*Setlowe,
Richard. The Sexual Occupation of Japan. HarperCollins. June
1999. 290p. ISBN: 0-06-018393-4. $25.00. Fiction.
Peter Saxon is in Japan to arrange a merger between an
American media conglomerate and a Japanese electronics
giant, a high-stakes game for control of the entertainment
and communications industry worldwide. Thirty years earlier, as a pilot in
Vietnam, he faced a terror that was only assuaged in
the “floating world” of
Japanese sex clubs. Now, threatened by an enemy aiming to destroy both him and
the history-making deal, the American must confront what happened in the past—a
haunting love affair with a nightclub hostess who had her own history of pain—and
its legacy in the present: a half-century of Japanese hatred and jealousy that
goes back through Vietnam to the devastating fire bombings of World War II. In
his fifth novel, Setlowe tells an intelligent and engrossing story of love and
war, one crafted with exquisite skill, richly detailed, insightful in its implications,
and immensely satisfying. Highly recommended.