Nishimura is a seasoned pickpocket. He roams the streets of Tokyo looking for rich men to rob, deftly sliding his fingers into their jacket or pant pockets to slip their wallets from them before notice. When he spots a young boy trying to steal from a grocery store, Nishimura helps him out and soon finds himself a young apprentice. He reluctantly trains the boy while simultaneously urging him to stop stealing and do something better with his life.
When Nishimura is asked to steal a few items from three prominent men, he'a given an ultimatum: refuse, or fail, and the young boy will die. Nishimura accepts, but despite his lackluster life, he decides that he isn't ready to accept his fate that easily.
This novel reads as a quick crime-like thriller which takes the reader into the underbelly of Japanese organized crime (outside of the yakuza). It's a slim novel, yet it's heft comes from the existential questions it continually poses. Nishimura ponders fate. Why do things happen to him? Was it his fate to end up a pickpocket, or was his fate controlled by the outside circumstances that pushed him into picking pockets? Is there a difference?
Beyond that, this novel places Nishimura outside society yet within it and longing to join it. As a criminal, he feels wholly unbound from the people around him, walking in a haze, picking pockets without realizing it. The relationships that he does form are manipulated, and everyone close to him falls away.
This wasn't a wholly depressing existential novel, though, as they often are. The Tower that fades in and out of Nishimura's view is both threatening and redemptive, a beacon of hope, emblematic of that same duality one character mentions about a fireworks show: "[Fireworks are] really beautiful. One of the most beautiful things in this life, in the world. But we take advantage of that beauty, yeah? We're waiting for a chance, when everyone's absorbed in the beauty. We're not looking at the fireworks, we're looking at people's pockets."
Whether or not it was Nishimura's fate to turn away from the Tower and the fireworks, he did, but that doesn't mean he can't look up at them again.
7/10 📕