Burning Down The House (Part II)

"Do you still write in your diary every day?
Do you still look up at the stars once a month?
Do you still walk around the park alone?
Do you still watch movies on Sundays?"

        —"Renai Bochi" ("Graveyard of Love"), Kirikyogen, Kuni Kawachi and the Flower Travellin' Band

Akimitsu Takagi debuted with Shisei Satsujin Jiken (The Tatoo Murder Case) in 1948, but it was his second novel—1949's Nōmen Satsujin Jiken (The Noh Mask Murder)—that won him the prestigious Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1950. I fondly recall The Tattoo Murder Case for its evocative portrayal of a bombed-out Tokyo, the underworld, the tattoo culture, and its clever use of tailing as a plot mechanic, rather than for its locked room mystery credentials and prowess. So, naturally, expectations were sky-high when I picked up a copy of the English translation of Nōmen Satsujin Jiken (The Noh Mask Murder, Pushkin Vertigo, 2024) earlier this year.

Takagi comes across as an intriguing writer on two counts. On the one hand, while he is probably not as skilled a storyteller as his compatriot Seishi Yokomizo, his portrayal of a post World War-II Japan (as seen in The Tatoo Murder Case) is refreshingly original, in a manner quite different to Yokomizo's Japan. On the other hand, Takagi's sense of fair play and habit of acknowledging his inspirations is rather extreme—to the extent that he openly describes important details and plot points from the works he is inspired by, thereby spoiling them for numerous readers. Subtlety in this regard is not his strong suite, and the combination of the two qualities can be both fascinating and frustrating.

The Noh Mask Murder takes one to the seaside resort town of H– on the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa. In 1946, a mansion on the outskirts of the town is witness to a series of incidents that leads to the demise of the entire Chizui family living in it. Thematically, the novel resonates with Yokomizo's The Devil's Flute Murders which portrays the downfall of the Tsubaki family and other lineages associated with it. However, the mechanics of the family's annihilation in The Noh Mask Murder sharply contrasts what one sees in Yokomizo's novel.

The novel opens with a note from the author himself who plays a not-insignificant role in the events. In it, he recounts meeting with a childhood friend, Koichi Yanagi, that would eventually lead him (Takagi) to be embroiled in the Chizui affair. The subsequent narrative is in the form of Yanagi's journal that documents the Chizui case, bookended by a letter and a sealed note addressed to Takagi by a public prosecutor Hiroyuki Ishikari. Though Ishikari's 'association' with the Chizuis dates back three decades, his involvement in the events of 1946 begins, incidentally, with a chance encounter with Yanagi, the son of Ishikari's dear friend Genichiro, on a beach that holds some painful memories for Ishikari. A few days later, Ishikari visits the Chizui mansion on Yanagi's invitation. Their stroll comes to a jarring end once they reach near the grey walls of the Western-styled Chizui mansion, when they hear a haunting tune on a piano. At around the same time, they see the terrifying face of someone wearing a hannya mask staring at them from one of the upper-floor windows. The nightmarish scenes concludes with an abrupt end to the piano tune, just as "the ghastly, deranged laughter of a woman" echoes through the night.

So much for the opening act! Takagi may not impress one with his storytelling finesse, but there's no doubt that he significantly amplifies the dramatic, theatrical quotient in the novel. Two days after the demon's sighting, amateur detective Takagi ( who "... fancies himself Japan's answer to Philo Vance") enters the picture when Yanagi visits him on the request of the head of the Chizui household, Taijiro. As Takagi and Yanagi discuss the case, they receive a rather frantic call from Taijiro who states that he has identified the person behind the Noh mask. However, within the 20 minutes it takes for Takagi and Yanagi to return to the mansion, the unthinkable happens—and the corpse of Taijiro, with no visible injuries, is found seated in a room with doors and windows tightly closed and locked, with the hannya mask, "the bearer of a two-hundred-year-old-curse", lying on the floor. 

The murder of Taijiro acts as the catalyst for the eventual unravelling of the Chizui family, but it is hard to feel any shred of sympathy for a majority of the characters and their fates. Most of the patriarchs in the Chizui family are portrayed as absolutely vile with no redeeming quality, while the victims die by the end of the novel, facing the most pitiable and pathetic fates. Taijiro and his sons are involved in the death of the previous head of the Chizui family—Taijiro's brother Soichiro—while Soichiro's wife Kayoko is 'admitted' to a mental asylum for her alleged insanity. The most villainous of the lot is Taijiro's eldest son, Rintaro, who is described by Yanagi as "a terrifying nihilist":

"All he really believes in is power; to him, justice and morality are no more than intellectual games. He seems to view everything in this world as a sort of dreary mirage, contemplating reality in the indifferent way one might gaze at a passing cloud in the sky. All capacity for feeling has deserted him, leaving behind only his abnormally sharp intellect; if he hasn’t murdered anyone yet, it’s probably only because it doesn’t agree with him as a hobby. He told me as much himself once, in no uncertain terms. If it had been you he was talking to, I imagine he would have informed you, with a scornful smile, that 'the ultimate law is lawlessness itself '."

Even though the other family members also exhibit varying degrees of evilness and madness:

"It’s the same with Taijiro’s second son, Yojiro. He may not be quite as craven as his father, but still—a snake only ever begets a snake. If we were to compare Taijiro to a mighty sword, Yojiro is more like a dagger glinting in its sheath.

Even Taijiro’s mother, Sonoe, long bedridden with palsy, has the same fiery temper smouldering away inside her. And while his daughter, Sawako, is the most reasonably minded of the family, you have to remember that for many years she has had only lunatics, near-lunatics and invalids for company. Who knows when she might succumb to some violent fit of emotion?

Between the two remaining members of the Professor’s own family, and these five members of Taijiro’s branch, it is safe to say there is no love lost. As Jules Renard once put it, a family is a group of people living under the same roof who cannot stand each other. That house has been struck by a disease from within. Riven by mutual hatred, suspicion and a sheer failure to understand one another, the Chizuis are engaged in a perpetual and desperate struggle.

But precisely because their respective forces have reached a sort of equilibrium, the family appears, on the surface at least, to be entirely at peace. Any disruption of that balance, however momentary, would surely spell the downfall of the entire family. Who knows what tragedy may erupt among that forsaken tribe? In any case, I fear it may be fast approaching …"

The swirling miasma in the Chizui family also overwhelms Soichiro's and Kayoko's children—14-year- old Kenkichi who is unaware that he has a heart disease (and won't be alive for long), and 27-year-old Hisako (once a piano-playing prodigy, now driven to madness). And, unlike the kind of madness seen in Yokomizo's works such as Death on Gokumon Island, where the onset of insanity is often tied to external factors such as war, the madness of the characters in The Noh Mask Murder is due to willful and vile misdeeds committed by certain characters on others. In particular, Hisako's plight is a scathing indictment of the depravity of the Chizui family members.

It is no surprise therefore that the Chizui family ultimately decays from within. In fact, I am almost tempted to call this an 'anti-Yokomizo' sensibility. In a work like The Devil's Flute Murders, one sees how the sordid secrets of the Tsubaki family affect multiple families caught in the wheelhouse of the Tsubakis. In other words, the action spills out in a centrifugal manner. In Akimitsu's work, however, the narrative absorbs all the disparate strands and concentrates them on the Chizui family. Like a whirlpool, the Chizui affair draws all kinds of hidden facts and truths towards itself with an enormous centripetal force, leading to the implosion of the entire family. However, the War plays, at the most, a cursory role in this work—limited to one or two social commentaries, and not even close to the level of influence it exerts on the plot of The Devil's Flute Murders.

What does leave a lasting influence on the novel, however, is the discourse on and application of theatre, particularly its conventions and 'props' (masks and tools). Furthermore, a particular section in Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, provides a code to the whereabouts of the elusive treasure, the root of all that's evil in this work, while the dying words of Kayoko reference the character Portia in the same play. And, while the core mystery of Taijiro's death is, at its heart, a scientific one, the use of the cursed mask and a particular tool used in Noh theatre prove to be integral to the entire performance.

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In between setting up puzzles, Takagi devotes a surprising amount of time and space in providing social commentary. As Ishikari addresses his companions in a certain section:

"Gentlemen, Japan is changing: we have a democracy now; the military has been disbanded; the police are no longer the violent enforcers we knew in the past. It seems that even in prisons, with a few rare exceptions, torture has fallen out of use. These days, there is only one place where such brutality is still permitted—the mental asylum.

This is possible, of course, because we hold doctors in higher regard than almost any other profession. We see them as somehow special—almost holy, if you like. But any privilege, in the wrong hands, can have terrible consequences. And when a doctor abuses their power, the results can be spine-chilling." 

Takagi's description of the Oka asylum follows in these lines:

"Could it even be called a ward? There was a small barred window high up on the wall, through which even the summer sunshine seemed reluctant to enter. The tatami mats were mouldy, an acrid stench of unknown origin assaulted our nostrils, and leaking water had smeared the walls a miserable grey. Even prison inmates were surely treated more humanely than this. I recalled my army days, and the dreaded guardhouse to which disobedient soldiers were confined—and yet even that paled in comparison to the wretched sight in front of us."

(Sadly enough, cases of abuse in Japanese mental asylums continue to this day.)

 Takagi also briefly reflects on the country's 'misguided education policy':

"[...] the answer to that question lies, in a sense, in the misguided educational policy of the war period. For all those years, we drummed into the nation’s children a pointless hatred of the enemy, a misguided desire for revenge. Children’s hearts aren’t like those of adults; the emotions seared into them cannot simply be forgotten overnight. Perhaps an extended period of democratic education will one day succeed in reversing the harm that was done. Otherwise, this country will be doomed to repeat the tragedies of its past."

Perhaps, these were all early signs that, as an author, Takagi would not be limited to only honkaku mystery conventions, but instead, dabble in multiple genres. However, The Noh Mask Mystery is still a very nascent work in this regard, with Takagi showing his naivete at times with some curious but questionable observations:

"A year before Sawako was born, Mrs Chizui began suffering from mild pleurisy, and relocated with Yojiro to a fishing village not far from Zushi for convalescence. Mrs Matsuno went with her as her maid and nurse; Taijiro himself visited once a week. Gradually, Mrs Chizui’s condition began to improve. Then, one autumn day, she had a chance encounter with the man she had loved in her youth. Now, to most men, such youthful dalliances are like a sprig of wild chrysanthemum, broken off on a whim as they pass and just as immediately discarded. The names of those first loves—sometimes even their order of appearance—are easily forgotten. But to women, love is a more vital force—and they never forget the person who first kindled its fire in their breast."

[Funnily enough, I recently came across a similar observation in C. M. Naim's work, Urdu Crime Fiction, 1890–1950: An Informal History (2023), where he translates a section of Lala Tirath Ram Ferozepuri's Urdu novel, Mistrīz āf Fīrozpūr (c. 1904): "Modesty does not allow me to be explicit, but let me give you a hint. A woman—any woman—when she shares her bed with a man and satisfies her sexual passion for the first time, a deep love for that particular man becomes a permanent part of her being, like a line scratched into stone ... It was Dunichand who first planted 'the seed of love' in me. Thousands came after him and told me how they loved me, but I now find no trace of affection for them inside me. However, the special love I feel for Dunichand will remain with me till death arrives."]

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The solution to The Noh Mask Mystery, while pleasing to visualize, really suffers from the lack of a map or a diagram, especially since there's an expansive fake solution involved. Even more glaring is the fact that the novel borrows handsomely from a few well-known works of S.S. Van Dine and Agatha Christie (which Takagi mentions too many times over the course of the novel to mention here). It therefore lends itself to the same critique I had extended in the case of The Tattoo Murders: that the ending stretch reads too much like a tribute act to certain works of Western crime fiction, despite it having sufficient elements to break new ground. A missed opportunity indeed!

The saving grace is the manner in which Takagi handles his own inclusion in the plot. Maybe it is an act of self-indulgence, but Takagi comes across as, perhaps, the only gentlemanly character in the work. He does not overplay his involvement in the case, honestly admits to his failures in deciphering the case from the right angle, gets a vague glimpse of the truth, nonetheless, that is completely against his expectations, and gently excuses himself from the case around the midway point:

"In your journal, Mr Takagi comes across as a complete idiot, but it seems a correction is called for. Nobody is perfect, after all. Making mistakes is only human [...] He told me he’d forget everything he’d learned, then withdrew entirely from the case. [...] See how, even in a situation like this, friendship shows us its beautiful light."

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With all its promise and flaws, The Noh Mask Murder is an oddly balanced work, where the yin and the yang cancel each other. Even with his considerable shortcomings, Takagi continues to fascinate me in these early works as an author charting his own path, and finding his own voice and style. This view of a flawed author experimenting with genre, form, plot, and style, has its own charm—distinct from what one experiences from reading the more polished works of a consummate storyteller like Yokomizo.

Burning Down the House (Part I)

The translations of classic Japanese crime fiction works which Pushkin Vertigo has been publishing in recent years is a veritable goldmine for aficionados and scholars to dig into. If not anything else, these works provide a glimpse into how a genre originating (allegedly) in the West came, first, to be adopted in the Far East, and then developed its own identity in myriad ways, informed primarily by the contemporary social and cultural realities in the eras they are placed in. I find myself particularly fascinated by the novels of Akimitsu Takagi and Seishi Yokomizo, two doyens of the mystery genre in Japan, whose novels often openly acknowledge influences from classic Western works but then go on to transcreate the essence of their inspirations, by moulding highly original stories boasting of a unique Japanese identity. Interestingly enough, the early works of Yokomizo and Takagi, both written in the post-World War II era, seem to take on similar themes, the treatments of which circle around, but never quite intersect with, each other.

The demise of entire families or lineages—often in the most violent and abnormal ways imaginable—is one of the themes the aforesaid writers seem to be preoccupied with. There are a number of reasons that may account for this fixation on part of the authors. The American Occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952 irrevocably changed the social, cultural, political, and economic fabric of the country. The army was disarmed and demobilised, wartime public officials were excluded ('purged') from public offices, wartime criminals were put on trial at the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal, while the Emperor himself denounced his divine status. It is no wonder then that the works of Yokomizo, in order to portray the intense turmoil and churn of the times, use the figure of the disfigured, disembodied, demobbed soldier (having served in the colonies) returning home, only to roam aimlessly in search of their families or a place to belong to. Furthermore, the 1947 Constitution of Japan abolished the erstwhile kazoku (a system of hereditary peerage under the Empire of Japan), as a result of which the nobles, princes, dukes, viscounts, barons and marquesses were all stripped of their titles and the privileges that came along with it. The decade between 1945–1955 was, therefore, marked as much by decadence, futility and a loss of purpose, as it was by a fierce clash between newly emerging and traditional world orders—something that both Takagi and Yokomizo use, often to varying degrees and effects.

Yokomizo's Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku (serialised between 1951 and 1953, translated as The Devil's Flute Murders, and published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2023) chronicles the tragic downfall of the once-proud and noble Tsubaki family: 

The Tsubaki family was a noble one, and one of the most prominent of the old aristocratic lines, but it had produced no notable members since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and although the family had received titles from the Imperial family, their yearly stipend had dwindled. In Hidesuke’s youth they had been reduced to poverty, and he himself had struggled to maintain the basic appearance necessary for a man of his station. He had been saved by his marriage to a member of the Shingu family.

What saved the Tsubakis from complete ruin is the Viscount Hidesuke Tsubaki's 'marriage of convinience' to Akiko Shingu—the Shingus being "peers of the old feudal daimyo lineage" who were "famous for their wealth". The marriage was a strange, mismatched one, and inexplicable to the Viscount himself who had often wondered why Akiko's maternal uncle, the Count Tamamushi, "would assent to letting his darling niece marry a man such as him". After all, Hidesuke "had apparently lacked the vitality necessary to deal with all the changes and turmoil rocking Japanese society at the time", instead spending time on extending his mastery over the flute, while Count Tamamushi "had always remained a powerful political force in the shadows", despite not being a minister himself. The firebombing of Tokyo spares the Tsubakis' mansion, but brings together a lot of combustible elements from branch families of the Shingus under one roof—the Count Tamamushi and his mistress Kikue, and the entire Shingu household, consisting of Toshihiko Shingu (Akiko's brother, "who filled his life with liquor, women and golf" and was regarded by Count Tamamushi as "a true figure of [the] nobility), his wife and son.

The fuse to this powder-keg of a situation is lit, seemingly, not through the internal machinations of this disjointed household, but from an unexpected external source. Yokomizo relies on a real-life case—the robbery-cum-mass-murder at a branch of the Imperial Bank (Teikoku Ginkō, aka Teigin), Tokyo, in 1948—to set in motion the chain of events in The Devil's Flute Murders (which are, however, set in 1947). Acting on an anonymous tip, the police summon Viscount Hidesuke due to his strong resemblance with a montage photo (or a composite photo) of the culprit which they had released. The viscount is later set free due to lack of evidence, but he disappears, nearly two months after the events of the Teigin Case. A month-and-half later, Hidesuke's body is discovered in the faraway Nagano Prefecture. It is established that he had committed suicide, but not all is as it seems as Hidesuke's presence is seen and felt by Akiko during a visit to the theatre, a few months after the former's death. And, thus it is that in the month of September 1947 that Hidesuke's daughter, Mineko, visits the private detective Kosuke Kindaichi to request his help in finding out whether her father is dead or alive. What Kindaichi finds, instead, over the course of the novel, is a whole lot of skeletons buried in the closets of the Tsubakis, Shingus and Tamamushis—miserable secrets that force the chronicler of Kindaichi's adventures to significantly postpone its publication: 

In truth, I should have written about this case before two or three other Kindaichi adventures I have published in the last few years. The reason it comes so late is that Kindaichi was reluctant to reveal its secrets to me, and that was mostly likely because he was afraid that unveiling the unrelenting darkness, twisted human relationships and bottomless hatred and resentment within might discomfit readers.

The opening act of this 'tragedy in three acts' unfolds with two significant events. The first is the revelation of the two 'legacies' left behind by Viscount Hidesuke. One of them is an enigmatic letter to his daughter: 

Dear Mineko, 

Please, do not hold this act against me. I can bear no more humiliation and disgrace. If this story comes to light, the good name of the Tsubaki family will be cast into the mud. Oh, the devil will indeed come and play his flute. I cannot bear to live to see that day come. 

My Mineko, forgive me. 

The second piece of legacy is Hidesuke's last contribution to the world of music—a sinister composition titled "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute", based on Doppler’s flute song “Fantaisie Pastorale Hongroise”, and which would play a vital role in the unravelling of whodunnit.

The second significant event is the divination ceremony held in the Tsubaki house the day after Mineko's visit to Kindaichi. The ceremony held is unlike seances in the West, instead sharing resemblances with Japan's "kokkuri-san" divination and sand divination, as noted by Kindaichi. Needless to say, a number of events happen in quick succession before, during, and after the ceremony—not unlike the opening stretches of Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit. The house is plunged into darkness, footsteps are heard from the unoccupied, former room of the Viscount, the ceremony goes sideways when the image of a kaendaiko (or flaming drum), eerily matching the birthmark on Toshihiko Shingu's shoulder (a later revelation), is found engraved on the sand in the divination apparatus, and the haunting notes of "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute" are heard immediately after the end of the divination. As if this isn't enough, the Count Tamamushi is found dead the next morning in the locked "Western-styled" room with its "long ventilation window or ranma" where the divination had been held the previous night. Preliminary investigations by Kindaichi and his friend, Chief Inspector Todoroki, reveal that the count had been beaten with a statue and then strangled with a scarf. Some other incidents—a missing statue, a jewel stolen in the Teigin case ending up in Viscount Tsubaki's flute case, and a typewriter with a particular peculiarity—amp up the mystery quotient in this section to a fever pitch.

The commencement of the second act marks a tonal departure from the preceding section, as Kindaichi travels to the west to follow in the footsteps of Hidesuke's final days, and unravel the singular mystery behind why he took his own life and left the aforementioned, ambiguous letter to his daughter. Personally, I quite like this section as it unfolds in the form of a travel narrative where Kindaichi indulges in conversations with people from different stratas of society—from inn owners, domestic helps, craftspeople, temple priests and prostitutes, all the way up to former aristocrats. Also, the pictures Yokomizo paints of the countryside in these sections are tinted with a sense of nostalgia, of places, faces and figures lost to the vagaries of time and war:

The one saving grace, he found, was that the Three Spring Garden Inn was not one of the shady new-built inns, aimed at couples looking for some brief privacy, that had proliferated after the war—the ones with the fake onsen, hot spring signs. Rather, it was a grand old lodge with a long history—as well as wide gables to keep the rain off—and a calm atmosphere.

Kobe had been heavily bombed in the war, and the district of Suma itself was mostly burnt out, but the area around Sumadera temple had been largely spared. These few old, miraculously surviving buildings standing in that heavy autumn rain served as faint reminders of better days long gone. The Three Spring Garden Inn was itself a serene testament to those days, as well.

Or, take, for instance, the section where Kindaichi discovers the former villa of Count Tamamushi:

At this, Kindaichi shook his head and looked around like he was waking from a dream.

He saw a stretch of about two and a half acres of scorched land spread out in front of him. It looked like a brick wall or something similar had been up on the hillside where they stood, but it was completely burnt away, and now all that was left was bare land. No buildings, no trees; nothing was left. Nothing, except for the stone lamp that Okami-san had mentioned. It, too, had been scorched white by the flames, and now it stood forlorn in the autumn dusk.

[...]

At the bottom, they stepped out into an overgrown field piled with charred tiles and other rubble. The red heads of knotweed, damp from the rain, danced like waves in the breeze on their long stalks. Osumi and Kindaichi trudged through them, the hems of their kimonos soaking up the damp, heading towards the lantern.

Once, this garden must have been a wonderful place. The layout of the land, with the pond and hill, and the remaining garden stones, gave a hint of its past glory, though now it was nothing more than a dismal ruin.

Or, the description of Akashi Port:

The rain had lifted, but clouds still hung low and dark in the sky, and the waves on the leaden sea at Akashi Port were running high.

The port was shaped like a coin purse with its mouth facing south. At its back were two piers, each about thirty feet long and seemingly made of old ship parts, jutting out over the filthy, debris-covered seawater. The Bantan Line steamships bound for Iwaya used one pier, and the other was for Marusei Line ships sailing around the Awaji route.

Rain-battered fishing boats were clustered around the roots of the piers, rocking like cradles on the heavy swells. One rather elegant lighthouse still stood at the mouth of the port. Awaji Island rose beyond it like an ink painting.

The eastern half of Akashi and Kobe city had survived relatively untouched through the war and still had some old houses, but the western half looked to have been completely lost to the fires. Now it was covered with the same slapdash temporary buildings that had spread across most of Japan. None of the beauty that the Suma and Akashi districts had once been famous for was left to be seen.

This is not to say that Kindaichi completely abandons the investigation to indulge in melancholic reflections over the lost Japanese countryside. Rather, the investigation Kindaichi and the young police detective Degawa conduct is of a more intense, intimate and sensitive nature. That is because The Devil's Flute Murders, from the reader's perspective, is not a story where one can employ principles of logic and fair-play to solve it. The core question of "what really happened in the past?" requires one to go along for the ride the author wants the audience to embark upon. On the one hand, in this act, Kindaichi peels layer after layer of the depraved and senses-numbing history of the Tsubakis, Shingus and the Tamamushis, by interacting with a whole host of people, spread across myriad locations, who were connected with these families in the past, however remote that connection might have been. On the other, events unfold in a most thriller-like fashion in real time. A stone lantern with the mysterious but important inscription, "Here, the devil's birthplace", is found defaced the next day. Furthermore, on an island away from the mainland, a hitherto-unintroduced nun called Myokai is murdered before Kindaichi can meet her. As it would later transpire, Myokai, the last person Hidesuke Tsubaki spoke to, was possibly the one living person who could have seen and predicted the plot of a majority of the novel, plain as a map.

Things pick up in the third and concluding act of the story as Kindaichi races back to Tokyo, on being informed about Toshihiko's murder in the hothouse, with his head split open, at a time the culprit, in a premeditated manner, arranged for Toshihiko to be at the crime scene at the right time, away from the sight of others. At the same time, the missing statue makes its reappearance with its base sawn off. Two other murders—that of Toyasaburo Iio, one of the suspects in the Teigin case, and of Akiko Shingu, through poisoning—and a bit of sleuthing involving a confirmation of identity of a particular member of the Tsubaki household hastens the novel towards its conclusion. A very neat and inspired piece of clueing, focusing on the manner in which "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute" is composed and played, ultimately points to the culprit. By the end of it all, the events of a single summer day in the faraway past lead to four households being effectively wiped out—the Tsubakis, the Shingus, the Tamamushis and the Kawamuras.

As with Death on Gokumon Island, The Devil's Flute Murders suffers from some characteristic, familiar flaws—most prominent of them being the inconsistent and extremely repulsive characterisation. In order to portray the depravity and perverted mindsets of Japanese nobility in its 'sunset years', the main characters in the tragedy—Toshihiko Shingu and Count Tamamushi—are portrayed in a most unpleasant manner, with no redeemable features. Indeed, while it is possible to sympathise, to a degree, with the fate of the Kawamuras, the actions of the elder members of the Shingus and the Tamamushis deserve no such consideration. On the other hand, the women (with the exception of Kikue, perhaps) are mostly relegated to secondary roles, with most of them coming across as victims with barely any agency of their own, whose plight ought to be pitied. Furthermore, a very casual strain of misogyny comes across in certain sections, as is evident in Kindaichi's first impressions of Akiko ("Akiko was certainly beautiful. However, it was the beauty of an artificial flower. She seemed as hollow as a woman in a painting. Akiko’s smile filled her whole face. It was a dazzling, beautiful smile. However, it was one that someone had taught her to make, not one of genuine feeling. Her eyes were pointed at Kindaichi, but they seemed to actually be looking somewhere else, somewhere far away."), or the description of Shino, Akiko's senior lady-in-waiting ("Next to her sat an old woman who was as ugly as any in the world. This must have been Shino, the senior lady-in-waiting who had accompanied Akiko here when she left the Shingu household. [...] Ugliness of such purity and extent is actually not unpleasant. Indeed, it becomes a kind of art at that point. The corrosion of age seemed to have washed all marks of shyness or vanity from her expression, and she stood unabashed in front of guests as if having forgotten her own ugliness, even putting it on display, making it an object of awe. In a way, this woman seemed to have left some elements of human weakness behind."). There is also a section that revolves around linguistics, and differences in local, regional dialects, that comes across as jarring and a bit too obvious in the translation. But perhaps, the most glaring of these shortcomings is a major plot point involving the science of birthmarks, which seems to be quite inaccurate and would require a significant suspension of disbelief for it to be convincing enough.

The strength of the novel is its treatment of its core theme: the decline and demise of the Japanese nobility and aristocracy in the post-World War II era—something Yokomizo was inspired to explore after reading Osamu Dazai's 1947 book, The Setting Sun, as he admits in the story ("This was all before Osamu Dazai wrote his work Setting Sun, about the decline of the aristocratic class after the war, so we did not yet have ready terms like 'the sunset clan' or 'sunset class' to describe these people, newly bereft of their noble privilege and falling into ruin. But, if we had, then I think it likely that this case would have been the first to see the term used."). Along with this, Kindaichi's 'travel journal' in the second act is a welcome addition. Replete with brief but illuminating interactions with numerous characters, these provide a rich study of the lives of people from different social classes, and how they evolved from the pre-War to post-War times. Nicely dovetailing with this are Yokomizo's descriptions of the landscape and activities in the countryside and harbours around Kobe and some islands, with their evocation of what they had lost with the passage of time and two World Wars.

I had briefly touched upon a 2018 adaptation (a TV special) of Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku in a previous post of mine, where I had argued that a wonderful casting choice and some creative liberties to alter the plot of the book in subtle but major ways led to an incredibly sinister, foreboding and dramatic viewing experience. Having read the translated version of the book now, I would say that the plot-based alterations in the movie were a bit too over the top—the darkness and wickedness in the original novel is quite overwhelming and unpleasant, as it is.

In the second part of Burning Down the House, I hope to discuss Akimitsu Takagi's 1949 novel Nōmen Satsujin Jiken (translated as The Noh Mask Murder, published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2024) as an intriguing companion piece (in some respects) to Yokomizo's The Devil's Flute Murders. Takagi's novel too is not for the faint-hearted—the levels of perversion and evilness seen in The Noh Mask Murder far surpass what one encounters in The Devil's Flute Murders.

In Search of Lost Time

The cover of Pushkin Vertigo's 2023 English edition of Fūtarō Yamada's 1979 novel, Meiji Dantodai (translated as The Meiji Guillotine Murders) briefly describes the book as follows: "Death stalks Old Edo". It is, I feel, a curiously appropriate descriptor, for reasons that go beyond the initial impressions one gets from it.

Starting out as a mystery author, Yamada (1922–2001) is perhaps best known for his works of historical fantasy such as Kōga Ninpōchō (The Kouga Ninja Scrolls) and Makai Tenshō, many of which have been adapted to films, manga and anime multiple times. A prolific writer, he left his mark in the world of crime fiction as well—The Meiji Guillotine Murders being a top-tier example. It should come as no surprise, though, that what this book shares with his fantasy works is a preoccupation with all things historical.

For me, in a work of historical crime fiction, the historical elements should add to or elevate the experience of consuming the mysteries. These elements, however, should not lead to either of the two circumstances mentioned below:

The historical element basically becomes an excuse for the author to indulge in the dissemination of unsolicited history lessons that are not particularly pertinent to the mysteries themselves.

The historical element is of such critical and excessive importance to the plot that one cannot enjoy the mysteries without properly researching and understanding the aforesaid element, its relevance and context.

The Meiji Guillotine Murders stands out as a shining example of how to imbue a work of mystery fiction with historical details in a manner that does not come across as overbearing. It helps that Yamada is a gifted storyteller—The Meiji Guillotine Murders oozes with an old-world charm (replete with local, cultural details) that transports readers to the era it is set in. Even more important is the ways in which the narrative presents itself—the book unfolds first almost like a jidaigeki (period drama) with the flashy, dramatic appearance of the protagonists, then it evolves into a torimonochō (a somewhat ambiguous term for a style of fiction that imitated the personal 'case notebooks or logs' kept by investigators or police personnel). The use of both forms helps Yamada exercise a reasonable level of creative liberty and dramatisation while also accurately portraying real-life, period-specific politics, events, places and material things.

The novel is set in the aftermath of the Boshin War (1868–1869) and the onset of the Meiji Restoration (1868), the events spanning a three-year period between 1869 and 1871. An era of acute socio-political turmoil marked by several high-profile assassinations, these years saw the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the restoration of Imperial rule, and the opening up of the country to the West. Not surprisingly, this period of "chaos-cum-fallowness" was defined as much by "a nationwide sense of collapse" as it was by "a sense of heartfelt relief at the dawning of peace"—a time when "new government sprouted up like bamboo shoots, when new administrative orders came down from on high like rain, and when new customs and ideas came flooding in like a deluge from a harbour", but which also saw "even stranger offices, laws and notions from the old days [...] revived like the souls of the departed and combined, as though mixing together the seven colours of the rainbow—who could say then whether for better or worse—with the end result a chaos of ash-grey."

One of these "even stranger offices [...] from the old days" revived after the Meiji Restoration was the Imperial Prosecuting Office, a long-forgotten institution from the seventh and eighth centuries (CE) that tackled corruption within government departments. The opening two chapters establish the broader context in which the work is set, and introduces readers to the main cast of the book—the two shining lights of the Imperial Prosecuting Office, Chief Inspectors Keishirō Kazuki and Toshiyoshi Kawaji, a French woman Esmeralda Sanson, and five rasotsu ('policemen') who cheat and exploit commoners. The two chapters may not feature mysteries, but are very entertaining nonetheless—Yamada achieves this by presenting well-defined, distinctive characters and scenarios. Keishirō and Toshiyoshi can be recognised by their appearances—Keishirō flaunts a suikan, while Toshiyoshi wears a fuka-amigasa hat, and their apprehension of a vicious gang of robbers resembles scenes from a jidaigeki or a torimonochō drama. With her blonde hair, Esmeralda Sanson is even more of a rarity—a descendant of the infamous Sanson family of Parisian executioners, she is brought to Japan by Keishirō, along with a guillotine which the Imperial Prosecuting Office intends to use for executions instead of the traditional sword. The chapters also establish roles for supporting characters—in the first chapter, for instance, the five rasotsu, who serve as sidekicks, are portrayed as lazy, sleazy and greedy, through a series of amusing sketches. But, what also becomes evident is the reasons they resort to such dishonesty—ranging from the situations in their homes and families to the ways in which these ex-samurai are dealing with changing, conflicting loyalties, and the demands of the new era. Similarly, in the second chapter, readers are exposed to the simmering chaos of the times, and the far-reaching effects of a political assassination—from the way in which the different hierarchies in the Imperial Prosecuting Office and other government departments exploit the situation for their own ends, to how the assassination ends up affecting the conversations and relations between Toshiyoshi and Keishirō, and in their circle of friends and family. What is also established is the 'conceit' that will enable Esmeralda to stay and operate in a Japan that is almost hostile to her.

The mysteries start in earnest from the third chapter onwards, once the groundwork and the rules have been laid. Each tale of mystery (barring the last) begins with a brief segment of a report made by Toshiyoshi that provides a basic outline of the case in question, and ends with a 'performance' by Esmeralda dressed up as a miko (priestess) who communicates with the spirits of the deceased which reveals and denounces their killers. In the first mystery, "A Strange Incident at Tsukiji Hotel", a body is found sliced in half in the great hall of the hotel below the bell tower. In the next one, "From America with Love", a rickshaw with a man plunges into a river drowning its occupant. In the surrounding snow-covered landscape, however, no footprints of the rickshaw-puller are discovered, leading to rumours that the ikiryō (a vengeful, evil spirit) of a war criminal must have committed the deed. "The Hanged Man of Eitai Bridge", on the other hand, unfolds as an alibi-deconstruction story where the victim was hanged from a bridge with the suspect nowhere near the scene of crime. In "Eyes and Legs", people witness an act of decapitation through a telescope, and even though amputated legs are recovered from the site, the victim is never located. Lastly, "The Corpse that Cradled  its Own Head" concerns the investigation into a case in which the beheaded body of a certain person of interest, defiled with manure, appears at a farm. 

In brief, these puzzles form the crux of each story—and, for me, each puzzle and trick boasts of a level of chutzpah comparable to the pranks seen in the Home Alone series. Except, one also recalls how effective young McCallister's snares and traps were. The tricks seen throughout The Meiji Guillotine Murders are just as inspired, unexpected and deadly, if not more. But, that only reveals a part of the picture. A major reason why the books operates as an excellent historical crime narrative is because it blends tradition and modernity, even when it comes to the question of murder mechanisms. From a materialist perspective, it is wonderful to see recently introduced innovations and tools become contraptions of murder. For instance, the functioning of the novel guillotine inspires the perpetrator in "A Strange Incident at Tsukiji Hotel" to come up with his own instrument of execution involving traditional Japanese articles. "From America With Love" sees the newly introduced mode of transport, the hand-pulled rickshaw, become a terrifying contraption of death—one that can be used to move a corpse without leaving any human footprints behind. "The Hanged Man of Eitai" sees another new vessel that transformed waterways businesses and transport—the steamer—being used to reduce time taken to travel between places and thereby, create an alibi. In "Eyes and Legs", the telescope is used not only to gaze upon the changing physical and socio-economic landscape of Edo, but also to look at and reveal modern surgical practices and newer varieties of crime emerging in a new era. The collaborative performances of Esmeralda, Keishirō, and the rasotsu, in the denouement of each case, certainly adds a theatrical element to the proceedings by revealing how each of the contraptions was used.    

It is worth noting that the conversations, decisions and actions of several characters in the background play a significant role in influencing Keishirō, Toshiyoshi and Esmeralda. However, because they are used in a non-intrusive manner and blend seamlessly with the stories, the reader would be hard-pressed to realise that many of them are historical figures—Toshimichi Ōkubo, Takamori Saigō, Takayoshi Kido, Yukichi Fukuzawa, Shinpei Etō, Gensai Kawakami, Nagamichi Ogasawara, Dr. Hepburn, Ginkō Kishida, O-Den, Tomomi Iwakura, Kanzō Uchimura, Tanosuke Sawamura, Aritomo Yamagata, to name a few. In fact, the protagonist Toshiyoshi Kawaji is a real-life figure said to have revolutionised and modernised the Japanese police force. The fact that a lack of awareness about the historical import and significance of the characters does not detract the readers or diminish their enjoyment of the story is a testament to Yamada's superb skill as a storyteller that enables him to integrate these 'easter eggs' that only elevate the audience's experience of and engagement with the work.

From a literary standpoint, The Meiji Guillotine Murders seems to initially develop as a torimonochō story. Adding to this perception is the atmosphere the work creates and sustains, with an emphasis on the 'images-of-the-floating-world' aspect of old Edo—as seen in sections such as "when they saw the fantastic vision of a Heian courtier, seemingly floating before them in a moonlight-drenched Tokyo alleyway, they stopped, spellbound" and "the enormous windows on all four sides of the room had been flung open to the vast autumn night sky with its countless twinkling stars. None of the assembled guests was looking at them, however. It was as though everybody were floating in another dimension altogether." The immediate comparison is with Kidō Okamoto's The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo, an anthology of atmospheric Holmesian short stories set in the Edo of the 1850s, with a languid, nostalgic air about it. The Meiji Guillotine Murders, however, does sketch the socio-political reality of the times to a greater extent and with more urgency, especially in the concluding chapter, "Can There be a Just Government?", which radically changes the nature of the story—from a series of chronological but disjointed stories to a linked-story novel. Not only does it tie up and resolve several discrepancies, it also fundamentally subverts and alters the role of the rasotsu—from being sidekicks and comic foils to being critical components of an all-encompassing criminal plan, plotting their own redemption (of sorts). And it is here that the metaphor of death stalking old Edo gains extra layers—as it turns out, just like the murderers in the individual stories stalk their prey, the rasotsu also follow and stalk these murderers, playing the role of masterminds and facilitators in the background, and providing them with insights, inspiration, and critical services at the right moments, for the furtherance of their objectives.

With its focus on corruption in the old shogunate order as well as in the new Meiji administration, The Meiji Guillotine Murders perhaps resembles Shōtarō Ishinomori's 1966–1973 manga, Sabu to Ichi Torimono Hikae (Sabu and Ichi's Detective Tales) more closely than it does Okamoto's Hanshichi. In Ishinomori's beautifully illustrated but bleak work set in the dying years of the Tokugawa shogunate, Sabu, a young thief-taker, and Ichi, a blind masseur, navigate the harsh Edo landscape populated by a society, impoverished and in ruins, dealing out their severe and fierce (but not unsympathetic) brand of justice to bandits, rouge samurai and corrupt officials, while bemoaning the decaying and rotten state of affairs in the upper echelons of the shogunate that spells unrelenting misfortune and tragedy for the common people Sabu and Ichi try to protect. Neither work quite explicitly puts forth a political opinion or standpoint, but they do share the common theme and agenda of portraying the inherent and deeply embedded corruption in both new and old world orders, and the effect it has on the people who bear its brunt. Even beyond Japan, the use of a linked mystery-story approach to reveal a larger issue in the background has grown in popularity, particularly in the recent spate of Chinese detective shows (such as 2022's Checkmate, an adaptation of a number of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories set against the backdrop of a Republican China) featuring Shanghai and/or Beiing of the 1920s or 1930s.

Reflections after vanquishing the misguided foe (panel from Shōtarō Ishinomori's Sabu and Ichi's Detective Tales, chapter 83, January 1973)

It is safe to say that The Meiji Guillotine Murders has been one of my best finds of the year. Taking inspiration from its predecessors in the genre, the book goes on to lay down an enviable template for future authors dabbling with the historical crime fiction genre to try and emulate—take, for instance, a completely different work such as Honobu Yonezawa's excellent The Samurai and the Prisoner that still feels quite similar to Yamada's work with regards to its modus operandi of stringing individual stories together in the climax. The Meiji Guillotine Murders comes highly recommended, indeed!