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'.

And then there were five people missing

そして五人がいなくなる (soshite gonin ga inakunaru, And Then Five People Were Missing, 1994) is the first book in the series 名探偵夢水清志郎事件ノート (Meitantei Yumemizu Kiyoshirou jiken nooto, Case Notes of Great Detective YUMEMIZU Kiyoshirou) by はやみねかおる (HAYAMINE Kaoru, born 1964). It's a lighthearted children's detective series, probably aimed principally at children around ten to twelve, although the narrator and her sisters are slightly older (about thirteen).

Yumemizu is the new neighbour of the IWASAKI (岩崎) family. He has moved into the ramshackle western style house next door and hung up a sign saying "Yumemizu Kiyoshirou, Great Detective". The children 亜衣, 真衣 and 美衣 (Ai, Mai, Mii, or I, My, Me, as they write their names) regard this declaration with suspicion; and Ai starts to investigate the detective, calling round on the new neighbour with a gift from her mother. Yumemizu is an eccentric, always dressed in a black suit and sunglasses, mostly lying around reading or sleeping. A former lecturer and self proclaimed great detective, his self confidence is boundless, but somehow hard to credit, even though he shows Ai his card, which reads "Great Detective Yumemizu Kiyoshirou".

"You showed me the card earlier, so never mind that. I mean, tell me what cases you've solved so far."
"Fine." But although Yumemizu's mouth stayed open, no more words came out.
"What is it?"
"I can't remember."
Seeing my suspicion filled eyes, he hurried to defend himself, "It's true. I really have solved any number of difficult cases. But when a puzzle's solved, it's not interesting any more and I just forget them."
Really?

In the end Yumemizu's deductions convince the sisters that he really is a detective; but since "Great Detective" isn't a real title, they end up calling him "Professor".

The first real case comes in the summer holidays. At a nearby amusement park, the performing magician "The Count" (伯爵) makes a young girl vanish from a box suspended on ropes above the stage. When neither he nor the girl reappear, the audience realise that she has in fact been kidnapped. The Count announces that this is the first of five people he is going to make vanish; and soon another three children disappear in impossible circumstances. The figure of the Count is very much like the villain of EDOGAWA Rampo's children's series; but here there is less adventure, more emphasis on the puzzle. The book aims to be a proper classical detective story, though one in a world in which plausibility is not really a criterion. There are a couple of good ideas in the various puzzles (and one nice use of a narrative trick), but most will seem a little obvious. The chief attraction of the book is in the humour, particularly in its eccentric detective and sarcastic narrator.

The Targeted Town (The Case Notes of Telepathy Girl Ran)

ねらわれた街 テレパシー少女「蘭」事件ノート (nerawareta machi , The Targeted Town:The Case Notes of Telepathy Girl Ran, 1999) is the first in a series of children's books by ASANO Atsuko (あさのあつこ). The main character, Ran (蘭), is a thirteen year old girl just starting middle school; and the book is clearly aimed at children about that age. In many ways it is very reminiscent of Japanese popular television, particularly anime or dramas aimed at teenagers. Not surprisingly it too has been made into an anime series, by NHK in 2008.

Ran and her family, mother and father and older brother Rin (凜), live in a small but growing town. Ran already has a boyfriend, the quiet Rui (留衣), whom she has known since they were small children. She is looking forward to everything in her new school life. Then on the way to school, she hears a mocking voice inside her head.

Haha.

 Just next to her she heard a laughing voice, a tiny laughing voice.

Ran turned around.

The room was filled with the the light flowing in from the window. The cats Kishou and Tenketsu were sleeping in the bright spring sunlight. There was nobody there.

As the day progresses, she hears the voice again, now talking to her clearly, and she identifies the 'speaker' as the new student Midori (翠), who seems set to become Ran's personal enemy. After an initial confrontation however, she finds that Midori has been seeking her, having come to her town after sensing another person with strong telepathic powers in it. Midori's parents have effectively rejected her, unable to accept her powers. Ran, more at ease in her home life and confident that her family would still accept her, makes friends with Midori. There is however a real enemy at work in the town. A variety of apparently isolated incidents all have in common that people (and animals) suddenly act out of character. It seems there is someone else with psychic powers behind it all.

The mystery is one of those affairs where there's really only one suspect, though just what the culprit is after leaves some room for deduction or speculation. In general as far as plot is concerned, the book runs a very conventional path, with a thin emotional story progressing in tandem with a thin mystery. Probably the book is best seen as establishing the characters, in particular Ran, Midori and Rui, for later appearances. In the final confrontation, it is Midori, rather than Ran, who is the detective. Ran's role, from this book at least, looks to be more one of emotional guidance.

What I said about the vivid but simple style of Battery applies here too. The story here feels more conventional than that book. It looks like it is meant to be something lighter, mostly humorous outside of a few confrontation scenes. It is also more eventful and progresses a lot more purposefully.

Boy Science Detective in review

I can imagine that some people will have had enough of these stories by now, after an introduction and six translations; but since I've now translated a whole book (a short one, admittedly), I thought it might be good to sum up what it had to offer. So here's my 'review' of Boy Science Detective by KOSAKAI Fuboku (小酒井 不木). There are six short stories in the collection:

• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard
• 4. The Secret of the Skull  
• 5. The Wisdom of a Fool 
• 6. Ultraviolet Rays

Each of them was first published in a children's science magazine over three issues, reflected in the three parts that each story is divided into. You can sometimes see traces of the serial publication in a slight tendency to unnecessarily recap material at the beginning of a new chapter; but unlike some Japanese mysteries first published as serials, this does not get too repetitive. The magazine publication ran from 1924 to 1926, and the book came out at the end of 1926.

As Kosakai explains in the preface, the stories are meant to encourage young readers to learn about science by showing them that science is interesting. In that respect, I think he keeps his promise fairly well. Almost all the stories have a large scientific element, generally well integrated into the story. Only once or twice did it feel like it was getting a bit bogged down in exposition. This scientific character may well remind you of R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke stories.

Some people find the Dr. Thorndyke stories a little dry. I do too, but generally in a positive way. The Boy Science Detective stories are also a little drier than say EDOGAWA Rampo's boy detective series. The criminals in Kosakai's series are just dull and often not especially competent professional criminals, not flamboyant masterminds; but Kosakai does not forget that he has young readers who want to be entertained. While the villains are generally unremarkable, his child detective is allowed to surprise the onlookers again and again.

The hero is TSUKAHARA Toshio (塚原俊夫), a twelve year old genius, whose rich parents and richer uncle have fitted him out with his own laboratory, from which he takes cases as a private detective. The narrator is his bodyguard and assistant OONO (大野), a young judo expert (whom Toshio mostly calls niisan, 'big brother'). This is an early instance of a constellation most famous from Rex Stout's books, where Archie Goodwin does the more dangerous and active work, Nero Wolfe does the intellectual part. Toshio is pretty active himself, but any violence gets deputed to Oono. Apart from Oono, the most important recurring character is Detective Oda of the central police station in Tokyo, who has learnt to give Toshio whatever he wants, and puts up with being called 'Uncle P' (for 'police') by him in exchange for his invaluable help.

The two Edogawa Rampo juvenile detective stories that I've read avoid actual bloodshed. Kosakai is not so restrained. The first two stories are thefts; but every story after that features a murder. The concession to young readers is that they are all a bit easy. I imagine most children and any adult familiar with detective stories will see who did it in every case. That doesn't mean they have no interest as detective stories. The culprit may not come as a surprise, but there are often excellent clues and elements to the puzzle that the reader may not have spotted.

The best stories, I think, are 'The Scarlet Diamond', 'The Riddle of the Beard' and 'The Secret of the Skull'. 'The Scarlet Diamond' introduces the characters and has an interesting code-breaking puzzle. Obviously this works better if you're reading in Japanese; but I hope I've done enough to let a western reader get something from it too. 'The Riddle of the Beard' is a complex and fairly clued murder mystery. 'The Secret of the Skull' is a dramatic story of forensic reconstruction, as Toshio applies the western technique of putting clay on a skull to find the face of the victim. It too is well clued. Of the others, 'A Fight in the Dark' is a lively story of the capture of a gang of thieves. The mystery element is weak, but the science part is kept up. 'Ultraviolet Rays' is the most complex mystery in the collection; but as there are few clues, most of this is revealed by the criminal's confession at the end. 'The Wisdom of a Fool' seems to me the weakest in the collection, with no clues but an obvious villain, and no real scientific element.

Beyond their interest as mysteries, the stories also have some interest as a view of Tokyo and the surrounding countryside in the early twenties.

Boy Science Detective: Ultraviolet Rays

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

 

  This story completes the translation of the book Boy Science Detective by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard
• 4. The Secret of the Skull  
• 5. The Wisdom of a Fool

As Kosakai promised in the preface, he did go on to write more Boy Science Detective stories; but having translated a whole book (even if it's not a very long one), I think I'd like to give my attention to the works of some other writers for a while. 

The story was first published in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children's Science) from July to September 1926. You can read the story in the original Japanese on Aozora Bunko here. I've put in footnotes that look like this[1]; I'm afraid that they aren't actively linked. You'll have to scroll down (or use find) to the footnotes at the end. As always, I've put the translation after the break, so click to read on.

Boy Science Detective: The Wisdom of a Fool

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

 Another translation: this is the fourth Boy Science Detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard
• 4. The Secret of the Skull 

Most of the stories from the series have had something in them to make them worthwhile. To be honest, this one is one I might have been tempted to leave untranslated. It does not have much of the detective or scientific interest that the other stories had; and its central idea is one of the worst plot elements of the detective story (and probably back around 1600 people were saying, "I don't know, Will, that scene seems a bit clichéd to me"). But since I was already two thirds of the way through the six stories that made the first collection, I thought it was a pity not to translate the whole book.

The story deals with intellectual disability, in a way that did not ring true to me; but that may be because the people I have known were more mildly affected. The question of what language to use comes up here. In general I mostly aim for the most polite expression which still sounds more or less like something someone might have said at the time. But I don't know how successful I was here.

The story was first published in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Childrens' Science) from January to March 1926. You can find the original Japanese on Aozora Bunko here. As always I've put the translated story after the break; so click to read on if you're interested.

Boy Science Detective: The Secret of the Skull

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

 Another translation: this is the third Boy Science Detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 
• 3. The Riddle of the Beard

I imagine most children's detective stories prefer to stay with less serious crimes. The Boy Science Detective stories start with an incident that is hardly a crime at all and move on to theft and then in the third story murder. This one goes even further. The murder of children is a crime that writers were a little shy of using in stories that were meant essentially for entertainment; but here we have the murder of a child as the fourth mystery in the series. The only respect in which this is a children's story is that it has a child as protagonist and (as always) the solution is a bit obvious. I hope you won't think that means it isn't worth your time. The answer is obvious, but you might well miss the clues; and the story is an interesting reflection of the state of forensic science at the time.

I've glossed most of the things that need explaining in the translation itself. So I think we can get away without footnotes this time.  I'll put a few links in advance. The Great Kantou earthquake took place on Sep. 1, 1923 and caused massive destruction in Tokyo. The most interesting part of the story is the forensic facial reconstruction which is central to the plot. The late nineteenth century reconstruction of Bach's face was performed by Wilhelm His and Carl Seffner. The detective called Williams that Kosakai mentions seems (from Google) to be Lieutenant Grant Williams, bureau of unidentified dead, Manhattan,  who in 1916 identified a skull found on a farm in Brooklyn as Dominick La Rosa leading to arrest of Giovanio Romano (Brooklyn Eagle Oct 10, 1916). Kosakai probably did not know of another more recent case where Williams had been called in by a former subordinate, Mary Hamilton to investigate a skull found  in Rockland County, N.Y. and had reconstructed the face as a missing girl, Lillian White. Hamilton's investigations lead to a suspect James Crawford, who was also missing at the time, but captured in 1925 after a different crime. 

One last thing: this is a bit spoilerish, but if you don't know how kimonos are worn, you might search out some photographs or prints on wikimedia commons or elsewhere on the internet to get an idea.

The story was first published in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children’s Science) between October and December 1925. It's in the public domain, so you can read the original Japanese on Aozora Bunko, here.

As always, the actual story is after the break. So click below to read it.

Boy Science Detective: The Riddle of the Beard

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

Another translation: this is the third Boy Science Detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond
• 2. A Fight in the Dark 

This one doesn't give away the endings to the previous stories, so you don't need to have read them to read this. The first story introduces the main character, boy genius Toshio Tsukahara and his bodyguard/assistant Ono. Toshio has a private laboratory and office a few streets away from his rich parents' house. The stories first appeared in a children's science magazine; and Toshio's investigations always involve a Dr Thorndyke style scientific element.

The puzzle in this one is quite well done, I think (although as always the culprit is fairly obvious). The story is also a spy story, and has a not very sympathetic MacGuffin in the national secret of a poison gas formula. At the time of the story, Japan had a small empire (the result of Meiji period militarism) and was a not very stable democracy, which had to struggle with the kind of militarism that would so disastrously come to dominate a few years later.

The story was first published from June to August 1925 in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children's Science), then collected in book form in 1926.

As always, I've put the translated story (whose Japanese original you can read online at Aozora Bunko here) after the break. Explanatory footnotes look like this[1] in the text; but you'll have to scroll to the end of the file to find them.

Boy Science Detective: A Fight in the Dark

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

Another translation from the Boy Science Detective stories by KOSAKAI Fuboku. Previously we had:

• Preface (and general introduction)
• 1. The Scarlet Diamond

 暗夜の格闘 (anya no kakutou, 'A Fight in the Dark') is the second Boy Science Detective story, featuring twelve year old Toshio Tsukahara and his bodyguard and assistant Oono (whom Toshio addresses as niisan, older brother). It was published serially from March to May 1925 in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children’s Science). The work is in the public domain in Japan and Europe (and probably America, but I don't know the rules there). You can read the original at Aozora Bunko, here. The story does give away the (very obvious) culprit in the previous story. So you might want to read 'The Scarlet Diamond' first, if you care about that.

Footnotes look like this[1] and you'll have to scroll down to the end of the story to find the annotation they're pointing to (or search for "footnotes").

As always, I've put the translation after the break: so click through for the actual story.

Boy Science Detective: The Scarlet Diamond

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

Here, as promised, is the short story by KOSAKAI Fuboku (小酒井 不木, 1890-1929), the first of his 少年科学探偵 (shounen kagaku tantei, Boy Science Detective ) stories, 紅色ダイヤ (beniiro daiya, ‘The Scarlet Diamond’), which you can read on Aozora Bunko here. It was first serialised in 子供の科学 (kodomo no kagaku, Children's Science) between December 1924 and February 1925, then collected in book form in 1926. Kosakai’s works are in the public domain almost everywhere, but if you prefer a book, there is an edition of the stories in print. You can see the earlier post for a general introduction.

I’ve put most of the explanations of subject matter in notes at the end this time, partly because some of them would give away the solution to a puzzle if I wrote them at the beginning. I’ll explain one point in advance, as it might help you if you want to play along with the mystery. The story involves code breaking in Japanese, so the Japanese writing system comes into play. Japanese writing has two kinds of characters, the kana, the Japanese syllable alphabet, and the kanji, the symbol set borrowed from China. The relevant kana for this story are the hiragana, which encode the syllables like this:
あいうえお a i u e o
かきくけこ ka ki ku ke ko
さしすせそ sa shi su se so
たちつてと ta chi tsu te to
なにぬねの na ni nu ne no
はひふへほ ha hi fu he ho
まみむめも ma mi mu me mo
やゆよ ya yu yo
らりるれろ ra ri ru re ro
わ wa, ん n, を o.
As you can see, these look quite like western handwriting, made up of few strokes, mostly curved and flowing. The kanji (used for most nouns, verbs and adjectives) are generally more complicated and more angular looking. For instance, the book title 少年科学探偵 that I quoted above is all kanji.

Story and footnotes come after the break. The footnotes look like this[1] and you'll have to scroll down for them I'm afraid, as I can't work out how to make internal page references inside the blogging editor. I realise this is not ideal, especially since you run some risk of spoiling the story for yourself, if you don't scroll fast (using the find function to get to "Footnotes" would get you past the story, I suppose).

Boy Science Detective

I’ve not been posting much this year. That was due to pressure of work, which may let up a little soon. At any rate I hope to get back to posting at least once a week. For the moment, let me just try and get your interest for a coming translation, which I mean to put up shortly. The short story I’ve translated is a juvenile detective story by KOSAKAI Fuboku (小酒井 不木, 1890-1929), the first of his 少年科学探偵 (shounen kagaku tantei, Boy Science Detective ) stories. Here is Kosakai’s foreword to the stories (translated from the Japanese on Aozora Bunko): 

The six detective stories collected in this book were first published in Science for Children. They were written for boys from the fifth or sixth year of elementary school [10-12 years old] to the second or third year of middle school [13-15 years old].

We are living in a world of science now, and without science a person cannot pass one day with enjoyment; but since, to gain scientific knowledge, the most important thing is to know first of all that science is interesting, I have written these stories to get children to know just how interesting science is.

Next, scientific knowledge is something gained by reading books and at the same time properly ‘thinking’ about them. For this reason, as the German proverb has it, ‘A person can profit much from what they read, but they can profit more from what they think.’

Still, the detective story is a story you read and a story you think about while you are reading it. That is why I wrote these stories, thinking that I would like to get my young readers to develop the habit of thinking about things.

 This is not the end of the stories in which Boy Science Detective Toshio Tsukahara makes an appearance. In the future I hope to add more stories bit by bit. So I hope you will make it part of your favourite reading for a long time.

 Let me finish by expressing my profound gratitude to Kanda bookshop owner and friend Shigeru Fukano, who assisted me in many ways in publishing the book, and also to the artist Hisashi Morita, who provided illustrations back when the stories were serialized and also contibuted his beautiful artwork to the book. December Taishou Year 15 (1926)

This seems like a great idea for a series to me. Nowadays, it would probably be Girl Science Detective, and actually that would be pretty cool too. I was really hoping that the stories would be good. The first one at least seems pretty good to me (the second is so so and I haven't yet finished the third). 

The main characters are genius boy detective TSUKAHARA Toshio (塚原俊夫) and the narrator, his bodyguard OONO (大野), a young judo expert. Twelve year old Toshio comes from a very wealthy background and his parents have set him up with his own little laboratory and hired Oono to protect him from criminals that might threaten him because of his investigations. Once you get to know Toshio a little better it may occur to you that this is not the only reason he might need a bodyguard. While Toshio's position in the world is distinctly unrealistic (adults constantly defer to his recognised detective genius), his character has a realistic childishness to it too. When you think about it, the great detective of the Sherlock Holmes mould often has a distinctly childish side to their character, pointlessly mystifying and misleading those around them. Toshio takes this kind of misbehaviour a little further than most.

Since the English Wikipedia doesn't have a page on Kosakai, I'll put a couple of notes about him here, mostly from the Japanese Wikipedia page. He was born in the Ama distict of Aichi prefecture in 1890, studied Medicine at the Imperial University in Tokyo from 1911, taught hygiene at Touhoku University from 1917, travelled for research to America, Britain and France. Returning to Japan in 1920, he started writing essays, translations and short stories. At first he did this along side his university work, but in 1922 he gave up his post at Touhoku University to devote himself to writing. Several times throughout his adult life he suffered from pneumonia, from which he died in 1929. Both his own stories and his criticism were very influential in the detective story world and beyond.

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).

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?