The Tama Lakeside Murder Case

I don't think I've reviewed anything by UCHIDA Yasuo (内田康夫, born 1934) yet, though I read a couple of his books before I started this blog. He is best known for the Asami Mitsuhiko series, whose hero's job as a freelance travel writer allows Uchida to decorate the mysteries with descriptions of different parts of Japan in which the crimes are set. The title of this book 多摩湖畔殺人事件 (Tamakohan satsujinjiken, The Tama Lakeside Murder Case, 1993) would be absolutely typical of the series, many of which are a combination of place name and "murder case". This is a recognized genre in Japan, the "travel mystery", which gives the reader a combination of guidebook and mystery. The book is actually not in that series, but has strong travel mystery elements, although anyone looking for information on the title setting will be disappointed, as the body found there by a passing jogger ought not to have been there and the pursuit of how the victim got there leads to quite different parts of Japan, in particular to Arita in the north east.

The narration mostly follows the viewpoint of a police detective, KOUCHI (川内), a middle aged man, known to criminals as the demon policeman for his relentless pursuit. He had been too devoted to his work even when his wife and daughter were alive, but after both died early, his work is all he cares about. Currently he is resisting his doctor's advice to have the severe stomach pains he has been experiencing for months properly investigated.

Although the killer seems to have made some effort to make the victim hard to identify, they soon find that he is a Tokyo businessman. His daughter, a beautiful wheelchair bound invalid who resembles Kouchi's lost daughter, soon proves to be more of a detective than the police, making several key breakthroughs in the investigation.

Like many travel mysteries the plot follows a "patient policeman" model, gradually revealing the victim's movements before his disappearance and homing in on a suspect. There is, as often in these stories, only one real suspect, and the interest is in whether the police can break his alibi. Different parts of the  puzzle get solved stage by stage until the final confrontation. None of it really got my interest, I'm afraid, neither the mystery nor the human interest story. Uchida is a competent enough writer that you can understand his reliable popularity; but both plot ideas and characters seem very conventional for the most part. And diversions from the conventional were generally unattractive rather than interesting.

The Man Who Climbed to Heaven

“My father and mother were honest, though poor—”

“Skip all that!” cried the Bellman in haste.

“If it once becomes dark, there’s no chance of a Snark—
We have hardly a minute to waste!”

(Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark)

天に昇った男 (ten ni nobotta otoko, The Man Who Climbed to Heaven, 1994) by SHIMADA Souji (島田荘司) opens in the execution block of a Japanese prison. Like America, Japan still has capital punishment, although normally reserved for murders seen as particularly worthy of punishment (such as multiple murders). KADOWAKI Haruo (門脇春男) has been on death row for decades, while his case, uncontested on his part, proceeded up through the courts to the final judgement. But when the day of his execution arrives, Kadowaki miraculously survives and is released.

For the rest of the book we follow him as he returns to the little town in O. prefecture in northern Kyushu where the crimes he was arrested for were committed. (I imagine readers will guess that O stands for Oita. You find this kind of coy documentary style of naming from time to time in Japanese fiction; I'm not quite sure what it means.) Along the way he thinks back on the events leading up to his imprisonment. This means that most of the short book is a long series of flashbacks from his childhood through the various jobs he had in life and his failed marriage up to the actual crime.

I'm not very fond of flashback narrative in any case; and when it takes up most of the book, my tolerance gets even thinner. As we approach the end, the possible surprises in the narrative are thinned out. In the end the narrative structure has its justification, of a sort, although readers may not be entirely surprised to find that it is a version of storytelling's second most hated narrative idea.

The Sharaku Murder Case

The Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) best known in the west are those by Hiroshige and Hokusai, artists who were still active in the first half of the nineteenth century, as the influence of western techniques and materials was rapidly increasing. The Sharaku of  写楽殺人事件 (Sharaku satsujinjiken, The Sharaku Murder Case, 1983, translated as The Case of the Sharaku Murders) by 高橋克彦 (TAKAHASHI Katsuhiko, born 1947), is less well known, but much admired by connoisseurs.  He was active for only a brief period from 1794 to 1795, specialising in portraits of kabuki actors. Since little is known of him, many people have had speculative theories identifying him with this or that artist of the time. Takahashi was a lecturer on art history from Touhoku, the north east of Japan's main island. So it's perhaps not surprising that he constructed his first detective story, which won the Edogawa Rampo prize, around a theory connecting Sharaku with the art world of the region.

TSUDA Ryouhei (津田良平) has a junior research post under his professor, the leader of one of two opposing groups in the world of Japanese woodprint studies. Shortly after the leader of the other group is found dead, apparently from suicide, Tsuda gets his hands on a book of photographs that seems to give a clue to Sharaku's true identity, linking him to a painter, Shouhei.  He tries to find out more about Shouhei by visiting the north east, where he had been active, and gradually pieces together a story connecting Sharaku to a group of early imitators of western oil painting techniques (Akita ranga). His discoveries promise to be a sensation not just in the art world, but with the press and television; but the promised glory is a temptation for his professor too.

This is one of those mysteries which introduce their readers to a specialist field along the way. We get a brief glimpse of the murder part of the title in the first chapters, and then we are on a scholarly treasure hunt for half the book until the next mysterious death occurs. I like treasure hunts as a plot well enough; but this one reminded me a little too much of the kind of enthusiastic house of cards construction that so often wastes other researchers' time in academic life. Reading this part in Japanese with an imperfect grasp of the kanji (symbol letters) used for names and minimal knowledge of Japanese art history was hard work; and I was often a little lost as Tsuda drew his network of connections between a huge number of eighteenth century characters (perhaps it is easier if you're reading it in the translation).

The appreciation printed at the end of the book quotes Takahashi as saying that as a reader he likes locked room mysteries and alibi breaking plots, but when he comes to write he turns to mysteries of motivation. There is some alibi breaking in the book, but it's a fairly minor part, and in general this is more a read along mystery than a fair play puzzle. We share Tsuda's experience of the story as each part of the truth is revealed rather than competing with him to solve the mystery.

Taro the Dragon Boy (film)

When I wrote about the children's book, Taro the Dragon Boy by MATSUTANI Miyoko, I was aware of the 1979 film; but I'm too much of a miser to pay the 25 Euros that a DVD cost back then. Happily the price went down to something more affordable, and I thought I'd write another post comparing film and book.

To recap a little of what I wrote in the earlier post, the book combines folk tale elements to make a larger adventure story. Taro is a lazy, greedy, thoughtless child raised by his poor and self sacrificing grandmother in a mountain district of Japan. He is also strong, brave and good natured, spending his time playing with his friends, the animals of the surrounding forests. (Here he is teaching them sumo wrestling.)

When a friend is kidnapped he sets out to rescue her, and success in this leads to a further search, to find his mother, who had been transformed into a dragon.

The most striking thing about the film is how closely it follows the book. Most film adaptations diverge significantly from their source material, with close correspondences mostly found only in the earlier scenes; but Taro the Dragon Boy stays close to the original from beginning to end. The story makes a slightly different impression in the different media. Both are episodic; but while the two larger plot arcs that the book divides into are still present in the film, the story seems to flow forward more easily and the division is not so strongly felt.

The visual style of the film is strongly influenced by the traditional ink wash painting that Japan learnt from China.

The background landscapes are all done in this style, and while the characters are drawn in a more typical animation style, their colours are also toned down to fit the scenery.

You probably anticipate that a story that starts with a lazy and thoughtless protagonist will have moral lessons about the value of hard work and consideration for others. In a sense, it does. Here is Taro after working for months for a manipulative landowner, taking the pay she reluctantly offers him, as much rice as he can carry (which he then distributes to poor villagers).

But the account of the hero's growth does not feel moralising. We are not invited so much to condemn the earlier version of the character as to share his realisation of the harshness of the world he lives in and desire to change it.

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 Black Trunk

AYUKAWA Tetsuya was a leading representative of the traditional detective story in the decades after the second world war. I wasn't very keen on his The Villa Lilac Murder Case; but 黒いトランク　(kuroi toranku, The Black Trunk, 1956) seems to me a real classic of the alibi breaking genre. It is fairly explicitly a homage to Freeman Wills Crofts' classic The Cask (1920), but its complex and ingenious plot makes it a masterpiece in its own right.

The story starts with the discovery of a dead body in a trunk delivered to a Tokyo station from northern Kyuushuu. The addressee has never appeared to collect it, and the address given seems to be a fiction. The sender however is real, a drug dealer in a small Kyuushuu town. Soon the Kyuushuu police are busy trying to trace his movements. When he turns up dead in the Seto Inland Sea, it looks like his suicide puts an end to the story; but his widow is not happy with this and asks an old friend, Inspector ONITSURA (鬼貫警部, Ayukawa's series character), to look into it.

Onitsura had been in love with the widow as a student and had lost out to the man who married her, a fellow student. In fact all the characters in the case were students with Onitsura: both victims, the drug dealer and also the first victim, a widely disliked far right militaristic zealot; and soon two suspects, a nervous artist and a tough minded industrialist. Onitsura soon turns up suspicious activity from a man dressed in blue, who must be the murderer; but it looks as though neither suspect could be the man.

What makes this mystery so good? I think that part of it is the single minded concentration on advancing the plot. In The Villa Lilac Murder Case the mystery remains unsolved until the end only by having incompetent detectives who never notice suspicious behaviour or ask questions every reader has thought of. In The Black Trunk both Onitsura and the local police detective who first investigates are competent. The concentration of the plot is notable. There are only two suspects that matter, and readers will probably quickly pick one of them. You could call this story "The One Red Herring". The characters are not exactly realistic; but they are interesting. Ayukawa allows himself the same freedom as modern drama to let his characters talk much more freely and directly than we would expect. This too helps the story move along briskly.

It must be admitted (as Ho-Ling's slightly less enthusiastic review notes) that there are stretches where the story just feels too complicated. You are asked to keep track of the separate movements of several people and pieces of luggage through the rail and boat systems of Japan from Tokyo to Kyushu over several days. There were certainly points in the story where I had trouble trying to remember what I was supposed to know about the earlier parts of the investigation. Certainly, even if I had made notes, I could never actually solve this in one go; but Ayukawa provides for us there too, I think. The solution proceeds by stages. We make one breakthrough, but find that we are left with a new problem. The reader can at least spot some of the (many) tricks, and as the solution proceeds we get a firmer grasp of the details, leaving us in a good position to solve the final puzzle if we want. Even for admirers of the Golden Age detective story, this is not a book for everyone; but for an admirer of Crofts it's well worth reading.

The Locked Room the Angel Opened

天使が開けた密室 (tenshi ga aketa misshitsu, The Locked Room the Angel Opened, 2001) is a teenage oriented detective story by TANIHARA Shouko (谷原秋桜子). As the title suggests, it features a locked room mystery.

 Highschool student Minami is trying to save up money with part time jobs. After one of them instead lands her with a massive debt, she is happy to take over the well paid night shift job of a departing neighbour, though she has some doubts when she learns what it involves. An undertakers' does the initial handling of patients who die in a local private hospital (while trying to win customers for the actual funeral service). Minami gets a mobile phone and gets paid even if she is not needed; but if someone dies, then she has to go out (for extra pay) and help move the body.

All goes well enough until her unpleasant colleague is found strangled, and Minami seems to be the only person who could have killed him. Happily she has friends to look out for her, and soon they are on the track of the real killer.

This world Minami lives in is peopled a bit too much by the conventions of popular literature. Her two school friends are an energetic and self confident sporting type and a traditional minded daughter of a wealthy family. Her new neighbour is a handsome and intelligent student, with whom she is on bad terms for no good reason. Her kimono wearing mother is a kindly and domestic figure whom Minami thinks must be protected from the outside world. Any originality in the book comes in the depiction of Minami's part time jobs, particularly the depiction of the undertaking business.

The story and characters are perhaps a bit weak; but it reads easily and agreeably. It approaches the mystery at a fairly leisured pace. We are half way through the book before the crime occurs, although of course some of the elements of the mystery are being prepared at the same time. The actual puzzle could probably fit comfortably into a long short story. 

My kindle edition had a short story with the same characters as an extra, tatta nijuukyuufun no yuukai, 'The twenty nine minute kidnapping'.