Night of the Living Dead

The tendency of Japanese mystery authors to fixate on apocalyptic, end-of-the-times themes has much to do with the country's own tryst with bloody conflicts, internecine strife and wars going back decades and centuries. This is visible in the settings and politics of works by prolific wartime authors such as Seishi Yokomizo (taking on the theme of the disfigured individual and society crippled by the Second World War in multiple novels) and Akimitsu Takagi (portraying the seedy underworld in the midst of bombed-out ruins in The Tattoo Murder Case). Images of the war continue to loom large in the works of authors writing a few decades later such as Natsuhiko Kyogoku (with a number of characters in the Kyōgokudō series suffering from post-war PTSD), and in manga series such as The Kindaichi Case Files and Detective School Q (both of which have stories with wartime biological experimentation in their backgrounds). And, if one includes historical crime fiction in the equation, the net has to be cast much wider, travelling further back in time — Honobu Yonezawa's The Samurai and the Prisoner takes place against the backdrop of the siege of the Arioka Castle (1578–1579), while the events of the Boshin Civil War (1868–1869) and the Meiji Restoration play an important role in Fūtarō Yamada's The Meiji Guillotine Murders.

When Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no Satsujin (translated as Death Among the Undead, Locked Room International, 2021) first came out in 2017, it was widely hailed as a much-needed shot in the arm for the shin honkaku sub-genre. As Soji Shimada points out in his insightful introduction to the book's translation, the genre had been showing tendencies similar to the preceding 'social school of mystery fiction'—namely that the sub-genre was restricting and limiting itself too much by sticking religiously to a select few 'golden rules', as a result of which originality was being stifled. Indeed, if one simply glances, at the surface level, the elements the novel introduces and the genres it blends, Shimada's observation is warranted. Yet, as has happened with so many works in the past, Death Among the Undead is also driven by bloody violence, albeit in a modern avatar—a bioterrorist attack.

Imamura clearly loves popular Japanese mystery tropes—a university setting, mystery clubs and an incredibly young cast. In fact, the opening stretches resemble, in essence, Yukito Ayatsuji's groundbreaking novel, The Decagon House Murders. The wry, self-deprecating humour ("It was up for debate whether his 'deductions' could be considered logical, but I did agree that humans do not act as predictably as they do in books.") punctuating sections (such as the one where Shinkō University's Mystery Society members Kyōsuke Akechi and Yuzuru Hamura make idle deductions on the food a girl may order at the cafeteria, or the one where Akechi strikes a 'deal' with real-life detective Hiruko Kenzaki to enter the Film Club's summer trip) makes for easy reading in the early going. All the ingredients indicate a classic, closed-circle setup: the Film Club receiving a threatening letter on who the next 'sacrifice' will be, and all the members of the Film Club going ahead with the trip and gathering at the Villa Violet close to Lake Sabea, with Akechi, Hamura and Kenzaki as the 'invited' guests.

It is here that another thread in the form of a bioterrorist attack at the Sabea Rock Festival nearby collides with this closed-circle setup with the force of a freight train, and transforms the section into a scene straight out of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Even though the members could hear ambulance sirens since the afternoon and observe an unusual glow from the festival area, it is only during the evening-time Trial of Courage held between the Club members that things are thrown into disarray. By this time, there have been significant casualties, but it is during the main cast's encounter with wandering zombies that the novel acquires a personal touch. Both the Club members as well as Yuzura lose their friends to the horde of zombies wildly stumbling about. They are also forced to retreat into the confines of the Villa Violet, while closing, shuttering up all points of entry and egress, and barricading themselves. The book then purports to unfold as a zombie survival narrative. Or, does it?

The use of zombies to double down on the closed-circle and enforced isolationist aspects of the novel, besides positioning them as potential instruments and perpetrators of murders most foul, can indeed be considered to be revolutionary in textual or literary terms. However, in my view, Death Among the Dead can best be enjoyed as a cinematic experience*. Much of it has to do with how the novel transpires henceforth. First, Imamura carefully outlines the extent of the zombies' capabilities, laying out what they can and cannot do:

"[...] these zombies appeared to have badly-developed motor skills. Their speed of movement on the steps was much slower than on level ground, and they had trouble staying balanced. Any zombie that did somehow manage to make their way up found the barricades in their way, got their feet wrapped up in the sheets and tripped backwards, taking the zombies behind with them in their fall. The process kept repeating itself. [...]"

Despite all the precautions taken based on the collective observations of the gathered people, the following morning, one of the members is found dead in a closed room in a gross manner (with his face gnawed off), slowly transforming into a zombie before the witness' eyes. The victim is 'killed' a second time, before the observers find a note with the words 'let's eat'. This sets off a second wave of revised speculations and discourse on zombies, their abilities, and the process of zombiefication, with conversations on locked room mysteries and their applicability (in the current scenario) thrown in between. Some of the discourse has a surprising philosophical depth (which is, unfortunately, never really followed up on), despite being peppered with pop-cultural references to cult hits in the zombie fiction genre, such as Resident Evil and Shaun of the Dead:

"Zombies are not simply grotesque, horrifying monsters anymore. They are beings that can be used to cast a light on so many themes: the sin of man, economic class differences, the strong and the weak, or the tragedy of how friends and family can turn into enemies in the blink of an eye. Zombies are projections of our own egos and minds."

However, no amount of philosophising, theorising and notes-taking help the survivors prevent two other murders—one on the second night and the other on the morning of the third day. In the second case, the corpse is found with its head smashed to bits in a closed elevator stuck on the second floor of the building, while the third case involved the poisoning of a character in the room he had holed himself up in. In the meantime, the threat of the gathering multitudes of zombies breaking through the barriers put in place has increased exponentially.

So, these three incidents, featuring the involvement of zombies to varying degrees, form the crux of the narrative. The incidents are all explained in a rational manner—and to answer the question I had posed earlier, it is ironic to note that the way the novel unfolds after the introduction of the zombies makes it a celebration of logical and deductive reasoning, with the survival of characters against a zombie outbreak being presented as a consequential byproduct. In particular, I prefer the explanation of the first incident, which has a tragic and pathetic aspect to it, and merges the mystery and horror aspects very well.

Perhaps, it all unfolds a bit too logically and rationally for a reader invested in the setting of the work. The biggest failure here, in my opinion, is that Imamura sorely undersells the psychological impact of the zombie attack on the characters. The fact that they all display too much of a 'calmer heads should prevail, let's wait for help to arrive' attitude, accompanied by an almost placid acceptance of the situation, beggars belief and feels excessively unnatural, artificial and forced by the dictates of the author's plotting preferences and the need to conform to a particular brand of mystery fiction. There's no unpredictability or instinctiveness in the reactions of the characters holed up in Villa Violet in the face of a zombie invasion. Instead, even though the book had previously poked fun at the predictability of characters in fictional works, it all feels too premeditated, predictable and well-rehearsed, like a movie script. What's disappointing is that the zombies are almost peripheral in the central sections of the book, only serving as tools to advance the plot, and the sense of threat emanating from their presence is often severely underplayed. Paradoxically, therefore, the introduction of the zombie element that promised to add a new dimension to the dynamics of the shin honkaku sub-genre ends up restricting the narrative potential by imposing the dictates of a classically-constructed shin honkaku story on to the characters and their reactions that do not seem to be appropriate to the circumstances they face (except for the portion after the denouement leading to the rescue of the remaining characters). What's extremely lacking is a consistent level of panic and nervous/manic energy seen in, say, Frederic Brown's Night of the Jabberwock.

It begs the question: is the inspired use of zombies really essential to Imamura's debut work? Given the larger genre-wide implications it has wrought, the answer is a resounding yes. But, seen in the context of Death Among the Undead specifically, one cannot help but argue that Imamura fails to do justice to or explore the enormous potential of the zombies that he introduces in his fictional universe. Akechi indeed has the final say when he remarks, "... Things don't always go right."

*Thankfully, a 2019 movie version of Death Among the Undead, titled Murder at Shijinso, can be found online. In all respects, it is fairly faithful to the events in the book, but the use of dramatic tropes, some creative liberties and a stylised treatment focusing more on the action and survival elements, makes for a more entertaining, spectacle-filled view that could help one gloss over the identity-based issues one encounters when reading the book.

Sitting on Top of the World

And thus, 2023 concludes, for me, with a picture-perfect rendition of the proverbial 'save the best for the last' scenario ...

My acquaintance with Japanese historical (or period) crime/detective fiction is limited to only a handful of works: Kidō Okamoto's Hanshichi torimonochō (translated as The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi : Detective Stories of Old Edo, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007) and a couple of manga and anime series such as Shōtarō Ishinomori's Sabu to Ichi Torimono Hikae (Sabu and Ichi's Detective Tales),  Shōtarō Ikenami's Onihei Hankachō (adapted into a long-running manga series by Sentaro Kubota and Takao Saitō, as well as a 2017 anime series), Yuichiro Kawada and Takase Rie's Edo no Kenshikan (Edo Coroner), Fuyumi Ono and Niki Kajiwara's Toukei Ibun (Strange Tales of Tokyo), Kei Toume's Genei Hakurankai, and maybe a couple more. To this list, I now have the privilege and good fortune of adding Honobu Yonezawa's acclaimed, award-winning novel from 2021, Kokurōjō (translated as The Samurai and the Prisoner, Yen Press, 2023).

The period in which The Samurai and the Prisoner is set—1578–1579, falling in the last quarter of the Sengoku era—predates the historical setting of the other aforementioned works. This makes for interesting outcomes. For one, this is a far more chaotic time in history, marked by incessant, excessive warfare and strife, compared to the Edo and later periods. Second, the more visible difference is that the resulting focus or the gaze of this novel, unlike that of the ones set in the later Edo, Meiji, Taisho or Showa eras, is not as much on introspection that seeks to shed light on the internal decay or rot in society, as it is on the 'insider-outsider' dichotomy and the intrigue surrounding the relationship and politics between different clans and warlords negotiating who they want to ally with and who to fall back on in case of a betrayal.

What also gives the novel a distinct identity is the fact that the events of the novel transpire within a fortified castle besieged by enemies, within and without. Honobu's story picks on the historical events of the second siege of the Itami Castle (or Arioka Castle), orchestrated by Nobunaga Oda, the famous daimyō (feudal) and one of the "three Great Unifiers" of Japan. His plans for the ruthless conquest of the northern Settsu province (consisting of parts of the modern-day prefectures of  Hyōgo and Osaka) hit a roadblock when one of his allies, the general Murashige Araki, betrays the Oda in 1578. Araki—driven partly by his own ambitions and mostly due to his horror at the excesses of the Oda's brutality—seeks to mount an opposition against Nobunaga, with the help and support of the Mōri clan, an influential and powerful family in the Aki province (the western portion of modern-day Hiroshima prefecture), and the Buddhist temple-fort of Hongan-ji in Osaka. Araki holes up in the Arioka Castle (effectively a castle-city in Itami) with his commanders and members of several other clans who contribute to the army/military efforts, and his concubine Chiyoho, a 'blessing' and a 'gift' from the Hongan-ji to Murashige for helping defend them. 

And so it is, at the start of the novel in November 1578, when Araki receives a visitor called Kanbei Kuroda, a retainer of Hashiba Hideyoshi (a lord under Nobunaga; later Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the second of "three Great Unifiers of Japan") of Chikuzen province, who arrives to ascertain whether Murashige had indeed turned his back on the Oda, and to advise him against taking such a course of action. However, Araki goes on to capture Kuroda after a brief but bloody struggle. Instead of having him executed (which was the norm back then, and a matter of honour), Murashige throws him in a cage in the dungeon in the depths of the castle, alive but severely wounded—a truly ignominious fate for Kanbei.

The four short stories that form the bulk of the novel span the following year, corresponding quite accurately to the historical timeline of the conquest of the castle. The stories, divided according to seasons (winter, spring, summer, and autumn) follow a common pattern—strange, unsettling events threaten to undo the goodwill and harmony not just among the clans and commanders, but also among the masses, for reasons directly or indirectly tied to the events. Each time, Murashige has to rely on Kanbei's extraordinary intellect to get to the truth behind the incidents. The bad blood and further developments between the two influences the evolution of their relationship, with the result that Kanbei does not provide outright answers to the mysteries narrated to him (instead, replying in convoluted riddles), and plots behind Murashige's back. 

In the first story, a young hostage from a clan that betrays Murashige's faction is found dead in a closely guarded storehouse surrounded by an unfinished garden covered in snow. In the second story, a successful, surprise, nighttime attack leads to the elimination of an enemy camp hidden perilously close to Arioka Castle. However, unrest brews when the decapitated heads of two high-ranking enemy officers are switched during a head-identification session, and the camp commander's head is not found despite definite reports of his demise. Ugly rumours spread within the city, and a Christian place of worship is burnt to the ground leading to the death of a person. In the third story, a revered priest-messenger and a member of Murashige's personal guard-force are murdered in an old hermitage and its environs. The priest had been entrusted to convey a secret message and a treasured possession of Murashige to a samurai serving under an enemy general Mitsuhide Akechi (who would later force Nobunaga to commit seppuku in the Honnō-ji Incident of 1582). The article in question was stolen, while the secret message, even though left intact, had already been read by parties unknown—a development that, apart from hinting towards the presence of a potential traitor within the castle, meant certain doom for Murashige and Itami, especially in the face of defections by the generals and commanders in neighbouring forts and castles, as well as the rapidly declining morale of the soldiers who still stood beside Araki. The fourth story ties some of the loose ends in the preceding chapter, sees Murashige try to uncover a conspiracy and Kanbei enact his 'revenge' before the castle's inevitable fall, and heads off towards a surprising but extremely logical conclusion.

Seen in a vacuum, the mysteries can be dissected fairly easily. But, to better understand Murashige's struggles against them, it is necessary to look at and identify the numerous battles he was fighting on multiple fronts. And, it is here that the novel excels—without passing judgement, Yonezawa continuously sprinkles the narrative with details that give great insight into the socio-cultural and economic status of samurai and commoners, cutting across different strata, while also depicting, time and again, the mindset of the people, their religious beliefs, and the rituals and practices they subscribe to. All of these myriad, divisive elements determine the context, and ensure that the characters do not act in ways that seem too forced, unnatural or absolutely out of sync with their historical persona. For instance, in the first story, Yonezawa describes the standing and importance of the multiple clans in the war council, delving into their background, and the story behind their participation in the faction and reasons for doing so. These details give readers some idea of the possible frictions between clans and individual members inside this faction, while also explaining why Murashige personally analyses the so-called 'betrayal' of his close allies in a very measured, sympathetic manner. Yonezawa also fleshes out the story and background details of each member of his personal guard in vivid detail (even pertaining to their mastery of individual weapons), to explore who would want to murder a hostage, going against his explicit orders not to. The problem is, nearly all of the influential personalities or the suspects who had an opportunity to and even the victim himself wanted the hostage dead, so that an example could be made out of him, with many of them expressing surprise and discontent at Murashige's decision to spare him. Furthermore, there is also the mystery of the vanishing weapon and the no-footprints-in-the-snow conundrum to deal with. On a different note, Murashige also has to deal with the curious incident of a fort near the castle borders not reacting to the summons to join a skirmish in time. Little wonder then that Murashige—who is also continuously planning and trying to maintain harmony between the individual clans and their heads, and uplift the spirit of his troops—finally has to take the help of the prisoner, Kanbei, despite his unwillingness. Ultimately, the solution, which makes great use of the positional awareness of the culprit, the details provided by the author regarding the weapons stored in the castle, and some inspired ingenuity on the culprit's part, is one that could only have been employed in the special setting of a besieged castle at its time of occurrence. In the second story, religious beliefs and the 'insider-outsider' dichotomy take centrestage, as the missing head of the commander becomes a flashpoint that ignites tempers between the members and followers of a clan subscribing to Buddhist faith and the adherents of another clan which has taken up Christianity. Once again, Yonezawa describes, in minute detail, the circumstances of the ambush and the sequence of events leading both to the replacement of heads and the commander's head going missing, paving the way for a simple, logical reveal. Additionally, the beliefs and religious alignments of the masses, the samurai and the clans are outlined with great care, providing more motives to a larger cast of characters. Then, there's the larger picture, with rumours and gossip about more potential defections among Araki's allies—and once again, Murashige finds himself besieged by too many enemies and wars to fight.

But, there are undercurrents to the novel as well. It can be read at several levels—but, for me, there are at least two major ones. One of them is, of course, the constant intrigue surrounding wars, battle strategies, potential alliances, betrayals—and this is mostly limited to the samurai class. Considerations of honour, prestige and status inform this level of narrative and its underlying rules—the interactions of Murashige with his commanders, guards and soldiers (both personally as well as in the war councils) and with Kanbei are representative of this. The other major level is the religious subtext, that assumes greater significance further into the novel. In the limited confines of the castle, the interplay between three major religious sects/practices—True Pure Land Buddhism (also known as Jōdo Shinshū or Shin Buddhism), Zen Buddhism and Christianity—propels the narrative in subtle ways. It is this subtext that unites the other spectrum of the population (the masses) through the promise of salvation and fear of divine punishment. Seen in this light, despite the overall chaotic atmosphere of doom and gloom, an uneasy peace does exist in the midst of the town's populace outside the inner citadel and the samurai quarters. In his quest to unearth the rational nature of the truth behind the incidents, Murashige fails to read the pulse of the people until late into the novel. For the common people, the deaths and the mysterious incidents could be attributed to a form of divine justice or the Buddha's wrath, reinforcing their faith in the real existence of these concepts, however abstract they may be, and providing solace to them in the face of a doomed war, unceasing brutality and killings, by suggesting that even the Oda and their allies will not be spared from such justice and that they would have to pay for their sins, sooner or later. This also explains why the sentiments of the masses are best seen after the murder of the revered priest and the subsequent divine punishment meted out to the perpetrator (a perfect cause-and-effect, or 'reap what you sow', scenario for the observers), and why passions rise against an 'outsider religion' like Christianity. Unfortunately, for Murashige, he is unable to bridge the gap between these two levels, ironically due to the lack of an introspective view of his own fiefdom. As a result, he is unable to stay true to his own tenet that the people make the castle, and finds himself, unwittingly or driven by circumstances, walking a path similar to that of Nobunaga Oda—a fact he rues late in the novel. The reason for his failure, as pointed out by his concubine Chiyoho, lies in a fundamental difference in the faith and creed of a samurai and that of a simple, god-fearing, common person, in those times. For a samurai clothed in armour and wielding weapons, the bravery and valour embedded in their being makes it impossible for them to understand that fabricated omens and concepts such as divine retribution could honestly be 'believed' by one. After all, the question of their survival depends on their cunningness on the battlefield and how attuned they are to their immediate reality and surroundings. Above all, as stated by Murashige, samurai fear death the most. For common people not protected by any armour or weapons, who are constantly on the receiving end of massacres by warlords, the reality is not so straightforward. It is possible to engender hope among them through talk of fabricated omens and the spread of ideas such as divine miracles, punishment and retribution, especially as they need something to hold to at a time when they are subjected to unending torture. And, that is why, as stated by Chiyoho, they fear not death itself but the fact that they may not achieve salvation or reach heaven even after dying. Besides adding another layer of historical authenticity (with events such as the Ikkō-ikki rebellion and the subsequent massacre of the sect at Ise-Nagashima serving as one of the backdrops), the religious subtext therefore also opens up a wealth of theological discourse of an admirably high quality, through the conversations between the characters who fulfil the role dictated by the needs of the mystery plot while staying true to their historical personas—a very difficult act to pull off, in my opinion.

A quick note about the translation—it is slightly inconsistent (words like 'damn' sharing space with archaic terms like 'prithee' and 'ye' feels anachronistic, to put it lightly), the setting may need some time to sink one's teeth into, and the need for footnotes is sorely felt. But it is well worth the effort, time and money to procure a copy. Yonezawa does not rewrite or reinvent history in this book—the Itami Castle siege ended in November 1579, and a total of 670 people (women, men and children included) were executed by Nobunaga, in Itami, Kyoto and Nanatsumatsu (near Amagasaki, in Hyōgo prefecture). No further worthy deeds of Murashige Araki have been recorded either. However, what he does most skillfully is weave in tales of mystery and intrigue into the seams of Arioka Castle—tales that elevate the work from the status of simply being a work of only mystery or historical fiction. By using real-life figures and events, Yonezawa bestows life upon his craft, turning it into a living, breathing, plausible document of the times that shares an extraordinary synergy with its mystery and historical elements, and its many other subtexts.

The Rain Song

I had initially planned to discuss Suishakan no Satsujin (1988; translated and published as The Mill House Murders by Pushkin Vertigo in 2023), the second novel in Yukito Ayatsuji's Yakata series, alongside The Decagon House Murders, but my fanboying of the latter turned too long for my taste. Hence, the decision to write about The Mill House Murders in a separate post.

The way things ended in The Decagon House Murders, it was hard to envision a sequel to the work. The Mill House Murders, while not exactly a sequel in the truest sense of the word, serves as a great example of how even a minor, almost inconsequential, detail can serve as the basis of a series in continuity — in my very limited reading of the Yakata series (only two works in English translation so far), the two connecting threads would be that they share a common detective and that they are all set in mansions and buildings constructed by the eccentric architect, Seiji Nakamura, introduced and killed off in the first novel itself. The result seems to be a series whose works can be enjoyed both as standalone entries (featuring the odd tribute to previous masters of the craft) as well as part of a loosely-connected chronological set. And on that note of continuity, The Mill House Murders is a work that is fascinatingly similar and dissimilar to The Decagon House Murders, in ways both good and bad.

My first impression of the second entry in the Yakata series was that the sprightly, breezy nature of the first novel had been replaced with a heavy, brooding atmosphere. While The Decagon House Murders had a lightness of touch to it, replicating the essence of an Ellery-Queen puzzle plot, The Mill House Murders is heavy-handed in its execution, doffing its hat instead to the works of another master, John Dickson Carr. However, the main trickery employed here makes it another Christie tribute novel, in my opinion, even though it may not be as evident as seen in The Decagon House Murders.

The Mill House Murders is narrated from the perspective of one of the characters, a resident of the eponymous Mill House (named so after the mill wheels generating power), another strange creation of Seiji Nakamura. The narrator is introduced as the current owner of the Mill House — and is the son of a 'visionary' painter who drew a number of remarkable surrealist scenes and landscapes before dying. Every year, he hosts a diverse group of guests — a disciple of the deceased visionary painter, an art dealer, a professor of art history, a director of a surgical hospital, and a few others — all of whom gather to marvel at the painter's works and to chance their luck at buying one of the masterpieces (particularly The Phantom Cluster, a painting that no one has seen). However, tragedy struck when the group met a year prior to the events of the novel — "a woman fallen from the tower", "a painting disappeared", "a man vanished under seemingly impossible circumstances", and "another man ... killed, cut up in pieces and burnt in the incinerator". The novel does a great job, straight-up mentioning the past mysteries in the prologue itself. And, thrown into this mix is the series detective, Kiyoshi Shimada, who arrives to the mansion in the present day, to solve the mystery of his friend's impossible disappearance the year previous. 

But then, it starts to suffer from a few design issues. Unlike The Decagon House Murders, the division of the narrative in The Mill House Murders is mostly time-based as the movements of the characters are limited to the confines of the mansion and its tower. What this essentially means is that most of the action in the novel consists of a cast of mostly familiar faces roaming over the same grounds in different combinations and circumstances. While this is not a bad thing by itself, the novel goes out of its way in the early stages to demonstrate how eerily the events of the present day and the previous year parallel each other. Consider, for example, the two opening sections of the first two chapters:

I woke as I usually do. The amber curtains were drawn over the windows facing the courtyard to the east, but the bright morning sun shone right through them into the room. It was quiet outside, but if I listened carefully, I could just make out the faint chirping of the mountain birds, as well as the distant sound of flowing water. I could also hear the heavy rumble of the mill wheels, always revolving by the western side of this house. It was a peaceful morning.

We’d had good weather ever since September came along, but the news last night had reported an approaching typhoon. The forecast said it would start raining in the Chūgoku region this afternoon. This morning was thus, truly, the calm before the storm.

I slowly sat up in the spacious bed. The clock on the wall showed half past eight. The same time I always woke up.

Leaning back against the headboard, I reached for the nightstand with my right hand, picked up my old briar pipe and packed it with tobacco. Soon a mellow scent filled the room, accompanied by cream-coloured smoke.

“A typhoon, eh?” I mumbled out loud to myself. My voice was unnaturally hoarse.

I had to think back to exactly one year ago, 28th September. The morning of that fateful day had been the same as today. There’d been reports of an approaching typhoon then too. And it arrived just as forecast.

One year… A whole year had passed since that blood-soaked night.

I became lost in thought, my hand swaying with the pipe. The tentacles of my mind crept towards the events of that night one year ago, to everything that occurred the following day, and even to what happened afterwards.

I stole a glance at the door in the corner of the room, the bronze doorknob and dark mahogany panelling. That door, which led to the study, would never be opened again…

My lean body suddenly shuddered. An indescribable, inescapable shiver welled up from deep within and ran through my whole being.

It was a quarter to nine now. The phone on my nightstand would ring soon, softly signalling the start of another day.

“Good morning, sir.”

The familiar voice on the other end of the line sounded calm. It was the butler, Kuramoto Shōji.

“I will be bringing you your breakfast right away.”

“Thanks.”

I placed my pipe on its stand and started getting dressed. I took my pyjamas off, put on a shirt and trousers, and a dressing gown on top. When I had managed to do all of this, I put the cotton gloves on both my hands. And finally, it was time to put on my face.

My mask.

That mask was a symbol of my whole life at this time, a symbol of everything that Fujinuma Kiichi now was.

A mask. Indeed, I had no face. I wore that mask every single day to hide my accursed features. The white mask was now the real face of the master of the house. The rubber clung to my skin. A cold death mask worn by a living man.

and

He woke as he usually did. The amber curtains were drawn over the windows facing the courtyard to the east, but the bright morning sun shone right through them into the room. It was quiet outside, but if he listened carefully, he could just make out the faint chirping of the mountain birds, as well as the distant sound of flowing water. He could also hear the heavy rumble of the mill wheels, always revolving by the western side of the house. It was a peaceful morning.

The news last night had reported an approaching typhoon. The forecast said it would start raining in the Chūgoku region on the afternoon of the 28th.

He slowly sat up in the spacious bed. The clock on the wall showed half past eight. The same time he always woke up.

Leaning back against the headboard, he reached for the nightstand with his right hand, picked up his old briar pipe and packed it with tobacco. Soon a mellow scent filled the room, accompanied by cream-coloured smoke.

Three days ago he’d caught a cold and ran a fever, but he’d recovered now. He could savour the scent of tobacco again.

He slowly closed his eyes as he puffed his pipe.

28th September. Ōishi Genzō, Mori Shigehiko, Mitamura Noriyuki and Furukawa Tsunehito. Today was the day the four of them would visit him in the afternoon, just as they had done in previous years.

Their annual visit was not a joyous occasion for him, living as he did in this house deep in the mountains, hiding from the outside world. He honestly felt their visit was a great annoyance.

Yet he was also in denial about his feelings. He could easily tell them not to come if he genuinely did not want them to. But his inability to turn them away all these years was perhaps partially due to guilt.

He kept his eyes closed as a low sigh escaped his cracked lips.

Anyway, they’re coming today. It’d all been decided, so nothing could be changed now.

He had no intention of making a detailed analysis of his own contradictory thoughts. The visit plagued him, but he also welcomed it. That was all there was to it.

It was a quarter to nine now. The phone on his nightstand would ring soon, softly signifying the start of another day.

“Good morning, sir.”

The familiar voice on the other end of the line sounded calm. It was the butler, Kuramoto Shōji.

“How are you feeling, sir?”

“Better now, thanks.”

“I can bring your breakfast immediately if you wish.”

“I’ll come down myself.”

He placed his pipe on its stand and started getting dressed. He took his pyjamas off, put on a shirt and trousers, and a dressing gown on top. When he had managed to do all of this, he put the cotton gloves on both his hands. And finally, it was time to put on his face.

His mask. 

The mask could be considered the symbol of the last twelve years of his life, a symbol of everything that Fujinuma Kiichi was.

Indeed, he had no face. He wore this mask every single day to hide his accursed features. This white mask bearing the features of Fujinuma Kiichi, the master of this house. The rubber clung to his skin. A cold death mask worn by a living man.

There are important reasons, both stylistic and plot-based, behind such a narration, which are revealed towards the end of the novel. But, I am not sure that this style of closely mirroring prose over long stretches and/or entire chapters is necessarily in the best interests of the book. If nothing else, it invites the allegation that the narration is lazy, long-drawn and stretched—an allegation that is justifiable for the first half of the novel. Even more infuriating is the fact that the repetition spills over into the conversations between the characters during this stretch, with the result that, time and again, readers are forcibly reminded of the multiple events that occurred in many of the characters' pasts, to the point of memorising them. Even though a sense of unease (that things are not as they seem) persists—and despite Shimada's constant needling—any fair, outright indication of the deception behind the events of the past is not explicitly revealed till a much later period in the novel.

The experience of reading the first half/three-fourths of the novel is akin to that of playing a challenging, laborious dungeon-crawler game where one knows the entry- and exit-points of the maze and, seemingly, the major boss to be overcome. However, they still need to explore the same dungeon time-and-time again to unravel different secrets (spaces, quests or resources) that reveal themselves only during a replay and which have a bearing on the game and its completion, and can potentially change the nature of the dungeon-space itself. In the case of The Mill House Murders, readers are likely to retread the same incidents, stories from the past and developments in the present time from the mostly similar perspectives of multiple characters—and each time, they are likely to have to refer to the previous mention of said incident to spot the critical difference/change in viewpoint. Besides not making for a smooth, fluid read, this is, indeed, an excruciating exercise in patience—not unlike taking on and staring at an extremely difficult spot-the-difference challenge where the differences are microscopic to a visible eye.

It does not help that a superior treatment of this narrative style, in my opinion, is seen in Taiwanese author Szu Yen Lin's Death in the House of Rain (translated and published in English by Locked Room International, 2017)—a far more fluid, fast-paced read than The Mill House Murders because of the simple fact that the individual incidents do not overstay their welcome and the characters are hardly given time to obsess endlessly over past events. Even more damning is the fact that The Mill House Murders itself does not really provide a framework with which one can appreciate the narrative style employed (even though it is tepid and off-putting in its execution), or a solid rationale for its application. For instance, a recent chapter of Motohiro Katou's manga, Q.E.D. iff, employs two legal principles that may be used to cultivate a somewhat begrudging admiration of the way things unfold in The Mill House Murders. In chapter 46 of the manga series (a story titled "Legal Realism"), a character provides a beginner's introduction to the judicial principles used to resolve civil and criminal cases—namely, 'legal realism' and 'legal formalism', respectively. In 'legal realism', which is employed in civil cases, the 'matching parts' of conflicting testimonies are upheld as 'the truth', even though they may oppose each other completely in other respects. However, in 'legal formalism' (used in criminal cases), the minutest details, facts, testimonies, perspectives and discrepancies are gathered and thoroughly investigated to establish and verify 'the truth'. Analysed from this perspective, it can be argued that the opening half of The Mill House Murders adheres more to the 'legal realism' principle, whereby certain core 'facts' are established to be 'the truth' through their constant repetition, whereas the other half goes about subverting, unravelling and undoing the aforesaid, established 'facts' and the core 'truth' by employing 'legal formalism' through the disruptive activities of the detective, Kiyoshi Shimada.

It is a shame then that the first 150-odd pages are so challenging to get by, because when the revelations emerge in the latter half, they come in fast and hit real hard. Architecture plays a greater and more central role in this story than it did in The Decagon House Murders, with one particular resolution evoking the spirit of Gaston Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) in a wonderful way. Ayatsuji also shows a marked improvement in certain aspects of his craft—the characterisation, in particular. He fleshes out the characters of his cast well, and gives them motivations and more pronounced roles than he did in The Decagon House Murders—from the very young, Rapunzel-esque wife of the narrator who is confined in the fairy-tale setting of the tower, to the brash and extremely forward hospital director, to the meek and subdued art professor, all of whom have different reasons for their presence at the Mill House, that are independent of the motives of the protagonist or antagonist. Personally, I also like the atmosphere here, with its constant evocation of the rainy, drenched and soaked weather in both of the years the work traverses between, particularly as I find it conducive to the setting up and maintenance, throughout, of a brooding, overwhelming mood that is appropriate for the story.

But alas, I cannot help but feel that The Mill House Murders would have been far better served as a novella (with better design choices, less narrative repetition and experimentation, and more impact) rather than as a full-blown novel. There are cases in which the saying 'less is more' rings true—this is certainly the case with Ayatsuji's second outing as well, despite him showing definite improvement as a writer.