For Whom the Bell Tolls: Tales of Gokumon Island

Seishi Yokomizo’s first Kosuke Kindaichi novel, The Honjin Murders, was serialised in the Houseki magazine between April and December 1946, but the story itself was set in pre-World War II Japan (more precisely, in 1937) in a rural farming community in distant Okayama. Just the following year (January 1947), Yokomizo would start serialising Death on Gokumon Island, the second Kindaichi adventure, which he would eventually complete in October 1948. Publication-wise, there’s not much of a gap between the two works; however, in storytelling terms, nearly a decade has passed, with the latter set after the conclusion of World War II (1946).

This passage of time is significant, especially as Death on Gokumon Island is steeped in local Japanese culture that mingles with the pervasive atmosphere of uncertainty and chaos in the aftermath of the war in unholy fashion. The predicament of Kindaichi (the sleuth) in the intervening period between 1937 and 1946 is an indication of this. He was drafted by the army and saw action in China, New Guinea and several other islands before returning to Tokyo, with the result that “the best years of his life became a kind of void”. As a matter of fact, it is the mysterious dying request of his wartime comrade that draws Kindaichi to Gokumon Island just as surely as a lighthouse beacon beckons a ship in choppy waters to safety.

Gokumon Island (translating to Hell’s Gate Island and/or Prison Gate Island), though, truly lives up to its moniker over the course of the novel. The groundwork for this is laid even before Kindaichi sets foot on the sinister and foreboding island. Yokomizo comes across as a gifted storyteller, and his skills express themselves not just in the plotting of fiendish puzzles but also in the way he describes the geography and history of the isolated (but not functionally so), insular Gokumon Island and its long tryst with criminals, pirates and the fishing community. This treatment is essential because of the ‘insider-outsider’ dynamic the novel sets up; it is essential for outsiders to understand the culture and the thinking of the islanders as well as the politics and powerplay between the residents and families to make an iota of sense of the events that happen on Gokumon Island. Yokomizo paints vivid portraits of all these aspects, often in lyrical, flavourful prose, allowing one to ‘live through’ the novel, even though for one looking to solve the mysteries, those important insights, revelations and throwbacks into the past may not be fairly or favorably timed.

The mysteries of Death on Gokumon Island revolve around the gruesome deaths of the three sisters of the aforementioned wartime friend of Kindaichi, Chimata Kito. Strangely enough, Chimata had an inkling of what would transpire even before he died on a repatriation vessel five days before he would have reached his Gokumon Island. On his deathbed, Chimata fervently requests Kindaichi to go to the island to save the three sisters—Tsukiyo (the eldest), Yukie and Hanako (the youngest). Kindaichi intends to keep his promise but completely fails to do so. The sisters are all killed in bizarre ways without rhyme and reason: Hanako is hung upside down from a plum tree on the grounds of a temple, Yukie’s corpse finds its way under a gigantic temple bell, while Tsukiyo is found dead in the garb of an ancient shamanic priestess within the prayer house in the compound of the head Kito household. Conceivably, only one explanation can suffice for all the happenings: insanity.

Insanity is indeed the all-pervasive theme of the novel, but the diverse layers of madness that Yokomizo unravels are complex and worthy of admiration. It is also testament to the progress Yokomizo makes as an author between his first and second works. After the first murder, Kindaichi is puzzling over the nature of the crime and the need to stage it in such a lurid manner, he ruminates thus: 

"And there was the crux of the matter. Detective Kosuke Kindaichi had been pondering the exact same question. Was it simply the murderer showing off? Just like some novelists, trying to find a fresh story, think up the most excessively theatrical settings, had this murderer, just on a whim, painted this ghastly spectacle out of flesh and blood?

No, no, no.

Kosuke Kindaichi didn’t believe anything of the sort. He was convinced that the fact that Hanako’s corpse had been hung upside down on the tree held some kind of profound significance. It was crazy, utterly insane. But the whole of Gokumon Island itself had something crazy about it. The island’s peculiar ways must have had some profound effect on both the murderer’s motive and method."

This is as clear a statement of authorial intent as any you will ever find. With that reference to ‘excessively theatrical settings’, Yokomizo throws shade at his previous work and assures readers that Death on Gokumon Island will not be alike The Honjin Murders. It also paves the way for the eventual unveiling of the novel’s plot as a nursery-rhyme-themed serial murder (or, more appropriately, a haiku-themed one).

As stated earlier, madness forms the overarching theme of the novel, and the haiku-themed modus operandi is only one of the numerous layers. As the late Dr Sari Kawana mentions in her essay “With Rhyme and Reason: Yokomizo Seishi’s Postwar Murder Mysteries”, Gokumon Island takes after its predecessors in S. S. Van Dine’s The Bishop Murder Case (1929) and Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders (1935) and And Then There Were One (1939). More significantly, as stated in the essay, it is perhaps one of the earliest instances of the use of such a device in Japanese crime fiction, as it remained unused in the pre-War years. Kawana argues that World War II was the necessary prerequisite for authors such as Yokomizo to explore the potential of Western devices such as the nursery rhyme and adapt them for their own indigenous purposes. And as it transpires, the haikus navigate a weird, transitory world in Gokumon Island where several orders collide and mingle—and where order and reason make way for unreason and chaos.

The haikus, in a way, can be said to be the ‘will’ and legacy of a deceased patriarch of the Kito family, trying to ensure the longevity and ’purity’ of a family line and order that he helped set up. The aforesaid patriarch, for his own selfish purposes, undid an even older order rife with criminal and unlawful activities by identifying poverty as the root of all plagues on the island. An unintended side effect of the patriarch’s quest for prosperity is that it also leads other islanders to grow rich and rise in status. However, on the flip side, these developments also set up rival factions, conflicting loyalties, deeply troubled interpersonal relations and ultimately madness (particularly, in the case of the three sisters and their father and mother) in unforeseen ways. Perhaps, this also explains why Kindaichi completely misreads the affair till the very end and has such a tough time investigating and understanding the myriad ways and power structures and hierarchies (religious, political, familial and professional) of the island, and why he has to, ultimately and perhaps unsatisfactorily, depend primarily on his conversations with various ‘untrustworthy’ people (instead of more concrete evidence) to deduce whodunnit and howdunnit. After all, with the level of distrust among the people of the island, is it any real surprise they would also harbor suspicions about the sleuth, especially as he is an outsider? Though unwilling to state the purpose of his visit, it is through a revelation of his status as a renowned private detective that Kindaichi is finally able to stamp his authority as an ‘agent of order’.

Ironically, the haikus are meant to be a safeguard against the inevitable turmoil to be wrought by World War II. In effect, seen in the light of the patriarch’s intentions and the island’s own convoluted logic, the haikus are straightforward agents of order meant to ensure that the effects of the War do not adversely affect the lineage and succession of the main family. In execution though, things fall apart completely and sensationally so. The unprecedented chaos and turmoil brought about by World War II subsumes the entirety of Gokumon Island and especially its powerful personalities in a maddening miasma from which there is no way out. The greatest testament to this is the revelation at the end that the execution of the murders ensures the tragic failure of both the detective and the culprits. The real culprit ultimately turns out to be the vagaries of World War II that usher in a third age on Gokumon Island despite the insane (yet, at the same time, logical) efforts—an unforeseen age where prima facie, most of the remnants of the previous orders have perished with the demise of their practitioners and custodians.

Kawana’s instructive, thought-provoking essay mentioned earlier connects several strands of the novel with Yokomizo’s experiences of the war. Kawana cites Yokomizo’s own observations regarding how his stay in “feudal” Okayama (during the World War II years) and its obsession with “pedigree”, “clan” and lineage (“obsolete” terms in urban Japan by then) largely influenced his depictions of the complexities of the rural, isolated communities in works such as The Honjin Murders and Death on Gokumon Island. Kawana also mentions Yokomizo’s curious contention that rationality and consuming detective fiction could have saved Japan from the clutches of fascism and militarist ideologies. Seen in the light of these facts, Death on Gokumon Island certainly seems to make a socio-cultural and political statement against the nuisance of war. 

In fact, interweaving these real-life elements, ideologies and cultural elements against the backdrop of a war and its aftermath and then positing rationality against the forces of chaos caused by an unholy combination of the war and older world orders makes Gokumon Island very much a product of its times. Not surprisingly then, a number of elements have not aged well—the uncomfortable omnipresence of patriarch worship, the brusque, rough-edged manner in which the topic of mental health is portrayed, almost ‘villainized’ and the blatant sexism in some parts of the novel will surely stick out as sore thumbs, even though they are meant to be representative of the age in which the novel is set. A particularly egregious example can be seen in the setup of Tsukiyo’s murder where a lighthearted, banter-filled conversation assumes problematic proportions due to the manner in which the issue of female sexual consent is discussed; one can well imagine such sections having a trigger warning or a red flag (literally) to caution readers in the 21st century.

Even with the shocking nature of commentary in quite a few passages, it is understandable why Death on Gokumon Island became a ‘beloved classic’ for Japanese readers. It may be difficult for audiences outside Japan to understand its merits beyond that of a mystery novel without the necessary context, but for a Japanese readership, several aspects of it must have resonated deeply with them when it was serialised. The hyperlocal setting, the dedicated effort in setting up a fictional, but recognisable, almost authentic Japanese landscape modeled on the aesthetics of wabi (transience and beauty), sabi (imperfection) and yūgen (profound subtlety), showcasing the insider-outsider dichotomy, the nuanced use of religion, politics, fishing, and theater in setting up a convincing mystery that can be termed as organically ‘Japanese’—these may have been some of the attractions and hooks that also mirrored the state of contemporary Japan back then. Above all, Death on Gokumon Island has literary value beyond its sensationalist roots, as the use of haikus by Matsuo Bashō and Takarai Kikaku well illustrates. The novel’s real strength lies in its beautiful, lyrical, character-driven approach, with sketches and dialogues that propel the narrative, provide motives for the cast, shine a broad light on the complex past and present of a fictional island, and scathingly, tragically indict the monster threatening both fictional and real Japan at that time—a world war.  

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: For whom the bell tolls: tales of murder and madness on the fictional Gokumon Island)

Random Observations: Gimmicks in Crime Fiction

It may be, ultimately, a matter of preference, but, much like professional wrestling, I enjoy my crime fiction a lot more when there are gimmicks involved. This is especially true in the case of a long-running series, where I need that extra incentive to stay invested. What I usually look for in a series are the following: a sense of continuity however slight, and, more importantly, consistency (the cast staying true to its established characters/features, barring exceptional/strongly reasoned-out circumstances; an authorial style and voice that fits the ambience of the work and its purpose, without drastic changes or too much flitting around or unexplained/needless experimentation; no execution of a convenient, contrived plot device or deus ex machina seemingly out of nowhere as a surprising plot twist but which undoes all the groundwork laid before that point). Which is why I find it easier to think of a work's merits and the author's crafts in terms of the gimmicks introduced and the way they are treated.

In my opinion, gimmicks are, broadly speaking, identifiable, distinguishable elements that constitute an author's trademark, prima facie, at the time they were published. The disclaimer about the time of publication is an important one as gimmicks are also the fundamental, building blocks of crime fiction tropes. Which is to say, any unique aspect (say, for instance, the introduction of the locked room mystery in Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery) is particularly prone to capturing the imagination of future authors, and if it proves to be popular enough, the more the likelihood of said aspect to be borrowed and replicated (albeit, in different ways). This accounts for the dual and peculiarly paradoxical nature of gimmicks: from a microscopic viewpoint, the elements have to be unique enough for them to be recognised as an author's trademark; from a macroscopic perspective, however, they can be a part of an already established, pre-existing, overarching trope or sub-genre.

As far as my reading of the genre is concerned, I have noticed authors to establish gimmicks predominantly in two ways:

• Characterisation
• Plotting and narrative structuring  

Characterisation

One of the simpler ways in which authors establish gimmicks is by bestowing their protagonists (usually the sleuths) with a strong visual identity. Sherlock Holmes, arguably the world's most popular private detective till date, is introduced in A Study in Scarlet as a man "over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller." Furthermore, he had "sharp and piercing" eyes and a "thin, hawk-like nose" that "gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision." A study in contrast would be Agatha Christie's creation, Hercule Poirot, described in The Mysterious Affair at Styles as "hardly more than five feet four inches", with a head "exactly the shape of an egg" and a "very stiff and military moustache." Another remarkable aspect of his appearance was the "neatness of his appearance"—in the words of Captain Hastings, "a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound." Nero Wolfe, a perfectly hilarious embodiment of the 'armchair detective' set in a world of pulp fiction, is essentially defined by his inability to physically move around—according to his long-serving assistant Archie Goodwin, Wolfe weighs "a seventh of a ton" who "limits his physical movements to what he regards as the irreducible essentials." 

Given the astonishing richness of the visual markers in these descriptions, it's little surprise then that multiple adaptations of these popular works have often stayed as true to the original work as possible, as far as the portrayal of the lead detective is concerned. Consequentially, the actors essaying these roles have also become household names among crime fiction aficionados and beyond (in some cases)—for instance, Basil Rathbone's and Jeremy Brett's Holmes, David Suchet's and Peter Ustinov's Poirot, Maury Chaykin's Wolfe, among many, many others. 

If a character struck gold, such as is the case with Holmes, it could also end up serving as an inspiration for new and upcoming authors. The Max Carrados stories by Ernest Bramahm, which, 1914 onwards, shared space in the Strand Magazine alongside Doyle's Holmes, are a case in point. The distinguishing feature of Carrados is his blindness that has somehow heightened his other senses exceptionally—the unique premise of a 20th-century Daredevil, if you will. He is able to 'read' print and detect coin forgeries through the sense of touch with equal expertise, while his elevated perception enables him to make masterly deductions and hunt down nefarious criminals. Like Holmes, he also happens to be an authority in a somewhat esoteric, specialised field—numismatics.

But, strong visual descriptors are not the only way in which authors set up gimmicks. Mannerisms, character itches and eccentricities can be equally useful as guides. Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner, another detective of the Holmesian school and perhaps one of the earliest armchair detectives, has a habit of tying pieces of string into extremely complicated knots at the height of his excitement, leading his captive audience to offer a ball of yarn as an incentive to start his explanations. For sources to base his deductions on, he relies on sensationalist newspaper accounts and has a penchant for attending the most crowded court gatherings ever. Seishi Yokomizo's sleuth, Kosuke Kindaichi, who is otherwise recognisable by his serge hakama outfit and a felt hat, often stammers and violently scratches his wild and unruly hair when confronted with an inexplicable puzzle. As another favourite ploy by authors to lend their creations a definite identity, catchphrases too fall in this very same category. Memorable as they may be in their initial form, personally speaking, I am thoroughly entertained when popular catchphrases and utterances/explanations are cleverly and funnily parodied/pastiched—such a treatment seems to me to be a subtle acknowledgement of a character's legacy while being cheeky about it in a good-natured way.

Other ways in which characters gain unique identities include their professions—for instance, magician (in the cases of Clayton Rawson's Merlini, David Renwick's Jonathan Creek and Bengali author Bimal Kar's Kinkar Kishore Ray), professor (in the case of R. Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke), astrologer (in the case of Soji Shimada's Kiyoshi Mitarai), among others. In the same vein but on a slightly different note, John Dickson Carr's Chestertonian sleuth Dr Gideon Fell is the author of some unconventional treatises—The Drinking Customs of England From The Earliest Days, Romances of the Seventeenth Century and another on the supernatural in English fiction. 

Yet another technique involves providing revealing insights into the lives and daily struggles of the investigators, portraying them as human figures and not solely rational, analytical, deduction supermachines. Such a treatment has been a staple particularly in the world of Scandinavian crime fiction, from Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck series to Henning Mankell's Wallander stories and more besides, where the extremely sobering depressing realities of the lives of the policemen and detectives serve to add to the bleakness quotient of the works. An obligatory reference must also be made to Russian author Boris Akunin's supremely entertaining Erast Fandorin novels, in which the protagonist goes through what I like to term as an 'emotional blue screen of death' in almost every one of the works. In comparison, Bengali author Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's Byomkesh Bakshi enjoys a refreshingly normal and relatively happy family life—one marked, mostly, by progressive arguments and discussions with his friend and his wife.  

Plotting and narrative structuring

In the Richard-Levinson-and-William-Link-produced Ellery Queen TV series, one of my favourite detective shows of all time, there are two challenges issued to the viewers—one at the very beginning and the other by the fourth-wall-breaking Ellery Queen, essayed by Jim Hutton, at a point he believes he has gathered all the evidence and connected all the threads of the matter. This simple addition was a wonderful twist and an intellectually stimulating exercise that did away with the tried-and-tested trope of the sleuth having to 'spoonfeed' everything at the end, without giving the audience an opportunity to exercise their "little grey cells". It is this format that has stayed with me the most; this, despite the extremely commendable nature of the puzzles themselves.

The same duo of Levinson and Link were behind the excellent series Columbo that turned the traditional whodunnit on its head and instead presented engaging howdunnits and inverted mysteries. Viewers were shown the  criminal acts within the first half of each episode with the identity of the culprit being no secret; instead, the audience had to correctly identify the loopholes in the modus operandi and the way in which Lieutenant Columbo was most likely to indict the criminal. The success of this series, in turn, led renowned playwright  Kōki Mitani to create an equally absorbing Japanese version of Columbo called Furuhata Ninzaburō.

The point of mentioning these three diverse shows is to highlight the fact that in crime fiction the way a story unfolds and the manner in which the narrative is laid out may well be the difference between a good piece of fiction and a great one. In its heyday, the so-called Golden Age of Detective Fiction was hailed for the intellectual quotient it brought to the table. However, the stories were also zealously faithful to rules set up by a close circle of authors comprising the Detection Club. And, thus it is that one encounters some familiar sequences and setups in a Golden Age work—a fair distribution of clues, red herrings galore, and the obligatory denouement scene where the sleuth gathers all parties concerned, shows off their deductions and then goes on to expose and denounce the culprit. And yet, one wonders how a work such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that subverted one of the most important cardinal rules of the time outshone and had greater longevity than the numerous others that stayed faithful to the literary conventions of the era, only to largely forgotten in the subsequent eras (till a favourable time of rediscovery unearths them again). Experimenting with rules and conventions, though risky, can be rewarding. For instance, Baroness Orczy's The Old Man in the Corner and Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley stories occupy morally grey areas where often, the rule of law isn't followed to the t, and the protagonist often praises the perpetrator's ability to hoodwink the police and the law, even going to the point of shielding them from their comeuppance—a potential novelty for readers too familiar with the 'goody-two-shoes' nature of fictional investigators.

Gimmicks or tropes established via plotting and narrative structuring, therefore, exhibit a cyclical and paradoxical nature. They arise in response to—often in opposition to—the conventions of a particular era or style, then gain legitimacy, later establishing themselves in the mainstream firmly enough to contribute their own to the world of tropes. The hardboiled genre, focusing more on the gritty, soul-crushing work of ordinary gumshoes in extremely harsh, unforgiving and hostile environment than anything, evolved as a counterpoint to the excessive liberties taken by authors of traditional whodunnits and the figure of the 'great, grand detective', both of which 'threatened' to take the genre away from more realistic moorings to far-fetched flights of unchecked imagination and fancy. The police procedural, on the other hand, is a more introspective genre reflecting widely on the nature of crime itself, its origins, its implications and the effects it has on society across different strata. The immensely popular psychological thriller veers into a different territory, often endeavouring to provide an understanding and a vivid picture of the inner workings and motivations of a criminal mind. In this, and especially the way in which it has developed in the 21st century, it can even be said that psychological thrillers share more similarities with true crime than fiction itself.

Intersections

The discussion above shouldn't be taken to mean that the two aspects are worlds apart without any possibility of crossing paths with each other. There exist gimmicks that advance the cause of both—Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, the two works I have talked about the most on this blog till date, are illustrative examples. One of the central points of the Detective Conan series is that of a detective being shrunk, literally, into the size of a kindergarten student. Taking up this fantastical premise, the manga's plot advances with the readers still awaiting its resolution of whether Conan is able to revert to his original body, while exacting justice on the organisation responsible for his plight—a perfect example of a very particular character detail propelling the plot of a work for above 1,000 episodes/chapters. The latest iteration of the Kindaichi series does this slightly differently. Long-time fans will undoubtedly be aware of Hajime Kindaichi's trademark catchphrase, "In the name of my grandfather", which, as a teenager, he uttered every single time before resolving to solve a case. However, in a recent series featuring the adventures of Kindaichi as a 37 year old, it turns out that the detective, now moonlighting as a corporate-sector worker, no longer wishes to be involved in any mysteries. The circumstances surrounding this radical shift in his character have not been revealed yet, forming one of the forces that is driving the plot forward for now. 

A reverse example of a plot detail influencing characterisation further down the line can be found in the Erast Fandorin series. In the first novel, The Winter Queen, certain events at the very end drastically alter Fandorin's constitution, physically as well as mentally. The reader comes to witness the character's change prominently several times in the series, but it all ties back to the first novel whose events also influence Fandorin's decisions and actions in the fourth novel, The Death of Achilles.

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Gimmicks, therefore, serve multiple purposes: as a unique identifier, a useful analytical tool, a foundational element of a trope, and much more. Personally, though, the reason I find gimmicks to be most relatable is because I find them to be one of the more entertaining and 'realistic' elements of detective and crime fiction. In our daily lives, we are all victims of our own habits, each of us unconsciously or subconsciously inhabiting a gimmick (or gimmicks) that are noticeable only when the more extreme traits surface. It is, perhaps, only natural that crime fiction, with its roots in an imagined reconstruction or an approximate simulation of all-too-human observations, ratiocinisation and deduction, would aspire to do the same with gimmicks.  

A Matter of Inheritance

It is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But, how relevant is this adage for a genre such as crime fiction, where tropes abound and the charm, in many cases, lies in the variations of a common core idea or the diverse ways in which the works treat a particular, familiar theme? Is there a case to be made for a distinction between good and bad imitation in crime fiction? And, to what degree and what kind of imitation can be considered permissible in the first place?

This isn't the space for discussing the intricacies of Aristotlelian thought, but his contention that a poet is both a creator and imitator may serve as an important clue to the questions posed above. Unlike Plato, Aristotle does not consider poetry to be inferior to the 'ideal', especially as he posits imitation to be a human instinct via which people, particularly children, learn more about their surroundings and reality.

It's not quite in the same context, but a similar argument can be made in the case of crime fiction. After all, discerning readers are often able to point out the oddest commonalities between works separated by decades and countries. It is the reason why the genre is particularly prone to being categorised—in John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man (1935), for instance, Dr Gideon Fell delivers a most memorable locked room lecture, where he lists the miscellaneous possible ways in which a near-perfect crime can be committed in normally impossible situations. The chapter would pave the way for contemporary and future authors to put forth their own theories in a manner similar to Carr's—Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat (1938) and Abiko Takemaru's Shinsoban 8 no satsujin (1989, translated as The 8 Mansion Murders in 2018) come to mind. An even more commonplace example would be the classic 'no footprints' scenario—a trope that has seen numerous variants and received multiple treatments over the ages from authors as varied as Carr, Keikichi Ōsaka, Gosho Aoyama, Seimaru Amagi, Paul Halter, among others. Or, if one is looking for a more specific example, how about the mechanism used to murder Louise in Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)? A more modern treatment of the same trick can be found in episode 31 of the Detective Conan anime ("TV Station Murder case", an adaption of chapters 102 to 104 of the manga), set in a TV studio where the culprit uses a pistol instead of a block of stone.

What these examples illustrate is a cardinal advantage and privilege exercised by crime-fiction writers—that it is possible to be immensely creative while borrowing influences, cues and prompts from sources not their own. Or, rather, to use an Aristotlelian conception, it is possible to see and understand the genre as it is, as it was and as it is likely to be, through a study of the ways in which a core theme or trope (the 'ideal', so to say) has been addressed over time.

But, there's also a pitfall associated with mimesis. Once in a while, however, there comes an idea so unorthodox, immaculate and complete in its conception and execution that it is not easy at all to creatively imitate it. Any effort to borrow such inspired plots/tricks/settings without a similar inspired vision to take it in a new direction is more than likely to end in disaster. In this rarefied category, I would probably include the likes of Soji Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders and Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (2017, translated as Death Among the undead in 2021). Which is why, every year, during my annual Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo binge-reading and -watching phase, I remain ever perturbed by the presence of that exceptional anomaly called the "Ijinkan Village Murder Case"—a story that dared to copy and depict, in this entirety and most faithfully too, the central dismembering trick employed in The Tokyo Zodiac Murders. My observation, thus, on this unmitigated disaster of a storyline is limited to the following—what in the world was the mangaka thinking? I mean, there may have been a dozen different ways in which they could have employed the backgrounds, settings and plot to good effect without going the route of imitating, to the point of plagiarising, Shimada's creation. 

Usually, I need a palate-cleanser to rinse off the bitter aftertaste of labouring through the Ijinkan chapters. This year, my choice was the "Russian Dolls Murder Case" arc—and, as luck would have it, this happened right after I had completed reading Seishi Yokomizo's The Inugami Curse. Which may as well have been one of the happiest coincidences imaginable, for I now consider the "Russian Dolls Murder Case" to be a masterful and most innovative and subtle tribute to the essence and spirit of Yokomizo's original—one that borrows and subverts elements from The Inugami Curse for its own purposes.

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Inugamike no Ichizoku (1950–1951, translated first as The Inugami Clan, retitled The Inugami Curse later) is one of the most famous and recognisable works of detective fiction both in Japan as well as the world outside—and for good reason. To me, it is a novel that can be sufficiently appreciated by both Western and Japanese audiences. Of course, Yokomizo pays homage to Western influences in his previous works such as The Honjin Murders, but the influences are much more visible here from the word go and in the way the plot progresses. In The Inugami Curse, you instantly have a setup that screams classic, Golden Age Detective Fiction even though it is used in a typically Japanese setting with a number of references to Japanese culture, mythology and contemporary events (World War II, for instance). But, at the heart of the book is the good ol' intergenerational struggle for inheritance between the members of a clan triggered by the provisions of an extremely complicated will left by a dying business mogul, Sahei Inugami. It's a trope common to detective fiction since the publication of Anna Katherine Green's The Leavenworth Case (1878).

What follows is an extremely well-paced and competent mystery that reads far less pulpish than other offerings such as The Honjin Murders and The Village of Eight Graves. The breakneck speed at which things happen in the other two novels is replaced here with pregnant pauses that somehow contrive to make the atmosphere far more foreboding and sinister than it otherwise would be. The body count may be paltry compared to that seen in The Village of Eight Graves, but when it delivers, The Inugami Curse does so in spades. And part of it has to do with the fact that the novel takes its own sweet time to build up to its own unique crescendos which are not disparate but are instead connected by a common thread—that of mitate satsujinjiken (themed murders), the framework and seeds of which Yokomizo painstakingly and admirably builds in the aforesaid will and then proceeds to scatter throughout his work.

Yokomizo also employs a host of familiar tricks and elements to enhance the mystery quotient—mistaken identities, missing and confusing fingerprints, the disfigured body of a war veteran, impersonations, a complex family tree with hidden relations still to be unearthed, among others. But, these are not used at random. It is all logically reasoned out at the end, but at the moments when they are used (in an incredibly timely fashion, one must add), they create this sensation of things being premeditated and plotted from one character's perspective with other developments, part of another person's plan, being outside the control and vision of the former person, all at the same time. These individual, yet co-dependent, plots intersect during the aforesaid, timely pregnant pauses and are masterfully hidden (but hinted at) from the reader—a ploy that serves to enhance the levels of suspense and foreboding, while also adequately conveying a sense of inevitability at the end of it all.

A still from Kon Ichikawa's 1976 film, The Inugami Family. Ichikawa would remake the same in 2006, this time titled as The Inugamis

What also strikes one is how visually enabling The Inugami Curse really is. The striking visual characteristics of some of the characters, the picturesque environs of Lake Nasu and some of the most stunning scenes and sequences surrounding the murders of some of the characters ensure that one will not forget the novel in a hurry. It is also one of the reasons why The Inugami Curse is one of the most widely-adapted works in Japanese media, with subsequent creators paying homage to its elements, plots, tropes and scenes in the form of manga, TV episodes, films (Kon Ichikawa's adaptations for instance), and more—either in the form of a plain adaptation, pastiches, or in the naming and visual descriptions of characters, or by subverting the usual Yokomizo-esque elements to create a unique work of its own. In fact, the far-reaching influence of the book and the movies can even be found in a mecha anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion that recreates the iconic 'frozen lake' scene.

***

In the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo canon, "Russian Dolls Murder Case" is one of the cleverer and subtler nods to The Inugami Curse. There are more obvious tributes to Kindaichi Sr. in this series of course, especially with regards to the visual depictions of characters—the "Hida Mechanical Mansion Murder Case" and the "Demon God Site Murder Case" come to mind. But, "Russian Dolls Murder Case" is far above such cursory gestures to its inspiration. 

For one, it recreates the classic inheritance-dispute scenario from The Inugami Curse and the plot is built along the lines of a mitate satsujinjiken as well. But, there are some key differences here. The 'family' in "Russian Dolls Murder Case" is not one formed by acrimonious blood relations; instead, they are brought together in an equally perverse manner as the relations of a famous author. The second point is the question of the will in this story arc. It is played in a relatively straightforward manner by Yokomizo, but here, there's an extra layer. The addition of a cryptic cipher that points to the location of the will gamefies the story and adds unpredictability and a ruthless battle royale-esque element to the proceedings, in which the characters are eliminated one by one in classic fashion. The cipher also ends up inverting the structure of the plot and the sequence of proceedings established in The Inugami Curse. In Yokomizo's work, all the murders, barring one, are carried out after the will is read. However, in "Russian Dolls Murder Case", all the murders take place before the true meaning of the cipher and by extension, the real location of the will, are discovered.

The Russian mansion in the "Russian Dolls Murders Case"

This subversion of key elements from The Inugami Curse, by first acknowledging them and then using them for its own ends, can be found throughout this story arc. 

• For instance, the main setting of Yokomizo's novel—that of a mansion surrounded by an enormous lake—is replicated here, expect that it is a Western-style mansion in comparison to the Japanese one seen in Yokomizo's. As with The Inugami Curse, however, the Russian mansion too plays a key role in the episodes of the story arc. 
• The Russian dolls, which lend themselves to the title of the story arc, are reminiscent of the Japanese doll-set at the scene of the first murder in The Inugami Curse. However, unlike the former, where the Japanese dolls form a part of only that set-up to advance only one particular element of the themed murders, the Russian dolls in the latter are present throughout and form a connecting thread to thematically link the murders, and play an integral role in the final solution of the cipher.
• Other neat tributes to The Inugami Curse are present throughout "Russian Dolls Murder Case". One of the characters, for instance, is named Inukai (literally, "dog guardian") a sly reference to the Inugamis (literally, "dog gods") in Yokomizo's work. There's also a beheading reminiscent of the first murder in The Inugami Curse—but here, it is not played straight and is instead used as a red herring to lure the culprit into a false sense of security and thereby force a confession from the person concerned. There's bodily disfigurement here as well—one of the characters has a significant scar on her face, but unlike Kiyo Inugami, it's hidden in a different manner. The character also doesn't survive till the end. Additionally, "Russian Dolls Murder Case" resembles yet another significant Yokomizo novel—Gokumon-tō (1947-1948, translated as Death on Gokumon Island)—in that the legacy and actions of a prominent deceased character orchestrate the actions of the rest of the cast from beyond the grave. Hell, the only thing missing from these episodes is something akin to the famous Lake Nasu scene in The Inugami Curse.

Messengers of doom: The Russian dolls in the "Russian Dolls Murder Case"

*** 

To return to a point I had made earlier, "Russian Dolls Murder Case" is everything that the "Ijinkan Village Murder Case" is not—and, in many ways, is the perfect antidote to cure the maladies of the latter. It feels almost surreal that both arcs, varying so much in their nuances and treatments, could be part of the same series. Additionally, one can well imagine Yokomizo appreciating and enjoying all that "Russian Dolls Murder Case" has to offer by itself and as an 'imitation' of his own work. After all, Yokomizo himself granted artists significant creative liberties when it came to adaptations of his own works. Incidentally, in my opinion, the comparative analysis of these supremely interesting works seems to speak much in favour of a study of the genre through an Aristotlelian lens. When cleverly and innovatively pulled off, 'imitations' rank no less than 'originals' in the world of crime fiction and therefore, should not be considered as inherently inferior and only worthy of being discarded solely due to that fact.

The Valley of Fear

"Everything takes ten times as long in the countryside: what takes one year to forget in the city takes ten years in that village. The memories stick, they take root—year after year, people stubbornly cling to them."

—Miyako Mori in The Village of Eight Graves 

The Village of Eight Graves is not your conventional detective story as it incorporates an unusual perspective that often relegates the detective/investigative elements to the sidelines. It is perhaps best read as a Gothic romance-thriller with distinct pulpish, horror and supernatural tropes scattered throughout. In that respect, The Village of Eight Graves' place in the Yokomizo canon and Japanese crime fiction is similar to that of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902) in the Holmesian world and British crime fiction.

In a February 2022 interview, however, Bryan Karetnyk, the translator of Seishi Yokomizo's Yatsuhakamura (1949-1951) (literally, The Village of Eight Gravestones/Tombs, published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2021 with the title of The Village of Eight Graves), mentions that Yokomizo, in one of his essays, acknowledged the influence of Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders (1936) on this novel in particular. Having now read the book, I think it is an interesting comparison to make, but not without keeping your expectations in check from the outset. 

Can The A.B.C. Murders template really be applied to The Village of Eight Graves? The Alexander Bonaparte Cust figure in Yokomizo's work is Tatsuya Terada, a man of uncertain lineage living in Kobe in post-World War II Japan at the time he is introduced in the novel. A mysterious summons reveals to him, for the first time, that he has links to the ominous-sounding 'village of Eight Graves', which is "perched amid the desolate mountains on the border of Tottori and Okayama prefectures". But, before he can even begin his journey to the village, strange occurrences crop up around him. An unknown lawyer named Suwa gets in touch with him, along with Miyako Mori, a representative from the village's Nomura Family (or, "The House of the West"), both of whom bring him up to speed on his connections to the village, a lowdown on the village's residents and the current happenings that necessitate his presence there. He also meets, for the first time, his grandfather, Ushimatsu Ikawa, a cattle trader, who soon meets a horrific end in front of Tatsuya, due to poisoning. Tatsuya also finds out that a strange person has been making all sorts of enquiries about him in the town. Around the same time, he becomes the recipient of a threatening letter warning him to stay away from the village of Eight Graves.

The breakneck pace of events established in the opening stretch is sustained after Tatsuya reaches the village. The village boasts of its own eclectic cast of characters: creepy elderly twins, thieving nuns, doctors dreaming up elaborate murder schemes, sneaky priests snooping on others, and disfigured war veterans no longer sure of their standing in society. The atmosphere is so rife with tension that you can literally cut it with a knife. Except, in this book, poisoning and strangulation seem to be the preferred modes for the culprit. Like the aforementioned Alexander Bonaparte Cust, Tatsuya finds himself embroiled in a large number of situations where he is potentially the most likely suspect, but not quite with the same 'directness' of being implicated and doomed that was the trademark in Cust's case. Add to this the Gothic ethos (the labyrinthine caves that go on endlessly, the seemingly bizarre disappearances of certain characters at key moments), and the strange, often threatening, ways of the villagers—and the reader, like Tatsuya, is stuck with this sense of dark foreboding, gloom and helplessness without any light at the end of the tunnel, despite the reassurances of Tatsuya's well-wishers and lovers.

The murders and their rationale is perhaps where this novel probably resembles The A.B.C. Murders most closely. Disregarding the bloody massacres that took place twice in the past, 11 people—priests, nuns, doctors and the narrator's family members included—die in the present time of the novel, most of them seemingly without rhyme or reason. It is the same stratagem that was used by Christie in her novel—create a deranged, serial-murder-like situation to hide the devilishly insidious real, singular motive in a most cunning fashion. However, The Village of Eight Graves wades further into deeper, murkier waters by throwing too many red herrings around for its own good. From the perspective of motive, the rapid developments lead the investigators to posit different theories focusing on different perpetrators, some of them more outlandish than the others, in an effort to explain it all. Even at the fag end of the novel, the mysterious, seemingly inexplicable, movements of certain characters from way before make it difficult to pinpoint whodunnit, which Kosuke Kindaichi does by finally gaining a correct understanding of the nature of the suspects involved. And yet, as Kindaichi reveals, despite the devilish plot behind it all, the miraculous thing is that it would have all naturally resolved itself at the end.

As a mystery, however, there are definite shortcomings in The Village of Eight Graves. For one, there's an abnormally high level of coincidence that places certain key characters at certain important locations at the most eventful moments, often without sound rationale. In fact, the entire chain of murders hinges upon the accidental discovery of a key item, which is, in turn, dependent on the fortuitous and favourable alignment of certain circumstances. It makes me suspect that Yokomizo may have been stringing things along to an extent, just to add, perhaps unnecessarily, to the mystery quotient of this hefty narrative. However, even more than that, it is, perhaps, the book's most intriguing aspect that is also its greatest weakness—its uncommon perspective. The events are narrated in manuscript form by Tatsuya, one of the book's suspects who could have ended up as one of its victims. He is, by his own admission, not a gifted and talented storyteller—something that becomes quite evident as the story progresses. Everything we see is through the lens of Tatsuya's tinted glasses, and they are not of the best kind. Furthermore, the problem is that we get to know of incidents and plot points only as they happen to Tatsuya and the people around him at that point of time. He cannot write about other events happening elsewhere (for instance, insights on what Kindaichi and inspector Isokawa may be thinking about and investigating at said moment), that too impartially, simply because he is not privy to those details. He has to rely on information furnished by others later to fill these gaps. These constraints and the perilous situations he is continuously faced with inevitably leads to his myopic treatment of a narrative over which he barely seems to have any control. Some characters (Noriko, for instance) often end up being one-note, treading over the same beats, while vital character traits and revealing hints are elicited very inconsistently, only when Tatsuya comes across them, often in his conversations and adventures in the village's caves and the countryside. Sometimes, these reveals come criminally late for the reader to make an informed guess based on them. It is this lack of an 'overall' view—rather, this constant, narrowed-down focus on the singular movements of Tatsuya in real time, without any knowledge of the whereabouts and activities of the rest of the cast—that hurts the novel the most.

Yokomizo's idea of stepping into a character's shoes and then having that character narrate the novel is certainly interesting. One other book that used the same ploy is Boris Akunin's The Coronation (2000; English translation in 2009) where the chief steward of a Russian noble family does the bulk of the storytelling. In both cases, however, I have been severely put off by the excessively stilted and artificial nature of the voices of the authorial personas chosen by the real-life authors. Even worse, in The Village of Eight Graves, Tatsuya overreaches his authorial ambitions to weave elements of mystery-writing in his narrative. The result, I feel, is a work that is not sure of its own identity. Is it a work of Gothic horror? Is it a faithful diary recounting Tatsuya's experiences? Or, is it a somewhat fictional, exaggerated account of Tatsuya's emotionally taxing travails that somehow also manages to masquerade as crime/detective fiction? Yoshitarō Nomura's 1977 film, Yatsuhakamura, resolves this conundrum to a certain extent by amplifying the horror and supernatural elements to the extreme, resulting in a film that has some of the most beautifully shot scenes I have ever seen, which contrast well with the amped-up terror and horror quotients. The composition of the shots and the moderately paced nature of the film (in relative terms, that is) lends a certain expansiveness which is accentuated immensely by the sweeping orchestral soundtracks that composer Yasushi Akutagawa made for this film. These sensations are seemingly in direct contrast to those experienced on reading Tatsuya's constraints-ridden tale in the book. This is not to say that the book is disappointing throughout; in fact, it is wildly entertaining where events, twists and turns, blood and gore are your constant companions every few pages. It is just that despite all the wealth and treasures it has to offer, it could have been so much more—and the thought of what could have been can make one very regretful, indeed. Hence, the caution of not getting swayed by all the praise the book has received for decades, and moderating your expectations at the outset.

The armour-clad skeleton in a still from Yoshitarō Nomura's 1977 film, Yatsuhakamura

The most unfortunate conclusion, though, is that I don't think Yokomizo needed to enforce the perspective of Tatsuya onto the readers. The world-building of the village of Eight Graves (especially its foundations in a bloody samurai tale where cycles of massacre recur) is top-notch, and the socio-cultural, economic and religious undertones should be evident to those curious enough to explore these themes. There is a lot to unpack here: the real-life inspiration behind the book (the Tsuyama massacre), Yokomizo's depictions of and commentary on feudal communities in the rural, isolated Okayama countryside (an area Yokomizo himself had travelled through and resided in during the World War II years), their family values and structures, superstitions, the socio-economic, religious (especially with regards to Buddhism and Shintoism) intricacies of life here, and the disruptive effects that World War II wrought in the life of certain residents even in these faraway places, especially those who shifted from urban areas in the wake of the war. One wonders why Yokomizo chose to have Tatsuya then as the narrative voice unveiling these threads, when Yokomizo himself could have done the same in a far more polished and competent manner.

An observation that would, perhaps, better serve as a question in a university semester examination, concerns imagining how the book would have turned out had Yokomizo told it all himself as the omniscient narrator—just as he had done in The Honjin Murders. In fact, The Village of Eight Graves is at its self-assured best in the first chapter, where Yokomizo, speaking in his own voice, talks of the bloody samurai history of the village, its traditions, its tryst with subsequent violence and massacres, and the past events leading to the story Tatsuya will narrate in the rest of the book. But, had Yokomizo done the entire narration, would he have altered the order in which the events were presented to ensure a better flow in comparison to Tatsuya's jerky but strictly chronological attempt to do the same? Would he have increased the participation of Kindaichi and Isokawa in key moments by revealing where and how the investigators came across decisive clues and the lines of deduction they pursued? Would he have provided illustrations/maps for the labyrinthine cave to serve as a companion to the poems that point out the landmarks but do not illuminate much otherwise? Above all, would he have judiciously managed the flow of necessary information to the readers so that they would get a fair shot at cracking the mystery, instead of Tatsuya's approach that invites readers to share his sense of befuddlement at the ever-deepening mysteries, only for them to be naturally resolved at the end?

Of course, there's no conceivable way to know the answers now—just like the many victims and the mysteries of the village of Eight Graves and its caves, these have also been buried forever in the sands of time. 

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: Not all Japanese crime fiction is superb, as Seishi Yokomizo’s ‘The Village of Eight Graves’ shows)

Soji Shimada's Bloody Christmas Gifts

This post comes more than a month late—I had initially planned to put this up on Christmas day, 2021. But, being part of a travel-magazine team and some COVID-19-related complications ensured that things rarely happened according to plan over the past few months.

Anyway, in 2018 and 2019, I encountered what are widely considered to be seminal works for a new generation of Japanese crime-fiction authors (the shin honkaku school that has already been referenced earlier on this blog). Both of them—The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (originally published in 1981 as Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken or The Astrology Murder Case) and Murder in the Crooked House (published as Naname Yashiki no Hanzai in 1982)—were written by Soji Shimada, and strangely enough, I finished reading both of them on the Christmas days of the respective years. Now, this was not my first stab at Japanese crime fiction, as I had already encountered the Kindaichi and Conan series and a few other titles before this, but it is safe to say that these books together sparked an almost academic interest in this field for me.

At the time I read it, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders ranked among the goriest and bloodiest novels I had the pleasure of reading. It wasn't sufficient that the body count was ridiculously high (seven—no, one may say, eight—victims); seven of these cases involved decapitation and dismemberments. However, it is not the number that is, personally speaking, a point of interest. Instead, it is the purpose of the clever, deliberate and intricate way in which these deeds are carried out that is most intriguing. Works such as Ellery Queen's The Egyptian Cross Mystery (1932) and Takagi Akimitsu's The Tattoo Murder Case (1948) also feature sinister acts of a similar kind, but in these two titles, the aim is to obscure, misinform and befuddle investigators, and to make identification impossible which, in turn, ties into issues of alibi, and estimating and establishing the right time and scenes of the crimes. In The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, the dismemberments serve an altogether different, and far more outrageous goal: to create a 'homunculus' out of thin air—considered by many to be the ultimate alchemical achievement.

This, of course, ties into the introductory part of the story featuring the last will and testament of a certain Heikichi Umezawa, an eccentric painter and astrologer who had taken it upon himself to create Azoth, the 'perfect woman' according to alchemical standards. For this purpose, he intends to sacrifice his six nieces and daughters at astrologically determined, precise spots scattered all across Japan. And sure, soon enough, the women chosen by Umezawa are all slaughtered, and parts of their bodies are found at each of the places indicated by his testament. The problem? Even before these murders took place, the would-be culprit (Heikichi) was found murdered in a locked room surrounded by snow.

All of these incidents happened way back in 1936. Forty years later, at the time the book is set, the cases still remain unsolved and have attained a legendary status in Japan, with many books written and numerous theories advanced on the subject. A university professor-cum-astrologer Kiyoshi Mitarai and his friend Kazumi Ishioka come across Heikichi's Azoth manuscript. The details of the three separate cases—Heikichi's death, the murder of Heikichi's stepdaughter and the Azoth slayings—pique the interest of Kiyoshi, who also doubles as an amateur detective from time to time and who makes the bold declaration that he would arrive at the correct conclusion of this unsolved, baffling case within a week, based on the details laid out before him.

And arrive he does! There are some books whose importance cannot be overstated, not based on how likeable and unlikeable the constituent elements are but simply because of what they achieve for a particular genre. In due time, such books become yardsticks to retrospectively measure the progress of the genre and often provide instructive threads, themes and tropes for future authors to replicate or develop in their own fashion. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is one such book. No doubt, there are a number of inexcusable treatments in this book, especially in the manner in which it treats the characters, especially women. You can even argue that there's a fair amount of 'character assassination' involved (both literally and figuratively) whereby the characters are fed as cannon fodder and treated as mere pieces in a larger puzzle game. In that respect, the book lacks a certain sense of humanity at its core, and the players, both old and new, all show their nastiest traits and rigid dogmatic views at different sections. Worst of all, the abysmal treatment of the cast only largely furthers the purpose of trying to make the culprit a more sympathetic figure. It is also a dig at the tropes and conventions of the social school of mystery writing which was all the rage and which Shimada was trying to overturn when he wrote this book. Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the pathetic portrayal of characters sticks out like a sore thumb.   

There's equally no denying that the execution of the core mystery plot is exemplary and excellent. There's an ingenious—one may even say bombastic—false solution to the mystery of the locked-room conundrum in Heikichi's case. However, the real solution has an elegance comparable to those found in Tetsuya Ayukawa's short stories. When it comes to the six Azoth murders, it is unlikely that you will make the correct deduction, despite the two Challenges to the readers from the author. There's a mathematical complexity to Azoth's existence that may not be everyone's cup of tea. What you will experience, though, is the 'aha' moment when all the jigsaw pieces are fitted together to make perfect sense. It is a glorious vindication of Shimada's vision for the novel—it is his and his alone, and he owns it like a virtuoso. There are lessons to be learnt here for budding authors on how to craft a devious puzzle, and it is little wonder that The Tokyo Zodiac Murders paved the way for the birth of the shin honkaku school and its practitioners such as Yukito Ayatsuji and Alice Arisugawa, among many others, in a major way.

***

If The Tokyo Zodiac Murders was all about the excellence of execution of an intricate, complicated puzzle, it is the brilliant central premise of Murder in the Crooked House (Shimada's second novel) that I have the highest regard for.

Murder in the Crooked House is, in essence, a mansion mystery—one that makes use of architectural features and functions more prominently than in its Western counterparts. The Crooked Mansion (or the Ice Floe Mansion) lies somewhere on the edge of a desolate cliff overlooking the icy Okhotsk Sea— a setting and location not entirely unreminiscent of End House in Agatha Christie's Peril at End House. The mansion itself is mazy but with no special features such as hidden panels and secret passages. It however has a special feature. The windows to the north and south are what one normally finds, but those on the east and west have had their frames built to run parallel to the ground outside. And since the mansion is situated on an incline, the visitors feel like "a hard-boiled egg that has been dropped on the floor" and "is trying to roll uphill", much to the amusement of the mansion's owner, Kozaburo Hamamoto, the President of Hama Diesel. There is an adjoining tower built of glass—an exact replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa with the same tilt—that houses Hamamoto's room and is connected to the main mansion by a drawbridge. At the foot of the tower is a strangely shaped flower garden.

Hamamoto invites a select circle of friends consisting of fellow businesspeople, their wives and secretaries and a few college students to this property for Christmas and New Year. At the party, he also promises the hand of his daughter Eiko to the one who is able to unravel the meaning of the flower garden's layout and design. However, strange incidents start to plague the gathering. A guest sees a long wooden stake in an ice field in the middle of a snow blizzard when earlier there had been none. Another visitor is scared out of her wits by scraping metallic sounds on the ceiling of her room on the topmost floor and a grotesque, unearthly face appearing on one of the windows of the same room. The next day, Hamamoto and his company are shocked to find the corpse of one of the guests in a locked storeroom, his body twisted at an unnatural angle and one of his wrists tied to the foot of the bed. On the way to the room, they also encounter the damaged remains of a life-sized puppet-like doll, the Golem, which Hamamoto had purchased in erstwhile Czechoslovakia.

The police are called to the scene, but they prove to be none the wiser. Even worse, another mysterious death happens under their watch in a locked room. More attacks on the remaining guests happen. As a last resort, the police decide to call in Kiyoshi Mitarai, a man they deem fit to solve a case such as this.

Unlike The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, Murder in the Crooked House unfolds in real time. The result is a welcome urgency that allows one to witness Mitarai being forced to take sly steps to resolve the matter as soon as possible. This is much unlike The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, where all you see is Mitarai mostly talking to people about past events and then drawing his conclusions based on those conversations. Here though, Mitarai, omniscient and omnipotent though he is in both novels, is a far more active participant even though he appears pretty late in the picture.

Admittedly, the scale and scope of Mitarai's second adventure is far less stunning and impressive—no cut-up bodies or an Azoth-like apparition emerging out of nowhere. The circle of suspects is also very compact. And due to the mechanics of the murders, especially the second (one that reminds me, incidentally, of a Detective Conan episode involving scores of masks and a knife), the whodunnit aspect isn't really a draw. In fact, once you are aware of the central trick employed, the culprit becomes fairly obvious as no one else except that person could have committed it.

For me, three things stand out in Murder in the Crooked House: the way architecture plays an integral role in the events of the novel, the howdunnit aspect of the second murder and the absolutely-nuts central premise of the work. An expensive mansion and tower existing for the sole purpose of murdering a person to honour a promise made to a deceased friend speaks of a directness of thought and approach that is hard not to appreciate. This directness is also reflected in the straightforward path taken by the murder weapon, during the second case, from its source to the intended target. Interestingly enough, all the complexities in the mansion's layout and myriad features (including the wall of masks in the Tengu Room) are only present as accessories and tools to emphasise the singular directness of the aim and intent behind it all. It would seem as though Shimada built the entire novel around a single trick—but what an innovative, awe-inspiring trick that is.

***

Retrospective studies and analyses of Japanese crime fiction often cite these books as turning points in the genre's history in Japan. They may not have been popular when they were published, but the greatest vindication of their virtues has been the emergence of a new sub-genre (shin honkaku) and generations of writers who continue to take notes from or look to them for inspiration and guidance. Sure, both of Shimada's books are flawed reads, and critically so in many respects. However, there is no denying either that decades after they were published, the tenets laid down in these books still act as guideposts and beacons for readers and writers in a country well-known for its involvement and contributions to crime fiction—and for a global audience as well, now that they are in translation. One wishes for more works from Shimada's massive oeuvre to be introduced the world over.

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: What is the shin honkaku sub-genre of mystery? How did Japanese writer Soji Shimada make it popular?)