2014年春、ヤングマガジンが激推しする新作4タイトルの、豪華試し読みブック! 人間と社会の“闇の奥”を鋭くえぐる骨太作品が勢ぞろい! 『新宿スワン』作者が贈る記憶をめぐる壮大なるサスペンス『セキセイインコ』、大人気格闘ロマン『喧嘩商売』の待望の続編『喧嘩稼業』、新鋭による爆発物処理班SFバトル『PACT』、そして口コミで話題沸騰中のサイコサスペンス『ミュージアム』の第1話を収録!

The Kwangtung Army’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was a clear demonstration of the military’s independence and the Japanese foreign policy establishment’s impotence and irrelevance. For the next 14 years, diplomats and others who sought to avert war on the Asian mainland and with the Western powers saw their efforts sidelined and undercut. Such is not, however, to imply such toilers-in-the-dark did not exist. They did, and this ambitious history chronicles that difficult time focusing on the lives of Shigemitsu Mamoru and Togo Shigenori. A career diplomat who brokered a ceasefire between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Chinese Kuomintang Army in 1932 and then a settlement of the Russo-Japanese border at Changkufeng Hill in 1938, Shigemitsu was aghast at the 1940 tripartite Pact (among Japan, Germany, and Italy) and its implications for Japan’s relations with the UK and the US. Despite―or perhaps because of―his opposition to the militarists’ policies, he was appointed Foreign Minister midway through the Pacific War, and it was in that capacity that he was caught up in the charade of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Much of Shigemitsu’s work was complemented by Togo’s, including efforts to better relations with the Soviet Union. Marginalized though he was, Togo had the distinction of being Foreign Minister both at the outbreak and at the end of the Pacific War, albeit with a long hiatus in the middle, and it was this distinction that brought him to the International Tribunal’s attention. Belying the standard image of a hundred million hearts beating as one, Japan had many distinguished figures who remained true to their principles even as they served the state during the long war years. This is thus both a history of personal turmoil and an insightful window on the Japan of that era.

“A solution without a solution.” In 1965, a secret pact concluded between the leaders of Japan and South Korea quietly shelved the territorial dispute over the island of Takeshima (Dokdo), setting the course for normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Several well-known figures were active in the complex and convoluted political maneuvering and backroom negotiations that helped bring the pact to fruition. For the first time ever, this book-including personal accounts from those who were directly involved-reveals the painstaking work behind the scenes to mend the fraught relationship between Japan and South Korea by conceiving the most subtle of solutions. And yet the pact and all that it achieved would mysteriously be erased from history. How and why did this happen? Winner of the Asia Pacific Award, Japan, Korea, and the Takeshima Secret Pact is a fascinating look into the intricate process of mending diplomatic relations and the small island that was the center of it all.

西暦20XX年、全世界を震撼させる戦慄の爆弾テロが発生。驚異の破壊力を持つ窒素爆弾が世界中の海底に仕掛けられた。「セカイをキレイにしよう」と“やくそく”をしたNWD〈近代兵器処理隊〉のナギとマチが、この未曾有の危機に立ち向かう。爆発までに残された時間は、あと10日……。