Kurt the Wednesday Child

I've already reviewed several books by 大井三重子 (OOI Mieko), the writer of  the collection of children's stories, 水曜日のクルト (suiyoubi no Kuruto, Kurt of Wednesday, 1961); but they were books under a different name and in a different character, as the postwar detective story writer NIKI Etsuko. She had been trying to establish herself as a children's writer when she won the Edogawa Rampo prize for her first detective novel 猫は知っていた (The Cat Knew, 1957), a genre with which she had more success. The stories gathered in this collection are fairy tale type fantasies of various kinds.

The title story, 'Kurt the Wednesday Child', is not one of the strongest, in my opinion. A children's illustrator after meeting a young boy on a Wednesday mysteriously loses items and as mysteriously regains them, while losing other ones. Like all the stories in the collection it is engagingly narrated and inventive; but the invention here is very diffuse, a bundle of different ideas that don't really connect. The style felt a little like a dilute version of MIYAZAWA Kenji's style in the stories in 注文の多い料理店 (chuumon no ooi ryouriten, The Restaurant of Many Orders, 1924).

The second story, 'The Memoir Art Gallery', is a well worked out story that perhaps does not add up to much more than its central, not very surprising, metaphor. The main character, a young boy, finds an art gallery that anyone can visit, but each visitor can only enter one room. The paintings in that gallery all depict people and incidents important to the visitor, whether welcome or not.

The third, 'The Life of a Puddle', is another piece that somewhat predictably follows a familiar genre, in this case the slightly moralising narration of the life of an inanimate object.

'The Story of the Mysterious Water Ladle' is a long and quite lively story of a good hearted cobbler, who is given a magical ladle by a homeless wanderer he invites in. The cobbler wants to give shoes to the poor children in his neighbourhood, but the pair he has just made for one boy is the first he has been able to afford to make in months. The stranger has him plant the shoes, then water them with the ladle. The next day a tree with shoes instead of fruit is growing in the garden. The cobbler plants hat trees and coat trees to make presents for his neighbours, but attracts the attention of the country's king, who confiscates the ladle and finds a horrible new use for it. The ideas in the story are again very familiar, but they combine well to make an interesting story with unexpected plot developments. In this story, Ooi makes the narrator a character, a grandfather visiting his grandchildren.

Unlike the cheerful stories that make up most of the collection, 'The Blood Coloured Cloud' is an unhappy story about war. From the harbour wall a girl sends a piece of paper out towards the horizon where she can see a pink cloud. On the paper she had written 'To the person beneath the pink cloud, please be my friend, Lily.' One day a little sea plane arrives with a boy who had found the letter, a cadet in the neighbouring country's airforce; but on the same day trucks roll through the town with loudspeakers announcing the start of hostilities with that country. Soon Lily's two brothers are called up to fight. This is clearly a more personal story (the author lost one brother in the second world war).

'The Conserve Jars of Things that Are or Could Be' returns to more whimsical magic. An old witch rewards a shopkeeper by making a set of jamjars which contain anything he or his family might need. When they have fulfilled all their needs they start giving away the remaining jars to customers. A girl from the neighbouring town makes friends with a rich invalid boy when his family accidentally leave him unattended and she shows him a nearby wood where they can gather acorns. Much later, learning that the boy is expected to die, she sets off to walk to the shop, hoping to give him one of the magic jars; but there is now only one left, which no other customer had wanted to take.

A Tree with Thorns

刺のある樹 (toge no aru ki, A Tree with Thorns, 1961) is the third novel featuring amateur detectives NIKI Yuutarou (仁木雄太郎) and his younger sister Etsuko, the narrator, who shares a name with the actual writer of the books, NIKI Etsuko (仁木悦子). I reviewed the first and second novels in the series earlier, as well as a collection of short stories. Picking up from the last novel, Yuutarou and Etsuko are still students house-sitting for a rich cactus collector who is currently living in Europe. The absent owner also conveniently allows them to use his Renault. Yuutarou is tall, thin, intellectual and more likely to observe social proprieties than short, active, Etsuko. Etsuko is an enthusiast for detective stories and by association for real crime investigation, Yuutarou shows less enthusiasm at first, but once involved in a case is more insistent on doing things his own way.

The new case starts with a visit from a businessman, ONAGA Masaji (尾永益治), who believes that he is being targeted by an unknown assassin. He and his wife have had several accidents in the last months which he thinks were murder attempts; but the police brushed off his concerns. The investigating inspector, who had worked with Yuutarou on earlier cases, had suggested that he talk to him if he was still concerned. Yuutarou agrees that there is certainly something to investigate; but when Onaga rings home to prepare his wife for the visit, he finds that she has been murdered. She had been strangled while bent over her sewing machine; and the maid, who heard her working at it, gives everyone connected with the case an alibi.

As in the earlier books, the mystery is mostly a comic detective story, with much of the humour coming from the narrator Etsuko, both as character and as observer. This kind of thing irritates some mystery readers, who look on busybodies approaching other people's tragedies with light hearted curiosity as sociopaths. A part of the humour is in fact Etsuko's inappropriate attitude here. But in the second half of the book, as a new murder takes place, the contradictions of the genre catch up with the characters and the tone becomes more serious.

As a mystery, it's well narrated with some skill in placing clues, but a fairly minor work.

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.

My Favourite Detective

I wrote about NIKI Etsuko's first novel 猫は知っていた (The Cat Knew, 1957) last year. 私の大好きな探偵 (Watashi no daisukina tantei, My Favourite Detective, 2009) is an anthology of her short stories. There are five short stories, written between 1958 and 1971. As in  猫は知っていた, the detectives are NIKI Yuutarou and his sister Etsuko (the narrator), except in the last one where only Etsuko appears.Yuutarou is a botany student, tall, thin, calm and rational, Etsuko is a music student, short, plump, lively and inquisitive. In the stories that the two share, Yuutarou contributes most of the deductions.

The first story, みどりの香炉 ('The Green Incense Burner' 1961), is a juvenile detective story, featuring the two detectives as middle school children. Unlike the other stories in this collection, the crime is not murder, but theft. The clues, too, are of the kind one might expect to meet in a detective story for children. The second, 黄色い花 ('Yellow Flowers', 1957) is the murder of a neighbour, found, in the hanare of his house. (Really, just stay out of the hanare. Those places are death traps.) The hanare is locked from the inside, as was the victim's custom; but it's not a locked room mystery, since there are two open windows, through which the murderer could enter and leave. This seems to me a slightly stronger story. The next story, 灰色の手袋 ('The Grey Glove', 1958) is the longest in the collection, the murder and robbery at a cleaning service. Compared to 黄色い花, this seems a more confident piece of storytelling. This time there is less emphasis on deduction, simply an explanation of what was really going on in the story. The readers are left to decide for themselves whether the answer was really discoverable by reason. The other stories, 赤い痕 ('The Red Mark', 1958) and　ただ一つの物語 ('Just One Story', 1971), follow the same pattern. In ただ一つの物語 Etsuko is now married, with two small children. The story starts when Etsuko sees a request in the paper from a woman looking for the children's story 'Little Bear Bay'. Bay is Etsuko's son's teddy bear; and the story only exists as a handwritten book. A friend of Etsuko had written it for him, shortly before she died. The move towards a more interesting story, at the cost of exact fair play, is carried even further in this; but I suspect that on rereading one would find that it is quite well clued.

 The book as a whole would probably fit into what nowadays are called 'cosy mysteries', particularly the last story, with an emphasis on daily life with small children. Both detectives are amateurs, coincidentally involved in crimes that happen around them. The style is humorous, though not relentlessly so.

The Cat Knew

NIKI Etsuko (仁木悦子, 1928-1986) wrote eleven mystery novels and over a hundred short stories as well as children's books. Her novel, 猫は知っていた (The Cat Knew, 1957) won the Edogawa Rampo Award, one of the major prizes for Japanese mysteries, and was made into a film in 1958 and a television drama in 1973.

At the age of four, Niki had been diagnosed with caries of the thoracic vertebrae, which led to paralysis of both legs. She spent her childhood confined to bed, unable to attend school. Her father died when she was seven years old, her mother and oldest brother died during the war and she came to live with another brother. At first she wrote children's stories, but turned to detective stories with 猫は知っていた.

I make a bookmark with the readings of the names when I read a novel, since names are one of the hardest things to learn (for me at least). Here's a list of the more important names. The question marks are for readings not provided in the book.

Name	Reading	Description
二木悦子	NIKI Etsuko	music student
仁木雄太郎	NIKI Yuutarou	botany student, Etsuko's older brother
箱崎兼彦	HAKOSAKI Kanehiko	doctor
箱崎英一	HAKOSAKI Eiichi	his oldest son, medical student
箱崎敬二	HAKOSAKI Keiji	his second son, student
箱崎幸子	HAKOSAKI Sachiko	his young daughter
箱崎敏枝	HAKOSAKI Toshie	his wife
桑田ちえ	KUWATA Chie	her mother
桑田ユリ	KUWATA Yuri	Chie's granddaughter
野田	NODA	nurse
家永	IENAGA	nurse
人見	HITOMI	nurse
平坂勝也	HIRASAKA Katsuya	patient
平坂清子	HIRASAKA Kiyoko	his wife
江藤まゆみ	EDOU Mayumi	patient
小山田すみ子	OYAMADA Sumiko	patient
宮内正	MIYAUCHI Tadashi	patient
桐野次郎	KIRINO Jirou	patient
カヨ	Kayo	maid in the Hakosaki household
清川	KIYOKAWA?	previous owner of the clinic
大野	OONO?	accident victim
吉川	YOSHIKAWA?	neighbour
笠井あきら	KASAI Akira	detective story writer
峰岸周作	MINEGISHI Shuusaku	retired police inspector
砧	KINUTA	deputy inspector
杉山	SUGIYAMA?	president of Yuri's drama club

The two central character of the book are the botany student, NIKI Yuutarou, and his younger sister, music student Etsuko, who is also the narrator. (Author as fictional character is an Ellery Queen like feature also found in ARISUGAWA Arisu, 有栖川 有栖, and NORIZUKI Rintarou, 法月綸太郎.) In this period it was rare for students to have their own apartment; and the two of them rent a room in the Hakosaki Clinic. (Given her background, a hospital setting perhaps reflects the received wisdom to 'write what you know'.) For a reduction in the rent, Etsuko will be teaching piano to the youngest daughter, Sachiko. Soon mysterious incidents start to occur. Etsuko rescues KUWATA Chie, the mother in law of the clinic's doctor, from the storehouse, where somebody had locked her in. Soon after, both Chie and a patient, the antique dealer, HIRASAKA Katsuya, are found to have gone missing, although no-one should have been able to leave the grounds unobserved. Also missing is Chimi, a young black cat who has a tendency to follow people about. Chimi reappears in the grounds of the temple next door; but there is no sign of the others until Yuutarou discovers the strangled body of Chie. This is the first of a series of murders in the clinic, many of which seem to involve the little cat in some way. Etsuko does some of the investigation, but for the most part she plays the role of intelligent Watson to her older brother.

Niki has been described as 'the Japanese Agatha Christie' in Japan. This kind of description is sometimes used by publishers to sell Japanese writers to western audiences. Julian Symons somewhere comments on the extreme absurdity of the same description used for NATSUKI Shizuko (夏樹 静子); and if you google "Japanese Stieg Larsson", you'll find hundreds of people making the happy discovery that HIGASHINO Keigo is nothing like Stieg Larsson. In this case however, the Christie comparison is really quite appropriate. The style and narrative technique has the same kind of easy simplicity. There is little expression of strong emotion of any kind. Niki describes most events with mild humour, becoming briefly serious, but not overwrought, when appropriate. The setting is the normal, modern day world. You could say that Niki was the polar opposite to YOKOMIZO Seishi. A.A. Milne's "The Red House Mystery" gets mentioned early in the book; and that too is similar. 

As a puzzle, it's certainly not on a level with the best Agatha Christie; but it's a well made and fairly clued mystery. I was particularly impressed when I got to the motive, which came as a horrific revelation, although it was obvious once I read it.