A work of suspense depicting a terrorist attack targeting the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics in October 1964, this book brilliantly recreates the elevated national mood of the time. Two explosions rock the metropolis at the end of August with little over a month to go to the games. The first guts the house of the senior police officer in charge of security for the games; the second sets the police academy ablaze. Someone claims responsibility and declares his intention to derail the event, but the police hush up the attacks while secretly launching an investigation. The reputation of the nation is at stake and a suspect is soon found: Kunio Shimazaki, 24. The second son of a dirt-poor farming family in Japan's northeast, Shimazaki is a graduate student of Marxism at Tokyo University. A month earlier, his older brother?who had been sending money home for 20 years?died in an accident at the Olympic construction site. Determined to discover more about his death, Shimazaki gets a poorly paid laborer's job at the same place. The intense pressure to finish on time yields fatal accidents as well as deaths from the workers' addictive use of methamphetamine. His proletarian consciousness rudely awakened, Shimazaki starts to fight back against the state. Twelve sticks of dynamite he finds at work are his only weapons. He demands an 80-million-yen ransom payment in return for not attacking the opening ceremony. There are 75,000 spectators packed into the National Olympic Stadium and a further 80,000 outside, while the emperor and foreign dignitaries are also in attendance. As Japan's biggest-ever security operation goes into overdrive, Shimazaki, clutching his last two sticks of explosive, makes his way to the stadium. His target is the platform of the sacred flame . . .
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(Vol. 1)? ISBN 978-4043860043, 442pages
(Vol. 2)? ISBN 978-4043860050, 405pages