Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century

A stunning blend of investigative journalism, authoritative science writing, and embedded ethnography. Every Human Intention captures the unsettling, lyrical beauty of the intimate moments and buried secrets that form Japan’s national drama.

＂An absolute marvel. Reveals the inner workings of modern-day Japan like no other work of literary nonfiction I have read, and does so with the smooth story-telling expertise of a novelist.＂--Richard Wiley, author of Soldiers in Hiding

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.

DREUX RICHARD is an American writer, journalist, and literary translator. From 2011 to 2016, he covered Japan’s African community for The Japan Times, where he also led a yearlong investigation of the ＂world’s safest＂ nuclear plant, published as the longest print article in the newspaper’s 123-year history. His work has appeared in CounterPunch, The New York Times, and O Estadao, among other publications. He is a doctorate-by-research candidate at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and a visiting researcher at the National Institute for Nigerian Languages, where he is working on a book about smuggling and political patronage in the city of Aba.