Zaibatsu: a novel about modern-day Papua New Guinea

Read Zaibatsu yesterday, a story about WW11 Japanese soldier Jiro Takano, who fought along the Kokoda Trail, and of his fight for control of Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea, after WW11.

 

It is set in Port Moresby, Irian Jaya, Japan and Australia.First published in Australia in 1983, this novel shifts the theatre of Japanese design on the world to Southeast Asia.

The hero, a New Guinean of Anglo-Australian ancestry residing in Switzerland,John Fallon, returns to New Guinea to look into the murder of his brother, who had stayed to manage the family's plantation near the WW11 Kokoda Trail