Murder at Mt. Fuji

I've given the book the English title, since this is one of the few Japanese detective stories translated into English; but a literal translation of the Japanese title of NATSUKI Shizuko's Wの悲劇 (daburyu no higeki, 1982) would be The Tragedy of W. Ellery Queen is very popular in Japan, and the title is a reference to the series of mysteries written with the character Drury Lane, The Tragedy of X, The Tragedy of Y, The Tragedy of Z, which the Ellery Queen writers published under the name Barnaby Ross. These books are popular with enthusiasts for Golden Age mysteries; but I wasn't a wild fan of the only one I've read (The Tragedy of Y). In particular the character description seemed to me often clumsy; and the detective figure was both incredible and unappealing.

One aspect that Natsuki's book shares with The Tragedy of Y is a closed circle setting concentrating on events of one family living together in one house. In the afterword, it is mentioned that she was deliberately trying to create a work in this classic pattern.

ICHIJOU Harumi (一條春生) tutors a younger friend, WATSUJI Mako (和辻摩子) in English. The Watsuji family owns one of Japan's largest pharmaceutical firms and is incredibly rich. Over new year the family gather in their villa in the five lakes region near Mount Fuji. This year Mako is finishing her thesis on American drama and asks Harumi to join her, so that she can help correcting the English. The lakeside town is mostly made up of second homes, and in mid winter it is almost deserted. Harumi feels some awkwardness as an outsider to the group, but joins the eight others in the snow bound villa.

That evening Mako runs out from the room of her great uncle Yohee (与兵衛), the company president. She has cut her own wrists, though the wound is not deep enough to be threatening; and in the room, Yohee is lying dead, stabbed with a fruit knife. By Mako's account he had tried to rape her and she had unintentionally killed him in the ensuing struggle. The family want to protect Mako and avoid a scandal for the family name. They decide to make the death look like the work of an outsider. But with the cuts to her hands, Mako is sure to attract suspicion. So they set to work to construct an elaborate cover, making it seem she had left the villa before Yohee was murdered.

The story now turns into a kind of inverted mystery. Until now we had been seeing everything from Harumi's point of view. Now the narrative divides. For some chapters, we continue to watch from Harumi's eyes and listen in on the discussions of the family behind the backs of the investigators. In others we follow the capable local police, as they spot inevitable incongruities and gradually break down the cover story. As we do so, we notice that some things that the police find do not quite fit with what Harumi witnessed. Is someone trying to sabotage the conspiracy?

As in The Tragedy of Y, there is some variation between the parts concentrated on the family and the parts concentrated on the detectives. The former make some attempt to live up to the "tragedy" of the title and evoke an oppressive atmosphere of desperation. The latter are much lighter with some room reserved for comedy.

One can certainly see why the book deserved a translation. The mystery within a conspiracy gives Natsuki the chance to engage our attention in a variety of ways: our sympathies are simultaneously engaged  for the conspirators and the investigators; and the lack of a clearly defined puzzle makes the mystery more interesting. The actual solution to the various mysteries at the end is merely "good enough". The most ingenious parts actually come in the cover up. Stylistically there is also a slight problem, common in successful Japanese detective stories which have first been published as a serial: there is a little too much recapitulation to keep the reader on track.

I haven't read the translation, Murder at Mt. Fuji (1990); but if you have, you may be wondering who all these characters are, since apparently most of the names are changed. Most strikingly, Harumi becomes Jane Prescott, an American exchange student. The English Wikipedia article on the book claims "In all audiovisual media adaptations the character of Jane Prescott, an American, is replaced with a Japanese character named Haruo Ichijo"; but in the essay  at the end of my copy, critic YAMAMAE Yuzuru says that the editor at St. Martin's Press felt that for a Japanese writer unknown in America, something American was needed to make the readers feel at home. So it looks like the difference is due to the translation, as a commentator on Ho-Ling Wong's blog noted.

The Devotion of Suspect X

Mostly the books I discuss, even if they have a translation, are little known in the west. In this case most English speaking mystery readers probably read the book long before I got round to it, since 東野 圭吾 (HIGASHINO Keigo) is one of the few successful Japanese mystery exports, with several of his books now available in translation. In Japan too, 容疑者Xの献身 (yougisha ekkusu no kenshin, The Devotion of Suspect X, 2005) was one of his most successful works, winning the Honkaku Mystery prize and adapted into a film.

The book is part of a series, in which Tokyo policeman KUSANAGI (草薙) consults his old university friend, now a physics lecturer, YUGAWA Manabu (湯川学) for ideas on difficult cases. I've read an earlier short story collection 予知夢 (Yochimu, Prophetic Dream, 2000) and 聖女の救済 (seijo no kyuusai, Salvation of a Saint, 2008). The former is fairly conventional, a set of mysteries with a slight appearance of the supernatural to them. Salvation of a Saint however is an inverted mystery, like its predecessor, The Devotion of Suspect X. Perhaps it would be better to call them semi-inverted mysteries. We know (or at least we are fairly sure) who did the crime; but exactly what they did is still a mystery. As in other inverted mysteries, we follow the story both from the point of view of the detectives and from that of the criminals, with divided sympathies and some unease at the developments.

In The Devotion of Suspect X, the killer is a mother, HANAOKA Yasuko, living with her teenage daughter after divorcing her abusive husband. A threatening visit from him escalates into a fight in which they end up strangling him. (I'm not quite sure what the legal status of the crime would be in England; the events are close to, but not quite eligible for a 'self defense' plea.) They are on the point of calling the police to turn themselves in when their neighbour, maths teacher ISHIGAMI rings the doorbell. He immediately deduces what has happened and offers to help them, if they intend to conceal the crime. When they accept, he takes charge of the situation and sets to preparing a trick to deceive the police.

From the police side, we follow Kusanagi as he investigates the ex-husband's murder, soon closing in on the mother and daughter. By coincidence, the neighbour Ishigami, whom he questions as a witness, turns out to be an old friend of Yukawa. Yukawa is surprised to learn that Ishigami, a mathematical genius, is now a high school teacher and visits him to renew their friendship. Soon the various parties are separately pursuing their suspicions or concealing their guilt. Meanwhile we, like most of the characters, don't know quite what trick Ishigami used; and this is the mystery part of the book.

From Ho-Ling's post about the book, I gather that there was some discussion in Japan about whether the mystery part of the book was fair play. This seems really bizarre to me, because the solution, while shocking, is really very obvious, and pointed to by a variety of hints. It may be that the answer is more obvious if you come to it from reading Salvation of a Saint, since the narrative trickery used to mislead us is much the same. (I hope it's not giving much away to say that in both Higashino uses our insider knowledge of the criminal and their crime against us.) Seeing through the tricks (both Ishigami's and Higashino's) doesn't make the story less interesting, as the mystery is only part of the book. It does make it more painful reading though. You share more of Yukawa's distress as he pursues his friend. I don't notice anyone else claiming to have solved it easily, so if you want a challenge, don't read Salvation of a Saint first. And if you only read one, read this one; it's far the better book.

Deputy Inspector Fukuie's Greeting

福家警部補の挨拶 (Fukuie keibuho no aisatsu, Deputy Inspector Fukuie's Greeting, 2006) is a collection of long short stories by OOKURA Takahiro (大倉崇裕, born 1968). The stories are all inverted mysteries, a format familiar from the television series Columbo. We see the crime being committed in the first chapter, then watch the investigation. Columbo is well known in Japan, which also has its own version of the format, FURUHATA Ninzaburou (古畑任三郎), whom I know only from Ho-Ling Wong's reviews. There are other books in the Fukuie series, and two television adaptations in 2009 and 2014, which I haven't seen.

Columbo is often underestimated by his suspects because of his shabby dress and chaotic behaviour. Something similar is going on in the Fukuie stories, most of it centering on the fact that Fukuie is a woman. The only Columbo style clumsiness comes in a tendency to find she has mislaid her police identification when she first appears on the crime scene (the stories all have a number of recurring set pieces like this, not very funny bits of humour which look like they are there in anticipation of the television series). Fukuie is in her thirties, but looks younger. On the surface her manners are correct and self effacing; but she pursues her goals with ruthless persistance and complete indifference to the reactions of others.

The four stories have varied settings (a library, the forensic medicine department of a university, the world of television drama, a sake brewery) and the culprits have different motives, some more sympathetic than others. Neither the settings nor the characters seem very vivid. Even the title character is seen only with outsiders' eyes. The interest in stories like this is to spot how the detective has found out the truth that we already know, sometimes through the significance of something we know, sometimes because something that we did not know can be deduced. I must admit that I never really engaged with the puzzle aspect of the stories, perhaps because I don't read many inverted mysteries. My reaction to the solutions was always more "Ah, OK, fair enough" than "My God, how could I have missed that?"