“With nuance and subtlety, this book confronts major contemporary issues: migration and loss, international marriage and parenthood, nostalgia for a lost homeland, and the xenophobia endured by those who go in search of a home their heart can recognize.”
—Ha Jin
“Dreux Richard’s Japan is instantly grim, yet always worthy of love. Possibly the last great work of expatriate writing from Japan.”
—Geraldine Harcourt
“Richard mobilizes the fruits of remarkable research into the geological, political, and judicial dimensions of nuclear restart to present a breathtaking drama.”
—Norma Field
“Eye-opening; I admire the way Richard focuses so intimately on a side of Japan that most of us know little or nothing about.”
—Pico Iyer
Every Human Intention takes us beyond political debates and news analysis, into the infinite complexity of historically significant events as they unfold. Admitted to the innermost corridors of Japan’s bureaucracy, Richard witnesses the near-collapse of the nation’s nuclear regulator and meticulously documents the way this upheaval is concealed from the public. Through his decade-long relationship with Japan’s Nigerian community, he pursues the elaborate cover-up at the heart of Japan’s immigration system. On the nation’s northern border, he follows the region’s youngest census worker through a landscape of abandoned homes and vanishing lives. In Richard’s poised narration, there are no simple answers or elegant conclusions—only the unsettling, lyrical beauty of the intimate moments and buried secrets that form Japan’s national drama.
A stunning blend of investigative journalism, authoritative science writing, and embedded ethnography.
(Photos: Sendai, Khalkh Gol, Owerri / copyright Dreux Richard)
