Two Minute Adventure

A boy who loves stories of knights fighting dragons is transported from his Japanese school life to another world where he must fight a dragon to save the kingdom. That probably sounds like the laziest fantasy fulfillment story you could write. I'm not sure why 二分間の冒険 (Nifunkan no bouken, Two Minute Adventure, 1985) by 岡田淳 (OKADA Jun) is so much better than you'd expect from that description; but it works very well.

The hero Satoru is on an errand across the school grounds, with instructions from the teacher to be back within two minutes, when he is summoned by a black cat, Dareka (Someone), whose voice he can hear in his head. Dareka gets Satoru to remove a thorn in his paw (or at least mime the action, as Satoru cannot see any thorn there). As a reward he grants Satoru one wish. When Satoru, pressed to decide, says "Give me time!", Dareka transports him to another world, where he can stay until he grows old, but still be back within the two minutes. And indeed Satoru  might have to stay, since Dareka now decides to play a game of hide and seek with him. The cat has transformed himself into something else, "the most certain thing in this world"; he will take Satoru back to his world when Satoru catches him and says "Got you!"

Alone in the middle of a forest, Satoru can think of nothing but to set off in some direction and hope he finds something. Night falls before he can find his way out of the forest. Fortunately after a while he spots light ahead in the darkness. He finds a group of children his age. In fact they all look like children he knows from school, but they have no memory of him. They have gathered to send off Kaori, a girl from their village. Every year the village sends two children to become victims to the dragon that rules the country, chosen by an arrow fired into the roof of their houses. This year however, both arrows had landed in Kaori's house; so the second victim is unclear. When Satoru appears, the other children think he might be the one meant; and Satoru agrees to go with Kaori, thinking that if the dragon's power is so absolute, he might be Dareka, so that catching him would solve his and Kaori's problem at once.

A world with yearly victims sacrificed to a monster sounds familiar; but this world is a little stranger than that.

"What you said, it sounds like you it's only children living in your village?" Satoru asked, tipping the last crumbs of bread into his mouth.

"Children?"

"I mean, people about our age ...." Satoru replied, surprised. "Do you understand the word 'adult'?" he tried asking back.

Kaori tilted her head.

"Who were you born from?"

"Born?"

This was no good, Satoru thought, and looked for a different line of question.

"Um, I mean, the people last night, they were living with you in the village, yes?"

Kaori nodded.

"Apart from them, who was living there?"

"No-one."

"No-one? Well, when did you all start living there?"

"When ....? Always."

"Always? There must have been someone looking after you?"

Kaori didn't seem to understand Satoru's question.

"I mean, the meat and bread we just ate - did you make it?"

No, Kaori shook her head.

"Who made it?"

"No-one made it. It just is."

"It just is? Even though no-one makes it? Does someone bring it for you?"

"I don't know. I've never thought about things like that."

...

"Well what did you do in the village from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night?"

"We played."

The story developes into a fight against the dragon; but it avoids some potential clichés, casting an ironic light on the idea of a chosen hero. In addition, the oppressive fear running through the group of children, who are each waiting for the moment when they must face the dragon, is conveyed more vividly than we might expect. In this and other ways what looks like an easy fantasy becomes a little more disturbing.

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.

The Boy Detectives Club

少年探偵団　(Shounen tanteidan, The Boy Detectives Club, 1937), is the sequel to　二十面相 (Nijuumensou, The Fiend with Twenty Faces, 1936), making it the second in a series of juvenile detective stories by  江戸川乱歩 (EDOGAWA Ranpo), featuring the great detective AKECHI Kogoro (明智 小五郎), his young assistant, teenager KOBAYASHI  Yoshio (小 芳雄), and a group of primary school aged boys, the boy detectives club of the title.

Tokyo is in terror of a black figure, who merges into the night and is seen only when he shows the white teeth of his mocking smile. The strange figure's appearances come close to the house of a wealthy Japanese family, and wake in the memory of the father an association with a jewel that he once bought. The jewel had seemed a bargain at the time; but he later learnt that it had been stolen from an idol in an Indian village, and two Indians were said to pursue the stone relentlessly, taking the life of the owner's daughter, just as an Indian girl of the village had lost her life at the time of the theft.

The mystery runs along similar lines to Twenty Faces. Akechi is again away on business and Kobayashi steps in for him. This time the villains seem a bit more ruthless than Twenty Faces, who did not care for killing.

Straining his eyes he looked up at the ceiling. It was hard to make out; but it seemed that a small hole was opening there and through that something like a thick pipe was being pushed inside. Its diameter was about twenty centimetres.

Hey, what's this you're playing at? What on earth is that? Kobayashi braced himself, prepared for whatever might come, and kept his eyes fixed in that direction. As he did so, he thought he heard a "ga, ga ga" sound. And in that moment, suddenly, out of the mouth of the thick pipe, something white and foaming started to pour down like a waterfall. It was water. Water.

Oh, readers, what must our Kobayashi's surprise be at this moment?

The novel follows very much the pattern of the first book and has similar virtues. The villain is hilariously irritating, crowing like a child in his victories and mocking his opponents. The narrator moves between different viewpoints and attitudes, often addressing the readers and inviting them to speculate about what is going on, sometimes pulling the camera back and seeing events through the eyes of the people of Tokyo. The passage of time has perhaps given the story more interest, for the glimpse of Japan in the thirties that it offers. That includes such suprisingly modern items as burglar alarms with infrared sensors and helicopters. It also shares the fault, if you care, that all the surprises are much too obvious. An adult reader will work out almost everything that is going on immediately; and probably children are expected to spot most of it for themselves before the revelation.

The boy detectives club, which had a small role in the first book, is the title character this time; but its role is only slightly larger, and almost restricted to the first part of the book.

According to the Japan Foundation's translation database, there is an English translation by Gavin Frew, The Boy Detectives Club (Kodansha International, 1988).

Travelling

Another post with no real content. My excuse is that I was travelling for most of March, my second trip to Japan (mostly western Honshuu and Shikoku). Here, for YOKOMIZO Seishi readers, is a honjin, the one in Tsumago, north of Nagoya.

As you can see, it's not quite on the scale of the one in the 本陣殺人事件.

Apart from general tourism, I managed to bring back quite a few books (about forty, plus another fifteen in electronic form, since Amazon only sells ebooks if you're in the country). In particular, I visited the BookOff store in Kyoto, which was near my hotel on the Sanjo-dori, and got about twenty books, including some I'd wanted to read that were out of print.

By Laichuan Yinfu [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

That store also had the advantage that novels were arranged in author order, not the unfriendly publisher order that new book shops use in Japan. I looked in some other BookOff shops and found that some used the publisher ordering. All of them had a large selection of detective stories. The shops sell almost all their books either at 100 yen or at just over half list price. I couldn't work out what decided which of these prices the books went into. The state of the copies seemed about the same. At my current reading speed, I've got enough now (with what I already had) to last for a couple of years, so maybe I can get by without ordering any more until my next trip.

I put a couple of posts up in advance, and managed to write one while I was in Japan (not very easy on an Ipad). But I should get back into normal (but not very frequent) posting now.

Palindrome Syndrome

As often with books published by Sougen Suiri Bunko, I didn't have to think up a translation of the title myself, since one was already provided. The original book is 喜劇悲奇劇 (Kigekihikigeki, Palindrome Syndrome, 1982) by 泡坂妻夫 (AWASAKA Tsumao). The translation offered is not literal. Kigeki means 'comedy' and higeki means 'tragedy' and the ki in the middle of it means 'strange' and can be used in describing stage magicians. So a more literal title would be something more like Tragicomagical; but the palindrome of the title references the original japanese. Palindromes in English read the same forwards as backwards. It's the same in Japanese, but the Japanese alphabet is syllabic. There's one letter for 'hi', one for 'ki' and so on, giving a series: ki-ge-ki-hi-ki-ge-ki. So the title is a palindrome, and it's not the only one in the book. The mystery takes place on a showboat whose owner is an enthusiast for palindromes, and all the victims have palindromic names.

Awasaka was himself an enthusiast for stage magic; so it's no surprise that there are several magicians among the characters, including the hero, KAEDE Shichirou (楓七郎). There are also fire eaters, clowns and several tigers. The story takes place on a old transport ship adapted to look like a nineteenth century paddleboat for entertainment cruises in Japanese coastal waters. In the first scene, the ship is travelling through a typhoon on a preparation trip before the first public performance. Hearing a disturbance from the stage magician's room, the crew force the door open. The magician staggers out,  stabbed with a sword that passes right through him. He pushes past the people outside and climbs desperately onto the deck, where he pulls the sword out and collapses as blood pours out onto the deck. Others rush to help, but a wave sweeps him over the side, and they only have time to reach the sword (a real one, not a prop). But one bystander had remained in the corridor outside the room and swears that no-one had left it, even though there is no-one inside.

This is the first of a series of bizarre deaths, which the manager covers up ruthlessly, thinking that the show must go on.  A serial murder case with a background in a curiosity like palindromes is very reminiscent of the other Awasaka book that I discussed earlier, 乱れからくり, which has mechanical toys as its speciality. I think it is less successful than that one was. In both, most of the ingenuity comes in the tricks that the murderer devises; and some certainly are ingenious. But in one case at least, you have to suspect that the murderer's ingenuity is really only for the author's advantage. With a range of grotesque characters and extravagant motives, we are very far from a realistic crime novel. But the first part is strangely a little lacklustre, though certainly not dull. A problem might be the self pitying alcoholic hero. The story picks up a lot towards the middle, as the farcical element becomes stronger; one unexpected turn in particular is neatly worked into a Wodehouse style comedy sequence, in a way very reminiscent of some John Dickson Carr (or perhaps even more Carter Dickson) stories. If you liked 乱れからくり, you'll probably like this, just not quite as much.

A Record of the Preliminary Hearing

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

This is another translation, of a story by 平林初之輔 (HIRABAYASHI Hatsunosuke, 1893-1931), 予審調書, his first crime story, published in the magazine 新青年 (Shinseinen, Modern Young Man) in 1926. You can read it online at Aozora Bunko: here. Hirabayashi was a critic and translator (of both French and English). He also contributed to the Japanese detective story with essays, and translations of Poe and S.S. Van Dine.

I'll explain a few points of the story in advance.
Shikishima: a high class Japanese cigarette brand: 敷島.
zashiki: a room in traditional Japanese style spread with tatami mats.
jou: a measure of area, derived from the tatami mats used for floors, about 1.65 square metres.

As usual, I've put the actual translation after the break.

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?