Translated by Paul Warham
Vertical, 2006
Reviewed by Pedro Ponce

The Cage, Japanese mystery author Kenzo Kitakata's third novel to be translated into English, centers on the apparently ordinary life of Kazuya Takino. Takino is married and runs a small grocery store in suburban Tokyo. Not the most promising noir protagonist, unless you factor in his penchant for smoking and torture. In the novel's atmospheric opening, Takino deals with a troublemaker at his store:

The punk stole a nervous glance at him through half-closed eyes, and then looked away again quickly. Takino took the cigarette and dropped it inside the guy's shirt. The guy suddenly convulsed and shook off Takino's hands. He rolled around on the ground, trying to put it out.

It soon becomes clear that Takino is no stranger to troublemaking. Before settling down in the suburbs, he was part of a yakuza crime gang formerly run by Sakurai, now deceased, whose gritty wisdom continues to haunt Takino in his new life. While mired in a hostile bid for his supermarket, Takino runs into an old friend from his past, precipitating a return to his criminal ways.

Genre tends to be a dirty word, suggestive as it is of a formula slavishly imitated by practitioners and obliviously consumed by readers. But the boundaries implied by genre are potentially frontiers; the survival of a genre arguably depends as much, if not more, on inventive play with narrative conventions and reader expectations. Kitakata's terse, darkly comic style should please the noir purist. Takino's latest venture into gang life is obstinately tracked by Takagi, a police investigator nicknamed "The Old Dog":

"Your face looks like shit," Takagi said. He breathed out a cloud of cigarette smoke, and watched it disperse into the early evening light. Takino put a cigarette to his lips. Bruises always looked worst when they were just about to heal.
"I fell headfirst down the stairs," he said.
"The stairs seem to have been very thorough. You've got bruises all over your
face."
"Don't tell me you came here to wish me a speedy recovery."

The author's noir style is only one level, however, to his exploration of the complex relationship between good and evil. Just as Takino's life in the suburbs masks a criminal past, Takagi's work in the justice system is offset with his own capacity for violence. Drunk and frustrated with the progress of his investigation, he takes his problems out on his son, Kazuo:

He felt ashamed. When he hit him, Kazuo looked dumbfounded but there
wasn't a hint of resistance in his eyes. Perhaps he was afraid of his father. Or maybe he just didn't want to get into a fight he knew he couldn't win.

Kitakata layers past and present to flesh out Takino's backsliding. The scenario might be a familiar one, but The Cage gradually reveals a new and unsettling variation. While the titular image suggests the prison of crime, Takino's story also figures clean living as a cage that is just as potentially restricting.