Second paragraph of third chapter:

An assistant professor of philosophy and a professor of history sat drinking in a corner booth. Two groups of executives were at other booths. It was still rather quiet. Most of the hostesses were sitting with one of these three groups. The executives told risqué stories while the professors complained about university life.

(I can’t locate the Japanese original text.)

Recommended to me by a friend with excellent taste, this is a detective story set very firmly in Japan in 1960. A dead man is found beaten to death near a railway station. Tracing his history is almost a map of Japanese society’s evolution over the previous fifteen years, with the contrast between the old ways and new forms of culture and technology, a political and judicial system struggling to make the adaptation, regions of the same country that know little of each other, and a partnership between an old and a young detective to solve what seems an unsolvable crime.

A crucial (and late) plot point depends on the Osaka fire raids of March 1945, in which almost 4,000 people died and nearly 700 were declared missing. The writing skips quickly over the devastation, but the reader of 1960 would not have needed much reminding of it.

The resolution comes quite close to being science fictional, but I think stays just about on the other side of the fence.

A thought-provoking procedural. You can get Inspector Imanishi Investigates here.

This was my top unread book by a non-white author. Next up is All That We See or Seem, by Ken Liu.