Kiharazaka took of black butterflies obscuring a figure that might be a woman. He is also drawn to Kiharazaka's obsession with lifelike silicon dolls that are patterned on real women, an obsession shared by a group known as K2.
Some chapters of Last Winter We Parted consist of Kiharazaka's letters to the narrator and to his sister. Some chapters relate the narrator's interviews with people who knew Kihirazaka, each adding insight to his life while prompting the reader to question what really happened. Some chapters follow the narrator's introspective life as he decides what to do about Yukie, his girlfriend. The narrator becomes uncomfortably involved with both Kiharazaka and his sister while coming to understand their true nature ... and his own.
Last Winter We Parted is a short but complex novel. The truth about the two deaths is surprising and complicity is found in unexpected places. This is the kind of novel that needs to be read in its entirety before all of the parts can be understood and integrated. Some chapters require reinterpretation by the story's end, while the ending gives the reader a new understanding of the entire book, including the dedication. The novel's brevity and tight construction make all of that possible without placing an undue burden on the reader.
Last Winter We Parted also considers the relationship of art to the living and the dead, as well as the reality that the art of fiction can inspire. This is a work of philosophy and psychology as much as it is a crime novel, yet the mystery that unfolds is riveting. Near the end, a character asks "Just what does it all mean? This world we live in." Nukamura provides no answer, but he offers the reader fruitful opportunities to think about the question.
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