The Magician of Balloon Town

バルーン・タウンの手品師 (Baruun Taun no tejinashi, The Magician of Balloon Town, 2004) is a sequel to MATSUO Yumi's The Balloon Town Murder (1994). I wrote a post about that a year ago; but I'll repeat the essential background to the series here. Balloon Town is the mocking name given by outsiders to a closed district of near future Tokyo, reserved for pregnant women. Most women in this future prefer to use the artificial wombs that have established themselves as the safer and more convenient way to bring a baby into the world. For those women who reject this, Tokyo has set aside a protected precinct, a kind of town within the town, in which almost all the inhabitants are pregnant women. A little unusual among the other expectant mothers, the amateur detective KUREBAYASHI Mio does not share their slightly cultish devotion to natural motherhood. In the stories in the first book, she solves mysteries brought to her by her policewoman friend, ETA Marina, who finds herself sent repeatedly to investigate crimes in this unusual world.

The stories partly satirise things familiar in our world, in particular attitudes to pregnancy and maternity, by taking them to extremes, partly play with the surreal reversal of norms that the premise permits. Both of these elements are still present, but much more weakly so in the sequel. Eta is visiting another friend from the first book, whose baby is due. When a disk possibly containing sensitive government data goes missing from the hospital room, the only suspects are the other visitors, but none of them have the disk on them and none of them could have got it out of the room. Kurebayashi, whose baby Reo was born at the end of the first book, turns up to solve the impossible crime. As the more experienced Balloon Town insiders spot, she is pregnant again. So she is also on hand to solve the crimes that continue to occur in the town. In "The Balloon Town Automatic Doll", a maker of karakuri dolls (traditional Japanese clockwork dolls that perform surprisingly complex actions like serving tea) is bludgeoned and robbed in front of the camera he was using to record the performance of his two automata; but nobody could have got approached him by the only possible exit without being spotted. In "The Orient Express 15:45 Mystery", a protestor who threw tomatoes at a visiting author vanishes into a fortune teller's booth constructed as a railway carriage; but it seems that none of the pregnant fortune tellers could have been the attacker. In "The Strange Passion of Professor Hanibaru", Eta's investigation of a missing pregnant woman leads her to the woman's psychiatrist, a strange, mesmeric figure, whose enthusiasm for the subject of cooking with placentas perhaps hides something even more disturbing.

As the titles suggest the stories make frequent allusion to detective story literature, sometimes creating a pregnancy or maternity themed version of famous mysteries. The crimes are often relatively minor (there was one murder in the stories in the first book, none in this one). While the satirical element is weaker, more attention is paid to the development of the book across stories. The final story is much longer than the others; and lines preparing us for some of its elements are set up in the earlier stories.

Archie, The Armchair Detective

The classical detective story has always been an unusually genre conscious branch of literature. Even the more straight faced versions are likely to be a little like parody in their readiness to make knowing references to the conventions of the genre. Japanese detective stories are if anything more self conscious than English and American ones. 安楽椅子探偵アーチー (anraku isu tantei āchī, Archie, The Armchair Detective, 2003) by MATSUO Yumi (松尾由美) makes reference already in its title to a convention of classic detective stories, the detective who solves puzzles by intellect alone, without visiting the crime scene, using only the evidence brought to him by others. The name Archie in the title will remind readers of the most famous armchair detective series, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books, in which Archie Goodwin is the sedentary Wolfe's more active assistant. The Archie in this book, however, is the armchair detective. More than that, he's an actual armchair, solving mysteries brought to him by his eleven year old owner, Mamoru (衛).

Mamoru bought the old armchair with the birthday money given him to buy a computer console, after noticing that the sound of breathing seemed to be coming from it. Having found that Archie is actually sentient, Mamoru mostly sits in a different chair facing him and discusses problems with him. He gives him the name Archie, since he cannot very well address him as "Chair", using the first two syllables of the English word "armchair" (you may be thinking that there's no "chi" in "chair": there is, if you write it in Japanese letters).

The mysteries that Archie solves generally belong to the genre known as 日常の謎, puzzles of everyday life, minor mysteries involving no major crime. There are four more or less independent stories, with some development carried over from one to the other. In the first, the bag that a fellow schoolboy had been making in crafts is vandalised, cut in half, so that the head of the octopus bodied alien he had painted on it is missing. In addition two teachers had been in the room that any vandal would have to pass through, and had seen nothing. Mamoru's friend, NOYAMA Fusa (野山芙紗), a detective story enthusiast, indentifies the case as a "locked room" mystery and a "headless corpse" problem. Detective story fans are often characters in Japanese detective stories, a consequence of the genre consciousness I mentioned earlier. The second story involves another impossible theft, the theft of a flower from the corsage of a young violinist. The third has Mamoru and Fusa investigating what looks like a secret message, chalk underlining of certain letters on a notice in the foreign graveyard in Yokohama, where the stories are set. The fourth breaks out of the pattern with a mystery rooted in Archie's past in wartime Shanghai. This adds elements of historical fiction and science fiction spy story, which is perhaps a bit much for a book that was already combining detective story and fantasy.

The Balloon Town Murder

バルーン・タウンの殺人 (Baruun taun no satsujin, The Balloon Town Murder, 1994) by 松尾 由美 (MATSUO Yumi), is currently out of print; so while in Japan recently, I bought an electronic copy. I think it's not difficult to find second hand copies there too. I certainly saw it in more than one used bookshop. It's a series of linked science fiction detective stories, all set in the same world, a near future Japan, with recurrent characters.

The classic of science fiction detective stories is of course Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1954). Many science fiction novels are a kind of mystery, where the reader or characters are trying to understand not a crime, but a world. Combining the two allows us to explore one aspect, the society in which the story is set, while the characters pursue the answer to the other puzzle. It helps of course to have characters who themselves don't understand the rules of the society in which the crime is committed. In The Caves of Steel, there is a crime committed at the intersection of two societies, both foreign to us, investigated by an ad hoc team of two detectives, one from each society. In The Balloon Town Murder, the foreign society is a part of Tokyo reserved for pregnant women, in an age where the artificial uterus has made pregnancy unnecessary. A minority of women choose to go through with pregnancy anyway, and the city has reserved an area for them, protected from harmful environmental influences. 'Balloon Town' is the non-official, somewhat derisory, name that outsiders have given the area. This setup allows Matsuo that very old science fiction trick of looking at the familiar with a stranger's eyes.

The eyes belong to 江田茉莉奈　(ETA Marina), a Tokyo policewoman, who investigates various crimes in Balloon Town. The real answers, though, are provided by an armchair detective, who deduces the answer from the data that Eta has gathered. This is Eta's friend from university, her senior in the detective fiction club there, 暮林美央 (KUREBAYASHI Mio). Kurebayashi is one of the inhabitants of Balloon Town, in the seventh month of her pregnancy when we first meet her. She doesn't share the slightly cultish seriousness about pregnancy that the other inhabitants seem to have (from an outsider's perspective); she offers 'curiosity' as her reason for coming to Balloon Town.

The title story establishes the setting and, as we expect from a science fiction detective story, it leads us to a solution that depends on aspects of the society that we have been introduced to. The style is generally light and humorous, occasionally becoming more serious or taking the humour in a more sharp and satirical direction. Throughout the book, attitudes to pregnancy and maternity are the focus, both outside the pregnant society and within it. In the following stories, humour sometimes takes the upper hand, with absurd situations and various parodic references to detective fiction (and more rarely science fiction). The second story, バルーン・タウンの密室 ("The Balloon Town Locked Room") is a locked room mystery; but the victim is only knocked unconscious. The story plays out as a battle of deductions between Kurebayashi and a deduction program on a policeman's laptop, given the name 'Professor Dowell' by one of the characters (apparently a reference to this). The third, 亀腹同盟 (Kamebaradoumei, "The League of Turtleshell Bellied Women") is a pastiche on several Sherlock Holmes stories, and I imagine that the fourth,　なぜ、助産婦に頼まなかったのか? (Naze, josanpu ni tanomanakatta no ka? "Why Didn't They Ask the Midwife?") is a reference to Agatha Christie's Why Didn't They Ask Evans? In both, the mystery starts with the dying message of the title, and Eta meets the dying man as she leaves the game centre where she has been playing virtual golf.  The book ends with a very minor story,  バルーン・タウンの裏窓 (Baruun taun no uramado, "Balloon Town Rear Window"), whose point of reference should be obvious; this is a later addition, a very minor story, which disturbs a little the concluding character of the previous story.

Me and the Cat and the Night of the Full Moon

ぼくと猫と満月の夜　(Boku to neko to mangetsu no yoru, Me and the Cat and the Night of the Full Moon, 2008) is a fantasy juvenile detective story by MATSUO Yumi (松尾由美). It was first published as フリッツと満月の夜 (Fritz to mangetsu no yoru, Fritz and the Night of the Full Moon). My edition is a revision of this, which adds a short story with some of the characters of the original novel, 小早川ミツルと消しゴムの謎 (Kobayakawa mitsuru to keshigomi no nazo, "Mitsuru Kobayakawa and the Puzzle of the Erasers").

The narrator Kazuya is boy in the fifth year of primary school (which would make him about eleven). His father, a writer, brings him to the quiet seaside town where the story is set, for  a few weeks in the summer holidays, while he finishes work on the book. Kazuya is an unremarkable boy. His only special ability is running. He seems intelligent, but not especially so. His narration is marked by a tendency to see the other (mostly negative) side of anything he talks about, often noted in little parentheses and afterthoughts. He soon becomes friends with the son of a nearby café owner, Mitsuru, an enthusiastic mystery reader.

Mitsuru is investigating a little local mystery on his own. Some years back a rich and eccentric woman had taken her whole fortune out of the bank. Although she had had no contact with anyone in the days between that and her (natural) death, the money had disappeared. Mitsuru has heard some clues to this fortune and wants to find it, to prevent it falling into the hands of the mayor, who thinks he has a right to it and wants to cut away the wooded hill above the town to build a golf course.

Mitsuru and Kazuya's investigation is helped and hindered by a thief with a hopeless sense of direction, the mayor's bullying grandson, and a strangely intelligent cat with a gold earring in one ear. The cat, Fritz of the original title, provides the fantasy element of the story. But fantasy does not dominate the narrative; and for the most part the setting is a more or less realistic description of a small seaside town.

The book is probably suitable for children around the age of the main characters, although my edition was not generously provided with furigana in the way that children's books generally are. There is no actual violence, although it is sometimes threatened. The first half of the book felt a little underpowered. The various mysteries were all small affairs, and I couldn't see enough of any of them to really feel involved. But towards the middle, the action and the progress of the investigation picks up.

The short story is in the tradition of "puzzles of everyday life". Mitsuru is pressured into investigating why a fellow schoolboy's older sister is secretly buying erasers. Can she be planning to rub out the sketches of her rival in art class? If not, what can she be planning?

Gingko Slope

松尾由美 (MATSUO Yumi, born 1960) writes detective stories, science fiction and fantasy; several of her works are a mix of these genres. Her most interesting sounding book is バルーン・タウンの殺人 (Baruun taun no satsujin, Balloon Town Murder, 1994), set in a new town reserved for pregnant women as part of a Japanese government attempt to keep the birth rate up. Unfortunately the book and its sequels are out of print. You can buy an electronic version if you live in Japan. As I don't, I tried a different book. 銀杏坂 (Ichouzaka, Gingko Slope, 2001) collects five short stories published between 1996 and 2001, featuring two police detectives in a Hokuriku town, whose cases all involve an element of the supernatural.

This is not the kind of supernatural element which actually turns out to have a natural explanation. Instead in the course of the investigation, the detectives have to accept that the mysterious phenomenon is real, and then explain the remaining mystery in the light of that. The stories can all stand as separate mysteries; but experience of one is reflected in the next.

A Street in Kanazawa

Matsuo devotes a lot of attention to the setting. The dialogue is largely in dialect; but it's easy enough to read (the most common differences to standard Japanese are that "ga" often appears where you might expect "no", and "ya" where you might expect "iru"). The town Kousaka seems to be fictional. I think that it's based on Kanazawa, which is Matsuo's home town according to Wikipedia. The town has two rivers, a famous park, little pockets of traditional streets and a "karakuri temple", all of which would fit. Also, one of the stories mentions a local author (apparently fictional) whose works include a story 化銀杏 (Bake ichou, "Gingko spirit"). The famous Kanazawa author, 泉鏡花  (IZUMI Kyouka, 1873-1939), has a story of the same name. I haven't read it; but the summary on the Japanese Wikipedia page fits the description given in the book.

The two detectives are the experienced Kizaki and the young Yoshimura; but in several stories Yoshimura plays only a minor role and it is always Kizaki who provides the key deduction. Kizaki grumbles quite a bit, both at his younger colleague's enthusiasm for detective story style interpretations of their cases, and at the supernatural phenomena that seem to plague him; but he is a likable character, unable to leave a problem alone, but still showing sympathy towards those he investigates. The supernatural elements that wind through the stories are the kind of ideas that disturb the real world only slightly: a ghost (who can be seen, but cannot move objects); prophetic dreams; a man whose soul wanders from his body while he sleeps; a child with weak telekinetic abilities. The crimes involved tend toward the less bloody end of the range of detective fiction. There is one murder, and that in a locked room whose only exit is through a window onto a snow covered garden with no footprints. Other than that the stories feature: the theft of a jewel box, which ought still to be in the building (since witnesses saw no-one leave), but cannot be found; the investigation of a woman whose dreams convince her she is going to stab her husband; a man hit on the head with a surikogi ; a passenger known to have boarded a plane to Tokyo, who nonetheless is not among the passengers when the plane lands. The last one might sound familiar if you read the post on 蒸発 by NATSUKI Shizuko (夏樹静子). This is Matsuo's approach to the same problem, with a different solution. Although there are two or three impossible crimes in the collection, the emphasis is actually more on the characters.