SYMPATHY TOWER TOKYO by Rie Qudan

Translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Ever since Howard Roark railed against conformity in Ayn Rand’s problematic epic, The Fountainhead, architects have proven a fertile, if unlikely, source of philosophical literary investigation. The like’s of Ballard’s Concrete Island, Mawer’s The Glass Room and Hwang Sok-Yong’s At Dusk all challenged how we view the manufactured landscapes we inhabit. In her third novel, Tokyo Sympathy Tower, Rie Qudan goes several steps further, calling into question their role in how we structure society itself.

At its heart lies Sara Machina, who’s commissioned to design a space to house all of Japan’s criminals. However, this isn’t some dank dungeon. It’s a huge reverse panopticon of extravagant beauty, where prisoners and those outside can look upon one another with awe. The tower’s already been built by the time the story kicks off, so we get a series of self-contained reflections by Sara and those around her. Including an AI bot which, Rie Qudan admits, she used to write some of the book. It’s cool and challenging on many levels, and almost made me believe in the creative potential of AI. Almost.

Tokyo Sympathy Tower is a rich engagement with language, technology, and the theory of punishment*.

*ChatGPT wrote that. (Just kidding).

Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan (Tr. Jesse Kirkwood)
Summit Books, 2025
197 pages