In September, Kodansha published the novel "Genpatsu Whiteout," which continues to climb the best-seller list, propelled by a guessing game over the identity of its pseudonymous first-time author, Retsu Wakasugi.
Genpatsu means "nuclear reactor," and the book describes a fictional terrorist attack on a power plant that leads to a meltdown. Though it sounds like a conventional thriller, the novel's overarching theme is the government's determination to resume the nation's nuclear power network after the Fukushima accident, a mission it carries out so heedlessly that it neglects to enact safety standards that would mitigate the effects of such an attack.
Readers were quick to note that Wakasugi seems to know a lot about the inner workings of not only the government, but also the electric utility structure. He (or she) was obviously writing from experience, and the media concluded he was a bureaucrat, though it isn't clear which organization he works for. The Mainichi Shimbun assumes it is the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and that Wakasugi holds "a senior post of, at minimum, division director." Though The Wall Street Journal called the book an "anti-nuke novel," Mainichi reporter Takao Yamada found the tone "cynical" and the viewpoint ambiguous.