Shadow Shinjuku by Ryu Takeshi - Book Tour

 Book Blurb

The streets of Tokyo are different at night.

There is darkness behind the glitter and the neon lights, and people who prefer to stay in the shadows, to dwell in the underworld – whores, gangsters, the homeless, the lost.

People like Sato.

 He’s part of this world, he always has been, but a feeling of change is lingering in the heavy air of the bustling city. A feeling brought to life by fateful encounters of solitary souls.

Shadow Shinjuku is a dark, yet magical journey into the depths of Tokyo’s nightlife and the depths of the human soul.

Ryu Takeshi’s first novel is both a crime thriller and urban fantasy. It's a unique and mesmerizing blend of the imagery of Japanese animation and film, the colors and details of street photography, and the mystical lyricism of soulful music.

But above everything, it is a gripping story that doesn’t let go.

Amazon UK : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Shinjuku-Japanese-Crime-Thriller-ebook/dp/B09C2RPCBP

Amazon US https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Shinjuku-Japanese-Crime-Thriller-ebook/dp/B09C2RPCBP

 

Excerpt
It was the 4^th of July 1993. On the other side of the globe, people were waking up to a day when they would go on to eat millions of hamburgers and drink gallons of Coke in the name of independence. “The Firm” was finally dethroning “Jurassic Park” in the cinemas; Janet Jackson’s “That’s the way love goes” topped the Billboard 100; and Pete Sampras won his first ever Wimbledon title, beating Jim Courier in the final round. It must have been a beautiful Sunday for many people. For me… For me, it was just another day on the streets of Tokyo, with nowhere to sleep. The rain kept falling, people kept walking by without even sparing a look, and my head hurt like hell. At least it made me forget how hungry I was.

It’s not entirely true that I didn’t have anywhere to sleep. I did have my cardboard box, like all the other homeless people in the vicinity of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building in Shinjuku. Mine was the average size, I would say, but as I was only ten, it looked like I had more living space than the others. You could say I was well off. It’s all relative, right?

I was sitting in my box, the lid open, waiting for the rain to stop so that I could go look for some food. There was a broad road running above our heads, and it gave us protection from rain, snow, and all that stuff. I hated sitting in that box and waiting. I hated the uselessness of the moment, the time passing, going to waste forever. I felt robbed.

I was staring silently at nothing, letting my misery gradually crush my will to bother, when I suddenly heard footsteps behind me. Not the usual sound of footsteps that I heard all the time as people trundled past. They had depth. Each time the sole of the shoes touched the ground, I felt a wave of energy hit me, and a chill went down my spine. I was hesitant to turn and look, but my curiosity got the better of my fear.

I saw two men. One in his early forties, the other maybe some fifteen years older. They walked slowly, as if they had the time on their side, unlike me. The older man had a large, black umbrella, which he was holding above their heads. The younger man was walking next to him with his hands in his pockets, and I immediately knew that the footsteps I had heard belonged to him.

When they reached my box, I looked up at them, and suddenly I could hardly breathe. Time seemed to have stopped. Even the raindrops seemed suspended in the air as if attached to invisible strings; the wind had gone silent, staring at us with wide-open eyes; and the street, which a moment earlier had been humming with the drone of a car or two, was empty.

 

 Ryu loves to write. It’s a way for him to find and explore new worlds, both inner ones and those way outside. And this process is spontaneous and instinctive, his stories born out of a single image, following a path Ryu himself never fully understands – not its origin, nor its end -, immersed in the magic of the moment, and the magic of everything that surrounds us, the visible and the invisible.

 Ryu is a daydreamer, a believer in the magic of humanity, a friend to all the mystical creatures of the night, and a sucker for the visual beauty of anime. But above all else, Ryu is just a human being, like yourself.

 Ryu was born in 1983, has a beautiful wife, a funny little dog, and a lovely daughter. He adores sumo, practices traditional kenjutsu, sometimes plays basketball (Go Denver Nuggets!), relaxes playing video games, watching anime and reading books.

 Oh, and he loves to eat! But who doesn’t…

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