One of the hottest-selling books here this spring is Ryu Murakami’s “Get Out of the Peninsula,” a novel set in 2010 that portrays a Japan in ruins, ravaged by economic and social collapse.
Armies of homeless and unemployed have been cast adrift. Japan’s alliance with America lies in tatters. Chinese and Indian criminal gangs run amok.
But Murakami’s main villains are a group of North Korean commandos. On the opening day of the baseball season, they storm the Fukuoka Dome stadium on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. As incompetent Japanese politicians fail to act, more North Korean troops arrive, sealing Kyushu off from the rest of Japan.
In Japan these days, bad guys just don’t come any more sinister than North Koreans.
