In repeated meetings, telephone calls, and e-mail exchanges, they submitted uncomplainingly to interviews that must at times have been unbearably painful. This book could easily have been subtitled The Fate of Carita Ridgway, and I’m sorry that I didn’t have the space to devote more of it to Carita and the endurance and tenacity of her family. I thank Rupert Blackman, Sophie Blackman, Tim Blackman and Josephine Burr, Annette Ridgway, Nigel and Aileen Ridgway, Jane and Roger Steare, and Samantha Termini (née Ridgway). I also thank Louise Phillips and Robert Finnigan, who did so much for Lucie and Carita, in life and death; and Lucie’s friends Valerie Burman, Gayle Cotton (née Blackman), Jamie Gascoigne, Samantha Goddard (née Burman), Caroline Lawrence, and Caroline Ryan. Some of those to whom I owe the most have chosen not to be identified, but I am grateful to all of them, particularly to the surviving victims of Joji Obara. Among those I can name, I thank the following for recollections, documents, contacts, support, ideas, research, proofreading, translation, interpretation, and hospitality: Kozo Abe, Jake Adelstein, Peter Alford, Kiyohisa Arai, Nahoko Araki, Mikiko Asao, Ian Ash, Charles Boundy, Alex Bowler, Everett Brown, Josephine Burr, Chris Cleave, Jamie Coleman, Rob Cox, David Seaborn “Dai” Davies, Tomomi Deguchi, Michael Denby, Toby Eady and all at Toby Eady Associates, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, the Foreign Press in Japan, Dan Franklin and all at Jonathan Cape, Wataru Fujisaki, Benjamin Fulford, Ben Goodyear, Ben and Sarah Guest, Samar Hammam, Thomas Hardy, Atsushi Hosoya, Hideo Igarashi, Noriyuki Imanishi, Stuart Isett, Shoshin Iwamoto, Lea Jacobson, Jenn Joel, Eric Johnston, Colin Joyce, Kentaro Katayama, Velisarios Kattoulas, Hideo Kawaguchi, Taeko Kawamura, Lee Hyon Suk, Leo Lewis, the Lloyd Parry family, Hamish Macaskill and the English Agency, Justin McCurry, Sean McDonald and all at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Toshio Maeda, the late William Miller, Vanessa Milton, Manabu Miyawaki, Giles Murray, Chika Nakayama, Shingo Nishimura, Katsuro Nitto, Hidetoshi Okuhara, Akihiro Otani, Tsuyoshi Otani, David Parrish, David Peace, Dave Russell, Julian Ryall, Issei Sagawa, Hiro Saso, Masato Sato, Junzo Sawa, Matt Searle, Huw Shakeshaft, Alex Spillius, Mark Stephens, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Hiroko Tabuchi, Yuki Takahashi, Gillian Tett, Chika Tonooka, Michiko Toyama, Adam Whittington, Fiona Wilson, Shigeru Yamamoto, and Yuji Yoshitomi.
