The Thief

Japanese author Fuminori Nakamura was propelled into the literary limelight with his novel The Thief, which was awarded Japan’s most illustrious award, the Kenzaburo Oe Prize in 2010. Two years later, this noir thriller was translated into English by a team of translators, Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates. Heavily atmospheric, filled with existential dread and ambiguously symbolic imagery, the crime drama centers on an unnamed protagonist whose easy existence as an extremely gifted pickpocket is threatened when he is caught up in the machinations of a diabolical crime boss who thinks of himself as the master of fate.

The novel is narrated by the thief, whose name we never find out, although late in the novel it is hinted that his “real” name may at some point have been Nishimura. The thief has spent his life perfecting the art of picking pockets and stealing wallets. Disappearing into a crowd, he has a preternatural ability to determine which person is the wealthiest, and thus least morally objectionable to rob. When he has selected his target, he moves so smoothly and with so little outward display that the moment of the actual theft is nigh undetectable. In fact, sometimes even the thief himself has no memory of where and how he stole a particular object. Nevertheless, it is clear that the thief lives for the moment of ecstasy he experiences when lifting a wallet from a stranger.

In perfecting his anonymous skills, the thief has become separated from most human connections. Just as the city where he finds himself is a maze of noir-inflected specific, but also somehow generic, “dim alleys, subway trains, underground passages, railway lines, graffiti, rotting lunch containers, black plastic bags with mysterious contents (‘having the unpleasant elasticity of dark meat’), dens of hellish decadence, and crowds” – so too, the thief only encounters people as victims of his crimes, or as semi-anonymous sex partners.



Still, sometimes the thief has flashes to his younger self. When he was still learning how to steal, he was haunted by the image of a tall tower – an object that shines like a beacon of a better, more impressive existence that is always just out of reach. He shared this haunting image with his lover, a married woman named Saeko, who died some time ago. The more the thief stole, the more the tower receded – he tells us that now, when he experiences the thrill of pick-pocketing, the tower is completely gone.

One day, the thief sees a teen boy and his mother trying to shoplift in a supermarket. They are both terrible at it and almost are caught, when the thief, feeling some kind of paternal instinct, steps in to protect the boy. After averting the arrest, the thief feels connected to the boy, whom he teaches better ways to steal, and at the same time, tries to steer away from a life of crime – something he is being forced into by his sex worker mother and her abusive “boyfriends.”

Just as he is getting to know this boy, the thief reconnects with his first criminal partner, Ishikawa, who comes with a job offer that seems foolish to refuse. A big gang boss, Kizaki, needs the thief and his colleague Tachibana to help with a simple burglary: they will tie up a rich old man and his mistress, keeping them out of the way while Kizaki’s own men will steal the contents of the man’s safe. No one gets hurt, everyone profits.



Of course, it is not as simple as that. The robbery goes off the way Kizaki described, but the next day, the thief learns that the old man was a prominent politician, who was brutally murdered after the thief and Tachibana left. Fearing for his life, he flees Tokyo. But then, worried about whether his relationship with the shoplifting boy has now put that boy and his mother in danger, the thief returns, falling right back into Kizaki’s clutches.

After a scene in which Kizaki sheds his bland demeanor, revealing an unhinged personal philosophy – he has decided that he is a god since he controls other people's fates – the mob boss offers the thief a way to get out from under the gang’s thumb. If the thief completes three increasingly difficult tasks, he can get his life back – an arrangement that seems as if it comes straight out of the world of myth or fairy tale.

The image of the tower returns to the thief’s mind as he goes about performing Kizaki’s demands. At the same time, he tries to secure the boy’s future by offering his mother money in order to release him into foster care and away from her – an offer that she happily accepts.



After the tasks have been performed, the thief realizes that all of this has been a setup and that he is doomed. Set upon by the crime syndicate’s goons, he is shot in an out-of-sight alley and left for dead. As he bleeds out, he sees the tall tower, now standing far off in a haze. Is it his death? Or is it a symbol of the uncaring world that will go on with or without him? The thief realizes that he now has a choice: he can simply give up and die, or else he can use his still-functioning hand to throw a coin toward the street, where he could attract a passerby’s attention.

The novel ends as the thief throws the coin.