The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, translated by Sam Bett (Faber & Faber) ~Ernie Hoyt

Akira Otani is a Japanese writer who got her start by writing for video games. She is a self-proclaimed lesbian and her first literary work was a collection of short stories in a book titled Nobody Said We’re Perfect which was about relationships between women. 

The Night of Baba Yaga is her first book to be published in English. It was originally published in Japanese in 2020 by Kawade Shobo Shinsha with the title ババヤガの夜 (Baba Yaga no Yoru). The English version was translated by Sam Bett. He was the co-translator for three of Mieko Kawakami’s books - Breasts and Eggs (Asia by the Book, November 2021), Heaven (Asia by the Book, July 2022), and All the Lovers in the Night (Asia by the Book, December 2022).

Yoriko Shindo was just getting off work and thought she would catch a movie at the local cinema. As she was walking through Kabukicho in Shinjuku, she ran into a group of young guys who were obviously drunk and bumped into her on purpose. One guy slapped her backside. She turned around and grabbed the guy's lapels and kicked his feet from under him. 

The fallen guy’s buddy then took a swing at her. She took him down as well after she had taken a fist to the face. The second fighter may have been drunk or just didn’t know how to fight well. Shindo dislocated his shoulder and was hoping to walk away before the police arrived but three more bad guys stepped out of the building and blocked her way. 

Unfortunately for Shindo, she was knocked out with a thick-glassed beer bottle. When she came to, she found herself at a large home in a nice part of Setagaya Ward in Tokyo. Shindo wasn’t done fighting though. “Faced with all this rage and consternation, the woman showed her teeth and smiled. She was covered in their blood. She laughed out loud and doled out punch after punch, kick after kick”. 

This is how Yoriko Shindo found herself being recruited by the boss of the Naiki Yakuza family. The boss had a special job in mind for her. She was to become the full-time bodyguard of the boss’s only daughter, Shoko. 

To Shindo, Shoko seemed really out of place in a Yakuza den, “like a crane perched in a landfill”. Naiki gave Shindo a simple job description - “Any shady character comes near her, break his neck”. Shindo still didn’t understand why a Yakuza boss would trust his daughter with a total stranger. However, he tells Shindo what happened to the last bodyguard. One of his lackeys brought in a lacquer box. Shindo opened it and saw that it contained a man' s right hand. “Severed through the wrist , where you might wear a wristwatch”. 

Shindo thought Shoko was a spoiled and naive rich girl. “She looked so delicate even a gentle prod might shatter her to pieces”. However, the more time Shindo spends with Shoko, she becomes more protective of her. When she sees Shoko in front of a bank on the verge of tears while a stranger is holding her by the wrists, Shindo goes into animal mode - “she charged, winding up, and drove her fist between his eyes”. 

After the man went down, the doors of a Mercedes opened and out came more well-built guys - Yakuza! Shindo thought, “Not again”. However, Shoko screamed for Shindo to stop. The man she had knocked out was Shoko’s future husband - promised to him by Shoko’s father. 

Will Shindo ever be able to extricate herself from this life? Will she be able to protect Shoko from this life where violence begets violence?

Otani has created an action-packed story that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Unfortunately, the latter half of the book, not only does the action dwindle down, but the timeline jumps from two years later to ten years later to twenty years later and makes you wonder what happened in between those times. Still, I believe this would be a great book to be adapted into a feature length movie!