Point Zero

**A beautifully written mystery novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation.

First published in Japanese in 1959, the novel abandoned the template of closed-room mysteries so popular in pre-war Japan to embrace social criticism.**

Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by an intermediary. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Teiko travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance.

She discovers he had been a police officer in Tokyo after the war, keeping watch over pan pan girls, Japanese prostitutes catering to GIs. Some of these women have created a new life in Kanazawa and may have taken extreme measures to hide their past.