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MANCHUKUO 1987
MANCHUKUO 1987 is an alt-history detective tale of imperialism, violence, guilt and sex, set in a decaying, impossible past. NO LONGER HUMAN meets FATHERLAND meets DISCO ELYSIUM.
The year is 1987. It is decades since the German Reich won the Great War and the era of great power competition never ended. In Asia an aging, democratising Japanese Empire faces its sunset, as its last major colony, the puppet state of Manchukuo, is to reunify with the Republic of China.
Keizo Munekata is an officer of the Kempeitai - the military police - with no policework left to do. As the colonial dictatorship he has served his whole life uneasily prepares for the future, Munekata spends his days drinking, sleeping, doing odd detective jobs, and being in futile love with Hana, the young woman he pays for company, who hates him. But when an old army comrade tasks him with investigating the sexual assault of a Japanese student in the Chinese part of town, Munekata finds himself on the tail of a political conspiracy that goes right to the dark underside of his sleepy seaside community and into the bloody history of Manchukuo's fascist past.
He and Hana, his reluctant partner, Jintian, a closeted, collaborationist Chinese novelist, and Mizuki, a model Japanese schoolgirl and the best friend of the victim, are gradually drawn together as the politics of Manchukuo reach boiling point, and forced to confront not only what the Empire has made of them, but whether there will even be a place for any of them, oppressors and oppressed both, in whatever world it is that comes next.
The year is 1987. It is decades since the German Reich won the Great War and the era of great power competition never ended. In Asia an aging, democratising Japanese Empire faces its sunset, as its last major colony, the puppet state of Manchukuo, is to reunify with the Republic of China.
Keizo Munekata is an officer of the Kempeitai - the military police - with no policework left to do. As the colonial dictatorship he has served his whole life uneasily prepares for the future, Munekata spends his days drinking, sleeping, doing odd detective jobs, and being in futile love with Hana, the young woman he pays for company, who hates him. But when an old army comrade tasks him with investigating the sexual assault of a Japanese student in the Chinese part of town, Munekata finds himself on the tail of a political conspiracy that goes right to the dark underside of his sleepy seaside community and into the bloody history of Manchukuo's fascist past.
He and Hana, his reluctant partner, Jintian, a closeted, collaborationist Chinese novelist, and Mizuki, a model Japanese schoolgirl and the best friend of the victim, are gradually drawn together as the politics of Manchukuo reach boiling point, and forced to confront not only what the Empire has made of them, but whether there will even be a place for any of them, oppressors and oppressed both, in whatever world it is that comes next.
480 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 26, 2025
26 people are currently reading
227 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 25, 2025
This was good. I thought this might have been more orientalist than it was, which I know the author was worried about. Like Michael Moorcock's stuff, a lot of this felt like a cipher for Britain's imperial decline and disintegration - this could easily have been about Britain's imperialist intervention in Malaysia, for example. Even if that's not your preferred reading, this was good - an examination of imperial decline and the legitimation crises states fall into when nobody believes in them any more. The ending was less bleak than I expected - maybe less bleak than some of these characters deserved. I wouldn't have minded more failure and futility, but ultimately this was an optimistic book. Universality can encompass all the particularities without extinguishing them, hideous old murderers can redeem themselves, communism can win.
September 11, 2025
I don’t think this is quite good enough for 4 but it’s not a 3 star read. my heart for a 10 point system. I do appreciate this novel.
July 1, 2025
“And what does Angulimala do?” she asked. “What does he do, when the crowd assaults him? Does he welcome them? Does he provoke them to do worse? Does he beg for forgiveness from those he has wronged?”
Munekata flexed an armoured hand. He felt the mask cold against his face. “He returns to the monastery, with a bleeding head, a torn robe, and a broken bowl. And he goes out again the next day to beg for alms.”
She kissed his metal cheek. “You should have told her that part.”
Munekata flexed an armoured hand. He felt the mask cold against his face. “He returns to the monastery, with a bleeding head, a torn robe, and a broken bowl. And he goes out again the next day to beg for alms.”
She kissed his metal cheek. “You should have told her that part.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2025
beach read
December 6, 2025
It's reasonable to have reservations when people say a book 'feels like anime' - or worse, when someone seems to have intentionally set out to write a book that feels like anime. Too often it suggests either a superficial, referential, tropiness, which usually references the lamer aspects of the medium at that, or else a hollow attempt to translate ideas that only really work in animation into a very different form.
Machukuo 1987 feels like anime. This is entirely a compliment.
It helps that the author has chosen the more literary end of the medium to draw on most directly. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is probably its closest analogue, alongside its live action sequels, and other slower seinen sci-fi shows like Gasaraki and Texhnolyze. It has an alt history setting, cool power armour, and a tone that largely gets the right combination of pulpy and self-serious (and self-seriously pulpy) that the best works in this subgenre achieve. It also helps that, despite effectively drawing power from the simple pleasures of its genre - for example in the impressive action scenes when the long-teased power armour on the cover finally gets used in combat - it manages to incorporate those elements into what could only ever be a literary work. The author's style is descriptive and introspective in a way that is entirely 'of' the novel rather than imitative of another form.
The plot, too, is noirish in a novelistic way. It largely follows a lovestruck, disillusioned, ex-colonial-death-squad-member turned colonial police officer named Munekata in a version of China's Dongbei region that never escaped Japanese occupation. This character is depicted as a pathetic, hollow, husk of a man who, when he's not busy solving the crimes at the novel's centre, spends his time desperately chasing either absolution or punishment from a much younger Chinese sex worker who reminds him of a girl he encountered while violently clearing a village - another strong parallel between the novel and Jin-Roh. However the prospective handover of the Japanese colony to the underdeveloped, KMT-run Chinese state far more strongly echoes the winding down of the British Empire through the second half of the 20th century than it does any aspect of Japan and China's mutual history. For this reason, one might reasonably assume the author is using the Japanese Munekata to channel his own conflicted feelings about being a British man in China: that Munekata's desire for punishment or absolution for his personal crimes reflects, to some degree, the author's guilt regarding Britain's historical ones.
I say this as a British man in China myself, intending no shade. I don't think it's possible to walk around the ruined Old Summer Palace in Beijing, or the eerie former horse racing track (now mall) in Tianjin without feeling the weight of that history - not to mention thousands of other locations elsewhere in China and around the world. But despite being one of the defining features of British identity, it's still so rare for British writers to grapple with the impact of the British Empire's existence and collapse on the soul and culture of the British people - or on themselves as individuals. Such conversations feel dangerous: we worry that they might suggest imperial nostalgia (perhaps unacknowledged), or seem to prioritise the cultural and psychological damage the oppressor inflicts on himself over the very material damage he inflicts on the oppressed, or else simply show 'white guilt' and therefore be simply cringe. I empathise with those critiques when they are coming from people still feeling the consequences of the British Empire's oppression - if you as a victim of colonialism don't care about how the contemporary British feel about all that then great, why should you? - but how often is this language used by white British people who SHOULD be thinking about the consequences of the presence and absence of the British Empire on their psyches but want a convenient excuse not to? Because however uncomfortable it is to talk about, to be British is to possess an identity fundamentally defined by the Empire: its existence and its actions and its weird simultaneous nonexistence and omnipresence in the present day, having partially but not entirely morphed into the new imperial domination of America and 'the West' and international business.
Anyway, this is all to say that when viewed from this angle, it's easy to criticise Manchukuo 1987's depiction of Munekata's colonial angst as self-indulgent: Munekata threatens to pull the British reader/writer into the gravity of his punishment/absolution complex, which in turn risks instrumentalising the novel's Chinese characters - its female Chinese characters in particular - into tools for the handing out of one or the other. And to be honest, I'm not sure myself if Munekata 'deserves' the complicated, partial (but maybe not complicated or partial enough) redemption he achieves in the final chapters, where he becomes a sort of Kamen Rider-esque figure of anti-fascist justice, complete with red scarf and sick motorbike. But when so little SFF interrogates such themes with this level of political or psychological nuance, or with prose this direct and unflinching, even when SFF's genre conventions make it eminently suitable for doing so, it's hard for me to let that overshadow the novel.
Because really, how often do modern SFF writers try to tackle a topic like the psychological effect of colonialism on those doing the colonising with the seriousness it deserves? How often does the contemporary publishing landscape even allow them to try? Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant makes the best attempt out of anything I've read published recently, and even then I'd argue that Dickinson's choice to have his central hero/villain be a striving member of an oppressed ethnicity (who nonetheless does terrible things in the empire's name) makes her a far less conflicting character to have conflicted feelings about than a former death squad member from the dominant culture, with none of the excuses Baru has. And that book was still controversial: it attracted discourse about the fact its white and presumed-to-be-a-cis-het-man writer included a lesbian romance, along with some slightly confusing accusations that the empire at its centre was a historically inaccurate depiction of imperial China (when it's quite obviously a a synthesis of Britain, America, and revolutionary France). Unlike the Traitor, Manchukuo was self published - and despite its quality, I have to wonder whether it could have been published any other way. Because sure, it's not 2016 any more, but how likely is a major publisher to take a risk on a book by a white (afaik) British and presumed-to-be-a-cis-het-man writer that not only includes a lesbian romance but also a complicated sexual/romantic relationship between a racialised woman and her colonial oppressor, and its setting is actually, undeniably, supposed to resemble real world China?
Which brings me on to the problem of going too far in reading this novel as an allegory for Britain, which is that it would also be a shame to boil down a novel that clearly attempts - and from a foreigner's perspective largely succeeds - to take Chinese and Japanese culture very seriously into a bland allegorical soup. The alternative 1980s the author creates feels impressively real and lived in, with pop culture and political ideologies equally fleshed out in ways that illustratively resonate with what China and Japan are and have been. On a personal note, I read this while travelling in North-East China, in particular the cities of Dalian and Shenyang, both of which were massively affected by the Japanese occupation - wounds still rawly felt today. While the geography of the region as described in the novel felt a little 'off' compared with reality, I can't imagine it ever being supplanted from the top few most memorable reading experiences of my life.
Even so, the novel is by no means perfect. One consequence of it being self published is that there are sections that could have been edited: certain passages of description and introspection get repetitive, and I'm not convinced that all of the viewpoint characters succeed in adding enough to the story to justify their inclusion. There is also the author's baffling use of punctuation within quoted dialogue, which always ends with a "Full stop." like so, even when embedded within a sentence (e.g. when followed by a dialogue tag). The rest of the grammar is fine, so I can only imagine this is a conscious affectation... though to what end I do not know. The plot also becomes somewhat convoluted, and while its treatment of guilt is worthwhile (as I have argued) and raw, it feels messier than it intends to be in ways a more experienced writer may have avoided.
Nonetheless, the talent here is real. This is a good novel - maybe even a very good one. But it's easy to imagine it as an early work of a great writer. Let's hope that's the case.
Machukuo 1987 feels like anime. This is entirely a compliment.
It helps that the author has chosen the more literary end of the medium to draw on most directly. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is probably its closest analogue, alongside its live action sequels, and other slower seinen sci-fi shows like Gasaraki and Texhnolyze. It has an alt history setting, cool power armour, and a tone that largely gets the right combination of pulpy and self-serious (and self-seriously pulpy) that the best works in this subgenre achieve. It also helps that, despite effectively drawing power from the simple pleasures of its genre - for example in the impressive action scenes when the long-teased power armour on the cover finally gets used in combat - it manages to incorporate those elements into what could only ever be a literary work. The author's style is descriptive and introspective in a way that is entirely 'of' the novel rather than imitative of another form.
The plot, too, is noirish in a novelistic way. It largely follows a lovestruck, disillusioned, ex-colonial-death-squad-member turned colonial police officer named Munekata in a version of China's Dongbei region that never escaped Japanese occupation. This character is depicted as a pathetic, hollow, husk of a man who, when he's not busy solving the crimes at the novel's centre, spends his time desperately chasing either absolution or punishment from a much younger Chinese sex worker who reminds him of a girl he encountered while violently clearing a village - another strong parallel between the novel and Jin-Roh. However the prospective handover of the Japanese colony to the underdeveloped, KMT-run Chinese state far more strongly echoes the winding down of the British Empire through the second half of the 20th century than it does any aspect of Japan and China's mutual history. For this reason, one might reasonably assume the author is using the Japanese Munekata to channel his own conflicted feelings about being a British man in China: that Munekata's desire for punishment or absolution for his personal crimes reflects, to some degree, the author's guilt regarding Britain's historical ones.
I say this as a British man in China myself, intending no shade. I don't think it's possible to walk around the ruined Old Summer Palace in Beijing, or the eerie former horse racing track (now mall) in Tianjin without feeling the weight of that history - not to mention thousands of other locations elsewhere in China and around the world. But despite being one of the defining features of British identity, it's still so rare for British writers to grapple with the impact of the British Empire's existence and collapse on the soul and culture of the British people - or on themselves as individuals. Such conversations feel dangerous: we worry that they might suggest imperial nostalgia (perhaps unacknowledged), or seem to prioritise the cultural and psychological damage the oppressor inflicts on himself over the very material damage he inflicts on the oppressed, or else simply show 'white guilt' and therefore be simply cringe. I empathise with those critiques when they are coming from people still feeling the consequences of the British Empire's oppression - if you as a victim of colonialism don't care about how the contemporary British feel about all that then great, why should you? - but how often is this language used by white British people who SHOULD be thinking about the consequences of the presence and absence of the British Empire on their psyches but want a convenient excuse not to? Because however uncomfortable it is to talk about, to be British is to possess an identity fundamentally defined by the Empire: its existence and its actions and its weird simultaneous nonexistence and omnipresence in the present day, having partially but not entirely morphed into the new imperial domination of America and 'the West' and international business.
Anyway, this is all to say that when viewed from this angle, it's easy to criticise Manchukuo 1987's depiction of Munekata's colonial angst as self-indulgent: Munekata threatens to pull the British reader/writer into the gravity of his punishment/absolution complex, which in turn risks instrumentalising the novel's Chinese characters - its female Chinese characters in particular - into tools for the handing out of one or the other. And to be honest, I'm not sure myself if Munekata 'deserves' the complicated, partial (but maybe not complicated or partial enough) redemption he achieves in the final chapters, where he becomes a sort of Kamen Rider-esque figure of anti-fascist justice, complete with red scarf and sick motorbike. But when so little SFF interrogates such themes with this level of political or psychological nuance, or with prose this direct and unflinching, even when SFF's genre conventions make it eminently suitable for doing so, it's hard for me to let that overshadow the novel.
Because really, how often do modern SFF writers try to tackle a topic like the psychological effect of colonialism on those doing the colonising with the seriousness it deserves? How often does the contemporary publishing landscape even allow them to try? Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant makes the best attempt out of anything I've read published recently, and even then I'd argue that Dickinson's choice to have his central hero/villain be a striving member of an oppressed ethnicity (who nonetheless does terrible things in the empire's name) makes her a far less conflicting character to have conflicted feelings about than a former death squad member from the dominant culture, with none of the excuses Baru has. And that book was still controversial: it attracted discourse about the fact its white and presumed-to-be-a-cis-het-man writer included a lesbian romance, along with some slightly confusing accusations that the empire at its centre was a historically inaccurate depiction of imperial China (when it's quite obviously a a synthesis of Britain, America, and revolutionary France). Unlike the Traitor, Manchukuo was self published - and despite its quality, I have to wonder whether it could have been published any other way. Because sure, it's not 2016 any more, but how likely is a major publisher to take a risk on a book by a white (afaik) British and presumed-to-be-a-cis-het-man writer that not only includes a lesbian romance but also a complicated sexual/romantic relationship between a racialised woman and her colonial oppressor, and its setting is actually, undeniably, supposed to resemble real world China?
Which brings me on to the problem of going too far in reading this novel as an allegory for Britain, which is that it would also be a shame to boil down a novel that clearly attempts - and from a foreigner's perspective largely succeeds - to take Chinese and Japanese culture very seriously into a bland allegorical soup. The alternative 1980s the author creates feels impressively real and lived in, with pop culture and political ideologies equally fleshed out in ways that illustratively resonate with what China and Japan are and have been. On a personal note, I read this while travelling in North-East China, in particular the cities of Dalian and Shenyang, both of which were massively affected by the Japanese occupation - wounds still rawly felt today. While the geography of the region as described in the novel felt a little 'off' compared with reality, I can't imagine it ever being supplanted from the top few most memorable reading experiences of my life.
Even so, the novel is by no means perfect. One consequence of it being self published is that there are sections that could have been edited: certain passages of description and introspection get repetitive, and I'm not convinced that all of the viewpoint characters succeed in adding enough to the story to justify their inclusion. There is also the author's baffling use of punctuation within quoted dialogue, which always ends with a "Full stop." like so, even when embedded within a sentence (e.g. when followed by a dialogue tag). The rest of the grammar is fine, so I can only imagine this is a conscious affectation... though to what end I do not know. The plot also becomes somewhat convoluted, and while its treatment of guilt is worthwhile (as I have argued) and raw, it feels messier than it intends to be in ways a more experienced writer may have avoided.
Nonetheless, the talent here is real. This is a good novel - maybe even a very good one. But it's easy to imagine it as an early work of a great writer. Let's hope that's the case.
August 13, 2025
As someone who enjoys casually learning about history, I wouldn’t call myself a history buff, more of a history…fan, I guess. At the very least, I can say I’m more educated on the subject than your average American. Alternate history novels are a genre that can either go really good or really bad, for me there’s not much middle ground. In my opinion, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle may be the gold standard. I’ve had to drag myself through a number of boring stories in this genre, but thankfully MANCHUKUO 1987 is on the “really good” end of the alternate history spectrum. It’s up there with Wolfenstein, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, The Plot Against America, and positive examples of steampunk.
The era of Japanese occupation in China where imperial Japan established a puppet empire known as Manchukuo is definitely under-reported on since I didn’t learn about it until a few years ago. Maybe fascist imperial projects are covered more outside of the United States, but it’s definitely something everyone should learn about. In school, I was taught much more about the atrocities that Germany carried out in WWII than Japan, but the old island empire’s crimes against humanity were nothing to sneeze at.
I’ve followed yoshimi red on Twitter for a few years now and when I saw he recently finished an alternate history novel set in Manchukuo, I barely had to skim the synopsis before I felt compelled to buy it. I saw comparisons between this and the game Disco Elysium which also helped put the book on my radar. Both stories have similar vibes in terms of all the individuals living in a failing empire and the complexity of their politics, but this novel is definitely doing its own thing that feels completely separate. I’d classify this as alternate history sci-fi noir, but the sci-fi element is a bit more subtle than the other elements. In other words, it’s 100% my jam.
The author’s world he lays out for the reader feels authentic and lived in. I imagine part of that is due to his thorough research into the history of Manchukuo, but he also impressively manages to extrapolate far beyond when that puppet state collapsed in reality and makes it last for decades longer in the novel. The central characters are Munekata (an aging Kempetai officer), Hana (a Chinese communist sex worker), Jintian (a self-loathing Chinese writer and collaborator with the Japanese government), and Mizuki (a hardwired Japanese nationalist schoolgirl). Each one feels fully realized along with their supporting cast. They all represent a fascinating spectrum of beliefs within a fascist state. It speaks to the author’s storytelling/characterization abilities that at times I found myself sort of rooting for Munekata even though he largely goes against everything I believe in. Hana was the character I connected to most given her politics and her attitude being trapped in a corrupt and oppressive society.
M87’s narrative plays with some noir tropes while also weaving its own unique yarn that kept me on my toes throughout, never quite sure what direction things were heading in. To some, it might feel like a slow burn, but I feel like it’s definitely worth it to hang on because there’s some inspired writing in here. At times, the story can feel bleak, but I am a sucker for dark stuff, so I didn’t mind. Here and there, I definitely found sparks of hope and humanity, so it’s thankfully not all gloom and doom.
An excellent debut novel from yoshimi red, definitely looking forward to what he cooks up next!
The era of Japanese occupation in China where imperial Japan established a puppet empire known as Manchukuo is definitely under-reported on since I didn’t learn about it until a few years ago. Maybe fascist imperial projects are covered more outside of the United States, but it’s definitely something everyone should learn about. In school, I was taught much more about the atrocities that Germany carried out in WWII than Japan, but the old island empire’s crimes against humanity were nothing to sneeze at.
I’ve followed yoshimi red on Twitter for a few years now and when I saw he recently finished an alternate history novel set in Manchukuo, I barely had to skim the synopsis before I felt compelled to buy it. I saw comparisons between this and the game Disco Elysium which also helped put the book on my radar. Both stories have similar vibes in terms of all the individuals living in a failing empire and the complexity of their politics, but this novel is definitely doing its own thing that feels completely separate. I’d classify this as alternate history sci-fi noir, but the sci-fi element is a bit more subtle than the other elements. In other words, it’s 100% my jam.
The author’s world he lays out for the reader feels authentic and lived in. I imagine part of that is due to his thorough research into the history of Manchukuo, but he also impressively manages to extrapolate far beyond when that puppet state collapsed in reality and makes it last for decades longer in the novel. The central characters are Munekata (an aging Kempetai officer), Hana (a Chinese communist sex worker), Jintian (a self-loathing Chinese writer and collaborator with the Japanese government), and Mizuki (a hardwired Japanese nationalist schoolgirl). Each one feels fully realized along with their supporting cast. They all represent a fascinating spectrum of beliefs within a fascist state. It speaks to the author’s storytelling/characterization abilities that at times I found myself sort of rooting for Munekata even though he largely goes against everything I believe in. Hana was the character I connected to most given her politics and her attitude being trapped in a corrupt and oppressive society.
M87’s narrative plays with some noir tropes while also weaving its own unique yarn that kept me on my toes throughout, never quite sure what direction things were heading in. To some, it might feel like a slow burn, but I feel like it’s definitely worth it to hang on because there’s some inspired writing in here. At times, the story can feel bleak, but I am a sucker for dark stuff, so I didn’t mind. Here and there, I definitely found sparks of hope and humanity, so it’s thankfully not all gloom and doom.
An excellent debut novel from yoshimi red, definitely looking forward to what he cooks up next!
July 4, 2025
I mean, it's alright. (I wanted to give it a 2.5, but whatever.)
It has an interesting concept, but concept could only carry you so far. It's true that Imperial Japan is overlooked in Western historiography of the Second World War (technically, this book is a Kaiserreich-esque alternate history where Germany won the First World War, but it's secondary to the cribbing of the OTL history of the Second Sino-Japanese war). The colonial nature of Manchukuo made the world pretty interesting, as the Japanese Empire IRL teetered between ostensible (sometimes individual genuine believers) anti-colonial and imperialism itself. A comparison would be Bok Geo-il's In Search of the Epitaph, about Japan that continues to colonize Korea by siding with the Allies in the Second World War and erased Korean culture and history, from the viewpoint of a Korean everyman. In Search of the Epitaph was never translated to English, although it was adapted partially into the movie 2009: Lost Memories.
Unlike the triumphant Empire of In Search of the Epitaph, MANCHUKUO 1987's Japanese Empire was one in terminal decline. It has lost Korea and Taiwan, and the titular puppet state itself was in a state of near death. The entire edifice designed to benefit the Japanese settlers are coming to a screeching halt. Most reviewers has compared it to the last days of Rhodesia or French Algeria, with a dash of post-Chiang RoC and Perestroika and i do find the worldbuilding and depiction incredibly compelling.
But that's where the good part ends. The writing was overwrought and would benefit from editing in parts, with run-on paragraphs where brevity is needed. The worldbuilding part sometimes got to the point of being self-referential as it is common in most alternate history works, with the usual
"DID YOU KNOW X HAPPENED IN 1914 INSTEAD OF Y????" exposition. Such exposition might be better for the short form writing the author usually engages in (and i do prefer short stories), but it's repeatedly beating you in the head in a novel. For one, we know Manchukuo sucks for the majority Chinese and set up for the benefits of the Japanese settlers, but the author keeps repeating this point without much narrative variation. Perhaps it's because two out of the three viewpoint characters are Japanese settlers themselves, but still it can be done differently, in my opinion.
The plot itself also hews too closely to it's stated inspiration Disco Elysium. I don't really have much opinion on the sex scenes but the above point of it being overwrought still applies. The ending, without spoilers, while i enjoy it, feels kind of heavy-handed.
But honestly, maybe i am too harsh about this book. It's already heads and shoulders above most alternatehistory.com timelines due to it having important female characters and being set in Asia. I also enjoyed the book as an entertaining read, and it's the author's first novel anyways. I'm also hypocritical since i am also working on an alternate history novel that falls on the same pitfalls and clichés i outlined on my criticisms of this book. So i suppose i am just a nitpicky critic who wishes the book could be better.
(Wrote the entire thing at 3 AM GMT+7 because i can't sleep)
It has an interesting concept, but concept could only carry you so far. It's true that Imperial Japan is overlooked in Western historiography of the Second World War (technically, this book is a Kaiserreich-esque alternate history where Germany won the First World War, but it's secondary to the cribbing of the OTL history of the Second Sino-Japanese war). The colonial nature of Manchukuo made the world pretty interesting, as the Japanese Empire IRL teetered between ostensible (sometimes individual genuine believers) anti-colonial and imperialism itself. A comparison would be Bok Geo-il's In Search of the Epitaph, about Japan that continues to colonize Korea by siding with the Allies in the Second World War and erased Korean culture and history, from the viewpoint of a Korean everyman. In Search of the Epitaph was never translated to English, although it was adapted partially into the movie 2009: Lost Memories.
Unlike the triumphant Empire of In Search of the Epitaph, MANCHUKUO 1987's Japanese Empire was one in terminal decline. It has lost Korea and Taiwan, and the titular puppet state itself was in a state of near death. The entire edifice designed to benefit the Japanese settlers are coming to a screeching halt. Most reviewers has compared it to the last days of Rhodesia or French Algeria, with a dash of post-Chiang RoC and Perestroika and i do find the worldbuilding and depiction incredibly compelling.
But that's where the good part ends. The writing was overwrought and would benefit from editing in parts, with run-on paragraphs where brevity is needed. The worldbuilding part sometimes got to the point of being self-referential as it is common in most alternate history works, with the usual
"DID YOU KNOW X HAPPENED IN 1914 INSTEAD OF Y????" exposition. Such exposition might be better for the short form writing the author usually engages in (and i do prefer short stories), but it's repeatedly beating you in the head in a novel. For one, we know Manchukuo sucks for the majority Chinese and set up for the benefits of the Japanese settlers, but the author keeps repeating this point without much narrative variation. Perhaps it's because two out of the three viewpoint characters are Japanese settlers themselves, but still it can be done differently, in my opinion.
The plot itself also hews too closely to it's stated inspiration Disco Elysium. I don't really have much opinion on the sex scenes but the above point of it being overwrought still applies. The ending, without spoilers, while i enjoy it, feels kind of heavy-handed.
But honestly, maybe i am too harsh about this book. It's already heads and shoulders above most alternatehistory.com timelines due to it having important female characters and being set in Asia. I also enjoyed the book as an entertaining read, and it's the author's first novel anyways. I'm also hypocritical since i am also working on an alternate history novel that falls on the same pitfalls and clichés i outlined on my criticisms of this book. So i suppose i am just a nitpicky critic who wishes the book could be better.
(Wrote the entire thing at 3 AM GMT+7 because i can't sleep)
June 27, 2025
To call MANCHUKUO 1987 merely a crime novel or an alt-history feels cheap, because it goes deeper than either of those genres tend to. It’s more of a slow burn character study of a cast of broken people living at the edge of a dying empire that has brutalized both colonized and colonizer—ultimately asking if anything can be salvaged in the human soul in such a legacy of hate and injustice. In its ability to balance detective story and broader social commentary, I was reminded a lot of Takamura Kaoru’s Lady Joker, which I enjoyed for its narrative journey much in the same way. Somehow bleak and hopeful at the same time, Yoshimi has written a fascinating story that is more than the sum of its parts, pulling sympathy for often unlovable characters while forcing the audience to consider if this alternate world is really all that different from ours.
December 7, 2025
Couldn't finish this. This book really needed an editor. There are basic grammatical and typographical errors throughout. Otherwise, the writing style is difficult to read. Punctuation is sparse, and very long sentences are common. These two combine to make many sections of the book difficult to follow. By long sentences, I mean there was a sentence that took up an entire page.
The worldbuilding is good and the plot is okay, but neither are interesting enough to overcome the other issues.
The worldbuilding is good and the plot is okay, but neither are interesting enough to overcome the other issues.
July 8, 2025
"The best Manchukuo-themed detective novel I've read this week!" A brilliant dissection of Japanese imperialism, evil promoted through "harmony," seen through the eyes of a discarded imperial tool. Honestly a delight to read. Munekata's final excursion in the communist village felt a bit strange, but the final scene with Xu Mei and Sachiko pulled the ending together.
August 31, 2025
Genuinely was expecting something good, but I was not expecting how good this was. Shilled it hard to my loved ones because I needed people to speak about it with. Moody, ugly, nasty and biting. Need a physical copy to put on my book shelf and loan out to friends!
October 3, 2025
Quite enjoyed this. I think it succeeds really strikingly at suffusing the whole book with the atmosphere of late empire and the uncertainty over what comes next while still delivering a good, grounded and human story.
June 3, 2025
First review! Really excellent, and full of great world building. Good job king yoshimi
June 3, 2025
One of the best books I have ever read, moved me to tears.
June 14, 2025
its really really good
June 25, 2025
"Who would stand up for these idiots as history came crashing down around them?"
July 10, 2025
Very interesting concept, the story drags on and is somewhat tired by the end
August 6, 2025
An alternate history page turner that wasn’t total gloom and doom.
October 1, 2025
spaventosamente bello per essere un'opera prima
December 23, 2025
Very good read, and well-written. Self-published and released this year (which I usually tend to avoid), Manchukuo 1987 is a detective story (mostly) set in an alternate history Manchukuo (northern China) where the Japanese occupied territory is soon to be transferred back to China (a la Hong Kong 1997), and political tensions are high. And it’s good. Surprisingly good!
My only other alt history reference points are Chabon's yiddish policemans union (of which m87 similarly plays with stylistic prose and a washed up detective plot line) and PKD's man in the high castle (here sharing an appreciation of deep esoterica and aesthetic). Which is to say I’m not that familiar with the genre, but maybe should read more... 'cause so far: all bangers.
The world of Manchukuo is incredibly well fleshed out, deeply researched. The author is a pseudonymous sardonic white boy in China (a position I also once held) and both their passion for the subject material (a bit over the top military fetishism tbh) and on the ground China experience are on full display (Erguotou! Dapaidang! Even some of the dialogue and curses appear to be translated from mandarin).
It’s not a perfect book of course, it takes a short bit to find its feet, and there are some passages that are a bit rough (and may need a slight content warning for some sex and violence)… But more often than not, the writing is just really good. It’s a fun and thrilling read with surprising depth; broken people making their way through a fucked up world.
A bit niche to recommend broadly, but one I enjoyed immensely. Good shit, comrade yoshimi
My only other alt history reference points are Chabon's yiddish policemans union (of which m87 similarly plays with stylistic prose and a washed up detective plot line) and PKD's man in the high castle (here sharing an appreciation of deep esoterica and aesthetic). Which is to say I’m not that familiar with the genre, but maybe should read more... 'cause so far: all bangers.
The world of Manchukuo is incredibly well fleshed out, deeply researched. The author is a pseudonymous sardonic white boy in China (a position I also once held) and both their passion for the subject material (a bit over the top military fetishism tbh) and on the ground China experience are on full display (Erguotou! Dapaidang! Even some of the dialogue and curses appear to be translated from mandarin).
It’s not a perfect book of course, it takes a short bit to find its feet, and there are some passages that are a bit rough (and may need a slight content warning for some sex and violence)… But more often than not, the writing is just really good. It’s a fun and thrilling read with surprising depth; broken people making their way through a fucked up world.
A bit niche to recommend broadly, but one I enjoyed immensely. Good shit, comrade yoshimi
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