Jose Ando’s Jackson Alone (translated from the Japanese by Kalau Almony) undertakes a compelling balancing act between a more straightforward story of minority treatment in Japan, a country whose population is largely homogenous, and an uncanny tale of life as a doppelgänger.
Jackson, our ostensible protagonist, is a massage therapist at a corporate fitness center. He has no desire for deeper connection with his coworkers despite attempts from some to draw him out of himself. The most that is known of Jackson is that he is of both Japanese and African descent, he used to model, and he might be gay. One afternoon in the staff cafeteria, an athlete tries to take a photo with his phone and ends up scanning a QR code on the back of Jackson’s shirt. It links to video of a man whose face is partially covered but who strongly resembles Jackson being sexually tortured by an unseen perpetrator.
The video is sent around until nearly every one of Jackson’s colleagues has seen it. The response is split between support and resentment, with Jackson actually forcing one confrontational athlete into a mental corner, asking him to explain exactly what about the person in the video makes him believe that it must be Jackson. The athlete of course refuses to admit that the main link between the two is that both appear to be Black, biracial men, and so the conversation is dropped. This scene lays the foundation for the novel’s thematic concerns. Throughout, Ando asks us to consider how alike or different those with similar backgrounds truly are, even having his main characters question their own individuality as they shed and trade selves with one another.
Of course the very idea of multiple unrelated persons looking nearly identical simply because they are all Black and biracial is ridiculous, but Ando uses this notion to illustrate the ways in which minorities are often grouped together by the majority. More than once, Jackson is stopped and interrogated by police in Japan because of the unfounded yet prevailing belief that Black people there are more likely to be engaged in criminal activity, something Black American readers can certainly relate to as well. Uncanniness arises however when the concept of interchangeability is pushed to include the protagonist as well. Jackson, who has no memory of what takes place in the video, secretly believes the person is him until he comes across a group of other Black, biracial men who all look incredibly similar to him. Turning this interrogation of identity self-ward is surprising and clever when it would be so easy to continue spotlighting the tendency of majority groups to lump minorities together as convenient scapegoats. Ando takes us in another unexpected direction when more about Jackson’s history at the company is revealed. We are made to reckon with some of Jackson’s choices in ways that incite questions about how and why one might perform discomfort, and who that performance is really for.
The ending veers into almost outlandish territory that threatens to undo the cleverness of the rest of the narrative by shifting the tone in a somewhat jarring way. Maybe some elements—cultural, linguistic, or both—that would have helped make firmer sense of the climax were lost in translation. It’s definitely possible to extrapolate meaning from it, but what happens is so strange as to spark far more questions than answers. One question in particular sat at the back of my mind during the entire story: why would someone publicly wear clothing decorated with a QR code they have never scanned? The events of the story hinge almost entirely upon this taking place. Sure one person might do this, but it happens more than once. This could be yet another of those similarities between members of a group that we are meant to ponder, but it isn’t presented that way. And it’s not that Jackson doesn’t notice the QR code either—he does, but just thinks it’s a cool pattern. This doesn’t take away at all from what this story does well, but it did stand out to me as slightly bizarre.
Jackson Alone lays various conundrums of identity side-by-side. Rather than drawing a final conclusion on where “truth” intersects with the self, Ando shows us what might be gained and lost if we are willing to consciously inhabit the obscure space between our personal estimation of who we are and everyone else’s.
FICTION
Jackson Alone
By Jose Ando
Translated from the Japanese by Kalau Almony
Soho Crime
Published January 6, 2026
