James Wood, Books, “But He Confessed,” Ball tells the story, or stories, of Oda Sotatsu, a twenty-nine-year-old Japanese man of no great distinction or education. In 1977, he is working in an import-export business owned by his uncle. He lives alone, has no girlfriend, no pets. The novel’s atmosphere at first calls to mind Kurosawa’s great film “Ikiru,” with its portrait of Kanji Watanabe, who has done the same dull office job for thirty years: “Many people knew him, and lived beside him, near him—but few could say they had any sense of what he was really like. They had not suspected that he was really like anything.” But Sotatsu has become friendly with a much more dynamic couple, Sato Kakuzo and his girlfriend, Jito Joo. They are restless, political, eager for risk. They persuade Sotatsu to commit to a revolutionary act, “in order to feel alive again.” Sotatsu agrees to a wager: if he loses a game of cards, he must agree to sign a confession, and Joo will take it to the police station. Sotatsu loses, signs the confession, and is soon arrested. . . .