The House in the Wood

林の中の家 (Hayashi no naka no ie, The House in the Wood, 1959) is the second detective novel by NIKI Etsuko (仁木悦子), following her prize winning debut, 猫は知っていた (The Cat Knew, 1957). The narrator, NIKI Etsuko, and her older brother Yuutarou, are still students. Although not especially rich themselves, they have fallen on their feet with the chance to house sit (and maintain the cactus collection) for a rich couple who are currently living abroad. This gives them a home and the use of a little Renault car and a television. The book came out in the same year as the OZU film お早よう (Ohayou, Good Morning), whose story turns on the gradual spread of television.

Etsuko is watching television when the story starts (the more serious Yuutarou is cataloguing plants). A telephone call comes from a woman who greets Etsuko and asks to speak to her brother. Then, before she can call him, the woman screams in horror and the phone is cut off. She had mentioned the address she was calling from, so Etsuko, accompanied by her brother, sets out to investigate. They find the victim, a former tango singer, clubbed to death in the titular house in the wood, the home of a successful television and radio scriptwriter. The victim was married not to him, but to a businessman, the manager of the business belonging to the victim's parents.

The story spreads out to cover a very large number of suspects, the victim's parents' family, her husband's household, the scriptwriter, his estranged wife and her employees, and so on. There are more crimes too, a suspicious heart attack, an apparent attempted murder, and the kidnapping a small child. The brother and sister again play amateur detective, with the improbable advantage that both the investigating deputy inspector (who knows them from the earlier case) and many of the suspects are very ready to talk to them. Occasionally there are more realistic moments where their lack of official standing leaves them unable to investigate something. Occasionally too they show an awareness of the various ethical problems that come with their role.

I mentioned the large number of suspects. I think there are at least fifteen people, who (sometimes only formally) are considered at some point as suspects. That means that there are a large number of red herrings. The reader has little chance of really knowing who did it till near the end, when most of the distractions have been cleared up and the picture has settled. The actual solution is well clued, though only parts of it are interesting: there are a few too many clues that rely on trivial contradictions that the reader is supposed to spot for my taste.

I said in my last review that Niki is the polar opposite of YOKOMIZO Seishi; and that's true of this story too. There is not much intense emotion on display. Several characters are wealthy in a normal middle class way; but there are no powerful families with special social influence. The setting is modern and urban and close to everyday life.

Our Hats

わたしたちの帽子 (Watashitachi no boushi, Our Hats, 2005) is a children's book by TAKADONO Houko (高楼方子, born 1955), aimed at older primary school children. Takadono is not well known in the west. There is a recent German translation of her picture book for young children, まあちゃんのながいかみ (Maa chan no nagai kami, Maa's Long Hair, 1989), published by Edition Bracklo (Wenn meine Haare lang wachsen, 2013).

Our Hats is a kind of fantasy, with a modern, urban setting. Saki and her mother move into an old apartment building while their home is being renovated. At first, Saki feels downcast at living in the old building; but soon she comes to feel an interest in it. In a cupboard in the apartment she finds a patchwork hat, made of bits of cloth with flower and leaf patterns. She tries the hat on and is still wearing it when her pet bird, Chiruru, gets out of its cage and flies out of the open door of the apartment. Chasing the bird, she climbs the stairs to the fifth floor, where she finds the door of another apartment open and hears a voice quietly singing inside.

In the middle of the all white, empty, bright room a girl was standing, facing to one side. She was wearing a white blouse and a fluffy round green skirt. Not just that, on top of her shoulder length curly hair, wasn't that the same hat as Saki was wearing? And then, sitting on her fingertip, there was Chiruru. He had his head on one side, just as if he was listening to the girl's song.

Saki becomes friends with the mysterious girl, Iku. Wearing their nearly identical hats, the two explore the building, with its strange corridors and stairs, and observe the even stranger residents. Saki keeps her friendship a secret from her mother, as she suspects that there is something strange about Iku.

The book keeps a balance between reality and fantasy, using the mysterious feeling that a strange older building has for young children. Saki's interpretation of the building and the people in it is informed by the expectations of a child who has read fantasy stories; but most of what she witnesses could be interpreted as part of the (not very) normal world. She has competing desires, for a normal friendship with a real girl her age, and for mysterious and magical events. The resolution of the various puzzles satisfies both her wishes in an unexpected way and links the friendship across the building's history.

[I borrowed the illustration from the JBBY web site that I link to. Mostly I put up a scan of the cover of the books I discuss. But since in either case the copyright belongs to someone else, I hope that if anyone has a problem, they'll let me know, so that I can remove it.]

The Case Files of Young Kindaichi, Files 12 and 13

I don't write much about manga:although I know it's a useful supplement for learning the kanji, I don't read it very much; and since there are a lot of blogs out there on the subject, I don't think I have much to add. I did write about one of the 金田一少年 (Young Kindaichi) manga last year. That one, The Vampire Legend Murder Case, like all those I had read, was from the more recent series, by AMAGI Seimaru (天樹征丸). In the early years the main series was written by KANARI Youzaburou (金成陽三郎). Some people are not big fans of Kanari (here for instance are the blogger TomCat's reviews of several of the translations); but the main reason I had read nothing by him is that in the original, the stories are published so that most start in one volume and end in another. That means that if you want to read every story you pay for, you have to buy a set of three or more volumes between the points where the break between stories and the break between volumes coincide. I didn't care to spend that much money on a writer I might not enjoy, but in Japan recently I picked up a short stretch of three volumes second hand, Volumes 16 to 18 of the series, containing File 12, 蠟人形城殺人事件 (Rouningyoujou satsujinjiken, The Waxworks Castle Murder Case, 1996) and 13, 怪盗紳士の殺人 (Kaitou shinshi no satsujin, Mysterious Thief The Gentleman's Murder, 1996). Both of these have an English translation (with one story per volume, unlike the Japanese), the first as The House of Wax (2006), the second as The Gentleman Thief (2006), both translated by Matt Varovsky. The publishers have changed the file numbers, so that they now number 13 to 14 rather than 12 to 13.

In The Waxworks Castle Murder Case, Kindaichi and his rival Superintendent AKECHI are invited to a mystery solving competition along with other leading crime experts at a lonely castle. The whole castle had been transferred from Germany, intended as the centre of a tourist attraction. That had failed and now the castle stands alone in the mountains. The castle has the nickname "wax figure castle", because it is peopled by life sized waxworks. Among those, they find a line of figures perfectly reproducing all the guests at the mystery solving competition, including Kindaichi, Miyuki and Akechi. The setup of the story is very nicely done. We have a play murder puzzle in which the competitors find one of their number apparently stabbed in the back, but then realise that it is only the wax model that has been stabbed and this 'murder' is their first mystery. Then, when this is solved, they wonder where the real person whose waxwork had been killed is. This is the start of a series of murders in which the murder is announced by the 'murder' of the victim's waxwork figure. Trapped in the castle and unable to contact the outside world, the detectives must solve the case before they become the victims.

The trick in this one is not new, but it's a neat variation, very well prepared. In general Kanazari makes very good use in various ways of the atmospheric, window dressing elements, both to deceive us and to keep us interested as the story is unfolding.

Mysterious Thief The Gentleman's Murder is a much weaker work. Inspector KENMOCHI has called in Kindaichi to help him catch a master thief, who goes by the name "The Gentleman" and always sends a calling card announcing the coming theft of a work of art. The Gentleman also always "steals" the subject of the painting, by changing it in some way. Japan really likes mysterious thieves; and this sounds like a promising opening, with the prospect of a double mystery, theft and murder, connected in some way, or unconnected. Somehow it doesn't come out as interesting as one might hope. The solution to the murder mystery involves a variation on a very standard trick (with perhaps one small interesting innovation, which I'd have liked to see used in a better story).

There are certain elements common to almost all Young Kindaichi mysteries: a closed circle of suspects in an isolated setting; a chapter at the end which explains the motive of the murderer. This can be a little tedious. I remember as a child feeling a bit impatient when I read the ends of the Sherlock Holmes books with the same structure (A Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear?). We know who did it now, who cares about the backstory? The Waxworks Castle Murder Case at least provided a new plot idea.

I've read five of the mysteries written by Amagi, and only once (that I noticed) was there a clue which was only in the artwork, not in the text. By contrast, both the mysteries here had clues which were in the pictures and not in the text, although in each case there was something in the text to draw your attention to the fact that there was a clue to be found. The art is by さとう ふみや (SATOU Fumiya), as in the later series. The characters are much the same, but there seem to be subtle changes. Kindaichi's face often looks plumper than in the revived series, and the area of Miyuki's chin and lower jaw is larger. The latter change seems to be part of some more general change in taste in what kind of female faces are judged attractive, even though the volumes here were published only eight years before the start of the new series.

The Book of Happiness

 Lector intende: laetaberis.

There are probably not many comic novels that deserve the name. But however good or bad a comic novel may be, it is mostly better, or at least less crass, than the cover suggests. English publishers used to like to signal to readers "this is a comic novel" by putting what looked like a pneumatic Punch and Judy show of bulging red faced figures on the cover. The comic Indian that the publishers put on しあわせの書　迷探偵ヨギガンジーの心霊術 (Shiawase no sho, meitantei yogi ganji no shinreijutsu, The Book of Happiness, Stray Detective Yogi Ganjī's Mind Reading, 1987) by AWASAKA Tsumao (泡坂妻夫) is in a different style, but gives the same misleading impression of a painfully misplaced attempt at very broad comedy. Both the Awasaka books that I've written about so far (乱れからくり and 喜劇悲奇劇) have a lot of humour in them, and this is very similar. But for the most part the humour is in mild incongruities and waywardness of conversation and choice of action.

The book comes with a warning, 'For the Happiness of Readers: Please do not reveal the secret of "The Book of Happiness" to those who have not yet read it.' I suspect with this preparation, warier readers will be on the lookout for the big surprise, and may well have a good idea what it is by the end. One way or the other, I think readers will be impressed (the book is a "tour de force" both in the negative and the positive sense). But, avoiding spoilers as well as I can, here's a little bit about the contents.

The story starts with a description of "The Book of Happiness", a religious text given out to adherents or potential converts to a large cult. It is the cult leader's account of her life and philosophy. The rest of the novel follows various mysterious events occurring in the cult, many of them involving this cult text. The detective figure here, Yogi Ganjī, is one of Awasaka's series detectives. He had already appeared in a collection of short stories, which I haven't read. Evidently in the earlier book, he picked up his two disciples, 不動丸 (Fudoumaru), a man counterfeiting psychic powers, and　美保子 (Mihoko), an actress. Ganjī is a teacher of yoga and casual practicioner of a variety of psychic arts. When we first see him, he is on Mount Osore, at the northern tip of Japan, regarded as an entrance to the underworld. Those wishing to contact the recently deceased go to the yearly festival there. Mistaken for an itako (a Japanese medium), Ganjī does an impromptu communication with a popular singer, who had died in a plane crash. The singer was an enthusiastic member of the cult, as was another recent accident victim, the sister of a man who questions the itako sitting next to Ganjī. In fact several members of the cult have died in recent accidents, and, more unusually, quite a few of them seem not to want to stay dead. Ganjī's curiosity is awoken by the copy of "The Book of Happiness" that one of the victims left behind, and he starts investigating the cult.

The story wanders about in various directions, and I don't think I can give much more of a summary than this, without starting to tell too much of the plot. Like its detective, the story is one where the reader wonders where exactly this is all heading. There are a lot of little mysteries that accumulate through the book, but if there's a major crime, it's not clear what it is. In general, my impression of Awasaka's books is that he's better at tricks (either his or the criminal's) than deductions; and that's probably true of this book too. But the lack of an explicitly posed single mystery until the solution makes for an impressive ending. I had spotted quite a lot of what was going on and had a fair idea of who was doing what and how; but the larger story was a complete surprise.

Battery

I started this blog on June 23rd last year. So this post marks a full year of posting, not very much of it in the last months. That's likely to continue (or get worse) for the next few months, as I struggle to meet a work deadline. For now, here's the next review.

バッテリー (Battery, 1996) is the first in a series of six children's novels of the same title by あさのあつこ (ASANO Atsuko, born 1954). I haven't read Battery II-VI, published from 1998 to 2005, so I don't know how the story goes on from here. There's a film with the same title from 2007 and a television series from 2008; but I haven't seen them and don't know whether they're based on the whole series or only part. The first book is structured as a complete narrative, with a ring composition motif in the titles of the first and final chapters; but a lot of elements of the story are still only slightly developed at the end of the book. American readers will probably recognise the use of the word "battery" in the title, which according to Wikipedia, "refers collectively to the pitcher and the catcher" in a baseball team. I'm English, and I don't know much about baseball. So I can't say how well it's portrayed.

The book follows twelve year old Takumi (巧), who had been the star pitcher in his primary school team, as his family moves to a new town, over a few weeks of the spring holiday before he starts middle school. Takumi is the book's main character, convinced of his own ability as a pitcher, and with no interest in anyone around him (almost every chapter has him saying, "As if that matters" or "What's that got to do with me?" more than once). Takumi's family are returning to their home town. His father has been transferred there after becoming ill from overwork in his previous position. They are moving in with Takumi's maternal grandfather. Takumi is happy about this, as his grandfather was very active in baseball. His mother is less happy. She had felt that her father neglected her for sports, and in reaction had married a man with no interest in baseball. In particular she is worried that he will involve her younger son, Seiha (清波). Seiha had been seriously ill when he was younger, and his mother now treats him over-protectively. Seiha wants to play baseball too; but Takumi is hardly willing to acknowledge his existence. (It isn't clearly stated, but I think it's implied that the family neglected Takumi when Seiha was sick, and that Takumi resents him.) Beyond the family, the most important character is Gou (豪), like Takumi a boy about to move up to middle school, and a baseball catcher. Takumi is relentlessly concentrated on his own achievements. Gou is more easy going and kinder, noticing the feelings of those around him.

The story follows Takumi's interactions with his family and with Gou and other baseball playing boys. The narrative and dialogue style is simple but lively, painted in a few bright colours. Much of the narrative follows what is going on inside Takumi's head. His thoughts tend to go round in circles, which is realistic, but a little wearying to read. The story progresses (not very fast) through conversations, where everyone brings out into the open underlying issues without much reserve, but without ever getting to any resolution either.

Magic Flight

KANOU Tomoko (加納朋子, born 1966) is a writer of 日常の謎 (nichijou no nazo, puzzles of everyday life), a genre of detective stories, where the mysteries are minor events, with no serious crime, often with no crime at all. 魔法飛行 (Mahou hikou, Magic Flight, 1993) is the sequel to ななつのこ (Nanatsu no ko, Seven Children, 1992), which I read some years ago. I didn't feel like rereading it, so I can't write a proper review. The basic set up is of a young college student IRIE Komako, retelling a mystery from a children's book that she's a fan of, her fan letter to the author, which happens to mention some minor mystery she has come across in real life, the author's reply, solving the mystery. So we get two sets of short story mysteries, one (the stories from the book Komako has read) involving a small farmer's young child and his friend, a mysterious girl who solves the puzzles he brings her, the other from the external narrator Komako, whose puzzles are solved by the author she writes to. For a little more detail, you can read Ho-Ling's discussion here. I don't share the view that mysteries need a murder; but I would agree that the stories feel a little too diluted for a mystery fan. They may have had too little ambition as mysteries; but as a narrative exercise, with different kinds of narration, paired related mysteries, and an overarching larger mystery, they certainly deserve admiration. 

The narrator's enthusiastic retelling of the stories from the book within the book was a slight hurdle for me. In real life, we tolerate that kind of thing from good friends; but they generally don't succeed in communicating the qualities of the original in the slightest. If you've ever listened to an acquaintance performing the parts of a classic Monty Python sketch, backtracking here and there, because they've forgotten a favourite bit, you'll know how tedious this can be. Komako's internal narration is not that bad, and of course one feels sympathy for a fan's enthusiasm; but it still felt as though I was looking at the stories of the internal narrative through clouded glass.

The way that the story in ななつのこ develops makes a continuation of this format impossible; and I was wondering where a sequel could go. In 魔法飛行, there are only four stories, each featuring a single mystery. If I remember there were more mysteries in the first book (7 times 2?). So the mysteries here are much longer than those. Komako is now writing to 瀬尾 (SEO, I think: the book doesn't provide furigana for the name), a young man she met in the first book; and sending him accounts of her daily life, written up as stories, but unfinished. Seo comments on the writing and also solves a puzzle in the stories. But then, after each story and Seo's solution of each mystery, there follows what seems to be a letter to Komako from a reader of Komako's stories, written as if to the fictional character Komako. The writer of these letters describes them as letters from a different dimension, and compares him or herself to children writing a letter to Santa Claus or to people who write to Sherlock Holmes. This is an interesting idea and certainly sets the reader wondering where it is heading. These letters from nowhere are the larger mystery of the book, growing darker as the stories progress, in contrast to the generally light tone of Komako's narrative.

The stories also show a greater interest in drama or in classical detective story elements like inexplicable situations than most of those in the first book. The puzzle of the first story is very minor (why would a girl enter different false names in the college lecture attendance register?) and serves more to introduce the major characters and their lives; but the following feature such things as an attempt to save a life, a ghost story of a painting on a bridge of a boy who died in an accident there turning into a painting of a skeleton, and an apparent case of communication by telepathy.

Suspicion

疑惑 (Giwaku, Suspicion) is a 1982 novella by 松本清張 (MATSUMOTO Seichou), first published, according to the Japanese Wikipedia page, as 昇る足音 ("The sound of footsteps on the stairs"). It comes printed with a second novella, which I haven't read yet. It was made into a film (also called 疑惑) in the same year, 1982; and as this was being shown near me earlier this week, I hurried to read the story before seeing the film.

The novella follows the trial of a woman accused of murdering her husband. ONIZUKA Kumako (鬼塚球磨子) had been a bar hostess in Tokyo, with yakuza connections and a criminal record; but she had risen in the world by marrying the rich Hokuriku businessman SHIRAKAWA Fukutarou (白河福太郎). Shortly after her marriage she had had his life insured for a huge sum. When one night the couple drive off the dockside of the local harbour and only Kumako swims out of the wrecked car, the police suspect that it was no accident, particularly after finding a spanner in the car, which Kumako might have put there as a tool to break the glass to get out.

The novella follows the case in a distanced way, either through the eyes of the local crime reporter, whose reports have made the story a sensation even in the national press, or with the general distanced view of public knowledge. We start some time after the actual crime, shortly before the trial, watching the attempts to find legal representation for Kumako, whose reputation from the press coverage makes lawyers unwilling to take her case. Finally she receives a court appointed representative, a specialist in civil law, from whom nobody expects much.

The style is generally very dry and factual. Only rarely does Matsumoto attempt vivid description, more of places than of people (who generally get a few traits, which are then repeated on each appearance). The dryness actually works very well, especially at this length, giving the work something of the feel of a documentary. That does make the ending a bit problematic. There's a too predictable "Oh the irony" ending, whose shape you can make out from about half way. I was really hoping that that wasn't where Matsumoto is heading, but it was. That's perhaps a matter of taste. The detection part of the story is quite solid, and the depiction of a trial being swayed by the judgement of the press is well done.

The film is directed by NOMURA Yoshitarou (野村 芳太郎), who made many films based on Matsumoto's books. I was not very enthusiastic about his version of YOKOMIZU Seishi's Yatsu haka mura in an earlier post; but I think this works quite well. There are two main differences between book and film. Firstly Kumako becomes the main character. Now in the book, Kumako is a very compelling figure; but we never see her at first hand, only through the eyes of public opinion or reports of others. This is clearly part of Matsumoto's deliberate narrative technique; and it neatly supports a major theme of the story, the judgement of public opinion. The idea of making a major character who never appears is possible in film too: KUROSAWA did it in Stray Dog. But of course this is a little harder in a courtroom drama. The change has consequences. In the book, readers will probably be ready enough to think that Kumako is a bad person, as far as they can judge; but the film makes her more complicated. The second major change supports that emphasis on Kumako's character. The lawyer is a man in the book, a woman in the film, a divorced mother, whose child is in the custody of the father and his new wife. The diligent, strict, self supporting lawyer is played as a contrast to Kumako, who is given to tantrums and relies on manipulating men. The film speeds through the earlier parts of Matsumoto's story to get to the introduction of the lawyer, transferring some elements forward (a little implausibly, sometimes) to the point where she can play a role in their discovery.

The deductions in the book come more or less whole through to the screen, but the actual arguments are downplayed and replaced by more dramatic revelations, which also have the effect of making the case less ambiguous than Matsumoto left it. The direction does still have some of the problems common in films by lesser Japanese directors. Like the book, the film generally has something of a documentary style, which it does quite well; but the acting of many minor characters is stagey in a way that jars with the rest of the action.