Sports Men

"I'm seeing Sundays / I could be apoplectic / The whole family gets in shape / Under the floodlights / People tell me I'm not strong / I can't seem to find the right charge" 

—Haruomi Hosono, "Sports Men"

How many years has it been since Detective Conan ushered in the 21st century with The High-Lows' "Mune ga Dokidoki"? Argue with me all you like—and I will still say that none of the opening theme songs in the Conan series are as upbeat as the very first one. Anyway ...

Funnily enough, my introduction to the world of teenage sports in Japan was through Detective Conan, and not through more focused titles such as Captain Tsubasa or Slam Dunk. With its youthful appeal, it was easy to be intoxicated by the combination of action, brains and brawn that these tales provided. In retrospect, what I had quite forgotten was how unironically hilarious and over-the-top these stories are.

"What do you mean I can't use karate on Shinichi the next time I see him?"

The "Pro Soccer Player Blackmail Case" (manga chapters: 68–71, anime episode: 10), for instance, is essentially a comic tale against the backdrop of a sports mystery. A girl arrives at the agency of detective Mouri Kogoro, introducing himself as the girlfriend of our protagonist, the elusive Shinichi Kudō who she wants to find and meet again. The problem? She does this in front of Shinichi's real girlfriend Mouri Ran, Ran's father Kogoro, and Edogawa Conan (that's Shinichi in his shrunken form)—all of whom express varying degrees of rage, cheeky amusement, and disbelief. Stepping into his double role-playing shoes, Shinichi (via Conan) shifts the scene of action to the girl's apartment where more shenanigans ensue. In many ways, the story gives viewers a taste of the kind of situational comedy and humour the series excels in—Ran searches for Shinichi, while Conan desperately seeks ways to keep Ran at bay, while trying to understand the client's real motive behind cooking up a false story. Even though the mystery itself is rather light, the layered approach shines through, thanks to proper foreshadowing and Conan's sleuthing. What unfolds is a kidnapping case where a football star is threatened to throw away the final match of a tournament in exchange for his brother's life. The way the kidnapping is carried out is actually quite interesting and age-appropriate—especially as it blends the worlds of real-life sports and video games. Not so much the way the culprit is captured because the 'rom-com of errors' approach overshadows the core mystery, with the clueless Ran indulging in some violence to literally knock down the perpetrator. But it is really the motive that cracks me up each time. I mean I understand the aim was to showcase professional rivalry and the emotions behind it, but all I can really think of is that for a three-month injury, the culprit could have simply waited and had his revenge at the first team scramble after recovering. That way, he could have avoided receiving another severe injury at the hands of Ran. All said and done, even in a seemingly minor case, the sheer tableaux (of comedy, emotions, situations, and layered narratives) that mangaka Gosho Aoyama presents is fascinating to behold.

The football star and the victim

Things take a more serious turn in "The Indiscriminate Stadium Threatening Case" (manga chapters: 189–191, anime episodes: 130 and 131). Conan and the Youth Detective Squad attend the finals of a football tournament when a ball goes out of play, suddenly deflates, and jumps awkwardly. The keen-eyed Conan who observed the ball do the funny jig jumps down from the stands immediately to find a bullet hole in the ball and the rubber surface around it. At the same time, the TV station van broadcasting the game from outside the station receives a call from someone threatening that they would randomly start shooting people if they were not paid 5 billion yen. A blackmail suddenly escalates into a hostage situation, with 56,000 people in the stadium being none the wiser. As the police arrive, Conan cleverly deduces that two people are involved in the plot. The police lay a trap, and captures one of the culprits inside the stadium, but the other proves to be a step ahead of the rest, ordering the police to release his partner and pay double the ransom. Even more puzzlingly, they seem to be aware of the positions of all the police personnel scattered around the stadium, and tells them to make their exit. The story unfolds as a cat-and-mouse chase, escalating from crescendo to crescendo, with a few false solutions, but given the choice of venue, the answer should have been evident pretty early on. The ridiculousness actually comes after the big reveal, when the second culprit's backstory is revealed. And, for a meticulous mastermind, one must admit they make some shockingly poor life choices. Sacrificing all of your savings of three years for a large payday from a single robbery you plan without any sort of backup? That too when you have someone dependent on you? No sir no—that's monumentally stupid no matter how much I try to justify it. Fun sidenote: The team that lost the final in the "Pro Soccer Player Blackmail Case" gets their win back this time around, against the same opponent. 

Upstaging the police

By now, the observant reader will have noticed Gosho's preference for dramatic blackmail/kidnapping and hostage-taking situations in the stories he sets in stadiums. The trend continues in "Holmes' Revelation" (manga chapters: 743–752, anime episodes: 616–621)—and, oh boy, where does one start with this? Overcoming a potential passport crisis (Shinichi has one, not Conan) with the help of an antidote to the poison that shrunk him, Shinichi, along with Ran, Kogoro, and Professor Agasa, travel to London on the invitation of a certain rich millionairess. (As the antidote only has a time-bound effect, Shinichi miraculously reverts to his Conan form at the Heathrow airport, after passing all checks no doubt). At the Sherlock Holmes Museum (duh!), Conan meets another kid frantically looking for Holmes (duh, duh!) because only he can stop something terrible from happening that may end up killing people. Conan—the 'disciple of Holmes'—is handed a cryptic code (duh, duh, duh!) that leads the merry gang to Sherlock-themed clues (duh, duh, duh, duh!) all over London. 

When in London, ask Holmes for directions—any kind 

In the midst of all this are character interactions at a dizzying level of coincidence. Cupid arrives, not with bows and arrows, but with a tennis racket, as a tennis champion meets Ran under a statue of Sherlock Holmes (not doing the duh! thing any longer, it's tiring) and gloomily instructs her that "love means zero; no matter how many zeros pile up, it amounts to the same thing." (Lady, that's simply cold! You have gone to Sherlock Holmes for clarity and guidance before your tennis match, not to broadcast Sherlock's detached observations on love to a fellow woman.) And then there's the 'rom-com of errors' routine where Ran realises that Shinichi is actually in London, tracks him down to a phone booth to tearfully complain about Shinichi's vanishing acts. Then, Shinichi has to chase after a crying Ran to issue his rejoinder to Minerva: "Love is zero? Don't make me laugh. Zero is where everything starts! You can't go anywhere or achieve anything if you don't start from zero." (Sheesh, Gosho! You could have just taken a chill pill.)

"Yeah, sure, love starts from zero, but more importantly, you are going the wrong way."

That's not all, because in this story, all roads and all plotting of points on maps ultimately leads to ... Wimbledon. And, don't you just love a emotionally-grieving and -deranged but fair-playing villain who for some reason bets on a tennis player to win the French Open to gather funds for the treatment of their terminally ill mother? Who, for some reason, sends out Sherlock-themed clues into the London ether as a way to challenge Scotland Yard and wannabe detectives to try and stop him? Who also plants a bomb in the teddy bear of said player's blind mother but, for some reason, does not choose to press the button till the match is over? But then, also wants record the moment of explosion and the sight of people screaming and dying on a camcorder, as an offering of revenge completed to his deceased mother? If your answer to all these questions is yes, then you clearly know Gosho too well.

And thus, for the first time, in the finals of Wimbledon, we have a villain threatening a women's tennis champion through a message slipped in their wristband. We have said champion issuing Braille-coded SOS messages for two sets of the match that can be deciphered only by observing the positions on the court where the ball lands. Never mind the fact that she nearly has them all killed by almost losing the second set. We have Conan appearing on TV announcing he is Holmes' apprentice to the world, and then enabling the champion to bust out more Braille messages till the last point. We have a throwback to the culprit from "The Indiscriminate Stadium Threatening Case" who had told Conan that since everyone's eyes were glued to the game, no one would notice him shooting a kid with a silencer gun. Here, Conan identifies the criminal by tracking the movements of the heads of the audience as they followed the ball and picking out the one whose head did not move at all, as they were too focused on their target—I must admit that was pretty cool though. And then, there's the climax—a tennis–football combination where we have the champion whacking a ball straight at the culprit's face several stands up, and then Conan kicking the same ball as it rebounded with his kick-enhancing shoes. Gosh—now that I think about it, what would I not give to see Gosho write the script for a Shaolin Soccer movie?

"And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for that pesky Holmes' apprentice ... " 

It is now somewhat clear that mangaka Gosho indulges in his most cartoonishly ridiculous instincts and excesses wherever sports is involved. Is there any other sports story in the Conan series that features a more moderate, middle-ground approach, I hear you say. I am glad you asked—and for this, may I direct you to "Miracle at Koshien Ball Park! The Defiants Face the Dark Demon" (manga chapters: 445–449, anime special episode: 383)? Conan's eternal rival Heiji Hattori prevails upon Conan, Ran, his own not-quite-girlfriend Kazuha, and Mouri, and convinces them to attend the finals of Japan's annual high school baseball tournament, the Kōshien. Playing in the final are two teams that have now faced each other three times in the finals of the very same tournament, but an evil spirit soon stalks this particular game. A spirit that comes equipped with a bomb (again—seriously, what is it with this series and bomb/shooting/blackmail threats in stadiums hosting finals?). And issues a direct threat to not one, but two great detectives.

That time when Japan's greatest detective solved a case by cracking a joke

This is a better-structured and -paced story than the other ones discussed here. One of the things I particularly like is that while the codes and clues the perpetrator gives to our detectives may not exactly be fair to those who do not know much about baseball and its larger lore, they all work in the context of a story set against the backdrop of the Kōshien finals. These clues are all baseball-themed, and therefore enjoy a thematic coherence with the sport that is happening at the same time. The narrative is also broken down into mini-games—with the evil spirit leaving location-based hints that the sleuths have to solve within designated time limits (such as the end of certain innings in the game). As a result, the story unfolds as a more urgent but less bombastic game of cat-and-mouse.

"End this game, please. And the episode as well—it's too long."

One of the reasons the episode is pretty sedate from a theatrics-and-action perspective is because this is a story where the unfolding game also exerts an emotional pull on the culprit. Besides, the perpetrator is portrayed in a far more grounded and less cartoonishly evil manner than the other stories mentioned here. A recent tragedy leads the culprit to harbour an abnormal hatred for the game and the audience at the Kōshien. However, the excellence of the game's quality unsettles the person, and the memories of his deceased son (who was a sensational player) further makes him doubt himself. As to the reason why the game affects him this way, the answer is revealed in the culprit's identity—one that is befitting of this story. And, for a change, the denouement is shorn of any bombast and happens in a humane way. The culprit's admission that they know that this is something they should not be doing, but at the time, they simply wanted people on whom they could pass on the blame (for their son's death) makes for a very sombre note on which to end this story.

"Yeah, that last deduction was a total fluke ... "

Of course, these stories only scratch the surface of sports-themed entries in the Conan series. Other stories in this more-than-11,00-chapter series introduce martial arts, shogi, swimming, gymnastics and much more, to the mix. But, rest assured, going through these chapters is a hefty task unto itself—particularly with Gosho exploring the limits of his plotting and expressionistic abilities. "Go for the sports, stay for the adventure, laughs and chaos" is what I would say, even if you find the mystery elements to be a bit muted and/or lacking.

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!

In Search of Lost Time

The cover of Pushkin Vertigo's 2023 English edition of Fūtarō Yamada's 1979 novel, Meiji Dantodai (translated as The Meiji Guillotine Murders) briefly describes the book as follows: "Death stalks Old Edo". It is, I feel, a curiously appropriate descriptor, for reasons that go beyond the initial impressions one gets from it.

Starting out as a mystery author, Yamada (1922–2001) is perhaps best known for his works of historical fantasy such as Kōga Ninpōchō (The Kouga Ninja Scrolls) and Makai Tenshō, many of which have been adapted to films, manga and anime multiple times. A prolific writer, he left his mark in the world of crime fiction as well—The Meiji Guillotine Murders being a top-tier example. It should come as no surprise, though, that what this book shares with his fantasy works is a preoccupation with all things historical.

For me, in a work of historical crime fiction, the historical elements should add to or elevate the experience of consuming the mysteries. These elements, however, should not lead to either of the two circumstances mentioned below:

The historical element basically becomes an excuse for the author to indulge in the dissemination of unsolicited history lessons that are not particularly pertinent to the mysteries themselves.

The historical element is of such critical and excessive importance to the plot that one cannot enjoy the mysteries without properly researching and understanding the aforesaid element, its relevance and context.

The Meiji Guillotine Murders stands out as a shining example of how to imbue a work of mystery fiction with historical details in a manner that does not come across as overbearing. It helps that Yamada is a gifted storyteller—The Meiji Guillotine Murders oozes with an old-world charm (replete with local, cultural details) that transports readers to the era it is set in. Even more important is the ways in which the narrative presents itself—the book unfolds first almost like a jidaigeki (period drama) with the flashy, dramatic appearance of the protagonists, then it evolves into a torimonochō (a somewhat ambiguous term for a style of fiction that imitated the personal 'case notebooks or logs' kept by investigators or police personnel). The use of both forms helps Yamada exercise a reasonable level of creative liberty and dramatisation while also accurately portraying real-life, period-specific politics, events, places and material things.

The novel is set in the aftermath of the Boshin War (1868–1869) and the onset of the Meiji Restoration (1868), the events spanning a three-year period between 1869 and 1871. An era of acute socio-political turmoil marked by several high-profile assassinations, these years saw the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the restoration of Imperial rule, and the opening up of the country to the West. Not surprisingly, this period of "chaos-cum-fallowness" was defined as much by "a nationwide sense of collapse" as it was by "a sense of heartfelt relief at the dawning of peace"—a time when "new government sprouted up like bamboo shoots, when new administrative orders came down from on high like rain, and when new customs and ideas came flooding in like a deluge from a harbour", but which also saw "even stranger offices, laws and notions from the old days [...] revived like the souls of the departed and combined, as though mixing together the seven colours of the rainbow—who could say then whether for better or worse—with the end result a chaos of ash-grey."

One of these "even stranger offices [...] from the old days" revived after the Meiji Restoration was the Imperial Prosecuting Office, a long-forgotten institution from the seventh and eighth centuries (CE) that tackled corruption within government departments. The opening two chapters establish the broader context in which the work is set, and introduces readers to the main cast of the book—the two shining lights of the Imperial Prosecuting Office, Chief Inspectors Keishirō Kazuki and Toshiyoshi Kawaji, a French woman Esmeralda Sanson, and five rasotsu ('policemen') who cheat and exploit commoners. The two chapters may not feature mysteries, but are very entertaining nonetheless—Yamada achieves this by presenting well-defined, distinctive characters and scenarios. Keishirō and Toshiyoshi can be recognised by their appearances—Keishirō flaunts a suikan, while Toshiyoshi wears a fuka-amigasa hat, and their apprehension of a vicious gang of robbers resembles scenes from a jidaigeki or a torimonochō drama. With her blonde hair, Esmeralda Sanson is even more of a rarity—a descendant of the infamous Sanson family of Parisian executioners, she is brought to Japan by Keishirō, along with a guillotine which the Imperial Prosecuting Office intends to use for executions instead of the traditional sword. The chapters also establish roles for supporting characters—in the first chapter, for instance, the five rasotsu, who serve as sidekicks, are portrayed as lazy, sleazy and greedy, through a series of amusing sketches. But, what also becomes evident is the reasons they resort to such dishonesty—ranging from the situations in their homes and families to the ways in which these ex-samurai are dealing with changing, conflicting loyalties, and the demands of the new era. Similarly, in the second chapter, readers are exposed to the simmering chaos of the times, and the far-reaching effects of a political assassination—from the way in which the different hierarchies in the Imperial Prosecuting Office and other government departments exploit the situation for their own ends, to how the assassination ends up affecting the conversations and relations between Toshiyoshi and Keishirō, and in their circle of friends and family. What is also established is the 'conceit' that will enable Esmeralda to stay and operate in a Japan that is almost hostile to her.

The mysteries start in earnest from the third chapter onwards, once the groundwork and the rules have been laid. Each tale of mystery (barring the last) begins with a brief segment of a report made by Toshiyoshi that provides a basic outline of the case in question, and ends with a 'performance' by Esmeralda dressed up as a miko (priestess) who communicates with the spirits of the deceased which reveals and denounces their killers. In the first mystery, "A Strange Incident at Tsukiji Hotel", a body is found sliced in half in the great hall of the hotel below the bell tower. In the next one, "From America with Love", a rickshaw with a man plunges into a river drowning its occupant. In the surrounding snow-covered landscape, however, no footprints of the rickshaw-puller are discovered, leading to rumours that the ikiryō (a vengeful, evil spirit) of a war criminal must have committed the deed. "The Hanged Man of Eitai Bridge", on the other hand, unfolds as an alibi-deconstruction story where the victim was hanged from a bridge with the suspect nowhere near the scene of crime. In "Eyes and Legs", people witness an act of decapitation through a telescope, and even though amputated legs are recovered from the site, the victim is never located. Lastly, "The Corpse that Cradled  its Own Head" concerns the investigation into a case in which the beheaded body of a certain person of interest, defiled with manure, appears at a farm. 

In brief, these puzzles form the crux of each story—and, for me, each puzzle and trick boasts of a level of chutzpah comparable to the pranks seen in the Home Alone series. Except, one also recalls how effective young McCallister's snares and traps were. The tricks seen throughout The Meiji Guillotine Murders are just as inspired, unexpected and deadly, if not more. But, that only reveals a part of the picture. A major reason why the books operates as an excellent historical crime narrative is because it blends tradition and modernity, even when it comes to the question of murder mechanisms. From a materialist perspective, it is wonderful to see recently introduced innovations and tools become contraptions of murder. For instance, the functioning of the novel guillotine inspires the perpetrator in "A Strange Incident at Tsukiji Hotel" to come up with his own instrument of execution involving traditional Japanese articles. "From America With Love" sees the newly introduced mode of transport, the hand-pulled rickshaw, become a terrifying contraption of death—one that can be used to move a corpse without leaving any human footprints behind. "The Hanged Man of Eitai" sees another new vessel that transformed waterways businesses and transport—the steamer—being used to reduce time taken to travel between places and thereby, create an alibi. In "Eyes and Legs", the telescope is used not only to gaze upon the changing physical and socio-economic landscape of Edo, but also to look at and reveal modern surgical practices and newer varieties of crime emerging in a new era. The collaborative performances of Esmeralda, Keishirō, and the rasotsu, in the denouement of each case, certainly adds a theatrical element to the proceedings by revealing how each of the contraptions was used.    

It is worth noting that the conversations, decisions and actions of several characters in the background play a significant role in influencing Keishirō, Toshiyoshi and Esmeralda. However, because they are used in a non-intrusive manner and blend seamlessly with the stories, the reader would be hard-pressed to realise that many of them are historical figures—Toshimichi Ōkubo, Takamori Saigō, Takayoshi Kido, Yukichi Fukuzawa, Shinpei Etō, Gensai Kawakami, Nagamichi Ogasawara, Dr. Hepburn, Ginkō Kishida, O-Den, Tomomi Iwakura, Kanzō Uchimura, Tanosuke Sawamura, Aritomo Yamagata, to name a few. In fact, the protagonist Toshiyoshi Kawaji is a real-life figure said to have revolutionised and modernised the Japanese police force. The fact that a lack of awareness about the historical import and significance of the characters does not detract the readers or diminish their enjoyment of the story is a testament to Yamada's superb skill as a storyteller that enables him to integrate these 'easter eggs' that only elevate the audience's experience of and engagement with the work.

From a literary standpoint, The Meiji Guillotine Murders seems to initially develop as a torimonochō story. Adding to this perception is the atmosphere the work creates and sustains, with an emphasis on the 'images-of-the-floating-world' aspect of old Edo—as seen in sections such as "when they saw the fantastic vision of a Heian courtier, seemingly floating before them in a moonlight-drenched Tokyo alleyway, they stopped, spellbound" and "the enormous windows on all four sides of the room had been flung open to the vast autumn night sky with its countless twinkling stars. None of the assembled guests was looking at them, however. It was as though everybody were floating in another dimension altogether." The immediate comparison is with Kidō Okamoto's The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo, an anthology of atmospheric Holmesian short stories set in the Edo of the 1850s, with a languid, nostalgic air about it. The Meiji Guillotine Murders, however, does sketch the socio-political reality of the times to a greater extent and with more urgency, especially in the concluding chapter, "Can There be a Just Government?", which radically changes the nature of the story—from a series of chronological but disjointed stories to a linked-story novel. Not only does it tie up and resolve several discrepancies, it also fundamentally subverts and alters the role of the rasotsu—from being sidekicks and comic foils to being critical components of an all-encompassing criminal plan, plotting their own redemption (of sorts). And it is here that the metaphor of death stalking old Edo gains extra layers—as it turns out, just like the murderers in the individual stories stalk their prey, the rasotsu also follow and stalk these murderers, playing the role of masterminds and facilitators in the background, and providing them with insights, inspiration, and critical services at the right moments, for the furtherance of their objectives.

With its focus on corruption in the old shogunate order as well as in the new Meiji administration, The Meiji Guillotine Murders perhaps resembles Shōtarō Ishinomori's 1966–1973 manga, Sabu to Ichi Torimono Hikae (Sabu and Ichi's Detective Tales) more closely than it does Okamoto's Hanshichi. In Ishinomori's beautifully illustrated but bleak work set in the dying years of the Tokugawa shogunate, Sabu, a young thief-taker, and Ichi, a blind masseur, navigate the harsh Edo landscape populated by a society, impoverished and in ruins, dealing out their severe and fierce (but not unsympathetic) brand of justice to bandits, rouge samurai and corrupt officials, while bemoaning the decaying and rotten state of affairs in the upper echelons of the shogunate that spells unrelenting misfortune and tragedy for the common people Sabu and Ichi try to protect. Neither work quite explicitly puts forth a political opinion or standpoint, but they do share the common theme and agenda of portraying the inherent and deeply embedded corruption in both new and old world orders, and the effect it has on the people who bear its brunt. Even beyond Japan, the use of a linked mystery-story approach to reveal a larger issue in the background has grown in popularity, particularly in the recent spate of Chinese detective shows (such as 2022's Checkmate, an adaptation of a number of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories set against the backdrop of a Republican China) featuring Shanghai and/or Beiing of the 1920s or 1930s.

Reflections after vanquishing the misguided foe (panel from Shōtarō Ishinomori's Sabu and Ichi's Detective Tales, chapter 83, January 1973)

It is safe to say that The Meiji Guillotine Murders has been one of my best finds of the year. Taking inspiration from its predecessors in the genre, the book goes on to lay down an enviable template for future authors dabbling with the historical crime fiction genre to try and emulate—take, for instance, a completely different work such as Honobu Yonezawa's excellent The Samurai and the Prisoner that still feels quite similar to Yamada's work with regards to its modus operandi of stringing individual stories together in the climax. The Meiji Guillotine Murders comes highly recommended, indeed!

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: ‘The Meiji Guillotine’: An excellent historical crime narrative that blends tradition and modernity)

Random Observations: Gimmicks in Crime Fiction

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

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

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

• Characterisation
• Plotting and narrative structuring  

Characterisation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plotting and narrative structuring

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

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

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

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

Intersections

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

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

***

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

Hard Times

If there is one year I wouldn't want to relive in the future, it would probably be 2021. The deaths of dear friends and numerous casualties among my near and dear ones owing to COVID-19, some recurring health issues (both physical and mental)—this year, the losses have been too many to count and bear.

By November, I thought I had left all of these behind, but then came the calling of a new job and, with it, the shift to a new city that left me severely ill. Settling at a new place and figuring out the logistics of my new workplace also took up a fair amount of time, as a result of which I wasn't able to pay any attention, whatsoever, to this blog for a month-and-a-half.

Amidst all these hardships, I suppose I owe a debt of gratitude to one of the most hilarious parodic one-shot mystery manga I have had the pleasure of reading which brightened many a dull and dreary evening. Kumeta Kōji's Shitauke Tantei Nokori Kasuhiro (The Cases of Contract Detective Nokori Kasuhiro: Foreign Student in a Locked Room) was the first entry in a collaboration series between art magazines Mephisto and Magazine on the theme of 'locked rooms'. Kōji is well known for his work on Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, a manga series with a suicidal teacher as the protagonist (and his 'students' as the cast), known for its whimsical absurdism, running gags, dark humour, literary references as well as the eccentric analysis of Japanese society and culture.

Kōji's brand of morbid humour and his use of running gags are made evident in this one-shot manga at the very outset of Shitauke Tantei Nokori Kasuhiro. Kasuhiro Nokori is introduced as a contract detective who takes up cases that are simply too 'annoying' for other well-known detectives such as Conan, Kindaichi and Sherdock to solve. It is his assistant Shiyori Jigo who accepts the case the great Nokori will solve within 20-odd pages. From here on, Kōji pokes fun at crime fiction tropes and conventions in side-splitting fashion. To achieve this, Kōji 'elevates' the tropes and conventions to ridiculous, parodic extremes. For instance, in the narration of Kasuhiro's achievements, Shiyori mentions 'legendary' cases which Kasuhiro has solved by (i) making a hundred round trips of the same train route, (ii) adopting a De Niro-like approach and losing 20 kilograms of weight to solve an incident that happened via an opening too narrow for anyone to pass through, and (iii) diving into a barrel of grated yam that left the detective filling itchy for the following two months. Then, there's the introduction of the stock inspector character, who rules everything as a suicide and is thus named 'suicide officer' Shintarou Mizukara.

Perhaps, even more ludicrous is the setting of the locked room. Surely, it has to go into the annals of crime fiction as the largest locked room—a square, five-kilometre-by-five-kilometre room where the victim, the suspect, the witness and the murder weapon lying at each of the four corners of this gigantic room. At this point, Nokori starts to realise why the other detectives may have given up on this case (there's a hidden meaning to this, though, and things are not what they may seem at first glance), and indeed, it is possible for one to feel sorry for the detective having to travel to each corner and back, multiple times, to connect the threads of information gleaned from the respective corners. But Kōji never lets go of his sense of humour, and the way he portrays the deduction scenes, especially how a 'runner's high' helps solve the case, will more likely leave you doubled up in laughter than feeling sorry.

Ladies and gentlemen, the world's largest literary locked room, courtesy Kumeta Kōji and Shitauke Tantei Nokori Kasuhiro

But, laughs aside, Shitauke Tantei Nokori Kasuhiro is an extremely competent mystery with a killer ending, even though it may seem to come slightly out of left field. Admittedly, the clueing and background information are a bit lacking, but there's only that much you can do within 20 pages. These shortcomings are more than compensated by the first-class deception and misdirection that leads directly into the devastating ending which hits the reader like a ton of bricks. What impresses me most about this one-shot is that nearly all the visual elements (the settings, the characters, the material evidences) that are so ruthlessly parodied also hide sinister meanings and implications behind their apparently ludicrous presence. One can sense Kōji's love and faithfulness towards the parody and crime genres, and it is to his immense credit that he is able to successfully merge the two in such a packed space. Ultimately, he pulls off a sensational and brilliant subversion of the locked room sub-genre using the duality of the synergistic elements he portrays—one where the mystery 'inside' the room matters little in comparison to what's happened 'outside' the room, even though the clues to realise the 'outside' events are all locked 'inside' the massive room.

In the last page, Kōji mentions that he would have loved to make this into a series, but this one-shot already seems to be the last chapter. A lost opportunity, I am sure, for us crime-fiction lovers, but I can sense a kind of resonance between my blog's plight and Kōji's unfulfilled manga series featuring the eccentric Kasuhiro Nokori. Moving forward, I am not sure how regular I will be with my writing on this blog, but as long as fulfilling reads such as Shitauke Tantei Nokori Kasuhiro come to my notice, there is always hope. Never say never, as they say.

Astronomy Domine

"Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania

Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten." 

—Pink Floyd, "Astronomy Domine"

Discussions on crime fiction manga and anime generally tend to veer towards Detective Conan or the Kindaichi series, but there are several others that deserve their fair share of the spotlight as well. Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series (1997–2015) is an excellent case in point, often providing a refreshing alternative to the genre leaders, Conan and Kindaichi.

What these three series have in common is the type of protagonist—a prodigious boy detective put in a comically absurd situation. Detective Conan has high-school detective Shinichi Kudo shrink into a pint-sized primary-schooler who nevertheless retains much of the intellect of his older form. The Kindaichi series has Hajime Kindaichi, a happy-go-lucky school-going teenager who always manages to get sucked into life-threatening locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. Much in the same vein, Q.E.D. has Sou Touma, a 16-year-old M. I. T.-graduate who left behind his thesis work to come to Japan and experience life as a normal (but somewhat aloof) high-school student. Unfortunately for him, he is often bullied into solving cases by his outgoing friend, Kana Mizuhara, the daughter of a local police officer who also jokingly backs up her 'threats' with a show of her immense strength and rather violent tendencies.

While the choice of such protagonists (for these serious, exemplary mystery works) may seem quite strange for an outside reader, teenage/boy detectives have been a popular phenomena in Japan ever since the time of Edogawa Rampo's Shōnen Tantei-dan. Seen in this light, it makes sense for mangakas to rely on such a tried-and-tested trope to boost visibility, while the fantastic (one may say, scarcely credible) situations these youngsters are put in go on to lure in more readers. Another important reason for such a choice of protagonist is the fact that these series fall under the shounen manga bracket whose main audience consists of young teenagers in middle or high school—the reason why manga artists and creators may feel the need to make their main characters relatable to a young readership.

Be that as it may, this is probably the only similarity between Q.E.D. and its companions. Q.E.D. fundamentally differs from its competition in the puzzles it presents and the way in which it approaches mystery storytelling. For one, it is very much focused on science and philosophy—especially the more complex and obscure concepts (hey, Touma's M. I. T. credentials can't just be for nothing!)—and both the scientific and philosophical elements are often central to the story, plot-wise or thematically. They are used for comic effects as well—and the sight of Touma (on multiple occasions) trying to explain complicated theories, in the simplest of ways, to a lazy Mizuhara who happens to be extremely curious and then refuses to see the point of it all deserves more than a single chuckle. Many of the stories are grounded in history, archaeology, astronomy and other specialised fields of knowledge, giving Katou the opportunity to provide his theories on contentious, long-debated topics. In this respect, it superficially resembles Master Keaton (given the gamut of esoteric subjects both of the works explore), but then again, the way Q. E. D. approaches its matter is very different from the treatment dished out in Master Keaton.

Each volume of Q. E. D. consists of two complete stories with nothing spilling over to another volume. What this effectively ensures is that the stories are much more compact than those in Detective Conan or the Kindaichi series (which usually devote 6 to 10 chapters for a particular mystery). Q. E. D. strikes a fine balance between comic storytelling and portraying scenes with adequate gravitas and pathos as and when the situation demands. There's a light, airy feel to the narratives that also leaves room for character development, which is in sharp contrast to the heavy, overlaid and overbearing atmosphere of the Detective Conan and Kindaichi stories. At the same time, plot developments can pack quite the punch, resulting in stories one is not likely to forget soon.

I was drawn to Q. E. D. after reading the story called "The Fading of Star Map" in volume 3 of the series. For me, it still stands out as the quintessential Q. E. D. story showcasing the elements that make this series unique. On a remote, snow-capped mountain stands a lonely, abandoned star observatory. In its early days, it would have made for quite the sight, but sadly, its days are now numbered. Changing times and a new ski resort in its surroundings ensure that it will have to be demolished so that it poses no danger to skiing enthusiasts passing through the region. However, there's an issue—the founder of the observatory, Fukutaro Tsukishima, has been missing for 25 years. A state-appointed investigator therefore summons Tsukishima's existing relatives (his sons, a granddaughter and his brother-in-law) to figure out his legal successor and beneficiary, the one who will bear the expenses of the demolition.

Into this austere gathering steps in Touma and Mizuhara, both of whom got lost from their school-trip group at the resort in the midst of a blizzard. The curious visitors start exploring the observatory (which is shown to still be perfectly operational), when they suddenly stumble upon the charred, skeletal remains of a long-deceased person inside a gigantic telescope. The mysteries only multiply with conversations around the sketchy history of Tsukishima and his family (some even consider him to be his wife's murderer—a view that will later prove to have major ramifications). What really happened to Tsukishima? Did he really kill his wife? If not, how did she really die? What is the mystery behind the portrait of the dog found in the observatory? And if that isn't enough, add to this the murder of Tsukishima's brother-in-law, who is found hanging outside the bathroom window the following morning. Touma really has his task cut out for him this time around.

Boy, does he come up aces with the solutions to all the mysteries (present and past) and how! "The Fading of Star Map" is, at its heart, an extremely capable, tightly-plotted architectural mystery. As Touma explains, the directions of the wind at definite times of the day, the rotation of the upper part of the observatory corresponding to the movement of certain stars under watch and the rotation (in the opposite direction) of the telescope itself are integral to solving the mystery and also serve as tell-tale clues pinpointing the identity of the culprit. It can all be a bit too technical for some, but if ever there was a case where a patient, step-by-step, close reading and understanding rewarded readers handsomely, it is this one. 

The corpse in the telescope is discovered

But what really elevates this mystery is how the remaining clues (the dog portrait, for instance) and the information gleaned from the conversations and interactions between the characters tie into a neat whole to reveal a tragic backstory of astronomical proportions. The series of misunderstandings that lie at the heart of the murder cases, both present and past, are all cleverly foreshadowed. There is a scathing indictment of the lies that adults tell impressionable children, but what's really heartbreaking to notice is the misguiding effect it has on the culprit in this instance (one's heart goes out to them) that leads him to commit unforgivable acts separated by several years. In that respect, this is perhaps, one of those 'had-I-but-known' mysteries, but this time, the tragedy is that it is from the perspective of the murderer, in the sense that had they been aware of the deception by X individual, they would never have stooped so low to commit these deeds, nor would they have been driven to kill their own self at the end of it all.

It is perhaps fitting that "The Fading of Star Map" reminds me most of Keikichi Osaka's lighthouse stories in The Ginza Ghost, where the operation of the lighthouse and its scientific explanation are integral to solving the tragic events in both stories. And much like its illustrious predecessors, "The Fading of Star Map" is a worthy addition to the honkaku/shin honkaku hall of fame.