Tokyo Year Zero: Book One of the Tokyo Trilogy

Unblinking in its vision of a nation in a chaotic, hellish period in its history, Tokyo Year Zero is a "brilliant, perplexing, claustrophobic … exhilarating" crime novel (The New York Times Book Review).
It's August 1946-one year after the Japanese surrender-and women are turning up dead all over Tokyo. Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police-irreverent, angry, despairing-goes on the hunt for a killer known as the Japanese Bluebeard-a decorated former Imperial soldier who raped and murdered at least ten women amidst the turmoil of post-war Tokyo. As he undertakes the case, Minami is haunted by his own memories of atrocities that he can no longer explain or forgive.