This is a tense and compelling thriller which moves between timelines. It keeps the reader involved with the characters.

3.5 stars. It's 12 August 1985. Journalist Kazumasa Yuuki is trying to wrap up his work at the North Kanto Times so he can head off for a weekend climbing with his colleague Kyoichiro Anzai. They plan to tackle the demanding Tsuitate rock face on Mount Tanigawa, something far more challenging than anything Yuuki's attempted before. However, just as he's about to leave the office, he and his colleagues hear a shocking news report. A Japan Airlines jumbo jet carrying 524 people has disappeared from the radar; soon, news comes that it has crashed into a ridge near Mount Osutaka, with almost complete loss of life. The staff of the paper are stunned into silence. This is on their patch. Suddenly their small provincial paper is on the front line for the deadliest airline crash in history. Hideo Yokoyama's novel covers the seven days that follow, as the editorial staff struggle to overcome internal factions to deal with the crash. Based on the true story of the Japan Airlines Flight 123, and inspired by Yokoyama's own experiences working as a reporter for a regional newspaper in Gunma Prefecture at the time, this is a sobering and thoughtful story about rising to meet challenges - both in and out of the office.

The Japanese title of the novel is Climber's High. You might well be wondering what that has to do with an air crash, but the answer lies in a parallel storyline, which picks up Yuuki's life seventeen years on from the JAL disaster. We find him back at Tsuitate in 2002, finally making his first attempt on the rock face in company with Anzai's son Rintaro. The challenge that lies in front of him reminds Yuuki of the last time he was meant to climb Tsuitate, and all the events that happened at the time. And 'climber's high' - the rush of adrenaline which can drive climbers to extraordinary speed and daring, but which can depart just as quickly, leaving them frozen with fear - can be applied equally well to the events of that dizzying week following the crash. 

Yuuki and his colleagues at the North Kanto Times simply aren't prepared for a story of this magnitude. Theirs is the life of a provincial paper: covering the local high school sports teams; reporting the opening of new shopping centres; and delicately picking a path through local political factionalism. The latter is all the more difficult because these factions have seeped into the offices, causing deep ideological divides and pointless enmity. As Yuuki and the rest of the team face up to the JAL disaster, they assume that they just have to produce honest, compassionate, truthful journalism in order to create their paper. But the upper echelons within the newspaper are too busy with political wrangling to let the journalists just get on and do their job. When Yuuki - formerly a free-roaming reporter - is appointed as JAL crash desk chief, he suddenly finds that his new role will require determination, diplomacy and a dogged fight to tell the real story, free of bias or obfuscation. It'll prove to be a much more demanding task than he ever imagined, not just because the story is so horrific, but because he can't just do his job.

The newsroom becomes the beating heart of the story, with Yuuki's colleagues banding around to either support or frustrate his efforts. There's Kamejima (the chief copy-editor); Kishi (on the political news desk); Oimura (the managing editor; predictably, a bit of a nightmare); Nozawa (copy-editor for the local news, and a rival of Yuuki's); Kasuya (the editor-in-chief); and Todoroki (the chief local news editor). Even these men, who work at the 'rock face' of journalism, aren't always prepared to let the story be told. For some of them, the JAL crash is someone else's problem, someone else's story - a flight that was from Tokyo, heading to Osaka, with only one person from Gunma on board. Why should they give up their entire paper for a national story? For others, including some of the long-standing reporters, the crash threatens to overshadow their own triumphs some years earlier - stories which have kept them well-respected and well-supplied with sake ever since. Motives differ, and Yuuki must find a way to get his story out without offending the powers-that-be, or short-changing the victims of the disaster.

As you can see, this isn't really a story about what caused the crash, or even the crash itself. It's about how an inward-looking group of people, used to championing local issues, find themselves called to compete at the national level. It's about how local and office politics get in the way - one senses that this is much more of a problem in Japan, where clientelism and hierarchy are immensely powerful forces, than it'd be in the UK. And it's about how one man has to face an apparently insurmountable challenge - whether that's telling the story of a unique tragedy, or finally climbing a rock face that will challenge him physically to the utmost. Yuuki's challenges don't end there. We also watch him struggling to come to terms with the recent death of a young colleague, for which he feels responsible, and wrestling with his role as a father. One wonders whether Yuuki is quite a common kind of father in Japanese culture: often absent, committed to his work at the expense of his family, unable to communicate, often resorting to physical chastisement rather than discussion in moments of stress. Now he has two children, Jun and Yuka, whom he barely knows and who have become shy or resentful of him. His relationship with Jun troubles him particularly, but is it too late to change? Facing all these issues, Yuuki is strangely haunted by a comment once made by Anzai senior: 'I climb up to step down'. What does that mean? Can it help Yuuki get some perspective?

The internal politics and office manoeuvring make parts of Seventeen feel very much like Six Four, the other Yokoyama novel I've read. But I found Seventeen much more satisfying overall: it feels less detached from its subject (detached storytelling is something that has frequently frustrated me in Japanese fiction). It deals with the JAL crash in a compassionate and sensitive way, and captures the deep frustration of trying to do the right thing, while being hemmed in by red tape. The tight seven-day storyline keeps the tension tightly-wound, as Yuuki must decide how to deal with the increasing flow of information about the crash - quite an achievement, actually, to keep it gripping, because Yuuki is almost entirely desk-bound. All in all, a powerful story based on true events that still have the power to shock (the JAL crash is still the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in history). 

This review will be posted on my blog on 16 April 2020 on the following link:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/04/16/seventeen-hideo-yokoyama

It took me a while to get into the story. It is certainly different from what I expect from reading the blurb as it’s more of a character-driven kind of novel. Described as an investigative thriller, it is unlike any thriller I’ve read as it was more focused on Yuuki’s character and his relationship to people around him. As Yuuki leads the biggest scoop, the pressure is mounting to deliver the news first and something the bosses would approve. It is interesting to get an insight into how a newspaper was made and how stressful it can get. The office politics is portrayed realistically and something that happened every time. Yuuki is a complex character and I struggle to understand and connect with him. It might be because of the culture difference. But it also made me want to know more about him, his personal and professional life.

There’s a lot of characters in the story and it can be hard to follow all the Japanese names. There are also certain parts that I believe could easily be removed as I find it of no importance to the story though I appreciate the detailed description and examination of some situations. Japanese culture is so very fascinating and it’s nice to get a glimpse of it through this book. It may have less thrill than I expected but I was glad to be able to read something different. Overall, it was surprisingly a good read. A well-written novel with a very interesting mix of fact and fiction.

I have always had a fascination with Japan, as well as Japanese authors, with my favourite writer, Haruki Murakami, hailing from that part of the world, so it was an easy decision to read SEVENTEEN. I love to learn about different cultures and this title educated me in a way that fit within the story, just like Yokoyama's previous release, SIX FOUR, which I also enjoyed immensely.

I found the story incredibly addictive, and written in an easy to read style that grabs you and doesn't let you go. The author breaks everything down, giving an examination of situations in minute detail. The characterisation is pretty amazing too, this guys knows how to write!

On publication in Japan SEVENTEEN achieved a 2003 Weekly Bunshun Mystery Ranking #1 and came second in the first Honya Award in 2004. It was subsequently made into a TV drama (2005) and then a film (2008), both of which won multiple awards in Japan.

This is a book that is more than worthy of your time, I hope he keeps writing in this vein as I for one would read anything else he decided to publish. A Japanese crime phenomenon!

I would like to thank Hideo Yokoyama, Quercus Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest and impartial review.

The book is focused more on the background of a small local newspaper that has to report on the biggest air crash known to date that happened just at their doorstep. This leads to a lot of power struggles, office politics and real politics, sometimes hard to keep up if you do not pay close attention to all the names involved.

All in all it was a good story that kept me engaged from start to finish, with the added benefit of having a lot about rock climbing, which I don't practice but I like to read about. Also interesting to learn about Japanese culture, which I like to do.

It's 1985 and reporter Kazumasa Yuuki is suddenly thrust into a major story as a passenger plane crashes into a mountain. Fast forward to 2002 as Yuuki reflects on those tumultuous seventeen days and a promise he made to himself regarding a colleague.

This is a deeply complex book and there's so much more to it than initially meets the eye. It's part thriller, part rumination on family with a healthy dose of newspaper politics. Yuuki has a difficult relationship with his teenage son and with pressure at his job mounting he finds it increasingly difficult to communicate with him. The infighting and power struggles at the paper enter into near farce as there's a near fistfight over paper distribution. The story of the crash is an ever evolving one as everyone rushes to get the scoop but fusses over the final details. The present day portions of the novel are more refreshing as Yuuki goes on a climbing expedition with someone he sees as a surrogate son. Yuuki is the main focus of the novel but he's a flawed character. He's indecisive, terrified of consequence and withdrawn when he needs to act. It can makes this book frustrating at times, it's certainly absorbing and enthralling at points but it also feels like theres something there that you can reach out at but not quite touch. More reflection of its culture than thriller, it just didn't quite hit the mark for me.

I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

I was interested in this book as the premise seemed interesting and not like something i had read before. Whilst the actual event within the book i haven't read before, i found the whole feeling of the book was samey in comparison to other crime/thrillers I've picked up. I did like the way the story flowed but i just found it underwhelming and i do not know how the original version compares to this translated one

This story was not what I thought it was going to be. I expected there to be a lot more about the plane crash. The story is full of the politics and rivalries of a newspaper office. They are interesting but not the action packed story I was looking for.

Although its stated that this is an investigative thriller, I would say it focuses more on the inner workings of a Japanese newspaper. This isn't a bad thing but I feel like this statement will only lead to confusion or disappointment for the readers. It is quite a slow moving plot and is quite heavy on details, so it can seem quite dense but I found it to be an interesting read. I enjoyed finding out how this newspaper organisation functioned on a daily basis and to see the relationships between the characters, although it can be a little tricky to keep with all of the characters. Due to the slow pacing it did take me a little while to get into the book though. The writing is good and the characters are all well written. Overall I thought it was an interesting, well written book, but not as gripping as I had hoped.

Wow. This was an immersive and utterly compelling read. Though billed as a mystery, it isn’t really; it is literary fiction, and damned fine literary fiction at that. Not that classification matters when a book is as good as this one.
Seventeen is one of those books that stay with you. On one level it is a fascinating insight into the workings of a small daily newspaper with all the tensions, infighting and personality conflicts that come from a group of people working together. Overlaying that is the local and regional political dimension control of the newspaper is in the hands of rival political factions, and each side spends a long time trying to oust the other in a rivalry that seeks to benefit local politicians, but has no thought for the readers of the paper.
In the midst of this endless petty bitching and squabbling is our seasoned reporter, Yukki, working at the North Kanto Times, who finds himself in charge of the coverage of the biggest air disaster the area has ever seen – and it is in their patch. Seventeen tells the story of how that coverage impacts on Yuuki, his family and everyone involved in the reporting and does so in an intimate, searching and very on point fashion.
Here are all the small decisions that make a huge impact on coverage and circulation; the big editorial decisions that make or break the reputation of those in charge; the tensions between advertising, circulation and editorial and in the midst of this, one man, Yuuki, struggling to make sense of it all.
Seventeen is very much a human story. Yuuki struggles with maintaining a home/work balance and pretty much loses all the time. Not by nature an outgoing individual, he prefers to stay out of the political squabbles, but when they threaten to overpower the biggest story the paper has ever handled, he knows he has to step up to the plate whatever the personal cost.
Seventeen is a dual timeline story. Written in part in the present as he fulfils a promise made to an old friend to climb a mountain, and also in the past with Yuuki looking back on that time seventeen years ago to a period which defined his future.
This is a complex novel which takes a bit of time to really settle into. This is partly because the Japanese situation feels a bit clunky to begin with to this western reader, with so many characters and a huge series of interwoven relationships. But once I had overcome my uncertainty, this book held my attention in a strong and steady grip.
Yuuki is no archetypal hero, but he overcomes some pretty big personal obstacles to find his way through and in the end his courage is rewarded.
For those who love newspapers, this is a must read. For an insight into the world of journalism and macho culture, it is exceptional. For those who just love to read a deeply personal story of loss and self-realisation, it is a joyous read.
Highly recommended.

Seventeen is the second of Hideo Yokoyama’s translated novels that I’ve had the pleasure of reading and if anything I enjoyed it more than the first, which is not always the case with second novels, particularly translated ones.

Japan Airlines (JAL) Flight 123 provides the background for this novel which centres around Kazumasa Yuuki, a reporter for the North Kanto Times (NKT). Yuuki is about to embark on a climbing expedition with his best friend at the paper Anzai when disaster strikes.

A jumbo jet has crashed, literally on the newspapers doorstep with an unprecedented loss of life.

Seventeen years later and Yuuki is about to try the same expedition again with Anzai's son. Just getting to the bottom of the mountain throws him back in time to that fateful week in which disaster struck Japan.

Described as an investigative thriller set in the aftermath of an air disaster, Seventeen isn’t a thriller as we would perhaps usually know them in the UK, but there is something with this novel that left me unable to put it down.

I’ve previously read that Hideo Yokoyama regards the crime as the least interesting part of the stories he tells. The crime in this novel could be perceived as the horrific crash that causes the investigation that NKT are keen to get to the heart of, or it could be the way that these events are covered by NKT and other news channels.

Whatever the crime, the way that Hideo Yokoyama tells the story is certainly the most interesting I've read in a while...

Since I read and really enjoyed Yokoyama’s novel Six Four, I really looked forward to this one. I can’t say this book is as good as Six Four, but it is certainly worth picking up. As I began reading, I was confused because the book is described as an “investigative thriller”. This is certainly an inaccurate label because it is a slow-paced, complex and thoughtful examination of the inner workings of a newspaper organization as it struggles to cover a major news story.

Part of the novel is set in 2003 as the protagonist, Kazumasa Yuuki, is climbing the Tsuitate rock face of Mount Tanigawa. As he does so, he thinks back to a week seventeen years earlier when the crash of a plane interrupted his planned first attempt to scale it. In 1985, Yuuki is a seasoned reporter for a regional newspaper when a Japan Airlines jet crashes into a mountain, killing 520. Yuuki, a career reporter, is made JAL desk chief “in charge of seeing this story through to the end.” As he works to have staff write “detailed, informative articles,” he finds himself caught in the middle of power struggles between different factions of the organization.

Though not a thriller, there is suspense. Yuuki’s experience is as a reporter who has shown no interest in a managerial position, so will he be able to fulfill the requirements of this new role when faced with perhaps the biggest story the newspaper would ever cover? His job is complicated by the fact that Yuuki feels “with his lack of self-control, he should never be put in a position where he could exercise control over others.” Will he be able to successfully navigate his way around the “internal machinations at the paper” where it seems that all his superiors have conflicting hidden agendas? As a 57-year-old, will he be able to scale a 330-metre vertical cliff on a mountain where 779 climbers had lost their lives? In addition, will Yuuki be able to repair his strained relationship with his son?

The book certainly shows how news stories are covered. Since the author was himself an investigative reporter with a regional Japanese newspaper for a dozen years, he certainly knows the rivalries that can develop among various departments who each have their own goals. Yokoyama actually covered the JAL Flight 123 tragedy so the details of that actual event are realistic. Sometimes it is difficult to remember the functions of the many characters, but titles and roles are usually mentioned when a character appears. This repetition is somewhat tedious but necessary, especially for a non-Japanese reader who may have difficulty with the Japanese names. There is a detailed character glossary at the end of the book, but constant reference to it would be aggravating.

Yuuki is a fully developed character. As he faces setbacks and makes decisions, some wrong and some right, his personality emerges. Through flashbacks, we learn that he feels great guilt for some actions in his past and that he has his “own dark storage shed of memories.” He does know himself to some degree: “Yuuki had suspected for a while that he was only able to love people who loved him. And even when he was sure he had their love, he couldn’t forgive them if they were ever cool or indifferent towards him. He expected absolute, unconditional love, and when he realized how elusive that was, he would fall into utter despair. So, instead, he kept his distance from people. He was wary of anyone who showed him kindness and never let anyone see his private side. He was afraid of being hurt.” In that week in 1985 and in the intervening seventeen years, Yuuki has learned more about himself and life: “As long as you kept running from birth until death, falling down, getting hurt, no matter how many times you suffered defeat, you got up and started running again. Personal happiness came from all the things and people you came across, ran into by chance along the way. . . . Climbing with all your might, concentrating completely on moving up, never being distracted by the meaningless stuff around you. He’d begun to think it was a fine way to lead a life.” Like Yoshinobu Mikami in Six Four, Yuuki has a career crisis and must tread carefully to avoid some pitfalls at work. He also has family difficulties which he needs to address.

This is a dense novel, but it has rewards for readers who persevere.

Note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Hideo Yokoyama's Seventeen centres on the JAL 123 airline disaster in 1985. Yuuki is an unambitious local news reporter who is unwillingly tapped to head his newspaper's coverage of the disaster. This event forces him to cancel a planned climbing trip, with unexpected consequences. Seventeen years later Yuuki is once again set upon performing this climb, this time as a middle-aged man.

Yuuki's attempts to do this gigantic story justice meet resistance from all quarters, and he ends up in a series of escalating confrontations as he tries to do the right thing in terms of both the gravity of the event and the impact on bereaved families and survivors. His chosen methods get a lot of his more conservative management and colleagues offside, and he begins to question his own motives and effectiveness.

While he is caught up in this drama, Yuuki also has to deal with family troubles and a crisis with one of his friends.

As with Six Four, Yokoyama excels at capturing the internecine office politics in Japanese companies. In his preceding book, the political games were being played out with a police media liaison officer and crime reporters; this time his setting is within a regional newspaper office. Yokoyama is a former journalist himself, which lends his story significant verisimilitude. This is a very different and affecting novel.

The urgency of the novel gets stuck for me between a sense of ethos and honor I don't share and so I wasn't drawn in, much as I totally enjoyed this author'S first novel which was also a kind of display of values and ensuing action .. foreign to me and intriguing. But this time , not so much .. just wrong reader here ...

Seventeen bills itself as "an investigative thriller in the aftermath of an air disaster". Truly, it isn't.

Instead, Seventeen is a competent and intriguing evocation of the inner workings of a local Japanese newspaper, the North Kanto Times, using the backdrop of an air disaster on the paper's doorstep to allow simmering resentments and rivalries to boil over. We are introduced to Kazumasa Yuuki, who is trying to make an ascent on Tsuitate rock face some seventeen years after making a promise to his colleague, Anzai, to climb the face with him. This leads Yuuki into a spiral of reminiscences of the events seventeen years ago, where the planned ascent of the rock was interrupted by the crash of a Japanese Airlines 747 into a nearby mountain, causing the deaths of 524 people.

Seventeen years ago, Yuuki had been a roving reporter with the North Kanto Times, assigned to lead the Air Crash desk. He was responsible for sending reporters out into the field, editing their stories, deciding the layout and, ultimately, which stories would make the cut and which would not. Yuuki was the most experienced reporter at the paper who had not gone into management, leaving him both respected and shunned.

The paper itself was constantly compromised in its effort to sustain circulation. It could not make political statements, could not ally more with one side than another (a problem in a province where the two main rivals in Japan's ruling political party held their bases), and shunned real news in favour of reporting local school sports fixtures, naming every player in an effort to sell the paper to kids' parents. But politics loomed large in the boardroom where the chairman and managing director were engaged in a bitter power struggle, sucking staff into one faction or the other.

So when the 747 went down in the paper's area - despite not being on a major flight path - the paper entered an existentialist crisis. The natural instinct of a journalist is to go after a scoop, but when the scoop comes, the fear is paralysing. Nobody knows how to play it, and the temptation is to retreat to the familiar comforts of routine basketball games and ceremonial openings of arts festivals. This is the context into which Yuuki is thrust - with all eyes on him. And at the same time, Yuuki has his own personal issues to resolve, not least of which is the sudden collapse of his climbing buddy Anzai from the circulation department...

Seventeen is a very complex novel with many characters and a network of relationships between them. It can be tricky to keep up with exactly who is who, particularly for anglophone readers who are not attuned to Japanese names. Hideo Yokoyama includes little summary lines when reintroducing a character to remind us of their role - this can feel irritating and repetitive, but without it I suspect the reader would be hopelessly lost. A further issue raised by the complexity is the uneasiness the reader will have in discerning what is actually the focus of the novel. Is it the plane crash? Is it the office politics? Is it Yuuki's personal situation? In truth it is all of these and none of them. It is really a slice of drama, a fly on the wall, from a newspaper office at a time of crisis. There is no particular beginning and no end. There is no great narrative arc, no moral, no winners and losers. It just is.

And then there's the present day, climbing Tsuitate. I can see that there was a need to have the odd period of relief from the intensity and claustrophobia of the North Kanto Times - and the open air and focus on small, technical details of the climb provided that. It also offered an opportunity for Yuuki to put some distance between himself and the events of the past. But this came at the expense of elevating one strand of the story - Yuuki's personal life - above the others in significance even though it was perhaps not the most prominent line at the time of the disaster.

Overall this is a complex, thoughtful and thought-provoking novel that has been somewhat cruelly mis-labelled to give a sure-fire guarantee of disappointing many of its readers.

Author Hideo Yokoyama has been described as a crime author who says that the crime is the least interesting part of his books. As a reader, you need to bear this in mind; as this is very much a novel described as a ‘thriller,’ which is much more interested in the aftermath of events, and – in particular – the way events are covered by the press, than in the air crash, which is central to the plot.

Indeed, Yokoyama worked as a journalist on a regional newspaper, in the same way that the main character in this novel does. Kazumasa Yuuki is a reporter on the North Kanto Times and we see his story presented from two time periods – 1985, when he is thrown into leading the story of an airline disaster in the locality, as well as seventeen years later, in 2003, when he climbs a mountain with the son of a friend and looks back on that fateful week of the crash.

Yuuki is an interesting character. He is the longest serving reporter on the newspaper he works at, working as a ‘roving,’ or ‘relief,’ reporter. Some envy him the ability to work on different stories, but others see him as lacking ambition or unwilling to take responsibility for others. Indeed, there is an event in which a young reporter has died, after Yuuki sent him back to cover a story and, although he is found not to be responsible, this obviously colours the way that his colleagues see him. He is closest to Kyoichiro Anzai, another outsider, with whom he likes to go climbing and he is meant to be going on an expedition with him the day that the plane crashes.

This is a slow moving, interesting novel, which centres on Yuuki’s character and, very much, on office politics and journalism. Obviously, this is something that Yokoyama knows well and his world (although culturally different from our own) has great authenticity. In 2003, Yuuki is about to finally challenge himself with the climb he meant to do so many years ago, but this time with Anzai’s son. This novel is about the way that week in the newsroom changed Yuuki, about the way major news stories are covered, about politics at work and you do always view events as he does – from the outside, as an observer. Interesting, but not as gripping as I had hoped.

Una settimana di vero giornalismo e lotte interne nella redazione di un giornale locale, che si trova a dover coprire il più grande disastro aereo della Storia accaduto sul proprio territorio.
Ma gelosie interne, insicurezze personali, rivalità fra reporter e sezioni rendono l vicenda ancora più dura da gestire di quello che è.
E nel frattempo Yuuki, il protagonista, vive il dramma di un amico - il suo unico amico - vittima di un aneurisma, e del mistero che circonda il suo vero ruolo al giornale.
Un romanzo che viene erroneamente pubblicizzato come thriller investigativo, ma che ha in realtà il suo maggiore interesse nello spaccato di una cultura profondamente diversa dalla nostra anche nelle dinamiche sociali e personali.
Soffre purtroppo di una certa prolissità e pesantezza, che rallentano la lettura senza però diminuire il piacere della scoperta.

The blurb that promises 'an investigative thriller' isn't doing this book any favours. There's no real investigation, nor much to thrill - instead we have a thoughtful piece about newspaper politics and the impact that reporting on an air disaster has on a group of reporters and others. Setting expectations clearly would help receptions of this book.

There's something very Japanese about the way the present story of a climb up a difficult mountain face is set against the main air crash strand set 17 years ago. The translation, however, feels distanced and somewhat opaque, as if we're experiencing the book at one remove rather than directly. I found myself skimming in parts but there's an indefinable air of a kind of metaphysical mystery that kept me reading to the end. An oblique book with a subtle hold on the right reader's imagination: 3.5 stars.