Crazy Train

"Later, one summer night in 1949,
again the Buddha appeared to me,
in my cell, beside my pillow.
He told me:
The Shimoyama Case is a Murder Case.
It is the son of the Teigin Case,
it is the son of all cases.
Whoever solves the Shimoyama Case,
they will solve the Teigin Case;
they will solve all cases."

—"Sadamichi Hirasawa", a poem, from Natsuame Monogatari, by Kuroda Roman, translated by Donald Reichenbach 

Two of the cases mentioned in the verse above, the Shimoyama case and the Teigin case, form the basis of two out of the three novels David Peace's now-complete Tokyo trilogy—the works in question being Tokyo Redux (2021) and Occupied City (2009), respectively. One of these, the Shimoyama incident, concerning the death of Sadanori Shimoyama, the first president of the Japanese National Railways, is officially listed as unsolved, even after nearly 74 years of its occurrence, while the other, the Teigin Bank Massacre of 1948, was a highly contentious affair, with the accused (Sadamichi Hirasawa) serving a death sentence for over 30 years, despite several retrials and no minister of justice ever signing Hirasawa's death warrant. Given the nature and legacy of the two cases, it is no surprise that both of them captured the imagination of the country's masses for decades, and continue to do so to this day.

Let's not bury the lede here—Tokyo Redux is an extremely clever feat of narration that blurs the boundaries between reality, history and imagination supplemented by the former two. It is also, stylistically, an incredibly accomplished work. But, a lot of the credit also goes to its subject matter, the Shimoyama case, the ambiguous and unsolved nature of which invites intelligent, well-measured speculation and manipulation. Tokyo Redux promises to be a great read for anyone sufficiently invested in detailed and well-researched conspiracy theories (paradoxical however it may seem).

Peace may be best known for his football books, The Damned United ("a fiction" based on Brian Clough's ill-fated managership of Leeds United) and Red or Dead (detailing Liverpool legend Bill Shankly's stewardship of the club between 1959 and 1974), but in crime-writing, particularly noir fiction, circles, he is hailed as an exceptional prose innovator and stylist. In Tokyo Redux, Peace displays the aforementioned virtues and much more. The novel begins with the discovery of a body on the outskirts of Edinburgh in the late 1980s (circa 1988–1989). Certain items found at the scene of the crime—an alarm clock, a newspaper clipping, a photograph and a picture postcard with a certain message scribbled behind it—connects this incident to the death of president Shimoyama on July 5, 1949. It also leads readers directly into the first of three neatly demarcated sections, each possessing identities of their own.

***

The first section, titled The Mountain of Bones, takes one back to the Tokyo of July 1949—a period when the American Occupation was in full force. Even with the challenge posed by criminal gangs and the protests by the communists, the administration is rudely jolted further more when president Shimoyama goes missing on July 5. The Public Safety Division (PSD) springs into action especially as its lead investigator, Harry Sweeney, receives a mysterious call just before the news of Shimoyama's disappearance breaks out. What follows next is a rigorous but speculative retracing of the steps Shimoyama took and the places he visited (for instance, the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Nihonbashi and the Chiyoda Bank near Tokyo station); however, Shimoyama's dismembered corpse is discovered after midnight, apparently having been run over by a train on the  Jōban Line near Ayase station in Adachi in north Tokyo.

The course of investigation over the next few days, besides throwing Sweeney's life completely off-kilter, also takes Sweeney and his team over a vast cross-section of Tokyo's landscape, not just in a geographical sense but in socio-economic terms as well. Shimoyama's death is more than it seems—and the more the PSD investigates, the more the number of threads emerge. Investigating these threads leads Sweeney and his team to various locations—from the posh neighbourhoods of Tokyo to the seats of administrative power, department stores, banks, railroad shanties, red light districts and seedy joints frequented by the underworld. Due to the large web spreading out of Shimoyama's influential connections and interpersonal relationships, Sweeney ends up visiting a large, diverse cast of characters—Shimoyama's assistant, family members, members of the upper echelons of the General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ-SCAP), an underworld don, a shamaness, Shimoyama's ex-mistress. Most of these interactions provide brief snippets not only into the lives of the characters, but also constitute pieces, earned painstakingly, of what would ultimately prove to be Sweeney's fruitless investigation. Needless to say, while this section has something of a hardboiled edge to it, it is also easily that portion which resembles a whodunnit the most. Sweeney faces challenges and pressures from both seen and unseen quarters—the GHQ-SCAP is more than willing to lay the blame on the communists, especially since members of the party, besides organising citywide protests against the railways' decision to fire several thousand employees, had also sent threats to Shimoyama, while a section of the police is happy to close the case as a suicide; an underworld don, on the other hand, pulls strings behind the scenes to incriminate Korean immigrants (one of whom also turns out to share a link with the infamous Zed Unit, an international covert ops organisation that saw action mainly in China and Korea).

Sadanori Shimoyama, the ill-fated,
first president of the
Japanese National Railways

The spotlight, however, shines solely on Sweeney, from an individualistic point of view. The case takes a heavy toll on Sweeney, the sordidness of which is laid out in excruciating, all-too-literal detail. The microscopic focus extends not only to his actions, but also to Sweeney's thoughts. For instance, the section after Sweeney returns to a hotel at the end of a particularly long, tiresome day reads as follows:

"Harry Sweeney put the key in the lock of the door to his room in the Yaesu Hotel. He turned the key, he opened the door. He shut the door behind him, he locked the door behind him. He stood in the center of the room and he looked around the room. In the light from the street, in the light from the night. The screwed-up envelope, the torn-up letter. The open Bible, the fallen crucifix. The upturned suitcase, the empty wardrobe. The pile of damp clothes, the bundle of soiled sheets. The bare mattress, the empty bed. He heard the rain on the window, he heard the rain in the night. He walked over to the washstand. He looked down into the basin. He saw the shards of broken glass. He looked back up into the mirror, he stared at the face in the mirror. He stared at its jaw, its cheek, its eyes, its nose, and its mouth. He reached up to touch the face in the mirror, to trace the outline of its jaw, its cheek, its eyes, its nose, and its mouth. He ran his fingers up and down the edge of the mirror. He gripped the edges of the mirror. He prized the mirror off the wall. He crouched down. He placed the face of the mirror against the wall beneath the window. He started to stand back up. He saw spots of blood on the carpet. He took off his jacket. He threw it onto the mattress. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt. He rolled up the cuffs of his shirt. He saw the spots of blood on the bandages on his wrists. He undid the buttons of his shirt. He took off his shirt. He tossed it onto the mattress. He took off his watch. He dropped it on the floor. He unhooked the safety pin that secured the bandage on his left wrist. He put the pin between the faucets of the washbasin. He unwound the bandage on his left wrist. He threw the length of bandage on top of his shirt on the mattress. He unhooked the safety pin that secured the bandage on his right wrist. He put it next to the other safety pin between the faucets. He unwound the bandage from his right wrist. He tossed this length of bandage onto the other bandage on top of his shirt. He picked up the trash can. He carried it over to the basin. He picked out the pieces of broken glass. He put them in the trash. He turned on the faucets. He waited for the water to come. To drown out the rain on the window, to silence the rain in the night. He put the stopper in the basin, he filled the basin. He turned off the faucets. The sound of the rain on the window again, the noise of the rain in the night again. He put his hands and his wrists into the basin and the water. He soaked his hands and his wrists in the water in the basin. He watched the water wash away the blood. He felt the water cleanse his wounds. He nudged out the stopper. He watched the water drain from the basin, from around his wrists, from between his fingers. He lifted his hands from the basin. He picked up a towel from the floor. He dried his hands and his wrists on the towel. He folded the towel. He hung the towel on the rail beside the basin. He walked back into the center of the room. In the light from the street, in the light from the night. He held out his hands, he turned over his palms. He looked down at the clean, dry scars on his wrists. He stared at them for a long time. Then he knelt down in the center of the room. By the screwed-up envelope, before the torn-up letter. The scraps of paper, the scraps of phrases. Betrayal. Deceit. Judas. Lust. Marriage. Sanctity. My religion. You traitor. Will never give up. Give you a divorce. I know what you are like, I know who you are. But I forgive you, Harry. The children forgive you, Harry. Come home, Harry. Please just come home. Harry Sweeney brought his palms together. Harry Sweeney raised his hands toward his face. He bowed his head. He closed his eyes. In the middle of the American Century, in the middle of the American night. Bowed in his room, his hotel room. The rain on the window, the rain in the night. On his knees, his stained knees. Falling down, pouring down. Harry Sweeney heard the telephones ringing. The voices raised, the orders barked. The boots down the stairs, the boots in the street. Car doors opening, car doors closing. Engines across the city, brakes four stories below. Boots up the stairs, boots down the corridor. The knuckles on the door, the words through the wood: Are you there, Harry? Are you in there?"

The reason I have quoted this section in its entirety is to illustrate the numbing effect of this immensely hardboiled piece of narration and characterisation here. The blow-by-blow account of every single one of Sweeney's actions and thoughts beats one's mind into submission, not unlike the effect produced by blunt-force trauma. This treatment is extended all through the novel, whenever Sweeney takes centrestage. In another instance, while strolling along the Sumida river, Sweeney's mood, ruminations and the surrounding cityscape come together and supplement each other as follows:

"Harry Sweeney turned and started to walk away from the station, away from the store, across Avenue R, toward the river, the Sumida River. He walked into the park, through the park, the Sumida Park. He came to the river, the banks of the river. He stood on the bank and he stared at the river. The current still, the water black. There was no breeze, there was no air. Only the stench of sewage, the stink of shit. People’s shit, men’s shit. The stench always here, the stink still here. Harry Sweeney took out his pack of cigarettes and lit one. By the river, on her bank. The streets behind him, the station behind him. All the streets and all the stations. He stared down the river, into the darkness, where its mouth would be, where the sea would be; across the ocean, there was home. A dog barked and wheels screamed, somewhere in the night, somewhere behind him. A yellow train was pulling out of the station, the yellow train crossing an iron bridge. The bridge across the river, a bridge to the other side. Going east, going north. Out of the city, away from the city. Men disappearing, men vanishing. In the city, from the city. On its streets, in its stations. Their names and their lives. Disappearing, vanishing. Starting afresh, starting again. A new name, a new life. A different name, a different life. Never going home, never coming back. The train disappearing, the train vanishing. 

Harry Sweeney looked away from the bridge, stared back down at the river, the Sumida River. So still and so black, so soft and so warm. Inviting and welcoming, tempting, so tempting. No more names and no more lives. Memories or visions, insects or specters. So tempting, very tempting. An end to it all, an end to it all. The pattern of the crime precedes the crime. The end of his cigarette burning his fingers, blistering their skin. Harry Sweeney threw the butt of his cigarette into the river. This dirty river, this stinking river. People’s shit, men’s shit. He turned away from the river, walked away from the river, the Sumida River. Back to the station, back down the steps. Away from the river, the Sumida River, and away from temptation, away from temptation. The pattern and the crime. Disappearing, vanishing. Into the night, into the shadows. Under the city, under the ground."

Once again, a constant hypervigilant focus on and repetition of key patterns, thoughts and associations creates a numbing, sombre mood for Sweeney and the readers—a mood that rarely lets up through the novel. However, the flipside of this highly stylistic exercise is that Sweeney's colleagues (such as Bill Betz and Susumu Toda) and the rest of the supporting cast are not even afforded a third of the limelight Sweeney gets in the first section. They keep appearing and disappearing, flitting around like phantoms which only adds, perhaps, to one key essence of the novel—that of events and ghosts of the past casting long, sinister shadows.

***

If The Mountain of Bones presented post-War Tokyo in all its dirtiness and filth through an exploration of its geography, socio-economic conditions and characters, the second section titled The Bridge of Tears achieves the same effect through different means and in a far more sinister fashion. The scene shifts to 1964 Tokyo during the time of the Olympics—a period that Peace, in the voice of one of the characters, succinctly describes as "Edo stench, Olympic noise". To achieve its purpose, this section employs the trope of a detective lost in the maze of a rapidly modernising city (with a dark underbelly) to devastating effect—a trope that has been quite popular, in a postcolonial context and era, in Japan and the world over.

President Shimoyama's remains being
removed from the Jōban Line

Murota Hideki, a somewhat down-on-his-luck, crooked policeman-turned-private detective is handed a missing-person investigation by a publishing house. The author in question is Kuroda Roman, who had apparently pocketed some advance fees without furnishing the requisite manuscript. Kuroda Roman, it turns out, was a popular author for some years during the post-1945 Shōwa era, at which time he gained some notoriety before disappearing completely from public view. What seems to be a routine investigation turns on its head when Hideki finds out that Roman had penned a pretty revelatory entry on Hideki himself, dating back to his days as a policeman, in one of his books. Furthermore, in Roman's address book, Hideki finds out that his residence and contact detail have also been listed, without him being none the wiser. What finally signals Hideki's spiralling descent into madness and a sinister plot far beyond his ability to comprehend and his ability to fight back is his discovery of a manuscript titled Natsuame Monogatari, or Tales of the Summer Rains, written jointly by Kuroda Roman and Shimoyama Sadanori. It is a development that inextricably ties the events of 1964 with the Shimoyama Case of 1949.

Partly because it is framed as a narrative portraying a person suffering from personal nightmares, while being trapped in the machinations of others, The Bridge of Tears reads faster and features more tighter prose than The Mountain of Bones. It also helps that much of the groundwork, in terms of key themes (vis-à-vis corruption, abuse of socio-political and economic power, racial tension, among others) is painstakingly laid out in the first part. So, how does The Bridge of Tears go about reinforcing an already dark and depressing atmosphere, other than the plot itself? One of the more interesting ways it does so is by a rhythmic repetition of certain sounds that also act as particular signifiers. If The Mountain of Bones saw a geographical mapping of Tokyo, The Bridge of Tears introduces a novel onomatopoeic mapping. For instance, 'ton, ton' represents sounds of construction, 'shu, shu, pop, pop' stands for the sound of a train's steam engine, the 'murder weapon' in Shimoyama's death, while the sounds signifying ghosts and phantoms of the past inhabiting and passing through empty, shadowy, dilapidated spaces is dramatically represented as 'sā, sā, rei, rei'. The repetition of these sounds at key intervals creates an effect similar to the chanting of Buddhist sutras in monasteries, as far as the setting of particular moods is concerned. 

The postcolonial nature of the narrative here also plays a major role here. For Hideki, the deep-dive into the past and the search for the remnants of Roman's presence transforms the Tokyo of 1964, caught in the crossroads of modernity and tradition, into an unfathomable monster whose inhabitants ambush one at every conceivable corner. Despite his training as a policeman and a private detective, Hideki is unable to see the dangers as they approach him—the deceitful clients, the lying people he interviews in course of the investigation and an unseen, powerful enemy that traps him leaving him no room for escape. As a result, he finds himself indicted in a murder case, two cases of assault and the disappearance of his own common-law life. It's a fate that, in its inevitability and hopelessness, closely and curiously resembles that of Kuroda Roman from a decade-and-a-half ago. As is revealed, after realising the extent of his participation in the Shimoyama case, Roman too found himself utterly helpless despite appealing to the police and the institution of Mystery Writers of Japan, ultimately being threatened and manipulated like a puppet in the hands of insidious forces whose presence he is constantly aware of but can do nothing about. And, it is here that the book-in-book structure that is employed half-way into the section displays its full utility. After Hideki discovers the manuscript of Natsuame Monogatari, Peace intersperses the action, unfolding in real time, which Hideki is involved in with excerpts from the book detailing Roman's surprising and deep-rooted involvement in the 1949 Shimoyama case from its earliest days, way before its commission. The purpose is perhaps to draw parallels between Roman's plight in the past and Hideki's fate unfolding in real time, but these passages also reveal much about the Shimoyama case that was left unsaid and unrevealed in The Mountain of Bones. Some characters with an almost shadowy, transient presence in the first half, who reappear in The Bridge of Tears, are also revealed to have played very important roles in the lead-up to and in the aftermath of the Shimoyama case.

The resulting effect is that Hideki not only finds himself caught in the web of a nightmarish conspiracy that extends from the past to the present, he also ends up as a victim of Kuroda Roman's and Sadanori Shimoyama dark legacy—the book, Natsuame Monogatari, which, if published, was, ironically, meant to be a tell-it-all account and a means to escape the clutches of the perpetrators of the Shimoyama murder case. Perhaps, Hideki's and Roman's fate do not exist on parallel tracks; they converge with only one possible outcome—madness, that hits both characters with the speed and force of a freight train. The element of madness adds yet another dimension to an already dark narrative, and it all culminates in a frighteningly spectacular scene in a mental asylum under the aegis of the 'Department of Psychic Seances'. The seance held at the end of The Bridge of Tears—akin to a lucid, fever dream which would have been completely at home in a novel like Dogura Magura (1935), author Yumeno Kyūsaku's surrealistic tour de force—sees an uncomprehending Hideki gliding through the spectres of cases past in a pantomime of a performance conducted for supposedly 'scientific reasons'. The figures in this performance include Kuroda Roman himself, Sadamichi Hirasawa (of Teigin Bank Massacre fame), and perhaps, most significantly, the figure of Harry Sweeney who clutches a broken teddy bear and softly whispers "It's too late" (a recurring motif and statement seen throughout the novel) just as the 15-year statute of limitations expires for the Shimoyama case.

***

More skeletons and secrets tumble out of the Shimoyama case closet in The Gate of Flesh, the last of the aforesaid three sections. Set towards the end of 1988, only a month or two away from the death of Emperor Hirohito, this concluding part is as much about the passing of an era (the Shōwa era) as it is about displaying the grasp the Shimoyama case had on each of the individuals involved prominently, till the moment of their deaths.

An inspection of the locomotive
that hit Shimoyama

The spotlight this time falls on the hitherto-unseen Donald Reichenbach, a professor and the translator of the verse mentioned at the start of this essay. It is through his eyes and memories that Peace lays forth his interpretation of the facts in the Shimoyama case and posits a plausible solution to the case. While the major perpetrators and much of the main conspiracy are pretty much revealed in act two, Reichenbach and his fellow cast of characters play roles that effectively prevented Sweeney and his team from getting to the bottom of the case in act one itself. In this third act, however, Reichenbach emerges as a rapidly ageing, broken-down, lonely man who is fast running out of friends and company, mainly  due to his refusal and inability to let go of the past, and always returning to the scenes of his past crimes, despite undergoing psychiatric treatment. Through the course of this section, even though his colleagues have moved past the Shimoyama incident and its long aftermath, Reichenbach finds himself unwittingly visiting some of the locations pertaining to the incident, almost like a ghost incapable of setting itself free off a haunted house. Here too, Peace utilises flashbacks into the past, shuttling alternately between 1949 and 1988, to reveal the incidents that the locations were witness too. While in the previous act, the alternating past-and-present narratives focussed more on the characters themselves, the focus of these flashbacks in this act seems to have shifted to the locations themselves, as mute, silent and impartial witnesses. This treatment may just be what the doctor ordered, because once the entire picture emerges, the sordidness, inhumanity and callousness underlining the Shimoyama case, as deduced by Peace, is simply too shocking. Briefly said (and spoilers ahead), Peace indicts the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Zed Unit (and, in close collaboration with it, the Hongō House) and the SCAP to varying degrees, with the unsettling revelation that the upper echelons of each of these organisations were aware of the political moves they were plotting against each other, while many of the foot-soldiers and the bits-and-pieces players were kept in the dark till the endgame, so that they could fulfill their role as scapegoats better. With its focus on secret organisations and internal politics, Tokyo Redux reminds me of Nagasaki Takashi and Kouno Kouji's manga, Inspector Kurokochi (2012), which, even if tonally disparate from Peace's work, takes on another yet-unsolved crime that is often considered to the holy grail of Japanese mysteries—the 300 million yen affair or robbery from 1968—and also indicts a clandestine, shadowy institution in the process. 

It is, perhaps, fitting then that, as the past rapidly catches up to him, Reichenbach is subject to the same terror that Hideki, Sweeney and Roman were subject to—the fear of an unknown, powerful enemy, except that, in Reichenbach's case, the enemy is a vengeful one as well. Ultimately, Reichenbach, fearful of death, is made to bear the weight and responsibility of the Shimoyama case as he meets an ignominious end, falling down a flight of stairs—"down the steps, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down each one, each single one of the thirty-six steps to the ground ... "

***

Tokyo Redux is a hefty novel that is, perhaps, well worth the ten-plus years it took Peace to research and write. In the way it presents conflicting perspectives, it resembles, in my opinion, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story, "In A Bamboo Grove"—but only to a certain extent, because, for one, the misinformation and deception is deliberate in a relatively linear story (it's not that the readers see different truths as much as they are made to see manufactured ones), and secondly, at the end of it all, Tokyo Redux provides a concrete solution to the Shimoyama case, and does not leave it to the imagination and judgement of the readers. Besides its stylistic and narrative achievements, it is also an incredibly immersive book and it is easy to lose oneself in the noirish underbelly of the Tokyo of the past, as portrayed here. And, despite his well-documented repugnance towards considering crime fiction as a puzzle game/game of logical reasoning, Peace does employ a bit of the essence of a whodunnit (not a fair-play one though) in this work, bringing the narrative to a well-reasoned-out conclusion. However, the most telling and impressive evidence of Tokyo Redux as a historical, conspiracy thriller of the first order comes in the End Matters portion of the book, where Peace hints that his entire understanding and reasoning of what actually happened in the Shimoyama case hinges upon the singular fact that "the sections for Japan in the weekly intelligence summaries provided by the Office of Reports and Estimates, CIA Far East/Pacific Branch remain redacted for the period around the death of Sadanori Shimoyama. And for only that period."

As my first tentative and experimental stab at Peace's crime fiction, Tokyo Redux proved to be a lot more than I had bargained for—in a good, fruitful way, of course. I will be covering more of Peace's works on this blog in the future, as and when I come across them. For the time being, however, my first order of business will be to complete the Tokyo trilogy—from the back forwards, which will be another first for me.  

Tokyo: A Love Story

Akimitsu Takagi's 1948 novel Shisei Satsujin Jiken (published in English first as The Tattoo Murder Case by Soho Crime in 1999, republished as The Tattoo Murder by Pushkin Vertigo in 2022) happens to be one of the first books that kickstarted my fascination with Japanese crime literature. As it was the only title missing from my collection of Pushkin Vertigo's translated Japanese titles, I recently decided to buy and revisit it after a period of eight-odd years. So, how did the trip down memory lane fare for me this time around?

Eight years are a long time for anyone to forget major chunks of a work, but I must admit I was pleasantly surprised at how much I remembered the setting of this novel. Against the backdrop of a wound as raw as World War II, it must have been difficult for an author to replicate its ambience. But, Takagi pulls it off and evokes the atmosphere of a bombed-out, defeated, post-World War II Japan in a manner that is refreshingly different from Seishi Yokomizo's Death on Gokumon Island, a work that was written and published in roughly the same time period. I keep returning to the opening two paragraphs of the novel that firmly establish the environs where the work will be set in and locates it strictly in a very particular time period:

"It was the summer of 1947, and the citizens of Tokyo, already crushed with grief and shock over the loss of the war, were further debilitated by the languid heat. The city was ravaged. Seedy-looking shacks had sprung up on the messy sites of bombed-out buildings. Makeshift shops overflowed with colorful black-market merchandise, but most people were still living from hand to mouth.

Even in formerly posh neighborhoods around the Ginza, the same pathetic scenario was being played out. During the day, ragged crowds of people with empty eyes would meander aimlessly about the crossroads, mingling with the American soldiers who strutted along triumphantly in their dashing uniforms. When evening rolled around, the rubble-strewn streets teemed with prostitutes, petty criminals, and vagabonds seeking a cheap night’s lodging. The uneasy silence of the night was frequently shattered by the report of a pistol."

Author Takagi's interest in an unfamiliar Tokyo provides fuel for the seedy atmosphere that he sustains for a majority of the novel, and his gaze (which he shares with the readers) has a flâneur-like quality in the opening stretches. Page after page, chapter after chapter, we travel through the charred streets and neighbourhoods of Tokyo to witness the curious, sometimes aimless, movements of the characters whose lives and motivations have taken unpredictable turns after the war. The overall, pointless, arbitrary nature of survival in a post-war period is best illustrated when Akimitsu describes the existing buildings in the several locales spread across the city. For instance, one is introduced to the opulent mansion of Professor Hayakawa as follows: "Professor Hayakawa had married money as well as beauty. He and his tattooed wife lived in Yotsuya in a splendid European-style brick house with leaded windows, wrought-iron balconies, and a classical English garden hidden away behind high brick walls. The house had been spared by some wartime fluke, while both of the formerly elegant dwellings on either side were now bombed-out ruins, overgrown with weeds." This illogical reality of certain settlements surviving with the surrounding ones in ruins persists throughout the novel. And it is against this backdrop that the story unfolds, with many of the key characters relying on the forbidden charms of the underworld and the red-light districts to escape from their mundane, sobering reality of their everyday lives.

The apathy in the lives of a number of the characters in the novel is juxtaposed with the sinister designs of some others. The result is a transformation of the flâneuristic gaze into a voyeuristic one—the object of voyeurism being a magnificent tattoo of the mythical sorcerer Orochimaru on the body of a certain Kinue Nomura. The tattoo is unveiled in all its glory at the first post-war meeting of the Edo Tattoo Society, an event meant for the recreation of a certain section of Tokyo's people suffering a long and terrible summer. This act of exhibitionism sparks a chain of events that leads different characters to 'tail' this bewitching tattoo and its owner for different reasons: first, Kenzo Matsushita (an aspiring student of forensic medicine), Professor Hayakawa (also called Dr Tattoo), Gifu Inazawa (the manager of the company owned by Kinue's husband, Takezo Mogami), and later, Ryokichi Usui (Kinue's former yakuza lover) and Tsunetaro Nomura (Kinue's brother, who had supposedly perished in World War II). Now, tailing is an essential tool for detectives—and as the late Sari Kawana mentions in her work, Murder Most Modern, it even allowed scholars and researchers in the 1920s and 1930s to put on their thinking caps and step in the shoes of a sleuth (a fact well illustrated in Kawana's encapsulation of a slightly creepy social experiment involving the tailing of a woman in a department store and then making observations based on her shopping habits and buying patterns). Not surprisingly then, the act of tailing became a keystone of crime and detective fiction works in the country—an investigative tool of such sanctity that deductions could safely be made on the basis of these actions and the secrets unearthed consequently.

When it comes to tailing, Edogawa Ranpo usually played it straight in his "ero guro nansensu" (erotic-grotesque nonsense) stories such as "The Stalker in the Attic". However, The Tattoo Murder (which mirrors some of the aesthetics of Ranpo's ero guro nansensu) subverts the role and purpose of tailing by turning it on its head and changing it into a tool of misdirection which fools not only the characters caught in a trap but also the police who draw their observations based on their misguided surveillance and pursuit of the suspects and the testimonies made. From the standpoint of the miscreants, however, it all unfolds perfectly like a well-rehearsed script. Kinue Nomura, the subject of much fascination, plays the role of a damsel-in-distress-cum-femme-fatale, using her feminine charms (and her tattoo, of course) to appeal to men like Gifu and Kenzo ("I feel that I am going to be killed very soon ... A terrible death is stalking me, and I am terrified of what may lie in wait. I fear my days are numbered, and the happiness I’ve found with you will be cruelly snatched away.… You’re the only one who can rescue me, my love."), even making out with them. However, the dismembered body parts of Kinue are soon discovered in the locked bathroom of their Japanese-style house, with her husband having ostensibly disappeared. To add further suspicion, Kenzo, Gifu, Ryokichi and Professor Hayakawa are all discovered to have visited the scene of the crime on the evening or the day after for their own, not-so-honourable ends. One by one, the authorities shift their focus on each of the suspects while simultaneously bringing to light the murky past of Kinue and her family (consisting of her father Horiyasu, an incredibly talented tattoo artist, her mother, a hardened criminal who ran away and died in person, her sister Tamae, who was supposed to have passed away in the Hiroshima explosion and her brother Tsunetaro, who had gone to serve in the Philippines during the  war and was listed as missing in action). It is also believed that Horiyasu had left a curse on each of his offsprings by etching three mythological characters on their bodies (Orochimaru on Kinue's, Tsunadehime on Sanae's and Jiraiya on Tsunetaro's). Such an act is considered to be taboo, because the three are warring magicians who are said to have destroyed each other—and with Kinue's death, the prophecy seems to have been fulfilled. Except, the killings don't quite stop at this point—a few days later, the body of Takezo Mogami is found in the storeroom of an abandoned building, a bullet hole above his right ear. And, in yet another turn of events, Tsunetaro turns out to be alive with a tattoo business of his own, only to soon end up dead (for real, this time) in a burnt-out building with the skin removed from his torso, hands and thighs, after promising to expose the perpetrators. This intense, secretly manipulated tailing and pursuit has no happy, satisfactory ending for any of the parties concerned.

Takagi's love for the art and the culture of the Japanese tattoo shines through the novel—and it is no surprise that the trick behind the case of a mistaken identity revolves around the process of tattoo engraving and removal. A review of the book termed it as "a document of the times", and this is best seen in sections where Takagi reveals, with an almost journalistic flourish, the harsh realities of post-war Japan that people could scarcely believe would have come to pass—women, both elderly and preteen, thrown into prostitution; the intricate and artistic Japanese tattoo as a symbol of superiority over the "unimaginative" American tattoo, providing solace (in a perverse way) to a population hurting from a wartime loss; tattoo parlours in hidden alleys being meeting grounds for the affluent and the downtrodden where skilled but outlawed tattoo artists sketched and imprinted these symbols of national pride and identity, flouting strict rules prohibiting such practices. Takagi paints the underworld and, in particular, the shady, tattooing industry in post-war Tokyo in vivid, sensual detail and in a sensitive, sympathetic manner that should resonate well with the layman reader. The rules, etiquettes and the inner workings of the world of the Japanese tattoo artists too are explained in a comprehensible, but perhaps excessively earnest, way.

Till this point, the narrative develops organically, providing reasons, along the way, for a reader to develop interest in Japanese history and culture. The denouement, comprising the last third of the novel, comes as a bit of a surprise, though. The arrival of the amateur detective Kyosuke Kamizu, who provides the much-needed "fresh point of view" and "miracle", signals the beginning of a significant tonal shift. Hereon, Takagi completely drops the ball on the creepy, seedy atmosphere he had so painstakingly established and rushes towards the endgame with a ruthlessness and clinical efficiency that would have done Freeman Wills Crofts proud. Gone are the discussions on the Japanese tattoo and the importance of mythological stories in the world of the Japanese tattoo; these are instead replaced with conversations on Western philosophies and ways of thought, and deliberations on Kamizu's pet theory of "criminal economics". For a novel that caters so much to Japanese tastes, cultures and sensibilities, The Tattoo Murder sure does proclaim the superiority and triumph of Western perspectives and methods of detection in its final stretches. The locked-room murder is explained satisfactorily and competently but in an uninspired, perfunctory manner, while a final dramatic twist and reveal is perhaps an inevitable development that may be considered predictable by today's standards.

When I referred to The Tattoo Murder as a novel of a very specific time period, I may have subconsciously also been hinting at the unfortunate, excessive cross-pollination of genre aesthetics and mechanics in its final portions—a development that was perhaps inevitable in that era. That is why this treatment is perfectly understandable too—for an author like Takagi writing right after the end of World War II, the challenge must have been to incorporate Japanese aesthetics and sensibilities in a genre that was essentially seen as a Western import. And, make no mistake—The Tattoo Murder as a mystery novel is a gripping page-turner of the first order that also wonderfully explores a city in ruins and offers fascinating insights into aspects of an oft-ignored profession and class of society (at that time). As a Japanese mystery, however, the lack of an organic conclusion stunts its status somewhat and, in my humble opinion, prevents it from reaching the heights of Seishi Yokomizo's The Inugami Curse and Death on Gokumon Island.  

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: The Tattoo Murder’ injects local aesthetics into a post-World War II Japanese crime novel)

Into Thin Air

"Nobody ever notices postmen somehow ... yet they have passions like other men, and even carry large bags where a small corpse can be stowed quite easily."

—Father Brown in "The Invisible Man" (1911)

This climactic observation in the Father Brown short story is the culmination of one of the first short stories I ever read that took on the theme of the vanishing corpse and the criminal. It is a theme that is fairly prevalent in crime fiction, but one that may be difficult to execute, especially because the limits of 'suspension of disbelief' are often stretched to unrealistic extents due to the dictates of the plot and to lend the 'wow' factor to it. "The Invisible Man" doesn't exactly dazzle with its plot—it is a rather linear, simple story with a slightly creepy sub-plot featuring headless cleaning robots/machines, the spirit of which would reemerge, later, with the automaton in John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge (1938). What the story does do well, without resorting to any complicated trickery, is the portrayal of the 'blind spot' in people's vision and perceptions, and how context and circumstance determine our observation of and reaction to a particular situation. It is a grounded, back-to-the-roots kind of approach that simply sticks to the fundamentals.

Building on these fundamentals, more sophisticated variants of the 'disappearing criminal and/or the transported corpse' theme would be plotted over the next few decades. It may not have been intentional but this year I have had the fortune to read three titles of relatively good acclaim that treat this theme to varying degrees of success. The first of these was The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) by Clayton Rawson, an author I was acquainted with having read his previous work, Death From a Top Hat (1938). A magician by profession, Rawson populated the pages of both novels with magical chicanery of all kind, but the execution is fundamentally different in the two novels. The Footprints on the Ceiling is replete, top to bottom, with a host of tricks and stagecraft that give Rawson an excuse to describe some engrossing magical secrets for the readers. The novel, however, has many more moving parts and character agendas compared to Death From a Top Hat, which is a more focussed read and dealt with perhaps only two or three well-defined set pieces. Consequentially, the minor mysteries in Death From a Top Hat take on a more superficial, showboating nature than in The Footprints on The Ceiling, where the lesser mysteries add to the excessively (and perhaps, irritatingly so) tangential nature of the narrative, yet stay integral to it because the culprit's actions can only be understood in relation to the individual actions and mutually negating deception of the rest of the other criminal characters surrounding the culprit. Whether they intend to or not, the sequence of events has the domino effect of covering up not only for their own selves but also the murderer in their midst. The device of 'covering up for another' can also be seen in a novel such as Seishi Yokomizo's The Inugami Curse, but there, it has a more direct bearing to the main plot than this one, and unfolds in a far less confounding manner than here.

The scale and the complexity of the plot also requires a breakneck pace to be employed early on in Rawson's work, which makes for a most pulpish and thriller-like read. Within the first few chapters, you have an ad for a haunted house that leads the detective, Merlini, and his journalist friend, Ross Harte, heading to Skelton Island. But, before they can even get to the island, Harte is ambushed ("Something that might easily have been the Chrysler building hit me on the top of the head, and was followed immediately by an elegant display of shooting stars in full Technicolor.") and there is a switcheroo involving suitcases and counterfeit guinea coins. Once they land, they come across the corpse of the heiress of the island, Linda Skelton, in an old, decrepit building, followed by an attempt on their own lives when said building is set on fire. Over the course of the night, Merlini, Harte and the readers come across an excessively suspicious cast of characters, there's gunfire, a jungle chase and all the boats are scuttled to prevent the escape of any character. All this goodness and more before the police even appear on the island.

One of the problems of a novel with too many moving parts concerns how the author manages to tie it all up with no loose ends, especially if the characters have diverse, personal motivations of their own that sometimes conflict with each other and manage to be congruent with each other at other times. Similar is the case with The Footprints on The Ceiling—and to his credit, Rawson is able to bring together the diverse narrative strands into a coherent whole, mostly by relying on page after page of exposition that describe magical trickery and scientific phenomena in equally excruciating detail. The effort is much appreciated, but it can be trying for a first-time reader unused to such a treatment. However, sprinkled in between are a few neatly and competently executed ideas—the mystery of the blue-skinned man, the mystery of the eponymous footprints on the ceiling and the segment involving decompression sickness which is actually the culmination of the independent actions of quite a few characters that ultimately claims the life of one of the Skelton siblings. On the flip side, the plethora of mysterious incidents, all to be explained by Merlini, ensures that certain events are simply glossed over. For instance, there are two separate instances in the novel that involve the disappearance and reappearance of corpses and which fulfill different narrative purposes. However, these are explained in a most desultory manner, while the motivations behind these actions seem almost superfluous to the needs of the core plot, existing seemingly to only complicate the story further.

Two other issues hurt the novel even further. One is the lack of a map or diagram of the island and its various scenes of crime, which makes it difficult to picture some of the ingenious tricks such as the bullet 'that bends around walls' and the shootout at the climax of the novel that claims the lives of two of the cast, somewhat inexplicably and to the bewilderment of the rest of the characters and the readers. Even more than this is a logistical issue that I would perhaps terms as 'the problem of the starting point'. However well Rawson pulls off the connecting-the-threads act at the end, there's this persistent sense of jarring disconnect throughout. Much of it, I believe, has to do with the point at which the readers are introduced to the novel. As later events attest, the plans of many of the characters are already underway by the time Harte and Merlini land on the island, and even before Harte is attacked in the opening chapters. One could even argue that Harte and Merlini arrive when these plans have almost matured completely. What this results in is that we are deprived of the larger context because the novel is seen through Harte and Merlini's perspectives—and the reconstruction of the events prior to those in the novel, which are essential to understand the happenings in the present day, is simply conjecture on Merlini's part. While this lends to the excellent shock value of the work, for those looking to solve the incidents on their own rather than simply going along for the ride, it can be very frustrating because without the context of events past, the onslaught of the present events leads to constant cluelessness and befuddlement (what is happening? why is it happening?) and not always in a good way, even with the minor mysteries being explained over the course of the novel. I think the novel would have been better served if Rawson could have interspersed the narrative with individual perspectives from the suspects (first-person and/or otherwise) other than Harte and Merlini, casting light on their motivations and actions, their personal opinions of the fellow cast members and how their thoughts and plans were influenced by those of the other. It is a ploy that was used to devastating effect in Szu-Yen Lin's Death in the House of Rain—and in the case of The Footprints on The Ceiling, it could have successfully shifted the starting point to an earlier period, in the segments where the characters shared their perspectives and provided the necessary context, perhaps making for a fairer and more dynamic read.

***

A better example of a good starting point lies in Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944), long touted to be one of the best locked-room mysteries ever written. Like Rawson, Talbot too was a magician with the result that Rim of the Pit is full of exquisite magical flourishes that set up an atmosphere of hair-raising, full-blown horror. But, it is not an all-out assault from the word go. A bit of breathing space at the start of the work allows readers to appreciate the background and context, while a few minor but striking incidents (such as the voice of a deceased person being heard over a frozen lake, eerie accordion music suddenly being played in a wooden lodge and threatening messages being left in door cracks) prepare one for the horror soon to unfold.

Things escalate—and brilliantly so, to a feverish pitch—when the cast gathers together in snowbound New England (Canada). Eight participants are invited by the Ogden family to attend a seance by one Irene Ogden in the Cabrioun, the two-floored log house built by Irene's former deceased husband—an elaborate ploy by Irene's current husband, Frank, to gain the 'permission' of Irene's deceased husband to open up a profitable stretch of a forest for the purpose of logging. The seance veers off in a most unpredictable direction when the spirit of Irene's former husband, who appears in the form of a Windigo (a mythological creature of evil in Native American cultures) and berates her vehemently before disappearing. To pile on the humiliation even further, one of the guests happens to be a magician called Vok who immediately sees through some of the other mysterious phenomena in the seance and denounces Irene as a fraud, leaving her a bundle of nerves. The only real mystery at this point is the appearance of the spirit.

A somewhat decent page-turner would probably have focussed on developing this singular plot point further in an engaging manner. But, in a masterpiece such as Rim of the Pit, the end of the seance marks the point where the story both springs into life all of a sudden and launches into overdrive. It is also at this point that the novel starts resembling The Footprints on The Ceiling in earnest, with the sheer number and diversity of impossibilities being presented to the reader in a dizzying, breakneck pace. Irene soon meets her end in a grisly manner in a locked room, mirrors are found smashed in the Cabrioun, footprints are discovered 'leading to nowhere' in an open snowfield, the Windigo makes an appearance again, Frank Ogden seemingly loses his mind and still manages to escape from a locked room, using the collective 'blind spot' of the onlookers (a throwback to Chestertonian aesthetics?) and is later found dead outside in the midst of a blizzard with no surrounding footprints. What helps Rim of the Pit compared to The Footprints on the Ceiling is its relative straightforward, linear narrative, with a marked paucity of character motivations and plans as far as their individual actions are concerned. That energy is instead expended in sustaining the ambience of horror, invited and uninvited, throughout the work. This is no mean feat given the fact that some of the impossibilities—such as that of the disappearance of the phantom in the seance, and the mysteries surrounding the smashing of the mirrors, the appearance of Irene Ogden's corpse in a locked room, the disappearance of Frank Ogden from a locked room—are great pieces of logical, rational misdirection and obfuscation that make use of positional and circumstantial awareness to distract readers and characters alike.

What's really disappointing to me, however, is the denouement to the novel. A work so steeped in horror deserved a better ending, especially when one considers the 'false ending' where the remaining characters work in cahoots to cook up an overelaborate scenario to hoodwink the police who would investigate the incident. In the aftermath of this cover-up, however, in typical GAD fashion, the detective Rogan Kincaid bares it all (and how he did so) before the culprit in the midst of a most genteel conversation in a train-car—a starkly observable tonal shift for the worse, veering more towards the armchair-detective school of stories, and not at all befitting of its status as an excellent horror-detective story.

***

However, in terms of both quality and aesthetics, I think I am most biased towards John Sladek's Invisible Green (1977) as the best of the lot being discussed here. Now, let me clarify at the very outset that Invisible Green is a work quite unlike either Rim of the Pit and The Footprints on The Ceiling, and comparing them isn't exactly a fair practice on my part. What they do have in common, however, is a love for impossibilities and locked rooms, even though the way Invisible Green goes about expressing its admiration and then engineering its own twists on these tropes is very different from the treatments seen in the other two.

Invisible Green does not have a sudden spate of impossibility after impossibility as seen in Rim of the Pit, nor does it have excessive distractions in the form of too many divergent character motivations and plans (as was the case in The Footprints on The Ceiling). In fact, it has three distinct, well-defined scenarios with the rest of the incidents serving merely as misdirection/red herrings or to enhance the setting and purpose of these scenarios. All of them feature murders—one of them in almost locked-room conditions, another in impossible circumstances and a third featuring a clever subversion of locked-room mystery conventions.

For me, the best thing about Invisible Green was its pacing. For a relatively modern work, the setup is as classical as it gets—and befitting its nature, Sladek devotes both time and space to build up the eccentricities of each character, and to allow the plot to breathe, fester and develop. It starts in the past, with a meeting of the Seven Unravellers, a club of seven odd personalities, to whom "murder meant a game with rules" and "suspects with false alibis, clues becoming red herrings, and courtroom revelations". The cast is a diverse one—from word-game and logic puzzle aficionado Miss Dorothy Pharaoh and the conspiracy theorist and "crypto Nazi" Major Edgar Stokes (with his paranoia of a Communist takeover) to the bohemian artist Gervase Hyde (with his predilection for real crimes and the psychological angle), the violent police constable Frank Danby (with his love for "sensational news stories of shotgun murders"), the chemistry student Leonard Latimer Derek Portman (who had read "all the weightiest tomes" on forensic chemistry and "the stories of R. A. Freeman, ...  where a murderer is hanged by the evidence from a single speck of dust"), the solicitor's clerk Derek Portman (who "enjoyed cutting into the legal fabric of other murder mysteries") and finally, the good old baronet, Sir Anthony Fitch.

The scene soon shifts to more than 30 years later, when Miss Pharaoh sends out invitations for a reunion of the remaining members of the Seven Unravellers (Sir Anthony having long passed away) sometime in the 1970s. In the meantime, Major Stokes has grown even more paranoid of a Communist conspiracy targetting his life (which he does by deciphering 'clues' in the Times crossword and codes in a movie hall, no less!). His state concerns Miss Pharaoh, even more so when it transpires, through Stokes' own admission, that an invisible antagonist, Mr Green, is issuing threats to the major and offering money to him to move out of the house. Soon, his cat is murdered too. Thus it is that Miss Pharaoh invites her acquaintance Thackeray Phin, a detective whose sense of fashion leads Inspector Gaylord of the Scotland Yard to comment that he looked like "best man at a pimp's wedding".

Stokes dies of a heart attack in the hall toilet of his home as Phin observes the same fortified house with spiked windows and floors sprinkled with talcum powder to capture footprints. Yet, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the death was not a suicide or accidental. As Phin starts investigating this devilish incident, he discovers that the rest of the Unravellers have been the victims of certain non-malicious attacks, all linked to a common theme—colours. The investigation soon leads the Unravellers and Phin to Frank Danby's seaside residence. Here, Danby too is inexplicably stabbed to death while the exits were being watched, after saying "Who are you" presumably to his murderer, even though the possible suspects had been introduced to him only moments before. The third murder, that of Miss Pharaoh clubbed to death, reveals itself with the discovery of Miss Pharaoh's corpse in her own house, with the rest of the cast miles away at different locations.

So, the three core puzzles of the novel take up different challenges. The first is a classic locked-room setup, the solution to which is underplayed by Phin himself. But, it is no less stunning—and its functionality is borrowed in one of the story arcs of Seimaru Amagi's Tantei Gakuen Q (more specifically, the Q vs A storyline), even though the tool Amagi uses in his story is the one Sladek rejects in Invisible Green. The second one isn't really innovative and may even be considered a bit of a cheat by some, but to me, it's a wonderful case study in realising the difference between a simple observation based on what is visible and making the right interpretation based on the said observation, by also factoring in other contextual information gleaned before, which may not be immediately apparent in the current circumstance. Personally, however, I have the highest regard for the third incident. Not only is it a subversion of the locked-room trope with the corpse (and by extension, the assumed scene of crime) and nearly all the suspects seemingly in different locations at the time of commission, it also deliciously inserts the unbreakable alibi conundrum into the equation. The manner in which this particular incident is explained is perhaps the icing on top of the cake. Seen as a whole, the three problems and the overarching essence and rationale of Invisible Green evoke the spirits of John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie in sufficient measure.

What's even more pleasantly surprising is how contemporary the work feels for its time. The effort spent in delineating the characteristics of the culprit (to make them the 'right fit') and the 'modern' nature of the motive behind the crimes not only make Invisible Green a product of its time, it also lends a high degree of credulity and believability to the work. Add to this the wry, easy humour with which Sladek peppers this story (particularly in the climax, which, to me, replicated the chaotic energy and hilarity of the climax of Edmund Crispin's 1946 work, The Moving Toyshop)—and I think we have a work that is perhaps deserving of a higher rank than what Edward D. Hoch and other literary reviewers and experts gave it in their 1981 poll.

As a reader, one of the most satisfying achievements is to discover an author whose works leave you with the dual feelings of bliss and wanting more, at the same time. Early last year, I hadn't the foggiest idea of who John Sladek was or what his works were like. I do not believe in subscribing to reading goals, but Invisible Green might have, unwittingly, led me to have one for 2023.

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: Crime fiction: Three novels where we don’t see the solutions because of our blind spots)