Saturday, February 2, 2013

People Who Eat Darkness - The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo - and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up, By Richard Lloyd Parry


The original title of this book was People Who Eat Darkness. The subtitle was added for American audiences. What does that say about us? While you are thinking about that, I’ll fill you in on this oddly engaging book.

This is the “true crime” story about a 21-year-old British former flight attendant, Lucy Blackman (pictured), who moved to Tokyo at the invitation of a friend. Her friend assured her that she could make gobs of money working as a "hostess" in the Roppongi entertainment district clubs. Unfortunately, Lucy hooked up with a serial sex offender and ended up drugged, dismembered and buried in a cave. Interestingly, that was sort of the least interesting part of the book.
 
What kept me reading was author Richard Lloyd Parry’s exposé of the Japanese culture, and his keen observations on how Lucy’s disappearance and death so drastically affected each member of her family.

To begin with, I found it uncomfortably enthralling that a 21-year-old girl would move to Tokyo to take a job literally, and only, flirting with and flattering men – a 21st century Geisha. Western women are highly valued by the wealthy Japanese businessmen who frequent the Roppongi clubs. For some reason it would seem less disturbing if they were prostitutes.

And then there’s the Japanese criminal justice system, which even Parry (pictured), who was the Tokyo bureau chief for the London Times for 10 years could not explain. Tokyo consistently ranks among the world's safest large cities. But as Parry pointed out, “low crime rates says more about Japanese culture than about police efficiency.” And in fact, it seemed that the police were so inexperienced at dealing with abduction and murder that they just really didn’t know what to do. So they didn’t do much of anything.