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)

A Nosy Affair

When I first conceived of this blog, I imagined it to be a space where I would talk exclusively about Asian (in particular, Japanese) crime fiction. And while the first post is probably a sign that is no longer the case, much of what I plan to write here will be my thoughts and commentary on books, films and series (animated or otherwise) from said region.

I was introduced to Japanese crime fiction courtesy of a television channel called Hungama TV, which once aired 30 episodes of Detective Conan, dubbed in Hindi, over the course of two seasons. It was a curious choice to broadcast them on a channel meant primarily for kids—most Indian parents I have come across have extreme reservations on letting their children see anything that has blood and violence; Detective Conan has copious amounts of both.

Be that as it may, I remember being pretty amused at the sight of genius high-school detective Shinichi Kudo being turned into a kid (literally!) in the very first episode itself. This happens after Shinichi solves a murder case on a rollercoaster while on a date with his girlfriend Ran Mouri. He then overhears a suspicious conversation between a businessman and two men in black and tails them only to be ambushed by said men in black, which finally leads to the predicament mentioned earlier.

The kid Shinichi adopts the name of Edogawa Conan (a tribute to mystery authors Edogawa Rampo and—you guessed it—Arthur Conan Doyle) to protect those near and dear to him as well as uncover the (many) brains and the mastermind behind the nefarious Black Organisation (who are responsible for his plight) and bring them to justice. And to his credit, Shinichi (or Conan) certainly stands out in a world where every fourth or fifth character (friend or foe) turns out to be a sleuth in some form or the other (hey, you can never have enough detectives after all!).

Shinichi Kudo (left) and Edogawa Conan (right) from the early days of Detective Conan

Conan's quest continues to this day. Gosho Aoyama's Meitantei Conan (as Detective Conan is known in Japan) started back in 1994 as a manga series. Conan and company's adventures have now seen over 1,000 manga chapters, 1,000-plus anime episodes, over 20 animated films, several OVAs and television specials. The prolific nature and high standards achieved make it one of the longest-running, most beloved and acclaimed literary-fiction franchises all over the world.

In my early university days, though, when I was first able to appreciate the nuances of Aoyama sensei's work, I failed to see it as anything beyond a creative and faithful tribute to the past doyens of mystery fiction. This was especially true in the case of the first few volumes of the manga and the first 50-odd episodes of the animated series, where I could spot fun, sporting and subtle nods to your Conan Doyles, John Dickson Carrs and Ellery Queens, but not much else besides.

My opinion changed drastically, however, when I saw episode 52—an episode I still believe really helped the series stand out on its own and conveyed the message that it is a masterpiece like no other. This one-hour TV special, ominously titled "Kiri-tengu Densetsu Satsujin Jiken" (The Mist Goblin Legend Murder Case) (an adaptation of chapters 108–110 or volume 11, files 8–10, of the manga series) opens in a relatively peaceful fashion. Ran, Conan and Ran's father, the 'great detective' Kogoro Mouri, are watching cherry blossoms on the mountainside. As evening descends, they try to make their way back home—but as is often the case when Kogorou and travelling are involved, the trio manage to get themselves stranded and lost in the deep forest amidst pouring rain. They are, therefore, forced to take refuge in a temple, with a waterfall running past it, that Conan spots. In the Sandeiji temple, the group meets with the caretaker and head priest Tenei, a long- and sharp-nosed, suspicious-looking figure who agrees to accommodate them for the night for a hefty fee. They also come to know of the legend of the kiri-tengu (the mist goblin, a figure from Japanese folklore), who, in this story, is believed to kidnap young women and feast on their flesh after hanging them from trees.

The four Buddhist monks in training—Kannen, Tonnen, Mokunen and Shunen—take Conan, Kogoro and Ran on a tour of a temple. Here, Conan's attention is drawn to a small room with an extremely high ceiling, a window near the top and a gap near the bottom guarded by a door. On asking, they find out that the room is a 'training room' for monks who isolate themselves to observe penance after being punished. There's also talk of a certain 'incident' in the room some years ago, which seems to have been the handiwork of the kiri-tengu, but Tenei abruptly and angrily brings a halt to all discussions on the subject. All the characters pass restless nights—and the unease deepens further the following morning when the head priest is found hanging from a beam high up in the ceiling of the training room. It's as if the kiri-tengu itself had hung Tenei there—and when the police arrive, Conan and Kogoro learn that, two years ago, another monk Chunen had been found hanging from the very same beam in an identical fashion, a case the police had ruled out as suicide. Can Conan and Kogoro solve the mystery of both murders and unmask the kiri-tengu?

The dastardly kiri-tengu 'hangs' Tenei Oshou

Seasoned readers of Japanese detective fiction will probably realise that this somewhat long and elaborate setup screams 'Seishi Yokomizo' from the get-go. Elements from the works of this master of crime fiction are all here in this episode. A remote location? Check. A case with links to Japanese folklore? Yes. And just as a waterbody plays a major role in Yokomizo's The Honjin Murders (more precisely, the mechanism of a waterwheel on a nearby stream), here too, the waterfall adjoining the temple plays a very influential part here.

And yet, Conan solves the case not in the manner of a Kosuke Kindaichi (the detective from Yokomizo's series) but in his own characteristic way. The 'howdunnit' aspect of the story is a sheer delight, the solution to which will logically lead you to find out 'whodunnit'. It's all fair and above board too—what I like most about the culprit's plan is that it uses the natural features and the 'potential' of the 'training room' to maximum effect by using tools and tricks (none too fancy) that are present in the temple and won't leave you wondering, "Hmmm, how and from where could they have procured these tools in such a short time?" 

The main trick is a variation of one that I have seen executed successfully in a horizontal space (say, a crop field for instance) but never in a vertical space. It is quite unique, but never for a moment does it feel forced or that it does not belong or feels out of place in a setting such as a mountain temple. There is a meticulous yet commonsensical, DIY nature to the physics and dynamics of the tricks here, all of which are neatly tied up and explained in the end.

The episode plays it very fairly with the viewers as well. It invites them to completely immerse themselves in the story being told and pay particular attention to every conversation and scene in order to pick out the select clues that can solve the crime. By the time the deduction starts, you have in your possession all the information, visual and verbal, to unravel the mystery, even though you will probably need to exercise your imagination judiciously to get you started.

The kiri-tengu baffles Conan and the others

The most damning clue that specifically reveals the culprit is also presented in a most human manner. Quite refreshingly, this is not a case of the detectives intellectually outsmarting the criminal hands-down; neither is it an 'oversight' by the murderer. In the course of the episode, both the criminal and the detectives are evenly balanced and look for the same clue—it's just that the sleuths get to it and understand its significance faster than the criminal can hide or destroy it. Perhaps, the only 'unfairness' I can think of comes when the culprit falls into a trap in the first place by incorrectly guessing something that happened while they were busy preparing the scene of crime so elaborately.

In an episode that is a fair-play mystery on so many levels, it is perhaps a tad bit unfortunate that the tragic motive takes a backseat. But it's really a minor peeve, especially when one considers that the episode sets so many of the rules of the game for this series—ones that defined the series and stands it in good stead even today, nearly three decades after its start.

Lastly, there's something really fitting in the use of traditional cel animation in a series such as Detective Conan. The dark tones enhance the atmosphere and feel of the mysteries in the manga so much so that it becomes all the more easier to be invested in them—wouldn't you agree?