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.

Back to School

"Who killed Cock Robin?

I, said the Sparrow ... "

—Yoichi Takato quoting the English nursery rhyme "Who Killed Cock Robin" in "Gokumon Juku Satsujin Jiken"

Among longtime fans, "Gokumon Juku Satsujin Jiken" (Prison Prep School Murder Case) is considered to be one of the best (if not the best) offerings from the Kindaichi series. There are several worthy reasons for this preference—a devilish performance by the sleuth's nemesis, tricks that are simple in their foundation but sophisticated in their execution, the thematic nature of the serial killings and the slow, deliberate build-up to the settings that make each of the events possible. But perhaps, the most significantly unique quality is that this majestic story arc—in a series reputed for repeatedly setting up impossible/quasi-impossible crimes and locked room murders—does not feature a single incident that can be considered (technically) to belong to either of the two categories aforementioned.

The story, the brainchild of the writer–artist duo of Seimaru Amagi and Fumiya Satō, was faithfully adapted as episodes 10–14 of the first season of Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo Returns (2014). After another disastrous performance in his school examinations, Hajime Kindaichi is forced by his 'childhood friend' Miyuki Nanase to come to Gokumon Juku, a prep school as famous for the results it produces as it is notorious for its excessively stringent regulations—the reason why it is also called Hell's Gate Prep School. Right on cue, the cruel machinations of Kindaichi's eternal nemesis, Yoichi Takato, are laid bare early on, when an examinee is killed in the school as soon as Kindaichi and his friends step into its halls to enroll—a crafty piece of business involving something called the magician's select (or the magician's choice). A tense standoff ensues between the mastermind and the detectives when Takato appears before Kindaichi, Nanase, police superintendent Kengo Akechi and police inspector Isamu Kenmochi to dramatically throw down the gauntlet and dare them to prevent his plot from succeeding. It is against this backdrop that Kindaichi and Nanase (with Takato and Akechi, both disguised as teachers, in tow) decide to attend the prep camp that the school is organising in prison-like facilities deep within forested mountains.

The first victim

The importance of the first two, slowly-paced episodes cannot be understated. They lay down the rules by which this game is to be played. The strict and extremely specific rules concerning the diet of the students, their study schedules, the class schedules, the limited paraphernalia of things students can carry with them during the trip and norms governing the conduct of examinations may seem to be excessive and comical, but all of these specifications are used to devastating effect by the perpetrators later on in the story. There's also a fair amount of foreshadowing and clueing in these episodes—for instance, the part which shows a bus travelling in a tunnel under neon light en route to the prep camp location is an important clue that goes on to solve a vital and wonderful bit of misdirection in the last episode. Above all, "Gokumon Juku Satsujin Jiken" shines best when it sets up this atmosphere of extreme unease when you are aware that terrible things are afoot but you don't have the slightest idea what exactly they are. The second episode in particular, where not a single murder happens, excels in creating this heavy, brooding and disconcerting atmosphere of perpetual unease. Against the backdrop of seemingly normal classes in session, a number of students mysteriously vanish, but the viewers aren't exactly shown what happens; instead, the scene simply segues into another ordinary classroom scene where the seeds of some other disturbing occurrence are being laid—all cogs in the wheel of a monstrous plot hatched by the dastardly Takato.

As the main antagonist of the series, Takato's moniker of "The Puppeteer from Hell" is well deserved and closely resembles the criminal organisation Pluto, the main villain of Tantei Gakuen Q (Detective School Q), another series on which Amagi and Satō worked. Takato's role is that of a criminal consultant extraordinaire—manipulating the feelings of impressionable people who are looking to seek revenge, organising intricate criminal plans, providing people with the requisite blueprints and tools for the plan's success and then disposing of any loose links should the plan be thwarted. In this story, the blueprint and tools Takato provides his two co-conspirators are for themed murders (mitate satsujin), the most well-known example of which is probably Agatha Christie's The A. B. C. Murders. In "Gokumon Juku Satsujin Jiken", the murders in the study camp are made to mirror the topics of discussion during classes and examinations. One of the student's is found burnt, thereby replicating a chemistry class lecture on spontaneous combustion; another is found dead in a bamboo thicket, associating itself with a literature class on the Japanese folktale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter; a third student is wrapped up in a double-helix spiral after her death—a throwback to an examination on the topic of DNA which she had completed; the fourth casualty is hanged to death, much like the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Demons, the subject of another assessment where the student murdered was accused of cheating. And much like The A. B. C. Murders, the purpose of resorting to themed murders is to hide and disguise. But unlike The A. B. C. Murders, where the alphabetical killings were orchestrated to hide the actual target of the whole spree, in "Gokumon Juku Satsujin Jiken", mitate satsujin is used for a far more damning purpose: to shield and hide a vital, glaring flaw in the execution of the perpetrators from prying eyes—something that ultimately costs one of them their life.

The double helix claims a victim

After the sinister build-up in the entirety of the second episode and the first half of the third episode, the body count (a total of eight, if one counts the one in the past and the post-denouement casualty) suddenly ratchets up from the second half of the third episode onwards. The conundrums presented are simple ones—how can so many murders have occurred in the two buildings of the study camp (the Sunlight Mansion and the Moonlight Mansion) at a time when classes and/or lunch hours were in session in both locations separated by miles of forests, a tough-to-navigate road with only a rapidly flowing stream connecting the two? And how come these bodies are surfacing, hours after their death, in such rapid succession? The answers to both questions lead one to marvel at the intricate groundwork laid in the previous episodes and the ample visual foreshadowing employed. There are numerous factors at play here, many of which hark back to the 'rules of the game' introduced before—the architecture of both buildings including the 'sealed-off' portions of one of them and how their floor plans 'fit together like pieces of a puzzle', the complicated but effective scheduling and division of classes and eating/recreation hours in both locations, the true purpose of the extremely limited but 'healthy' food items, the real motive behind limiting the things students can keep during to a bare minimum, two very daring, rope-led nighttime walks through a dense forest that 'mislead' students and teachers alike to a different location only to take them back to where they started after the second walk (after all the mischief has been done) and lastly, an optical phenomena that tricks the people and compliments the misdirection employed during the nighttime walk exceedingly well. What's even more surprising is the number of flaws and holes in this seemingly perfect, multilayered plan that are revealed by Akechi and Kindaichi in the denouement. Going by the variety of tricks employed and the level of deception achieved, too many cooks indeed spoil the broth—just not in the way you would usually expect.

"Gokumon Juku Satsujin Jiken" is not without its share of flaws, however. The sustained focus on the brilliant howdunnit angle results in the motive fading into the background. One of the faults with revealing the motive through flashbacks here is that you will not be able to figure out whodunnit by approaching the case from the motive alone. Even though one gets to know that another student of Gokumon Juku had died in the past, the hints linking it to the present case and the parties concerned are too vague for one to concretely identify the people who were most affected by the past incident. Even the whodunnit reveal leaves something to be desired. One of the students is forcibly made the scapegoat in a unsubtle, heavy-handed way only for them to pointlessly 'commit suicide'. And while one of the actual co-conspirators is revealed through a rigorous chain of logic and deduction, the second culprit is mainly unmasked through a somewhat unsatisfactory method of 'filling the dots' where it is found that one of the victims is revealed to have died unbelievably just before he was able to finish the stroke that would have led him to complete a dying message that would have directly named said culprit. Games of luck and chance in a story of logic and reasoning? Nah, not my cup of tea.

Possessed by Dostoevsky's Demons

"Gokumon Juku Satsujin Jiken" is an amusing case-study for me in some ways. Its sheer brilliance in a few specific aspects threatens to run away with it all, until the flaws surface and weigh it down. Ironically, the genius nature of the plot and the mechanics shines a starker, uglier light on the weaknesses in the execution of the whodunnit and the motive-related revelations, making the comparative imbalance seem more glaring and apparent than it would in a mediocre, by-the-numbers story. None of these drawbacks, however, takes anything away from the majestic and ambitious nature and scope of the groundwork and build-up the story employs, which are, frankly speaking, simply unparalleled.