Echoes

During a recent discussion on Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders, a friend made the following observation: "How come none of the mystery club members, for all their wisdom of classic crime fiction works, sensed that there could be something wrong with an invitation to an uninhabited island? Given their shared past, surely one of them would have thought of politely declining?"

It was, I felt, an argument that lends itself to works that tend to be self-aware and reflexive; so when the logic is reflected back on to the work itself, the deficiency seems to stand out that much more. In the case of The Decagon House Murders, the issue stems more from the lack of a proper 'trade-off' for the group to gather on the uninhabited island in the first place, given the surrounding context and history.

In mystery fiction works involving closed-circle situations, I have noticed readers (myself included) to be more generous with the rationale behind people gathering in the first place, than with the dynamics and mechanics of the way in which the situation plays itself out. The Decagon House Murders, otherwise an exemplar of the classical, logic-based school of mysteries, itself suffers from this shortcoming. However, Ayatsuji does improve on this aspect in a major way, with his third offering in the Yakata series: 1988's Meirokan no Satsujin (translated as The Labyrinth House Murders, 2024).

The setup is tantalising, and makes good use of a pitch-perfect casting. A few writers, an editor, a critic and a surprise guest gather at the residence of a famous author, each for their own reason. The editor to coax one last masterpiece out of the author; the writers to stay in the good graces of the author who was a mentor to them; the critic and the surprise guest attend the gathering for reasons that become evident once the party is underway. Missing from the party itself? The famous author, whose birthday is being celebrated in the remote Labyrinth House.

The initial scene-setting reminds me of the well-thought-out proceedings in the Detective Conan story, "The Holmes Freak Murder Case", where a bunch of Sherlock Holmes fanatics gather at a collector's place and take part in an exceptionally tough quiz to get their hands on the first edition of A Study in Scarlet. As the hidden motive behind the party is revealed—a writing competition to be judged by a panel of experts, with ownership of the Labyrinth House as the prize—along with the unforeseen death of the famous author, the similarities with the Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo story, "Russian Dolls Murder Case", become apparent. In that story too, a deceased author leaves behind his palatial house as his inheritance, and organises a competition among select participants to decide who gets to inherit it, thereby setting in motion a series of bloody murders. Things are no different in The Labyrinth House Murders—the competing authors are all killed in violent ways, with an added twist.

By this point, the nesting doll structure of the story is already established. The three translated stories in the Yakata series possess strong identities: The Decagon House Murders stands out as a reinvention of And Then There Were None, while The Mill House Murders has a fairytale-esque flavour to it. In The Labyrinth House Murders, Ayatsuji experiments with the structure of the novel itself, making it unfold in the form of 'a story within a story within a story'. The books opens with a certain Shimada receiving a copy of The Labyrinth House Murders by one Shishiya Kadomi, who had been present when the events mentioned in the book took place. We then enter the world of Kadomi's manuscript, surveying a meeting between the famous author and the editor a few months prior to the birthday party. There is a fair bit of foreshadowing and a subdued-but-clever introduction to the cast in the opening chapter itself.

The events of the party kick off in earnest with shenanigans that clue in to some character traits and authorial tendencies of the writers participating in the competition. Then comes the double shocker: the announcement of the death as well as the terms and conditions of the will that bequeaths the entire mansion to the winner of the competition, besides funding a mystery-writing competition in the author's name. The will and its conditions lay a solid groundwork for the mystery to unfold: no one except a secretary and a doctor to step outside the house for the duration of the competition; the author's suicide to be reported to the police after five days; the fifty-page story entries to be set in the Labyrinth House, featuring only people present in the house, and centred on a murder mystery; all stories to be typed out in typewriters provided in each of the authors' room. The tension is well depicted, and the competition forces the authors to face their own demons, and their greed for the mansion itself.

Not surprisingly, the authors meet ghastly ends. An invisible enemy targets them one by one, walking through and around the solid walls of the mansion, terrifying and befuddling the remaining characters. And this is where Ayatsuji accomplishes an inspired, audacious feat of plotting: each of the authors, barring one, are killed in ways that completely resemble the manners of death they outline in their own submissions for the competition.

The possibilities for the impossible occurrences expand, and the scope of the novel assumes a sprawl as broad and convoluted as the floorplan of the Labyrinth House. Modelled after the mythical labyrinth in the Palace of Knossos, while also resembling one of those 'get in and out of the maze' puzzles one sees in children's books, the house itself plays probably the most significant, involved role I have seen in the Yakata series so far. In doing so, Ayatsuji pays homage to the works of Seishi Yokomizo, another maestro from the past. It mentions Yokomizo's Akuryū-tō (The Island of Evil Spirits) in reference to a message left behind, but for me, the operations of the Labyrinth House are more reminiscent of the Western-style manor in Meiro-sō no sangeki (Tragedy at the Maze Manor), whose hidden passages, peepholes, and secret doors are depicted vividly, and which play such an important role in the adaptation starring Ikko Furuya. Even more serendipitously, both Yokomizo's and Ayatsuji's novels feature climactic sections that take place in caves.

What is perhaps another strange point of similarity is the fact that both The Labyrinth House Murders and Tragedy at the Maze Manor reveal 'hidden' culprits. But, while the adaptation of Yokomizo's work explores this in a straightforward way, Ayatsuji, in keeping with the multi-layered nature of the book, employs a fair amount of narrative trickery to keep the real culprit cloaked till the very end. And, while some may object to the way the novel utilises fair play in the post-manuscript revelation where all disguises are discarded, this is also Ayatsuji at his playful best. While I did perceive a lack of the characterisation one sees in The Mill House Murders, the conceit, structure, and trickery seen here, and the much-better rationale for the setup, more than make up for it. The Labyrinth House Murders witnesses an author at his self-assured best—exhibiting a level of imagination, control, and sportsmanship few can aspire to achieve. One wonders what further surprises lie in store in the Yakata series.

The End is the Beginning is the End

The legendary Japanese detective Kosuke Kindaichi meets his creator Seishi Yokomizo in the sitting room of the author's residence in Yoshino city in 1956. It is a moment worth preserving in a photo album; thankfully, for us, it is also the way in which Kon Ichikawa chooses to begin the last of his 1970s adaptations of Kosuke Kindaichi novels. The movie in question? 1979's The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope (Byoinzaka no Kubikukuri no Ie).

In Ichikawa's large directorial oeuvre, his films based on the Kindaichi novels occupy a special place in the hearts of mystery lovers. In the 1970s, he adapted five novels, a mix of top- and second-tier works of Yokomizo: Inugami-ke no ichizoku (1976), Akuma no temari-uta and Gokumontō (both 1977), Joōbachi (1978), and Byoinzaka no Kubikukuri no Ie (1979). Later, he would go on to film Yatsuhaka-mura (1996), and, in what turned out to be his last film, a remake of Inugami-ke no ichizoku (2006) with the original cast.

Ichikawa is widely credited for developing probably the first authentically Japanese iteration of Kindaichi for the big screen. Earlier movies—such as Gokumontō (1949), Yurei Otoko (1954), Kyuketsuga (1956), and even Honjin Satsujin Jiken (1975)—reimagined the persona of Kindaichi more along the lines of American sleuths, replete with western attire and, in the cases of Yurei Otoko and Kyuketsuga, a focus on more thriller-ish elements (gunshot exchanges and more). However, when Ichikawa debuted Kōji Ishizaka in the role of Kindaichi for Inugami-ke no ichizoku, the previous trappings were all discarded. Instead, Ichikawa brought to life the Kindaichi Yokomizo had characterised in The Inugami Curse: "mid-thirties, slightly built, with an unruly mop of hair, and wearing an unfashionable serge kimono and wide-legged, pleated hakama trousers, both very wrinkled and worn ..."

The appearance of the great detective: Kōji Ishizaka as Kosuke Kindaichi in Inugami-ke no ichizoku (1976)

The shift towards a more faithful visualisation and characterisation of Kindaichi clearly worked wonders, for a 'Yokomizo boom' soon followed. Ichikawa's Kindaichi films from the '70s are all beautiful productions—rich in atmosphere, full of shots that capture Japanese landscapes and scenes in telling but languid detail, and above all, narrating stories of crime and detection deeply embedded in Japanese culture, values, and lore. The formula was a winning one—and Yokomizo's willingness and flexibility in acceding to Ichikawa making subtle changes to his stories further add to the value of these films, helping them transcend the level of being merely faithful adaptations to becoming films that can be enjoyed on their own merits. It is to Yokomizo's and Ichikawa's credit that, barring a few exceptions, most Kindaichi adaptations for TV and the big screen ever since have retained Kindaichi's presentation with kimono and hakama trousers, while making alterations to the plots of the novels, resulting in innumerable permutations and combinations that still continue to feel fresh and instructive for new audiences.

The masked man in Ichikawa's Inugami-ke no ichizoku. The portrayal has become a mainstay in Japanese mystery fiction, endlessly replicated and parodied

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After a career spent solving some of the most convoluted, heart-rending cases in Japan, Kindaichi decides to go to USA once again. But, first he heads over to author Yokomizo's house to say his farewell. While conversing, he comes to know of the Honjo photography studio, which later becomes central to the events of the film. As he needs to have a passport, Kindaichi visits the studio to have his picture taken. Here, he learns about the abandoned premises of the erstwhile Hogen family  hospital and residence on the Hospital Hill—the location that becomes the site of the first horrific incident. 

A jazzy interlude follows, in which a band called The Angry Pirates perform in an American army base camp in the city. In the middle of the performance, however, the trumpeter and the drummer mysteriously disappear, with the latter returning with a bleeding wound on his eye. The trumpeter remains nowhere to be seen. The scene shifts back to the studio where Kindaichi takes on a case on the studio owner Tokubei's request. Apparently, someone had tried to drop large wind chimes (fūrin) on the owner, the chimes being hung on the ceiling of the large hall one entered as they stepped inside the burned-out building. As soon as Kindaichi leaves the studio after being asked to collect his photo in three days, in walks a young woman with a strange request. Paying money in advance, the woman asks Tokubei's son Naokichi to capture pictures for a wedding shoot at the abandoned Hogen building that night. At night, Naokichi meets none other than the trumpeter of The Angry Pirates—a bearded, boorish man now in traditional Japanese wedding attire—and heads over to the building with his pinhole camera and other apparatus. But, something seems to be off about the entire situation—the bride at the venue seems to be a dead match for the woman who requested the shoot, and seems drugged and zoned off—eyes glazed, the body swaying from side to side and supported by the man's arms. And, every time Naokichi tries to make changes to the setting—for instance, removing the wind chimes or fixing the crooked lapels on the bride's wedding kimono—he is soundly rebuked by the bridegroom. Thus concludes one of the strangest photoshoots in Naokichi's career.

Kosuke Kindaichi meets his creator, Seishi Yokomizo

Two days later, when the wedding photos are developed, old Tokubei mentions to his son that the bride in the picture completely resembles the Hogens' girl, Yukari. That evening, when Kindaichi visits the studio to collect his passport photo, Naokichi shows him the wedding photo and narrates the events of that night, also adding that all the festive arrangements and decorations were gone by the following morning. He also tells Kindaichi that the reason the building is called the House of Hanging is because a woman hanged herself in the house the year after World War II had ended. Just at that moment, the studio assistant Mokutarō answers a call from that mysterious client asking to deliver the photos at that abandoned building, and to also take photos of the wind chimes. Kindaichi, Naokichi, Tokubei and Mokutarō visit the building where they are met by a horrendous sight: the chimes that hung over the wedded couple the previous night are replaced by the severed head of the bridegroom, the bearded man himself. In the midst of this shocking discovery, Mokutarō gives chase to a figure lurking in the darkness who bolts out of the building, and restrains him after a physical battle to bring an end to the proceedings of the day.

Just like the vibrant jazz beats heard in The Angry Pirates' performance, the opening half hour of The House of Hanging on Hospital Hill is marked by a chaotic energy and pace. Things happen in rapid succession leaving one with barely any time to process all that's happening. And yet, there is a slapstick nature to all these events: Ichikawa clearly makes fun of the conventions of the same works he brought to life on the screen. For instance, when Yokomizo's on-screen niece Tae interrupts the conversation between the author and his creation, she says that she remembers a character from Yokomizo's books who, just like Kindaichi, disappears whenever a tough case comes calling. To this, Yokomizo says he does not remember including such a character in his works. These subtle and entertaining winks and nudges abound in the film, but there is also a lot of humour that is driven by the manners and actions of the characters. Early on, Mokutarō commits the cardinal sin of nearly dropping backdrop curtains on to Kindaichi's head, with the result that Naokichi berates Mokutarō as a baka (fool) whenever the latter tries to act clever. Similarly, the exaggerated expressions and actions of the police detective Todoriki (actually a long-time friend of Kindaichi in the books, who appears in this movie idly wondering whether he had heard of a famous detective like Kindaichi before) and his assistant Bando, whenever they are confronted by a puzzling situation, serve to add much levity to what turns out to be a very dark and tragic story. 

The infamous wedding photo

Like other Kindaichi offerings, World War II looms in the background of The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope. However, the way it is integrated in the plot is somewhat different to what we see in other works such as Gokumontō. In fact, the way in which the war is invoked has more in common with Akimitsu Takagi's depiction of the effects of the war in The Tattoo Murder Case: in both cases, characters ruminate on the illogical nature of the destruction wrought—with some buildings completely destroyed and others miraculously standing.

The investigation takes the detectives and viewers to some delightfully offbeat locations (such as a shed in an abandoned mine/quarry) that show tell-tale signs of the war, but the roots of the affair itself go back several generations prior to the war. Kindaichi tales are complicated affairs frequently featuring convoluted family trees, and this movie is no exception even though it apparently simplifies the book's plot to a large extent. Even untangling the relationship between the Yamauchis and the Hogens, the two major families portrayed in the family, is a laborious task. It helps that this is treated quite humorously to an extent—in one portion, Kindaichi, speaking for the audience, states that even he cannot make head or tail of the respective family histories, to which Mokutarō, who becomes sort of a sidekick to Kindaichi over the course of the film, shows a family tree he has drawn on a notebook.

The fulfilment of a complicated revenge

With its focus on family relationships and misguided revenge, The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope therefore feels familiar to other works in the Kindaichi oeuvre, and features a mish-mash of tropes (impersonation, mistaken identity, role reversal, and more) seen in this universe. The use of framing devices, however, feels quite fresh in this movie. Such devices are seen in previous stories as well—for instance, the nursery rhyme song in Akuma no temari-uta, or the haikus in Gokumontō—but here, two devices are used: one traditional, the other modern. On the one hand, we have the wind chimes (fūrin); on the other, we have photography itself. The use of the wind chime is somewhat akin to the use of the haikus in Gokumontō—they are portents both of happiness and doom. For the Yamauchis, the sound of the chimes once indicated a period of family bonding and contentment; for the Hogens, the same chimes unveil a long-buried secret that ultimately leads the family to completely fall apart. This secret is also preserved in another form: photographs. In fact, the way the act of photography is used in this film—to oppress and blackmail certain characters, and at the same time, to selfishly enable the perpetrators to dream of becoming rich by moving beyond the profession of photography—constitutes a running theme throughout the film. Ultimately, a matriarch's instinct to protect and preserve whatever remains ends up dismantling three structures that served as symbols and victims of the perverted, awful, terrifying, and morally debasing influence of patriarchy: the Hogens, the Yamauchis, and the Honjos. In the end, Kindaichi does break the curse wrought by photography on the Hogens and the Yamauchis by breaking the incriminating glass negatives—but only when it's too late.

It was probably inevitable, but the gravity of the narrative leads Kindaichi's solo investigation to be a sombre one. His retracing of a singular chime to its point of origin leads us through some beautiful landscape, and some vivid footage of the manual process of making chimes, but what we find at the end of the arduous journey defined by challenges (such as family records being destroyed in the war), makes for depressing viewing that even the great detective's genteel mannerisms cannot assuage. The whodunnit aspect is solved at this point, but what follows is more desperation on the part of the culprit, followed by a long, sappy denouement where the culprit themselves come to realise the full implications of the secret, and the truth about their role in a previous tragedy. In the end, the future and the past of the house of Hogen are entrusted to a 'newcomer' and a rickshaw-puller—a popular Yokomizo treatment that is also seen in works such as Gokumontō and Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku. It is this part that makes for the toughest viewing, because Ichikawa completely strips the narrative of any semblance of humour, with even the bumbling police detectives showing some urgency without committing goof-ups. Even though the acting is captivating, with the actors showing the breadth of their repertoire, this tonal shift (replete with operatic music) to showcase a more humane aspect is a bit extreme—it makes the narrative overlong and deprives it of its snappiness.

Kindaichi after solving the wind chime murder case. This is probably the last time we see the great detective in Japan

As a swansong to the entire Kindaichi series, The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope is tinged with nostalgia, and reminds viewers of all the elements that made these stories special and engrossing. While superior examples are there, Ichikawa's adaptation of this work remains a melodious, beautiful production spotlighting, for one final time, Kindaichi in all his glory and vulnerability, while also portraying its female characters, most of whom go through untold misery and tragedy and have to fight for their redemption in their own ways, in a sympathetic, humane light, giving them agency and allowing them to find their own voices. 

In the epilogue, Mokutarō meets Yokomizo and Tae in the author's study, Kindaichi himself being absent. When Mokutarō wonders if Kindaichi will ever return, Tae informs him that Kindaichi has disappeared and gone away to San Francisco. It is wishful thinking, of course, but one expects that Kindaichi went to San Francisco in pursuit of some equally complicated cases, the chronicles of which remain unrecorded with Yokomizo's death in 1981. As Yokomizo tells Kindaichi in the beginning, "People are the same all over."

Last of the Steam-Powered Trains

Like the last of the good ol' choo-choo trains

Huff and puff 'till I blow this world away

And I'm gonna keep on rollin' till my dying day

I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains

—"Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", The Kinks, 1968

The Kinks' 1968 album, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, stands among the finest lyrical evocations of the vanishing English countryside. A personal favourite from the album is "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", the band's adaptation of the classic Howlin' Wolf song "Smokestack Lightning", in which vocalist Ray Davies pens a rollicking character study of a steam train in a museum reminiscing about its glory days when it huffed and puffed across the country. 

I was reminded of the song—and the album—as I came across a description of steam engine drivers in Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi Hakucho (originally published in 1960, translated as The Black Swan Mystery, 2024):

"In his faded blue overalls, the strap of his cap tight around his chin, a driver was sitting on his hard seat, his right hand gripping a lever, his eyes fixed on the two parallel rails illuminated by the headlights in front of him. The fireman beside him opened the firebox door with a clatter and shovelled in some coal. The violent vibrations of the engine had taken their toll on the driver’s stomach, and all the colour had drained from his face. Every time the fire door was opened, however, the burning red light would be cast on his cheeks, and for a moment his complexion would improve so much that he was almost unrecognizable. Driving a steam engine was much harder than driving an electric locomotive. And yet the reward for it was scant at best."

This is not without precedent of course. The opening stretches of The Black Swan Mystery feature elements I would not have expected in a work by Tetsuya Ayukawa—a fashionably rich woman outsmarting a blackmailer rather courteously, a workers' strike at a textile mill and negotiations to overcome the impasse, a religious cult pulling the strings, and more. Clever casting ensures that these events are mostly seen through the eyes of characters pertinent to the plot, but it is all very industrious and painstakingly, meticulously laid out. It is also quite unlike my impressions of Ayukawa from my previous encounter with him—in the short story collection, The Red Locked Room, consisting of a number of intricately and tightly plotted, yet highly imaginative, tales of crime and detection.

The Black Swan Mystery, on the other hand, unfolds as a rigorous police procedural, not marked by instinctive flashes of inspiration or brilliance, but instead by a physically exhausting process of following clues, links, red herrings, and other lines of enquiry. Tailing—once a tool of misdirection and building up suspense—becomes a necessary, widely accepted norm of investigation by this time whose utility is openly accepted by both the police force and the perpetrators of the crime. The act of physically following up on leads is used for another purpose here. As the characters move from place to place, we become privy to the evolving landscape of Japan (transitioning into a rapidly industrial one), and how individuals, families, neighbourhoods, social orders, systems (transport and education, for instance) and professions (most prominently, prostitution) trace their journeys across time and space. In it all, there's a sense of people looking to move on from their past, yet being inexorably caught up in it through forces and circumstances beyond their control:

"Onitsura just stared at the photo without replying. That Kayoko had once entered a ladies’ college only to suffer the fate of a prostitute, and that afterwards this fallen angel had seen yet another reversal of fortune, living in the lap of luxury because of her attachment to a man of great power and wealth, seemed to exemplify the wretched lot of so many young women who had been thrown into the chaos of post-war Japan and made to fend for themselves."

In this aspect, the novel resembles the works of another doyen of Japanese mystery fiction, Seichō Matsumoto, particularly those involving extensive train travel (see Inspector Imanishi Investigates and Points and Lines/Tokyo Express). It is also indicative of the enormous influence exerted by the shakai ha (or social) school of mystery championed by Matsumoto over Japanese mystery writing in those days. In fact, the modus operandi of the police investigation and its arrival at the solution would suggest that The Black Swan Mystery be primarily regarded as an extremely competent work of the shakai ha school.

But, of course, the work does not follow the course of a full-blown shakai ha mystery. A major difference is the fact that there is lesser focus on making out industrial society to be some monstrous evil entity exhorting people towards crime. It is also less obsessed with analysing the psychology of classes and crimes. 

However, what the novel does accomplish is the presentation of memory-based character sketches gleaned through conversations with diverse people (doctors, gardeners, corporate sector employees, housewives, railway conductors, religious shamans, pharmacists, among others) that are used to piece together the full picture. And, to go back to a point I had made earlier, it is here that I am most reminded of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. One can, for instance, in some ways juxtapose the essence of and sentiment behind a character's reminiscences of the pivotal Kayoko in the novel— 

"Kayoko and I were the best of friends ... We sat beside each other in class and always studied together. But that was only until we left school. I got married and became an ordinary housewife, whereas she—"

 and

"There she is after school, wearing make-up for the first time. During the war, they were so strict about it—if they caught you even putting on face cream at school, you’d get a ticking-off. I used to take so much pleasure in putting it on after we graduated. Kayoko looked so pretty with it, too…" 

with that of some lines in the album's song "Do You Remember Walter?": 

Yes, Walter was my mate.

But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?

and

Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed? 

Do you remember, Walter, how we said we'd fight the world so we'd be free? 

We'd save up all our money and we'd buy a boat and sail away to sea. 

But it was not to be.

I knew you then, but do I know you now? 

Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago. 

Walter, if you saw me now, you wouldn't even know my name.

I bet you're fat and married,

And you're always home in bed by half past eight.

And if I talked about the old times, you'd get bored  

And you'd have nothing more to say. 

Yes, people often change.

But memories of people can remain. 

An unexpected bonus, but delightfully welcome nonetheless. In fact, in hindsight, the act of the sympathetic Inspector Onitsura experiencing and solving the mystery indirectly—through the eyes, ears, and memories of others—brings some relief to the Inspector himself. Otherwise, this tale of a character's quest for freedom takes some very dark and tragic turns, bookended by a somewhat tender, moving climax that offers the space for the character to take charge of and narrate their own story, and not be explained away as a footnote in a chain of grand, deductive reasoning.

We are back to familiar ground when talking about the mysteries the book sets up. Tetsuya Ayukawa is known in Japanese mystery writing circles as a fierce exponent of the alibi deconstruction story—and The Black Swan Mystery is no different. The core mystery concerns the death of one Gosuke Nishinohata, the director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to train tracks, a bullet in his back. A plethora of scattered clues—an abandoned car, blood on a railway overpass, among others—point in different directions, while the motives and list of suspects are equally vast, owing to a large number of shadowy connections and incidents linked to the company: an ownership struggle within the company, labour unrest, Nishinohata's problematic past, ties to underworld figures, religious cults, and more. More incidents soon follow—a down-on-his-luck gardener is found poisoned at a railway station, an accident claims the lives of a voice actor (who claimed they had a solution to the mystery) and another employee of Towa Textiles, while the underground blackmailer is found dead in a forest on the outskirts of another city at the same time the company's workers had gone there to attend Nishinohata's funeral. It is all time-consuming, but is carried out rather assiduously and neatly in real time.

The police investigation responds in kind—and goes through the entire gamut of experiences following red herrings, obscure clues, circumstantial evidence, witness evidence, and combing through multiple dead-ends and breakthroughs. If there is one criticism to be laid, it is that we do not exactly witness the aftermath of the police's failures in the course of the investigation. The team seems excessively reliant on Onitsura and his mental acuity, the camaraderie between the officers remains virtually unaffected, while the officers on the ground carry on with a different thread of investigation, barely unaffected by the previous setbacks. As readers, we remain none the wiser on whether any punitive action, however perfunctory, was doled out—whether they were soundly rebuked, or some officers transferred to other teams/investigations, or whether the lack of success soured relationships between officers and hierarchies, and/or affected their morale, for some time. Certainly, a shakai ha treatment would have benefitted here.

As concerns the murders themselves, the one carried out on Nishinohata feels over-elaborate in its conception and setup on the one hand, its impact and execution stymied by the adversarial, coincidental circumstances on the other. The demise of the gardener, the voice actor, and the second Towa Textiles employee fall under the "unavoidable evil to advance plot ends" category.  However, I must reserve a high level of praise for the trick employed to kill the underground blackmailer, involving astute understanding use of train routes and schedules. It is also a poignant relic of the past—similar to the depressing motive behind the events of Matsumoto's Inspector Imanishi Investigates, the acts of the criminal in their original form can no longer be practically carried out today, as the schedules and the train configurations are no longer there. It is oddly comforting to note, however, that closer home, in my country of India, an almost similar trick can be pulled off today if I travel from my hometown to the eastern metropolis of Kolkata, because the required differences in train schedules and the divergent routes to reach a common destination still exist.

It feels strange to conclude my thoughts on the note that The Black Swan Mystery reminds me more of Seichō Matsumoto's and Keikichi Ōsaka's works rather than Ayukawa's own short stories, as far as the themes are concerned. But, perhaps, that is where its charm and importance lies—not as an outright shakai ha or honkaku mystery, but as an instructive one seeking to bridge the gap between the two schools through an approach that is as much contemporary and fixed in its own time as much as it continues to memorialise a past people are seeking to leave behind, yet to which they find themselves inexplicably tied.

Man in the Box

My previous experience of a Masahiro Imamura work was with the experimental and entertaining Death Among the Undead, which broke new ground with its inspired-but-flawed use of zombies in a closed-circle situation. With an overarching thread of bioterrorism, I had expected things to escalate even further in the series, deploying more bombastic, hybrid-mystery elements.

Colour me surprised, then, because the second entry in the series, Magan no Hako no Satsujin (2019; translated as Death Within the Evil Eye, 2022), delivers a traditionally plotted, classically styled murder mystery, with just a pinch of the supernatural. No zombies, no bioterrorism plot points in the events as they transpire in real time.

Death Within the Evil Eye starts with a sense of déjà vu—Yuzuru Hamura making an idle deduction on the food a girl is about to order at the university cafeteria. It's very identical to the Sherlock Holmes-skit-like beginning of Death Among the Undead; however, due to the events of the first novel, this time, Hamura has no one to share his deductions with. The absence of Kyōsuke Akechi is felt throughout the novel, lending poignancy to the narrative and influencing the character dynamics of our protagonists in a major way.

Into this gap steps Hiruko Kenzaki, from the same university as Hamura, with her own quirks—a notorious oversleeper, and an exceptionally competent detective when it comes to real-life cases but utterly incompetent when it comes to identifying narrative trickery in fictional works. She also has a tendency to naturally attract freakish incidents. The two members of the reborn Mystery Society initially discuss strategies to hunt down the Madarame Organisation, the perpetrator behind the events of the first novel, through some potential leads—including one where a letter prophesising the Lake Sabea bioterrorist attack had been sent to a monthly magazine. However, Kenzaki decides to go at it alone, having already employed a private sleuth to investigate the Madarame Organisation's past activities and locations where it was active. In one of the finer bits of the novel, Hamura picks up changes in Kenzaki's attitude and demeanour, and decides to put the Tanuma Detective Agency on her tail. And thus it is that the duo find themselves on a journey to explore a former lair of the organisation. Their destination? Magan district in I county of W district.

Hereafter, the novel follows a pattern that may be familiar to readers of the Kindaichi series. A journey to a remote village in the mountains, with mysterious co-passengers (who happen to be students) headed to the same destination. To reach said destination, our main cast meets more curious folks—a professor and his son, a biker, a journalist, a woman visiting a grave in the village—all of whom then trek by foot to The Box of the Evil Eye—a two-storeyed building with no windows that was once used by the Madarame Organisation as a research facility to experiment with precognition and prophetic abilities. The purpose of the trip? To meet Sakimi, the prophetess whose prophecies have all turned out to be true for half a century.

And soon, a bridge burns down—isolating the whole cast. Then, the prophetess states that four people—two men and two women—will die. Yes, a major portion of the novel does indeed recreate the atmosphere and elements of multiple stories in Seimaru Amagi's Kindaichi and Detective School Q series.

Imamura does well to vary the nature of incidents that claim lives and distort minds: earthquake and landslide, animal attack, poisoning, and shooting. The cast, including two clairvoyants, reacts to the crises in a more diverse manner, even though they are already trapped in the clutches of the prophecy, than seen in Death Among the Undead. All this leads to multiple layered situations—and there's a definite improvement in establishing the closed-circle, locked-geography situations, the susceptibility of the characters to the supernatural, and creating the alignment between these situations and the rationale behind the characters' responses to these situations, when compared to the previous work. Having said that, the work still suffers from a problem I had observed in Death Among the Undead: namely that it is too aware of its status as a mystery novel, and the characters act not naturally or in accordance with the circumstances, but according to the dictates of mystery fiction tropes. It's a glaring discrepancy that is evident even here: in section-after-section dedicated to minutely dissecting each impossible situation through conversations and exposition (none of which, though logically sound, really stand out for quality or effect), but rarely do we see any concerted action.

Imamura thus comes across as an ideas man, rather than a natural plotter. The core of the novel—prophecies influencing people's actions—is carried out in several permutations and combinations. However, it is the spontaneous mix of superstitiousness, opportunism, and faith combined with fear, that invariably leads to unpredictable situations. Indeed, as Kenzaki points out in her summary of the case:

"This case is clearly completely different from the sort of crimes we all know. Setting aside the matter of whether Ms. Sakimi and Toiro’s powers were real or not, it is clear that our fear of their powers—and in a way, our faith in their powers—has influenced all that has happened here.’  

     Their powers had not directly killed anybody, but people had died there, whether by a natural event, or by human hand. In one sense, it was a murder case just like any other. However, the issue was that, additionally, the existence of precognitive powers had influenced our rationale and reasoning.  

     ‘A closed circle situation, plus precognitive powers. I do not believe that the police, coming from outside, can ever truly comprehend the fear and mental pressure created by such a combination. As soon as we step outside of the Box, the curious logic which has manipulated us over the last two days will disappear, as if it had all been just an illusion. Which is why I wanted to put an end to it all, before our tiny universe is broken up.’"

It is, therefore, quite unfortunate that the rationale and reasoning of the characters is also ultimately influenced too much by mystery fiction tropes and their analysis, which exert even more influence in the critical moments than any act of prophecy or clairvoyance does. Loss of hope and mounting despair can be powerful tools for authors to utilise, but when done in an organic manner. On the other hand, when they are used simply to serve plot-based, narrative, or trope-based functions, they can come across as excessively forced, artificial, and devoid of appropriate expression of emotions—as is the case with Imamura's two novels.

It is also the reason why, in my opinion, Imamura shines best when he explores human themes rather than supernatural themes. The evolving, moe-coded, Holmes-Watson relationship and dynamic between Kenzaki and Hamura, the continued acknowledgement of Akechi's absence—these form oddly tender oases in these two novels that revel in stretching character motivations to the extreme, and continuously putting them through a grinder. Both novels, I also think, are best read in light of a common them: revenge. While it is played in a straightforward, more preordained, manner in Death Among the Undead, the circumstantial nature of things ensures that the revenge seen in Death Within the Evil Eye is anything but straightforward, even though it is dictated by the needs of an infallible prophecy. The subject of the prophecy ends up as a victim, not of a direct revenge but an indirect, perverted one—one that not only fails to reach the intended target of the original grudge, but also effectively destroys the life of the perpetrator and condemns them to a future of utter futility, trapped by the nature and demands of the very things they exploited. In fact, this is rooted in a very Japanese sensibility—and one seen all too frequently in works featuring Hajime Kindaichi and Kosuke Kindaichi.

These are some of the aspects I would ideally have liked Imamura to have explored more in Death Within the Evil Eye, rather than the incessant homages to crime fiction he keeps making throughout the novel. There seems to be a third entry in this series—but I look forward to its translation with a sense of cautious optimism, and not of unbridled enthusiasm.

Thank You for the Music

Last year, I started with what I have since termed the 'Detective Conan Rewatch and Reread' project—the goal being to consume the entire franchise (manga, anime series and movies) from the very start in a chronological manner. It has been an instructive experience insofar as the evolution of the art-style and the plots are concerned. Although the series spans three decades with more than 1100 chapters and episodes, it still retains a reasonable degree of freshness and originality in both its main storyline and the fillers, which accounts for its rewatchable nature. 

Although a common criticism the series faces is that its central plot is stretching for far too long, creator Gosho Aoyama's top-notch world-building more than makes up for this. The Detective Conan universe is centred mainly around the fictional Beika City, and Conan and gang often travel all across the town and beyond, resulting in a dizzying variety of settings in which each of the stories/episodes are set: from mansions and restaurants to aquarians and museums to studios to camping and festival sites, and many more. And, in a majority of the cases, the locales play as important an role as the actions of the characters in the way the stories unfold.

There are, however, a few scenarios and themes that Aoyama loves to explore from time to time: music, sports and theatre being some of them. That is why stadiums, studios and theatres have formed the backdrop of a number of significant incidents that Conan has encountered. What I have also observed is a certain consistency in the way Aoyama explores these themes. For instance, stories involving musicians and band members have invariably involved tragic deaths borne out of terrible misunderstandings. 

This template was introduced pretty early in one of the more heart-wrenching stories (no, not this one), "The Karaoke Box Murder Case" (manga chapters: 45–48, anime episode: 42). Conan and his girlfriend, Ran, are invited by their friend, Sonoko, to the private meeting of a popular band, Lex, whose lead singer Kimura Tatsuya happens to be Sonoko's latest crush. What they witness, instead, is the animosity-filled break-up of the band, with the drunken Tatsuya announcing his decision to go solo. In the karaoke box, he humiliates each member of the band, past and present, including the manager, by choosing and requesting songs that would have hit a sore spot with each of them. Finally, he sings his heart out to the tune of his hit song, "Bloody Venus"... before dramatically coughing up blood and dying.

Foreshadowing Tatsuya's death

The mystery mostly unfolds as a howdunnit, but the 'why' and 'who' aspects of it are also quite engrossing. The howdunnit concerns mostly around how Tatsuya could be poisoned without the others getting affected. There are a few plausible and well-thought-out false solutions that keep pointing the needle of suspicion towards different members, and a suicide scenario as well. [Unfortunately, these are rushed through and/or ommited in the anime adaptation of the more nuanced manga arc.] The actual solution, however, makes excellent use of the habits and mannerisms of singers while performing—something the killer uses to precise and devastating effect. Ironically enough, the culprit is revealed when Conan (using the voice of Shinichi Kudou) asks the culprit to mimic the exact actions of the deceased, and then produces the two material evidences to decisively corner the criminal.

There is no doubt that an element of fortune is required to reveal the 'who' and 'why' of it all, but it doesn't make the tragedy any less poignant. At the centre of it is Aoyama's reflection on how musical fame and stardom can quietly devastate performers, make them lonely and unable to connect with their near and dear ones and communicate people. There are also two cautionary messages—one on taking one's need to be noticed and loved to extreme levels by making drastic changes to one's personality, the other on masking vulnerability, keeping up a facade, and displaying too much of tough love—both of which play major roles in the unfolding of the tragedy of the karaoke box.

Aoyama takes a shot at the extremes of manipulated musical fandom in "The Devil of the TV Station" (manga chapters: 591–593, anime episode: 488). Conan and his friends Mitsuhiko, Ayumi, and Genta, along with Professor Agasa, visit a TV station to see the studio of a popular kids' show, Kamen Yaiba. The plan, however, fails to materialize, as the actress, Yoko Okino, who had invited them for the tour, mentions that their schedules are tight and packed for the day. Instead, they come across Satan Onizuka, the lead singer of the visual kei band Styx III, in full KISS/Satan makeup, who is scheduled for a TV appearance in the afternoon. Back in his dressing room, Onizuka asks his manager to order food from three outlets as well as a hand mirror to fix his makeup (since the mirrors in his room are broken). He also expressly instructs the manager not to let anyone disturb or enter the room since he would be removing his makeup and take a nap in his room before the interview. The next time, we encounter Onizuka is when Mitsuhiko knocks on the door of his room, requesting an autograph for his sister. Onizuka appears, once again, in full makeup—an appearance that also coincides with the arrival of the police as Tenji Urushibara, the president of the entertainment company representing Onizuka and his band, is found dead in the station with several stab wounds. Suspicion naturally falls on Onizuka who recently had a heated argument with Tenji, but Onizuka has a solid defence—how could he have committed the deed with his makeup on, and with no one in the busy station having observed his movements from his room to the president's, two floors above?

The devil's due: outlining a murder plan

While less musically inclined than "The Karaoke Box Murder", "The Devil of the TV Station" certainly has its points of interest. The modus operandi of the murder is a tightrope act involving multiple moving parts and actors—makeup, impersonation, origami, rulers, raincoats, and restaurant delivery people. In particular, I like the rationale behind the use of three different restaurants to deliver food. However, with a limited cast, the case unfolds much like an episode of Columbo or Furuhata Ninzaburou—here too, the audience is made aware pretty early on who the culprit is; only the method remains to be uncovered. 

A dash of tragedy is added in the murder motive—it is here that Aoyama critiques the excesses and manipulation of musical fandom. At a time when Onizuka had lost his voice three years ago, a young girl took her own life and 'offered her blood' as a sacrifice to aid Onizuka's recovery—a horrific event stemming from a stunt by Tenji who left messages in Onizuka's name (unbeknownst to the singer himself) on online forums and message boards exhorting the followers to offer sacrifices. The event leaves a terrible scar on Onizuka himself, who visits the girl's parents, then spirals into depression, and loses his creative songwriting impulses, leading to a dissociation between him as a person and the persona he portrays and the lyrics (on curses, death, destruction, and violence) that he sings as Satan Onizuka. He is further trapped between a rock and a hard place when Tenji denies him permission to hold a farewell performance for Styx III, instead threatening him with legal action if he chose to walk out before the contract extracted. It is this toxic cocktail of tipping points that ultimately leads to the events of "The Devil of the TV Station".

Tragedy strikes again in "The Unfriendly Girls' Band" (manga chapters: 936–938, anime episodes: 836–837), which begins with the big-mouthed Sonoko all gung-ho on starting a high school girls' band. After being embarrassed in Café Poirot (below the Kogorou detective agency) for not being able to play the guitar, Sonoko saves face due to the intervention of Tooru Amuro (or Rei Furuya), another notable detective in the Detective Conan canon, who instructs her on the need to practice. An inspired Sonoko proceeds to drag her classmates, Ran and Sera Masumi (yet another detective), along with Tooru and Conan, to a recording studio. Unfortunately, the rooms all being booked, they have to wait for a fair amount of time during which they encounter a girls' band whose guitarist rebukes all the members for their flawed rehearsals in preparation for a funeral concert for their deceased bandmate, a singer. They adjourn for a 10-minute break, and during which interval Sonoko tries to select the preferred members and their roles for the band. Their reverie is rudely interrupted by a scream—and when Conan, Tooru, and Sera rush to the scene, they find one of the members of the girls' band they had seen previously slumped over the drum set, after being strangled. The CCTV camera footage should have captured the scene and action of crime—either directly or through a reflection on the mirror behind the performance area—but half of the camera was covered by a phone on a selfie stick attached to the mic to record the rehearsal, while curtains had been drawn covering the mirror, on the victim's request. As a result, the footage captured only the victim's slumped-over state without a trace of the perpetrator.

The investigation in progress

While "The Karaoke Box Murder" exploits the habitual itches of performers, "The Unfriendly Girls' Band" makes great use of positional awareness and knowledge of how a band sets itself up on the stage, to figure out how the position of the recording phone was manipulated and whodunnit in the absence of proper CCTV footage. I am less sold, however, on the mechanics of making the murder weapon disappear—a method which, while admittedly inspired, seems improbable to pull off perfectly, without hiccups, in that short a time-frame.

Like the previous two stories, "The Unfriendly Girls' Band" also unfolds as a revenge tragedy due to the underlying motive and backstory. At the centre of it all is a dual misconception regarding the death of their previous bandmate, the singer who had damaged her voice while acting on the advice of the current case's victim. The singer patched things up with the bandmate who had erroneously guided her, and started following the instructions to heal herself up to a t. However, she died while trying to save a boy from a car collision, instead of shouting to warn him—an incident that leads the present case's victim to feel even more guilty. Another bandmate (the perpetrator of the current case) remains unaware of these details, having gone into shock, and solely blames her fellow performer for driving the singer to commit suicide. This intersecting maze of emotions and mistaken beliefs ultimately culminates in the tragic events seen in this storyline.

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Songs and music tunes are often believed to bring out human emotions and sentiments in a manner that connects, either viscerally or transcendentally, with the audience at large. However, as these three stories depict, Aoyama subverts these expectations by turning music, songs, and the musical persona into tools of miscommunication and misunderstanding that shed a light on the blind spots that even music and songs cannot illuminate. By purposefully showing the pressures and strains that come with musical performances and showmanship, Aoyama skilfully explores what happens when the musical product is based upon foundations of tragedy, mistaken perceptions and the unpredictable human nature—and how these murky associations can cause a presumably liberating force such as music and songs to be bogged down by the all-too-sordid reality of crime and murder. 

A Night of Fright Is No Delight

Of the many reasons why I still relish a good ol' Scooby Doo yarn is the fact that the original series plays it remarkably straight with urban legends. Whenever Scooby and gang roll into a ghost town, abandoned mine, haunted film set or museum, they are led right into the thick of things, no questions asked. There is, above all, a superb level of suspension of disbelief—an undertaker in a mine or a ghostly space-pilot in an abandoned airfield are allowed to terrorise people in the vicinity unabated, leading to the emergence of rumours and urban legends, till Scooby, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and Fred somehow stumble on such occurrences and solve them with a combination of luck and logic. The cast of the early Scooby Doo series have well-defined roles to which they stick faithfully, enabling audiences to appreciate the diversity in the visualisation of monsters, the tricks and tropes employed, and the many wacky ways in which the incidents are solved, even though the episodes follow a fairly repetitive formula/script.

Recently, I rediscovered this feeling of wacky, undisguised delight when I stumbled upon Nemoto Shou's manga Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura (Sharaku Homura: Detective of the Uncanny) in an online forum. As it turns out, Shou's Sharaku Homura is one of these rare instances of a self-published (doujinshi) manga series not only winning an award, but also getting picked up by a major publisher. So, what's the deal about this series?

The best way I can describe Sharaku Homura: Detective of the Uncanny is as an inspired, successful blend of Scooby Doo aesthetics, the atmosphere of a Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo story, and the mechanics of Anraku Isu Tantei (Armchair Detective), a classic and critically acclaimed Japanese detective show. The characters in Sharaku Homura—and the villains in particular—seem to be obviously inspired by Scooby Doo characters. While the titular character, Sharaku Homura, possesses a mix of Velma-like curiosity and scientific know-how, and the damsel-in-distress aspect of Daphne, the villains boast of names and gimmicks that would be perfectly at home in the Scooby Doo universe.

The first story, scanlated (a process of fan-made editing and translation) as "The One-Eyed Clown", takes us to the Shimoyama Prefecture where rumours of a certain one-eyed clown starts spreading. This clown is said to appear in the dead of the night, chasing people down with severed heads and other human parts, stealing Buddha statues, before disappearing like smoke. And, according to the word on the street, the clown may also have exacted bloody revenge on its parents by killing them and gouging one of their eyes!

Clowns are scary and evil: (left) the Ghost Clown (from the Scooby Doo episode, "Bedlam in the Big Top") and (right) Sharaku Homura's one-eyed clown

Things get a little too close for comfort for our protagonists from Shimoyama Middle School—Sharaku Homura (of the Experiment Club) and Yamasaki Yousuke (of the Karate Club)—when the clown appears in front of them at night, and proceeds to disappear from a dead-end alley. While the impossibility is solved by the logical Homura in fairly quick order by analysing some possible scenarios, it makes excellent use of the visual format, providing a sample of what the series specialises in.

The first disappearing act

Not surprisingly, the disappearing acts soon escalate to the level of murder, when the clown brutally impales Kasugai Isamu, the school's maths teacher, in a graveyard in front of Homura and Yousuke, and escapes again. What follows next is a game of cat and mouse, with the clown looking to eliminate Homura via elaborate traps. The first time, Homura is lured to a 'doll house' via a fake invitation to Isamu's wake. She is nearly buried in a coffin before Yousuke rescues her.

Murder, bloody murder!

The next trap is even more diabolical and features another disappearing act by the clown. Homura is led to an empty school classroom with a single entrance and no means of exit. The figure of a clown with a barely visible message on a faraway blackboard beckons her to come closer, but for some unfathomable reason, Homura gets scared and runs off from the classroom. As it transpires, she escaped with her life.

The second disappearing act

For me, the favourite aspect of the story, apart from its fast pacing and dense plotting, is the minute attention devoted to visual detail. The steps leading to Homura's deduction—the discrepancies and the clues—are all depicted clearly, with multiple 'flashback' panels that even state which page the clue is located. This treatment makes Sharaku Homura a fair-play mystery series that does not withhold vital information to its readers—much in the manner of Anraku Isu Tantei.

The art of clueing: Flashback scenes and panels solve cases in (left) "Anraku Isu Tantei and the UFO" and (right) "The One-Eyed Clown" (Sharaku Homura series) 

Like Scooby Doo, this story is best enjoyed if one is willing to suspend disbelief for certain aspects—such as the logistics of adults dressing up as over-the-top scary monsters, the strength required to carry out the impaling with that weapon, and the fact that an entire police contingent was willing to listen to the explanations of a criminal who had confessed, instead of first securing him and doing a body check. These reservations aside, the story made me an instant Sharaku Homura fan. The distinctive, DIY-style art, the Kindaichi-esque atmosphere, the use of characters who stick to particular roles, and the fair-play modus operandi make for a refreshing, heady combination that scratches my mystery-solving itch. Highly recommended!

Burning Down the House (Part II)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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