Boy Science Detective in review

I can imagine that some people will have had enough of these stories by now, after an introduction and six translations; but since I've now translated a whole book (a short one, admittedly), I thought it might be good to sum up what it had to offer. So here's my 'review' of Boy Science Detective by KOSAKAI Fuboku (小酒井 不木). There are six short stories in the collection:

• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard
• 4. The Secret of the Skull  
• 5. The Wisdom of a Fool 
• 6. Ultraviolet Rays

Each of them was first published in a children's science magazine over three issues, reflected in the three parts that each story is divided into. You can sometimes see traces of the serial publication in a slight tendency to unnecessarily recap material at the beginning of a new chapter; but unlike some Japanese mysteries first published as serials, this does not get too repetitive. The magazine publication ran from 1924 to 1926, and the book came out at the end of 1926.

As Kosakai explains in the preface, the stories are meant to encourage young readers to learn about science by showing them that science is interesting. In that respect, I think he keeps his promise fairly well. Almost all the stories have a large scientific element, generally well integrated into the story. Only once or twice did it feel like it was getting a bit bogged down in exposition. This scientific character may well remind you of R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke stories.

Some people find the Dr. Thorndyke stories a little dry. I do too, but generally in a positive way. The Boy Science Detective stories are also a little drier than say EDOGAWA Rampo's boy detective series. The criminals in Kosakai's series are just dull and often not especially competent professional criminals, not flamboyant masterminds; but Kosakai does not forget that he has young readers who want to be entertained. While the villains are generally unremarkable, his child detective is allowed to surprise the onlookers again and again.

The hero is TSUKAHARA Toshio (塚原俊夫), a twelve year old genius, whose rich parents and richer uncle have fitted him out with his own laboratory, from which he takes cases as a private detective. The narrator is his bodyguard and assistant OONO (大野), a young judo expert (whom Toshio mostly calls niisan, 'big brother'). This is an early instance of a constellation most famous from Rex Stout's books, where Archie Goodwin does the more dangerous and active work, Nero Wolfe does the intellectual part. Toshio is pretty active himself, but any violence gets deputed to Oono. Apart from Oono, the most important recurring character is Detective Oda of the central police station in Tokyo, who has learnt to give Toshio whatever he wants, and puts up with being called 'Uncle P' (for 'police') by him in exchange for his invaluable help.

The two Edogawa Rampo juvenile detective stories that I've read avoid actual bloodshed. Kosakai is not so restrained. The first two stories are thefts; but every story after that features a murder. The concession to young readers is that they are all a bit easy. I imagine most children and any adult familiar with detective stories will see who did it in every case. That doesn't mean they have no interest as detective stories. The culprit may not come as a surprise, but there are often excellent clues and elements to the puzzle that the reader may not have spotted.

The best stories, I think, are 'The Scarlet Diamond', 'The Riddle of the Beard' and 'The Secret of the Skull'. 'The Scarlet Diamond' introduces the characters and has an interesting code-breaking puzzle. Obviously this works better if you're reading in Japanese; but I hope I've done enough to let a western reader get something from it too. 'The Riddle of the Beard' is a complex and fairly clued murder mystery. 'The Secret of the Skull' is a dramatic story of forensic reconstruction, as Toshio applies the western technique of putting clay on a skull to find the face of the victim. It too is well clued. Of the others, 'A Fight in the Dark' is a lively story of the capture of a gang of thieves. The mystery element is weak, but the science part is kept up. 'Ultraviolet Rays' is the most complex mystery in the collection; but as there are few clues, most of this is revealed by the criminal's confession at the end. 'The Wisdom of a Fool' seems to me the weakest in the collection, with no clues but an obvious villain, and no real scientific element.

Beyond their interest as mysteries, the stories also have some interest as a view of Tokyo and the surrounding countryside in the early twenties.

Boy Science Detective: Ultraviolet Rays

[You may want to check the warning on this blog's translations.] 

 

  This story completes the translation of the book Boy Science Detective by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard
• 4. The Secret of the Skull  
• 5. The Wisdom of a Fool

As Kosakai promised in the preface, he did go on to write more Boy Science Detective stories; but having translated a whole book (even if it's not a very long one), I think I'd like to give my attention to the works of some other writers for a while. 

The story was first published in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children's Science) from July to September 1926. You can read the story in the original Japanese on Aozora Bunko here. I've put in footnotes that look like this[1]; I'm afraid that they aren't actively linked. You'll have to scroll down (or use find) to the footnotes at the end. As always, I've put the translation after the break, so click to read on.

Boy Science Detective: The Wisdom of a Fool

[You may want to check the warning on this blog's translations.] 

 Another translation: this is the fourth Boy Science Detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard
• 4. The Secret of the Skull 

Most of the stories from the series have had something in them to make them worthwhile. To be honest, this one is one I might have been tempted to leave untranslated. It does not have much of the detective or scientific interest that the other stories had; and its central idea is one of the worst plot elements of the detective story (and probably back around 1600 people were saying, "I don't know, Will, that scene seems a bit clichéd to me"). But since I was already two thirds of the way through the six stories that made the first collection, I thought it was a pity not to translate the whole book.

The story deals with intellectual disability, in a way that did not ring true to me; but that may be because the people I have known were more mildly affected. The question of what language to use comes up here. In general I mostly aim for the most polite expression which still sounds more or less like something someone might have said at the time. But I don't know how successful I was here.

The story was first published in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Childrens' Science) from January to March 1926. You can find the original Japanese on Aozora Bunko here. As always I've put the translated story after the break; so click to read on if you're interested.

Boy Science Detective: The Secret of the Skull

[You may want to check the warning on this blog's translations.] 

 Another translation: this is the third Boy Science Detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard

I imagine most children's detective stories prefer to stay with less serious crimes. The Boy Science Detective stories start with an incident that is hardly a crime at all and move on to theft and then in the third story murder. This one goes even further. The murder of children is a crime that writers were a little shy of using in stories that were meant essentially for entertainment; but here we have the murder of a child as the fourth mystery in the series. The only respect in which this is a children's story is that it has a child as protagonist and (as always) the solution is a bit obvious. I hope you won't think that means it isn't worth your time. The answer is obvious, but you might well miss the clues; and the story is an interesting reflection of the state of forensic science at the time.

I've glossed most of the things that need explaining in the translation itself. So I think we can get away without footnotes this time.  I'll put a few links in advance. The Great Kantou earthquake took place on Sep. 1, 1923 and caused massive destruction in Tokyo. The most interesting part of the story is the forensic facial reconstruction which is central to the plot. The late nineteenth century reconstruction of Bach's face was performed by Wilhelm His and Carl Seffner. The detective called Williams that Kosakai mentions seems (from Google) to be Lieutenant Grant Williams, bureau of unidentified dead, Manhattan,  who in 1916 identified a skull found on a farm in Brooklyn as Dominick La Rosa leading to arrest of Giovanio Romano (Brooklyn Eagle Oct 10, 1916). Kosakai probably did not know of another more recent case where Williams had been called in by a former subordinate, Mary Hamilton to investigate a skull found  in Rockland County, N.Y. and had reconstructed the face as a missing girl, Lillian White. Hamilton's investigations lead to a suspect James Crawford, who was also missing at the time, but captured in 1925 after a different crime. 

One last thing: this is a bit spoilerish, but if you don't know how kimonos are worn, you might search out some photographs or prints on wikimedia commons or elsewhere on the internet to get an idea.

The story was first published in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children’s Science) between October and December 1925. It's in the public domain, so you can read the original Japanese on Aozora Bunko, here.

As always, the actual story is after the break. So click below to read it.

Boy Science Detective: The Riddle of the Beard

[You may want to check the warning on this blog's translations.] 

Another translation: this is the third Boy Science Detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 

This one doesn't give away the endings to the previous stories, so you don't need to have read them to read this. The first story introduces the main character, boy genius Toshio Tsukahara and his bodyguard/assistant Ono. Toshio has a private laboratory and office a few streets away from his rich parents' house. The stories first appeared in a children's science magazine; and Toshio's investigations always involve a Dr Thorndyke style scientific element.

The puzzle in this one is quite well done, I think (although as always the culprit is fairly obvious). The story is also a spy story, and has a not very sympathetic MacGuffin in the national secret of a poison gas formula. At the time of the story, Japan had a small empire (the result of Meiji period militarism) and was a not very stable democracy, which had to struggle with the kind of militarism that would so disastrously come to dominate a few years later.

The story was first published from June to August 1925 in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children's Science), then collected in book form in 1926.

As always, I've put the translated story (whose Japanese original you can read online at Aozora Bunko here) after the break. Explanatory footnotes look like this[1] in the text; but you'll have to scroll to the end of the file to find them.

Boy Science Detective: A Fight in the Dark

[You may want to check the warning on this blog's translations.]

Another translation from the Boy Science Detective stories by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond

 暗夜の格闘 (anya no kakutou, 'A Fight in the Dark') is the second Boy Science Detective story, featuring twelve year old Toshio Tsukahara and his bodyguard and assistant Oono (whom Toshio addresses as niisan, older brother). It was published serially from March to May 1925 in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children’s Science). The work is in the public domain in Japan and Europe (and probably America, but I don't know the rules there). You can read the original at Aozora Bunko, here. The story does give away the (very obvious) culprit in the previous story. So you might want to read 'The Scarlet Diamond' first, if you care about that.

Footnotes look like this[1] and you'll have to scroll down to the end of the story to find the annotation they're pointing to (or search for "footnotes").

As always, I've put the translation after the break: so click through for the actual story.

Boy Science Detective: The Scarlet Diamond

[You may want to check the warning on this blog's translations.]

Here, as promised, is the short story by KOSAKAI Fuboku (小酒井 不木, 1890-1929), the first of his 少年科学探偵 (shounen kagaku tantei, Boy Science Detective ) stories, 紅色ダイヤ (beniiro daiya, ‘The Scarlet Diamond’), which you can read on Aozora Bunko here. It was first serialised in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children's Science) between December 1924 and February 1925, then collected in book form in 1926. Kosakai’s works are in the public domain almost everywhere, but if you prefer a book, there is an edition of the stories in print. You can see the earlier post for a general introduction.

I’ve put most of the explanations of subject matter in notes at the end this time, partly because some of them would give away the solution to a puzzle if I wrote them at the beginning. I’ll explain one point in advance, as it might help you if you want to play along with the mystery. The story involves code breaking in Japanese, so the Japanese writing system comes into play. Japanese writing has two kinds of characters, the kana, the Japanese syllable alphabet, and the kanji, the symbol set borrowed from China. The relevant kana for this story are the hiragana, which encode the syllables like this:
あいうえお a i u e o
かきくけこ ka ki ku ke ko
さしすせそ sa shi su se so
たちつてと ta chi tsu te to
なにぬねの na ni nu ne no
はひふへほ ha hi fu he ho
まみむめも ma mi mu me mo
やゆよ ya yu yo
らりるれろ ra ri ru re ro
わ wa, ん n, を o.
As you can see, these look quite like western handwriting, made up of few strokes, mostly curved and flowing. The kanji (used for most nouns, verbs and adjectives) are generally more complicated and more angular looking. For instance, the book title 少年科学探偵 that I quoted above is all kanji.

Story and footnotes come after the break. The footnotes look like this[1] and you'll have to scroll down for them I'm afraid, as I can't work out how to make internal page references inside the blogging editor. I realise this is not ideal, especially since you run some risk of spoiling the story for yourself, if you don't scroll fast (using the find function to get to "Footnotes" would get you past the story, I suppose).

Boy Science Detective

I’ve not been posting much this year. That was due to pressure of work, which may let up a little soon. At any rate I hope to get back to posting at least once a week. For the moment, let me just try and get your interest for a coming translation, which I mean to put up shortly. The short story I’ve translated is a juvenile detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku (小酒井 不木, 1890-1929), the first of his 少年科学探偵 (shounen kagaku tantei, Boy Science Detective ) stories. Here is Kosakai’s foreword to the stories (translated from the Japanese on Aozora Bunko): 

The six detective stories collected in this book were first published in Science for Children. They were written for boys from the fifth or sixth year of elementary school [10-12 years old] to the second or third year of middle school [13-15 years old].

We are living in a world of science now, and without science a person cannot pass one day with enjoyment; but since, to gain scientific knowledge, the most important thing is to know first of all that science is interesting, I have written these stories to get children to know just how interesting science is.

Next, scientific knowledge is something gained by reading books and at the same time properly ‘thinking’ about them. For this reason, as the German proverb has it, ‘A person can profit much from what they read, but they can profit more from what they think.’

Still, the detective story is a story you read and a story you think about while you are reading it. That is why I wrote these stories, thinking that I would like to get my young readers to develop the habit of thinking about things.

 This is not the end of the stories in which Boy Science Detective Toshio Tsukahara makes an appearance. In the future I hope to add more stories bit by bit. So I hope you will make it part of your favourite reading for a long time.

 Let me finish by expressing my profound gratitude to Kanda bookshop owner and friend Shigeru Fukano, who assisted me in many ways in publishing the book, and also to the artist Hisashi Morita, who provided illustrations back when the stories were serialized and also contibuted his beautiful artwork to the book. December Taishou Year 15 (1926)

This seems like a great idea for a series to me. Nowadays, it would probably be Girl Science Detective, and actually that would be pretty cool too. I was really hoping that the stories would be good. The first one at least seems pretty good to me (the second is so so and I haven't yet finished the third). 

The main characters are genius boy detective TSUKAHARA Toshio (塚原俊夫) and the narrator, his bodyguard OONO (大野), a young judo expert. Twelve year old Toshio comes from a very wealthy background and his parents have set him up with his own little laboratory and hired Oono to protect him from criminals that might threaten him because of his investigations. Once you get to know Toshio a little better it may occur to you that this is not the only reason he might need a bodyguard. While Toshio's position in the world is distinctly unrealistic (adults constantly defer to his recognised detective genius), his character has a realistic childishness to it too. When you think about it, the great detective of the Sherlock Holmes mould often has a distinctly childish side to their character, pointlessly mystifying and misleading those around them. Toshio takes this kind of misbehaviour a little further than most.

Since the English Wikipedia doesn't have a page on Kosakai, I'll put a couple of notes about him here, mostly from the Japanese Wikipedia page. He was born in the Ama distict of Aichi prefecture in 1890, studied Medicine at the Imperial University in Tokyo from 1911, taught hygiene at Touhoku University from 1917, travelled for research to America, Britain and France. Returning to Japan in 1920, he started writing essays, translations and short stories. At first he did this along side his university work, but in 1922 he gave up his post at Touhoku University to devote himself to writing. Several times throughout his adult life he suffered from pneumonia, from which he died in 1929. Both his own stories and his criticism were very influential in the detective story world and beyond.