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!

Night of the Living Dead

The tendency of Japanese mystery authors to fixate on apocalyptic, end-of-the-times themes has much to do with the country's own tryst with bloody conflicts, internecine strife and wars going back decades and centuries. This is visible in the settings and politics of works by prolific wartime authors such as Seishi Yokomizo (taking on the theme of the disfigured individual and society crippled by the Second World War in multiple novels) and Akimitsu Takagi (portraying the seedy underworld in the midst of bombed-out ruins in The Tattoo Murder Case). Images of the war continue to loom large in the works of authors writing a few decades later such as Natsuhiko Kyogoku (with a number of characters in the Kyōgokudō series suffering from post-war PTSD), and in manga series such as The Kindaichi Case Files and Detective School Q (both of which have stories with wartime biological experimentation in their backgrounds). And, if one includes historical crime fiction in the equation, the net has to be cast much wider, travelling further back in time — Honobu Yonezawa's The Samurai and the Prisoner takes place against the backdrop of the siege of the Arioka Castle (1578–1579), while the events of the Boshin Civil War (1868–1869) and the Meiji Restoration play an important role in Fūtarō Yamada's The Meiji Guillotine Murders.

When Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no Satsujin (translated as Death Among the Undead, Locked Room International, 2021) first came out in 2017, it was widely hailed as a much-needed shot in the arm for the shin honkaku sub-genre. As Soji Shimada points out in his insightful introduction to the book's translation, the genre had been showing tendencies similar to the preceding 'social school of mystery fiction'—namely that the sub-genre was restricting and limiting itself too much by sticking religiously to a select few 'golden rules', as a result of which originality was being stifled. Indeed, if one simply glances, at the surface level, the elements the novel introduces and the genres it blends, Shimada's observation is warranted. Yet, as has happened with so many works in the past, Death Among the Undead is also driven by bloody violence, albeit in a modern avatar—a bioterrorist attack.

Imamura clearly loves popular Japanese mystery tropes—a university setting, mystery clubs and an incredibly young cast. In fact, the opening stretches resemble, in essence, Yukito Ayatsuji's groundbreaking novel, The Decagon House Murders. The wry, self-deprecating humour ("It was up for debate whether his 'deductions' could be considered logical, but I did agree that humans do not act as predictably as they do in books.") punctuating sections (such as the one where Shinkō University's Mystery Society members Kyōsuke Akechi and Yuzuru Hamura make idle deductions on the food a girl may order at the cafeteria, or the one where Akechi strikes a 'deal' with real-life detective Hiruko Kenzaki to enter the Film Club's summer trip) makes for easy reading in the early going. All the ingredients indicate a classic, closed-circle setup: the Film Club receiving a threatening letter on who the next 'sacrifice' will be, and all the members of the Film Club going ahead with the trip and gathering at the Villa Violet close to Lake Sabea, with Akechi, Hamura and Kenzaki as the 'invited' guests.

It is here that another thread in the form of a bioterrorist attack at the Sabea Rock Festival nearby collides with this closed-circle setup with the force of a freight train, and transforms the section into a scene straight out of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Even though the members could hear ambulance sirens since the afternoon and observe an unusual glow from the festival area, it is only during the evening-time Trial of Courage held between the Club members that things are thrown into disarray. By this time, there have been significant casualties, but it is during the main cast's encounter with wandering zombies that the novel acquires a personal touch. Both the Club members as well as Yuzura lose their friends to the horde of zombies wildly stumbling about. They are also forced to retreat into the confines of the Villa Violet, while closing, shuttering up all points of entry and egress, and barricading themselves. The book then purports to unfold as a zombie survival narrative. Or, does it?

The use of zombies to double down on the closed-circle and enforced isolationist aspects of the novel, besides positioning them as potential instruments and perpetrators of murders most foul, can indeed be considered to be revolutionary in textual or literary terms. However, in my view, Death Among the Dead can best be enjoyed as a cinematic experience*. Much of it has to do with how the novel transpires henceforth. First, Imamura carefully outlines the extent of the zombies' capabilities, laying out what they can and cannot do:

"[...] these zombies appeared to have badly-developed motor skills. Their speed of movement on the steps was much slower than on level ground, and they had trouble staying balanced. Any zombie that did somehow manage to make their way up found the barricades in their way, got their feet wrapped up in the sheets and tripped backwards, taking the zombies behind with them in their fall. The process kept repeating itself. [...]"

Despite all the precautions taken based on the collective observations of the gathered people, the following morning, one of the members is found dead in a closed room in a gross manner (with his face gnawed off), slowly transforming into a zombie before the witness' eyes. The victim is 'killed' a second time, before the observers find a note with the words 'let's eat'. This sets off a second wave of revised speculations and discourse on zombies, their abilities, and the process of zombiefication, with conversations on locked room mysteries and their applicability (in the current scenario) thrown in between. Some of the discourse has a surprising philosophical depth (which is, unfortunately, never really followed up on), despite being peppered with pop-cultural references to cult hits in the zombie fiction genre, such as Resident Evil and Shaun of the Dead:

"Zombies are not simply grotesque, horrifying monsters anymore. They are beings that can be used to cast a light on so many themes: the sin of man, economic class differences, the strong and the weak, or the tragedy of how friends and family can turn into enemies in the blink of an eye. Zombies are projections of our own egos and minds."

However, no amount of philosophising, theorising and notes-taking help the survivors prevent two other murders—one on the second night and the other on the morning of the third day. In the second case, the corpse is found with its head smashed to bits in a closed elevator stuck on the second floor of the building, while the third case involved the poisoning of a character in the room he had holed himself up in. In the meantime, the threat of the gathering multitudes of zombies breaking through the barriers put in place has increased exponentially.

So, these three incidents, featuring the involvement of zombies to varying degrees, form the crux of the narrative. The incidents are all explained in a rational manner—and to answer the question I had posed earlier, it is ironic to note that the way the novel unfolds after the introduction of the zombies makes it a celebration of logical and deductive reasoning, with the survival of characters against a zombie outbreak being presented as a consequential byproduct. In particular, I prefer the explanation of the first incident, which has a tragic and pathetic aspect to it, and merges the mystery and horror aspects very well.

Perhaps, it all unfolds a bit too logically and rationally for a reader invested in the setting of the work. The biggest failure here, in my opinion, is that Imamura sorely undersells the psychological impact of the zombie attack on the characters. The fact that they all display too much of a 'calmer heads should prevail, let's wait for help to arrive' attitude, accompanied by an almost placid acceptance of the situation, beggars belief and feels excessively unnatural, artificial and forced by the dictates of the author's plotting preferences and the need to conform to a particular brand of mystery fiction. There's no unpredictability or instinctiveness in the reactions of the characters holed up in Villa Violet in the face of a zombie invasion. Instead, even though the book had previously poked fun at the predictability of characters in fictional works, it all feels too premeditated, predictable and well-rehearsed, like a movie script. What's disappointing is that the zombies are almost peripheral in the central sections of the book, only serving as tools to advance the plot, and the sense of threat emanating from their presence is often severely underplayed. Paradoxically, therefore, the introduction of the zombie element that promised to add a new dimension to the dynamics of the shin honkaku sub-genre ends up restricting the narrative potential by imposing the dictates of a classically-constructed shin honkaku story on to the characters and their reactions that do not seem to be appropriate to the circumstances they face (except for the portion after the denouement leading to the rescue of the remaining characters). What's extremely lacking is a consistent level of panic and nervous/manic energy seen in, say, Frederic Brown's Night of the Jabberwock.

It begs the question: is the inspired use of zombies really essential to Imamura's debut work? Given the larger genre-wide implications it has wrought, the answer is a resounding yes. But, seen in the context of Death Among the Undead specifically, one cannot help but argue that Imamura fails to do justice to or explore the enormous potential of the zombies that he introduces in his fictional universe. Akechi indeed has the final say when he remarks, "... Things don't always go right."

*Thankfully, a 2019 movie version of Death Among the Undead, titled Murder at Shijinso, can be found online. In all respects, it is fairly faithful to the events in the book, but the use of dramatic tropes, some creative liberties and a stylised treatment focusing more on the action and survival elements, makes for a more entertaining, spectacle-filled view that could help one gloss over the identity-based issues one encounters when reading the book.

The Rain Song

I had initially planned to discuss Suishakan no Satsujin (1988; translated and published as The Mill House Murders by Pushkin Vertigo in 2023), the second novel in Yukito Ayatsuji's Yakata series, alongside The Decagon House Murders, but my fanboying of the latter turned too long for my taste. Hence, the decision to write about The Mill House Murders in a separate post.

The way things ended in The Decagon House Murders, it was hard to envision a sequel to the work. The Mill House Murders, while not exactly a sequel in the truest sense of the word, serves as a great example of how even a minor, almost inconsequential, detail can serve as the basis of a series in continuity — in my very limited reading of the Yakata series (only two works in English translation so far), the two connecting threads would be that they share a common detective and that they are all set in mansions and buildings constructed by the eccentric architect, Seiji Nakamura, introduced and killed off in the first novel itself. The result seems to be a series whose works can be enjoyed both as standalone entries (featuring the odd tribute to previous masters of the craft) as well as part of a loosely-connected chronological set. And on that note of continuity, The Mill House Murders is a work that is fascinatingly similar and dissimilar to The Decagon House Murders, in ways both good and bad.

My first impression of the second entry in the Yakata series was that the sprightly, breezy nature of the first novel had been replaced with a heavy, brooding atmosphere. While The Decagon House Murders had a lightness of touch to it, replicating the essence of an Ellery-Queen puzzle plot, The Mill House Murders is heavy-handed in its execution, doffing its hat instead to the works of another master, John Dickson Carr. However, the main trickery employed here makes it another Christie tribute novel, in my opinion, even though it may not be as evident as seen in The Decagon House Murders.

The Mill House Murders is narrated from the perspective of one of the characters, a resident of the eponymous Mill House (named so after the mill wheels generating power), another strange creation of Seiji Nakamura. The narrator is introduced as the current owner of the Mill House — and is the son of a 'visionary' painter who drew a number of remarkable surrealist scenes and landscapes before dying. Every year, he hosts a diverse group of guests — a disciple of the deceased visionary painter, an art dealer, a professor of art history, a director of a surgical hospital, and a few others — all of whom gather to marvel at the painter's works and to chance their luck at buying one of the masterpieces (particularly The Phantom Cluster, a painting that no one has seen). However, tragedy struck when the group met a year prior to the events of the novel — "a woman fallen from the tower", "a painting disappeared", "a man vanished under seemingly impossible circumstances", and "another man ... killed, cut up in pieces and burnt in the incinerator". The novel does a great job, straight-up mentioning the past mysteries in the prologue itself. And, thrown into this mix is the series detective, Kiyoshi Shimada, who arrives to the mansion in the present day, to solve the mystery of his friend's impossible disappearance the year previous. 

But then, it starts to suffer from a few design issues. Unlike The Decagon House Murders, the division of the narrative in The Mill House Murders is mostly time-based as the movements of the characters are limited to the confines of the mansion and its tower. What this essentially means is that most of the action in the novel consists of a cast of mostly familiar faces roaming over the same grounds in different combinations and circumstances. While this is not a bad thing by itself, the novel goes out of its way in the early stages to demonstrate how eerily the events of the present day and the previous year parallel each other. Consider, for example, the two opening sections of the first two chapters:

I woke as I usually do. The amber curtains were drawn over the windows facing the courtyard to the east, but the bright morning sun shone right through them into the room. It was quiet outside, but if I listened carefully, I could just make out the faint chirping of the mountain birds, as well as the distant sound of flowing water. I could also hear the heavy rumble of the mill wheels, always revolving by the western side of this house. It was a peaceful morning.

We’d had good weather ever since September came along, but the news last night had reported an approaching typhoon. The forecast said it would start raining in the Chūgoku region this afternoon. This morning was thus, truly, the calm before the storm.

I slowly sat up in the spacious bed. The clock on the wall showed half past eight. The same time I always woke up.

Leaning back against the headboard, I reached for the nightstand with my right hand, picked up my old briar pipe and packed it with tobacco. Soon a mellow scent filled the room, accompanied by cream-coloured smoke.

“A typhoon, eh?” I mumbled out loud to myself. My voice was unnaturally hoarse.

I had to think back to exactly one year ago, 28th September. The morning of that fateful day had been the same as today. There’d been reports of an approaching typhoon then too. And it arrived just as forecast.

One year… A whole year had passed since that blood-soaked night.

I became lost in thought, my hand swaying with the pipe. The tentacles of my mind crept towards the events of that night one year ago, to everything that occurred the following day, and even to what happened afterwards.

I stole a glance at the door in the corner of the room, the bronze doorknob and dark mahogany panelling. That door, which led to the study, would never be opened again…

My lean body suddenly shuddered. An indescribable, inescapable shiver welled up from deep within and ran through my whole being.

It was a quarter to nine now. The phone on my nightstand would ring soon, softly signalling the start of another day.

“Good morning, sir.”

The familiar voice on the other end of the line sounded calm. It was the butler, Kuramoto Shōji.

“I will be bringing you your breakfast right away.”

“Thanks.”

I placed my pipe on its stand and started getting dressed. I took my pyjamas off, put on a shirt and trousers, and a dressing gown on top. When I had managed to do all of this, I put the cotton gloves on both my hands. And finally, it was time to put on my face.

My mask.

That mask was a symbol of my whole life at this time, a symbol of everything that Fujinuma Kiichi now was.

A mask. Indeed, I had no face. I wore that mask every single day to hide my accursed features. The white mask was now the real face of the master of the house. The rubber clung to my skin. A cold death mask worn by a living man.

and

He woke as he usually did. The amber curtains were drawn over the windows facing the courtyard to the east, but the bright morning sun shone right through them into the room. It was quiet outside, but if he listened carefully, he could just make out the faint chirping of the mountain birds, as well as the distant sound of flowing water. He could also hear the heavy rumble of the mill wheels, always revolving by the western side of the house. It was a peaceful morning.

The news last night had reported an approaching typhoon. The forecast said it would start raining in the Chūgoku region on the afternoon of the 28th.

He slowly sat up in the spacious bed. The clock on the wall showed half past eight. The same time he always woke up.

Leaning back against the headboard, he reached for the nightstand with his right hand, picked up his old briar pipe and packed it with tobacco. Soon a mellow scent filled the room, accompanied by cream-coloured smoke.

Three days ago he’d caught a cold and ran a fever, but he’d recovered now. He could savour the scent of tobacco again.

He slowly closed his eyes as he puffed his pipe.

28th September. Ōishi Genzō, Mori Shigehiko, Mitamura Noriyuki and Furukawa Tsunehito. Today was the day the four of them would visit him in the afternoon, just as they had done in previous years.

Their annual visit was not a joyous occasion for him, living as he did in this house deep in the mountains, hiding from the outside world. He honestly felt their visit was a great annoyance.

Yet he was also in denial about his feelings. He could easily tell them not to come if he genuinely did not want them to. But his inability to turn them away all these years was perhaps partially due to guilt.

He kept his eyes closed as a low sigh escaped his cracked lips.

Anyway, they’re coming today. It’d all been decided, so nothing could be changed now.

He had no intention of making a detailed analysis of his own contradictory thoughts. The visit plagued him, but he also welcomed it. That was all there was to it.

It was a quarter to nine now. The phone on his nightstand would ring soon, softly signifying the start of another day.

“Good morning, sir.”

The familiar voice on the other end of the line sounded calm. It was the butler, Kuramoto Shōji.

“How are you feeling, sir?”

“Better now, thanks.”

“I can bring your breakfast immediately if you wish.”

“I’ll come down myself.”

He placed his pipe on its stand and started getting dressed. He took his pyjamas off, put on a shirt and trousers, and a dressing gown on top. When he had managed to do all of this, he put the cotton gloves on both his hands. And finally, it was time to put on his face.

His mask. 

The mask could be considered the symbol of the last twelve years of his life, a symbol of everything that Fujinuma Kiichi was.

Indeed, he had no face. He wore this mask every single day to hide his accursed features. This white mask bearing the features of Fujinuma Kiichi, the master of this house. The rubber clung to his skin. A cold death mask worn by a living man.

There are important reasons, both stylistic and plot-based, behind such a narration, which are revealed towards the end of the novel. But, I am not sure that this style of closely mirroring prose over long stretches and/or entire chapters is necessarily in the best interests of the book. If nothing else, it invites the allegation that the narration is lazy, long-drawn and stretched—an allegation that is justifiable for the first half of the novel. Even more infuriating is the fact that the repetition spills over into the conversations between the characters during this stretch, with the result that, time and again, readers are forcibly reminded of the multiple events that occurred in many of the characters' pasts, to the point of memorising them. Even though a sense of unease (that things are not as they seem) persists—and despite Shimada's constant needling—any fair, outright indication of the deception behind the events of the past is not explicitly revealed till a much later period in the novel.

The experience of reading the first half/three-fourths of the novel is akin to that of playing a challenging, laborious dungeon-crawler game where one knows the entry- and exit-points of the maze and, seemingly, the major boss to be overcome. However, they still need to explore the same dungeon time-and-time again to unravel different secrets (spaces, quests or resources) that reveal themselves only during a replay and which have a bearing on the game and its completion, and can potentially change the nature of the dungeon-space itself. In the case of The Mill House Murders, readers are likely to retread the same incidents, stories from the past and developments in the present time from the mostly similar perspectives of multiple characters—and each time, they are likely to have to refer to the previous mention of said incident to spot the critical difference/change in viewpoint. Besides not making for a smooth, fluid read, this is, indeed, an excruciating exercise in patience—not unlike taking on and staring at an extremely difficult spot-the-difference challenge where the differences are microscopic to a visible eye.

It does not help that a superior treatment of this narrative style, in my opinion, is seen in Taiwanese author Szu Yen Lin's Death in the House of Rain (translated and published in English by Locked Room International, 2017)—a far more fluid, fast-paced read than The Mill House Murders because of the simple fact that the individual incidents do not overstay their welcome and the characters are hardly given time to obsess endlessly over past events. Even more damning is the fact that The Mill House Murders itself does not really provide a framework with which one can appreciate the narrative style employed (even though it is tepid and off-putting in its execution), or a solid rationale for its application. For instance, a recent chapter of Motohiro Katou's manga, Q.E.D. iff, employs two legal principles that may be used to cultivate a somewhat begrudging admiration of the way things unfold in The Mill House Murders. In chapter 46 of the manga series (a story titled "Legal Realism"), a character provides a beginner's introduction to the judicial principles used to resolve civil and criminal cases—namely, 'legal realism' and 'legal formalism', respectively. In 'legal realism', which is employed in civil cases, the 'matching parts' of conflicting testimonies are upheld as 'the truth', even though they may oppose each other completely in other respects. However, in 'legal formalism' (used in criminal cases), the minutest details, facts, testimonies, perspectives and discrepancies are gathered and thoroughly investigated to establish and verify 'the truth'. Analysed from this perspective, it can be argued that the opening half of The Mill House Murders adheres more to the 'legal realism' principle, whereby certain core 'facts' are established to be 'the truth' through their constant repetition, whereas the other half goes about subverting, unravelling and undoing the aforesaid, established 'facts' and the core 'truth' by employing 'legal formalism' through the disruptive activities of the detective, Kiyoshi Shimada.

It is a shame then that the first 150-odd pages are so challenging to get by, because when the revelations emerge in the latter half, they come in fast and hit real hard. Architecture plays a greater and more central role in this story than it did in The Decagon House Murders, with one particular resolution evoking the spirit of Gaston Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) in a wonderful way. Ayatsuji also shows a marked improvement in certain aspects of his craft—the characterisation, in particular. He fleshes out the characters of his cast well, and gives them motivations and more pronounced roles than he did in The Decagon House Murders—from the very young, Rapunzel-esque wife of the narrator who is confined in the fairy-tale setting of the tower, to the brash and extremely forward hospital director, to the meek and subdued art professor, all of whom have different reasons for their presence at the Mill House, that are independent of the motives of the protagonist or antagonist. Personally, I also like the atmosphere here, with its constant evocation of the rainy, drenched and soaked weather in both of the years the work traverses between, particularly as I find it conducive to the setting up and maintenance, throughout, of a brooding, overwhelming mood that is appropriate for the story.

But alas, I cannot help but feel that The Mill House Murders would have been far better served as a novella (with better design choices, less narrative repetition and experimentation, and more impact) rather than as a full-blown novel. There are cases in which the saying 'less is more' rings true—this is certainly the case with Ayatsuji's second outing as well, despite him showing definite improvement as a writer.

Killing Floor

Yukito Ayatsuji's Yakata (literally, mansion) series, starting with the 1987 novel Jukkakukan no Satsujin Shinsou Kaiteiban (translated and published in English as The Decagon House Murders by Locked Room International in 2015, and republished by Pushkin Vertigo in 2020), is widely considered to have heralded the much-revered shin-honkaku (new orthodox) school of mystery writing in Japan. At the heart of this sub-genre was a shift to a more classical style, in sharp contrast to the social-commentary-on-crime approach that was more prevalent back then.

In many ways, The Decagon House Murders marks a break from pre-existing conventions and reads like a mission statement for a new, upcoming era. In a previous post on Alice Arisugawa's The Moai Island Puzzle, I quoted a segment from the early sections of The Decagon House Murders that reads like a statement of authorial intent:

"In my opinion, mystery fiction is, at its core, a kind of intellectual puzzle. An exciting game of reasoning in the form of a novel. A game between the reader and the great detective, or the reader and the author. Nothing more or less than that.

So enough gritty social realism please. A female office worker is murdered in a one-bedroom apartment and, after wearing out the soles of his shoes through a painstaking investigation, the police detective finally arrests the victim's boss, who turns out to be her illicit lover. No more of that! No more of the corruption and secret dealings of the political world, no more tragedies brought forth by the stress of modern society and suchlike. What mystery novels need are—some might call me old-fashioned—a great detective, a mansion, a shady cast of residents, bloody murders, impossible crimes and never-before-seen tricks played by the murderer. Call it my castle in the sky, but I'm happy as long as I can enjoy such a world. But always in an intellectual manner."

Ayatsuji faithfully sticks to the essence of this declaration throughout the novel—a fact evident from the premise itself. Seven university students, all members of a mystery club, head to Tsunojima Island to solve an unsolved case involving the death of an architect who built the only two places of residence on the island (the Decagon House and the Blue Mansion), and the members of his household (including the gardener and the servants). The students—Agatha, Carr, Ellery, Leroux, Orczy, Poe and Van Dine—put up at the Decagon House, the Blue Mansion having burnt down during the murder incident, six months ago. The members are however unsettled by a number of strange events that happen soon after their arrival and sow discord and doubt between them. Soon, the events turn out to be too ominous as, one by one, they are all killed in different ways—strangulation, poisoning, a blow to the head and burning. It all ends in a manner eerily reminiscent to what had happened six months earlier—just like the Blue Mansion was burned to the ground back then, this time, the Decagon House is set ablaze by the culprit, with the "extraordinary light even visible in S— Town across the sea."

Back in the mainland, Taka'aki Minami, a former member of the mystery club, and Kiyoshi Shimada, a self-styled investigator, find themselves entangled in the case of the death of the aforesaid architect, Seiji Nakamura. They indulge in a bit of sleuthing, armchair and on foot, with the occasional help of Kyōichi Morisu (another member of the mystery club who didn't make the trip to Tsunojima), hoping to uncover the truth of the previous incident. The reason for their sudden interest is that both Taka'aki and Kyōichi receive an anonymous letter accusing them of murdering Chiori Nakamura, a student who passed away during a New Year's party the previous year. Incidentally, Chiori happened to be the daughter of Seiji Nakamura. With the incidents all intertwined, will Shimada and company be able to solve the mysteries of the deaths of the Nakamura family members, as well as those of the university students condemned to a fiery funeral?

It goes without saying that many individual elements of this work are a nod to the Agatha Christie classic, And Then There Were None: the isolated island setup, the modus operandi of bumping off characters one after the other, the bottled 'confession'. But, what Ayatsuji crafts with these elements is something refreshingly original, in which the sum of the parts is larger than the individual elements. The Decagon House Murders is a sprightly, breezy read driven by a narrative structure that moves across space and time. The chapters place the reader either on the mainland or the island—almost always at the spot of (potential) crime and the investigation occurring in parallel—for each of the days, spanning from when the mystery club travels to Tsunojima till the day the Decagon House ends up in flames. The flowing narrative always clues readers in on the action—whether it be the increasingly pointed dialogue signifying increasing tension and suspicion between the club members or the intricacies of the investigation on the mainland that uncovers hidden truths. And yet, Ayatsuji finds space enough for subtle trickery that subverts reader expectations. As astute observers will point out, Ayatsuji fleshes out several important but minute background details, that may slip by unnoticed, to strengthen plausibility and the logical foundations of the work.    

Perhaps, the fact that Ayatsuji does not really try to overdo the mysteries works most in favour of the novel. Neither does he go out of his way to pile on twists and red herrings just for the sake of adding them. As a result, readers are invited to think for themselves and make deductions for themselves. For instance, after a certain point, the distance and the connecting bridges between the two key mysteries become evident—and despite the actions, thoughts and obsessions of a certain 'detective' on the island, perceptive readers should be able to fathom the extent of his mistaken perceptions. And, though the persistence of said character does end up solving an enduring puzzle, it ultimately provides little relief for him and the readers. What the novel also does really well is to present the execution of a flexible murder scheme—even though the rough outlines are in place, the culprit always manages to find a way to tweak and make minor adjustments depending on the circumstances, to avoid detection. However, my only minor gripe is that The Decagon House Murders does not really make use of architectural elements in the story. They become a footnote and are used to resolve a side-plot too late in the story. Furthermore, some of the impossible situations set up in the Decagon House are pretty much explained by the first, commonsensical thought that's likely to occur to people when faced with such a conundrum.

Despite the clever little puzzles and tricks and the overall playfulness of the narrative, The Decagon House Murders is not a bombastic read by any means. It also doesn't pass judgement on the culprit or their actions. In fact, the conventional 'denouement scene' where the sleuth exposes the criminal before an audience is entirely absent in the novel. This makes for a sombre and subdued atmosphere, marked by a rather tender prologue and epilogue that adds unexpected depth to the culprit's character. Consider, for instance, the following soul-searching internal conversation at the very start:

"The sea at night.  A time of quietude. 

No flickering of the stars, no light of the ships off-coast could disturb the darkness into which he gazed. He contemplated his plan once again. 

Preparations were almost finished. Soon they, his sinful prey, would walk into his trap. A trap consisting of ten equal sides and interior angles. 

They would arrive there suspecting nothing. Without any hesitation or fear they would walk into the decagonal trap, where they would be sentenced. 

What awaits them there is, of course, death. It is the obvious punishment for all of them. 

And no simple deaths. Blowing them all up in one go would be infinitely easier and more certain, but he should not choose that route. 

He has to kill them in order, one by one. Precisely like that story written by the famous British female writer—slowly, one after the other. He shall make them know. The suffering, the sadness, the pain and terror of death. 

Perhaps he had become mentally unstable. He himself would be the first to admit to that. 

I know—no matter how I try to justify it, what I am planning to do is not sane. 

He slowly shook his head at the pitch-black roiling sea. 

His hand, thrust into his coat pocket, touched something hard. He grabbed the object and took it out, holding it in front of his eyes. 

It was a small transparent bottle of green glass. 

It was sealed off securely with a stopper, and bottled inside was all he had managed to gather from inside his heart: what people like to call “conscience.” A few folded sheets of paper, sealed. On it he had printed in small letters the plan he was about to execute. It had no addressee. It was a letter of confession. 

I know Man will never become a god.

And precisely because he understood that, he did not want to leave the final judgment to a human to make. It didn’t matter where the bottle ended up. He just wanted to pose the question to the sea—the source of all life—whether, ultimately, he was right or no."

Or, for another example, the culprit's futile attempt at gaining emotional closure:

"The sea at dusk. A time of quietude.  

The waves shining red in the setting sun came from far away to wash against the shore and retreat back from whence they came. 

Just as once before, he was sitting alone on the breakwater, staring at the sea at sunset. 

Chiori…. 

He had been repeating her name in his mind for a while. 

Chiori, Chiori…. 

He closed his eyes and the fire of that night came back vividly alive. A giant fire of remembrance, which enveloped the decagonal trap that caught his prey and burnt through the night. 

Her image joined that sight in his mind. He tried calling out to her. But she was looking away and did not answer him. 

What’s wrong, Chiori? 

The flames danced more furiously and burnt brighter. The image of his love was caught in the fire, until its contour was swallowed completely and she disappeared. 

Silently he stood up. 

Several children were playing in the water. He stood there, staring at that scenery with narrowed eyes. 

‘Chiori.’ 

He muttered her name once again, this time out loud. But she did not appear anymore, whether he closed his eyes or looked up at the sky. A fathomless sense of emptiness tortured him, as if something had been ripped away from his heart. 

The sea was about to blend in with the night. The waves carrying the last light of the setting sun resonated silently."

It is a narrative device that one sees in a number of storylines in the far more dramatic series, Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, especially in segments following the climax. In fact, there are more than a few interesting similarities between the two. And, just as And Then There Were None served as a template here, I would argue that The Decagon House Murders also serves as a prototype for future mystery works across different media. For instance, the Kindaichi series shares a penchant for island mysteries (Uta island and Seiren island being cases in point). Additionally, and more specifically, the 'Lake Hiren Murder Case' (in the Kindaichi series) employs a variation of the trick used to 'connect' the mainland and Tsunojima in The Decagon House Murders. On the other hand, the entire motif of a certain architect's creations as the setting for a series of murder mysteries has been replicated in manga such as Tantei Gakuen Q (Detective School Q) and Tantei Xeno to Nanatsu no Satsujin Misshitsu (Detective Xeno and the Seven Locked Murder Rooms).

Its narrative credentials aside, The Decagon House Murders proved to be a watershed moment for a new, emerging style of mystery fiction in literature, the success of which then led to its widespread popularity in popular culture (manga, anime and films) within a decade of its publication, and the influence of which can be seen in this decade as well. From a literary and cross-media perspective, it is a work of monumental importance for scholars and aficionados of the genre—and it rightfully deserves every bit of the reputation it has earned and continues to, to this day.  

Soji Shimada's Bloody Christmas Gifts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Treasure Island

I have an unusually soft spot for mysteries and murders set in islands, and have been fortunate enough to have read and watched some of the best on offer—Shetland (based on Ann Cleeves' Jimmy Pérez books) and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None come to mind. Japanese authors, in particular, have mastered the art of delivering pitch-perfect island mysteries that utilise the unique environs to perfection—Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no Shinsou Kaiteiban (translated into English as The Decagon House Murders), Seishi Yokomizo's Gokumon-tō (Prison Gate Island) or any of the several Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo tales set on isles are only a few that promise a rollicking good time.

Ayatsuji's 1987 novel The Decagon House Murders, a wonderfully original take on the Christie classic And Then There Were None, was a watershed moment in the annals of crime fiction writing in Japan. In it, Ayatsuji lays the foundations of what would later come to be known as the shin honkaku (new orthodox) school of mystery writing—a sub-genre that would, soon enough, lure amateur writers away from crafting social mysteries and later earn a legion of devoted fans whose admiration remains unsullied to this day. Early on in this book, one of the characters articulates what would essentially become a clarion call to future writers of this school. It is worth quoting in its entirety, especially as it aptly describes what the shin honkaku school stands for:

"In my opinion, mystery fiction is, at its core, a kind of intellectual puzzle. An exciting game of reasoning in the form of a novel. A game between the reader and the great detective, or the reader and the author. Nothing more or less than that.

So enough gritty social realism please. A female office worker is murdered in a one-bedroom apartment and, after wearing out the soles of his shoes through a painstaking investigation, the police detective finally arrests the victim's boss, who turns out to be her illicit lover. No more of that! No more of the corruption and secret dealings of the political world, no more tragedies brought forth by the stress of modern society and suchlike. What mystery novels need are—some might call me old-fashioned—a great detective, a mansion, a shady cast of residents, bloody murders, impossible crimes and never-before-seen tricks played by the murderer. Call it my castle in the sky, but I'm happy as long as I can enjoy such a world. But always in an intellectual manner."

In ways both good and bad, the essence of this lengthy, almost Queensian declaration is rendered faithfully in Alice Arisugawa's 1989 work, Kotō Pazuru (literally, Koto Puzzle, translated into English in 2016 with the title of The Moai Island Puzzle). Just like its predecessor (The Decagon House Murders), The Moai Island Puzzle also has a university club of mystery fiction aficionados visiting a remote island that is soon cut off from the mainland by a raging storm, just as the island's residents start getting knocked off one by one. Three members of the Eito University Mystery Club—the narrator Alice, the sleuth Jirō Egami and the club's only female recruit Maria Arima—visit Kashikijima on Maria's invitation to indulge in treasure hunting. Kashikijima is a strange island—not only is it unusually shaped (it looks like a horseshoe magnet), it also has some 25 ominous moai statues looming large over the landscape. These statues also happen to be the focal point of the mysterious treasure—Maria's grandfather hid a large cache of diamonds worth a fortune somewhere on the island with the only hint being the statues and the directions they faced. It is this seemingly unsolved mystery that Jirō and his friends wish to crack now.

There exist only two residences on Kakushijima, one each on the two poles of this horseshoe magnet island. The larger one, Panorama Villa, is hosting a gathering of Maria's extended family members at the time of the mystery club's arrival, while the smaller Happy Fish Villa is home to a moderately successful artist (also one of Maria's relatives) who visits it from time to time. To travel from one to the other, one either needs to take a boat across the bay separating the two, or cover the distance on foot or bicycle courtesy of a road that takes one through the long arc of the island. Both villas soon witness impossible crimes in the midst of a storm. Will  Jirō and his friends be able to solve the puzzle of the treasure as well as that of the three murders that seem to have links with Maria's past and one of her now deceased relatives?

At first glance, this synopsis seems very attractive, but I'll start with the negatives here. The mystery surrounding the treasure, which lends itself to the title, is overlong and clearly overstays its welcome. Excessively laborious in its execution, one plods through this portion in weary anticipation of what they will find at the end of it all. Unfortunately, the puzzle of the statues 'evolves' too much for its own good—one definitely needs to be aware of a certain stream of knowledge to solve this puzzle, and even then, it's quite a stretch to reach the correct conclusion. Perhaps, even more damningly, the payoff is too little for all the struggle one undergoes, making for an extremely poor adventure trip—[SPOILER ALERT] turns out the mystery has already been solved before the arrival of our protagonists, and then, the puzzle and the developments surrounding them essentially become a footnote in the motive behind the cases. Not fair at all, one would say, considering that nearly a 100 pages are devoted to this puzzle and its unravelling!

The first murder also happens pretty late into the novel, but it is the conversations between the (mostly dislikeable) characters preceding it and the way they are portrayed that proceeds to suck all the life away here. There is too much unnatural stiffness in the nature of the dialogue in this section—as though the characters too are eagerly waiting for something to happen to them and that they can't wait any longer to reach the heart of the text. The plot and the puzzles demand that the characters act in certain ways—and they do so, regardless of how unnatural, forced and even unrealistic it may all seem. While such a treatment on Arisugawa's part clearly establishes the primacy of the plot and the puzzles over characterisation, a more competent balancing act would have gone a long way in making it palatable without leaving an unpleasant aftertaste.

The novel really starts shining once the murders are committed. The Moai Island Puzzle is, at its best, a tribute to Queensian and Holmesian aesthetics in the mystery novel—and thankfully, the work provides many instances to showcase both. The Holmesian trait of eliminating all that's impossible and positing whatever remains as the truth is evident in the many discussions between Jirō and his friends where hypotheses are presented and possibilities discounted by all three members of the Eito University Mystery Club, with Jirō acting as the most perceptive and discerning of the lot. And as Sōji Shimada astutely points out in his introduction to the novel, Jirō graduates from being a disinterested, bland, Queensian puzzle maniac to a more proactive Holmes-like figure who definitely acts heroically in a certain aspect towards the end of the novel. If only such a nuanced treatment could have been meted out to the rest of the characters ...

Anyway, the novel does one better when doffing its hat to Ellery Queen. Chains of deduction are built upon minutely detailed timetables drawn by the investigators and very singular observations of particular items and events—[SPOILER ALERT] a boat rown across the bay at a particular time, a light travelling between the two villas at the dead of night, a cycle tyre-mark and a piece of cloth found at particular parts of the island, among others—and linking them all into a linear, cohesive and definitive narrative. The novel is a perfect lesson in crafting chains of logical reasoning on singular observations, clues and items of evidence and also demonstrates why the author needn't 'deceive' readers with a gamut of randomly scattered, possibly relevant clues and/or too many red herrings. It plays it very straight with the dying message too, which just requires one to understand what's 'not present' to properly interpret it.

For those deeply vested in the world of Japanese crime novels, The Moai Island Puzzle can be considered to be mandatory reading. Personally, I find it a most instructive work that provides a fascinating glimpse into the highs and lows of shin honkaku plotting within the space of some 250-odd pages (notwithstanding the fact that it would have benefitted a lot if its length had been reduced by a third). Two different kinds of puzzles are presented in the work with conflicting treatments—one that the authors should aspire to, another they should avoid if they do not want to leave readers feeling short-changed. This, in itself, makes for a very strange balancing act—but one that should perhaps not be attempted at all. 

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: How a Japanese island mystery novel replicated the Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes brand of mystery)

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.