The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

First published in Japan in 1946; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on August 4, 2020

The Honjin Murders is a classic Japanese locked room mystery, first serialized in a Japanese magazine in 1946. When the mystery baffles the local police, a brilliant young detective is called to the scene and promptly solves the puzzle. The novel marks the detective's first of more than seventy appearances in Seishi Yokomizo's work. The detective is also a character in five Japanese films.

The story is set in 1937. Kenzo is the current master of the house of Ichiyanagi. Before the shogun was overthrown and the imperial government restored, the house was an inn for travelers who belonged to the nobility (a honjin). Nothing is more important to the Ichiyanagi family than being descendants of the owners of a honjin.

Kenzo and Katsuko were married in Kenzo’s home. Kenzo was about 40. His bride was about 25 and (to her shame) not a virgin, a confession she made just before the wedding. A scarred man with three fingers on his right hand inquired about Kenzo while passing through the village on Kenzo’s wedding day.

The post-wedding sake ceremony lasted all night. It was after midnight before Kenzo could take his new bride to their bedroom. Two hours later, a blood-curdling scream is heard. Kenzo’s family broke into the locked room and discovered that both had been hacked to death, apparently with a sword. The murder weapon disappeared with the killer, but how did the killer enter or leave a room that was locked from the inside?

Bloody three finger handprints point three fingers of guilt at a possible culprit, but that doesn’t solve the mystery of the locked room. Other characters who might be murder suspects are primarily Kenzo’s family members, including his mother and four siblings. His youngest brother is the family’s black sheep while his youngest sister is a bit simple. The sister has just buried a dead cat, which is apparently an ominous circumstance in Japanese mythology.

The stringed instrument known in Japan as the koto figures into the plot, in part because “the eerie strains of a koto being plucked with wild abandon” are heard just after the scream. A letter and a photo album that contain the words “My Mortal Enemy” provide another potential clue. Deciding which clues are real and which are red herrings adds to the fun, but to Seishi Yokomizo’s credit, none of the potential clues are completely extraneous to the story. Everything fits together and contributes to the mystery’s solution.

The police inspector, unable to make headway, summons Kosuke Kindaichi from Tokyo. Kosuke is unkempt and speaks with a stammer, but in the tradition of eccentric detectives, he pieces together obscure clues with ease. When Kosuke notices that the home’s library is filled with detective novels, he offers some literary criticism, expressing a preference for locked room mysteries that do not rely on a mechanical trick over those that do. Kosuke is a particular fan of Leroux’s Mystery of the Yellow Room and the locked room murder mysteries of John Dickson Carr.

The story is clever and complex, as good locked room mysteries tend to be. I probably miss the nuances of Japanese mysteries, having not grown up in the culture, but the unfamiliarity of the setting is part of the appeal of Japanese fiction. I doubt anyone will guess how the murder was committed. It may be possible for astute readers (and I’m not one of those) to puzzle out why it occurred. Whether the novel surprises the reader or not, following Kosuke’s deductive chain as he assembles the clues is fun. The Honjin Murders would be a perfect addition to the shelf of any devoted fan of locked room murder mysteries.

RECOMMENDED

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

Published in Japan in 2014; published in translation in Great Britain in 2019 and in the US by Riverhead Books on June 23, 2020

Having a familiarity with Japanese history would probably help a reader dive into the full depth of Tokyo Ueno Station. I lack that familiarity, although some googling and consulting the SamuraiWiki (yes, there is such a thing) helped me understand references to the conflict between the Shōgitai and Imperial troops, leading to the Battle of Ueno. In addition, a student of Buddhism, or a reader who is familiar with each of the novel’s references to eastern religious rituals and beliefs, will likely have a more nuanced perspective on Tokyo Ueno Station than I did. Such are the difficulties and rewards of tackling Japanese fiction. The novel nevertheless conveys universal truths, regardless of and apart from history and religion, including the pain of loss and the search for meaning in an apparently random universe.

Kazu, the novel’s narrator, tells the story from his memories of being alive. Those memories are fading, as is his ability to distinguish colors and smells. At the age of 67, Kazu began living in Ueno Park in central Tokyo. By 2010, apparently the year of his death, he was 73. He collected cans for recycling to earn the pocket money that helped him survive. Kazu often wondered whether survival is worthwhile. His status as a ghost suggests that he decided his pain was unendurable. Yet he still wanders through the park and the train station, still listens to conversations, still watches when the emperor’s car drives past, the emperor waving at the people lining the sidewalks, probably without really noticing them. Death has not changed Kazu much; certainly, it has not removed the pain. Fading away is his best hope for peace.

Kazu’s life shared milestones with the emperor’s — they are the same age, their children were born on the same day, the park that became his home was a gift to Tokyo from the emperor — yet their lives are a study in contrast. Kazu worked as a laborer, traveling from one construction project to another. He was rarely home to visit his wife and child. His son died in the middle of life. Shortly after Kazu’s retirement, when he finally had time for his wife, she died sleeping next to him after he came home drunk. Kazu wondered whether his wife cried out in pain, whether he could have saved her if he had not fallen into a drunken sleep. He carried the weight of both deaths. After his granddaughter came to live with him, he decided a 21-year old woman should not be burdened by an old man, so he left her a note saying he was moving to Tokyo and that she should not look for him.

Kazu tells us that the homeless do not usually tell each other stories, but a couple of the men he encounters in the park tell him about their past lives. A sense of guilt and shame is their unifying feature. Many of the park’s homeless occupants come to a sad end, sometimes by being beaten to death for sport by Tokyo teens. Their stories are in sharp contrast to the snippets of conversation that Kazu overhears, the idle gossip or comparison of purchases at the mall, the chatterers oblivious to the lives around them.

Tokyo Ueno Station suggests the importance of noticing the unnoticed. “To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past while still being in full view of everyone.” Watching a young man read the prayers for health or success at a temple reminds Kazu that, when he was a young man, he “had no interest in other people’s hopes or setbacks.” The experience of homelessness triggered an empathic awareness of the world that Kazu lacked when he lived a more fortunate life. It is an empathy that government lacks, as he learns when park management displaces the homeless and their cardboard huts so that the imperial family can enjoy the park and its museums without being troubled by reality.

Yet empathy cannot cure the sadness that Kazu feels. The sorrow of death has captured him. Whether he has imagined or witnessed his granddaughter’s fate is unclear, but he has seen enough death to consider whether the time has come to for him to die.

Tokyo Ueno Station might be read as a critique of the Japanese government, its post-war drive to become an economic superpower at the expense of family and a meaningful existence. On a more personal level, the novel stands as an examination of the choices (or lack of choices) that shape life and death. The novel tells a bleak story in spare prose that suits its subject matter, but it encourages readers to recognize the importance of the only life we have and the value of all that lives that we choose not to see.

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Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada

Published in Japan in 1982; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on June 25, 2019

Murder in the Crooked House is a locked room murder mystery that Soji Shimada divided into acts and scenes. A locked room murder in the first act is followed by another in the second. The novel challenges the reader not just to identify the killer but to figure out how the murders were committed. The latter is the more difficult challenge.

Kozaburo Hamamoto constructed the Crooked House, an isolated Western-style house next to a leaning glass tower, at the tip of Japan’s northernmost island. Hamamoto is a reclusive millionaire. He invites a few elite businessmen and their glamorous wives to a Christmas party at his Crooked House, as well as a couple of students. The chef, chauffeur, and maid are also present.

The students both have an interest in marrying Hamamoto’s daughter Eiko. Hamamoto puts a puzzle to them, offering his daughter’s hand (if she so wishes) to the winner. The challenge is to determine the significance of the flowerbed at the base of the tower. The significance will be revealed at the novel’s end.

Later that night, a female guest sees the face of a monster in her window — seemingly impossible since her room is on the third floor. The next morning, the chauffeur is found dead in his room with a knife protruding from his chest. The only door is locked from the inside. An art object, sort of like a large puppet or mannequin, is found in the snow outside his room. This turns out to be part of Hamamoto’s impressive collection of wind-up toys and other figures. He calls it a golem.

DI Okuma, DCI Ushikoshi, and DS Ozaki lead the police investigation. They take note of the house’s unusual design, which makes it difficult to move from room to room. A guest might need to climb down one staircase, walk the length of the house, and climb up a different staircase to access an adjacent room. The house is built on a slant and there are gaps between walls and the floor. The intricacies are difficult to follow, but Shimada provides helpful diagrams and maps of the house and murder scene.

Murder in the Crooked House is a classic locked room mystery. Several people were staying in the crooked house, all had gone to bed, most of them had their own room and no alibi, and none had an obvious motive to murder the chauffeur. The second murder is of a lecherous old man. This time, the only guests who had a motive were in the company of a police officer at the time the killing occurred.

The detectives are frustrated and, by the end of Act Two, they are wishing they had the assistance of a Japanese Sherlock Holmes. Enter Kiyoshi Mitarai, the star of Act Three. Mitarai’s role in the story is narrated by his own version of Watson, Kazumi Ishioka. Prior to the final act, the reader is assured that all the clues are in place and is challenged to solve the mystery.

And it’s true, the clues are there, but only a reader with some esoteric knowledge of Japan (and perhaps the ability to speak Japanese) will be able to unlock all of them. Most of the clues, however, would allow a reader to piece together how the murders were committed. To do so, the reader would need to be more astute than I am. Guessing the killer’s identity is somewhat easier.

The plot provides readers with an entertaining murder mystery, but the story is fascinating in its glimpse of certain aspects of traditional Japanese culture. A wife complains that her husband, a salaryman, is sycophantic in his relationship with a business owner, but bullying and bossy when he is at home. An older businessman is sleeping with his much younger secretary but hiding his conduct for the sake of appearances. The detectives are more worried about saving face than catching the killer. The murderer’s motivation for one of the killings is related to Japanese history. When the murderer is revealed, the unfailingly polite detectives fall over themselves to compliment the killer on an ingenious plan. And, of course, the polite murderer praises the investigator who solves the crime. What a nice place Japan must be to live (if you can avoid being murdered).

Mitarai isn’t quite Sherlock, but he brings a theatrical flair to his detecting style. An epilog gives the story a final twist. Murder in the Crooked House is a good choice for fans of Japanese crime fiction and a really good choice for fans of locked room murder mysteries.

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Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima

Published in Japan in 1993; published in translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 12, 2019

Territory of Light is a short novel set in the mid-1970s that covers one year in the life of a woman whose husband unexpectedly announces his separation from her life. The unnamed narrator has always considered herself a loser, and her husband’s decision to leave her alone with their daughter does nothing to improve her self-esteem. After an initial period of denial, confident of her husband’s return, she is jolted to reality by a poem that begins “Give up this idle pondering” and thinks about moving forward with her life. Yet many people tell her that women never get a better deal by divorcing, and that the quality of men she will meet will steadily decline. Society erects a barrier to the woman’s progress, and presumably to the progress of all divorcing women of that era in Japan.

Moving forward is hampered by the reality that the narrator isn’t much of a mother. She gives her daughter minimal attention. At least once, she leaves her kid home in bed while she goes out to get drunk. She drinks before sleeping in the hope that her daughter’s crying during the night won’t wake her up. She blames her daughter for problems of her own making. She is obviously suffering from depression and hasn’t figured out how to cope with it. It isn’t surprising that the daughter would like to live with her father, but he has a new woman and only wants to see his daughter for short periods, if at all, although he criticizes his wife’s parenting (with some justification, apart from his hypocrisy). Predictably, given her parenting, the kid has turned into a destructive brat.

The narrator spends a good bit of time (too much in my view) discussing her morbid dreams and the funerals she passes in her daily travels. All the death she witnesses or imagines or dreams about eventually causes an epiphany. Since that epiphany is probably the novel’s point, I won’t spoil it by revealing it. I will only say that, as revelations go, this one struck me as a strange way to look at life. Still, there is no right or wrong way to look at life, and other readers might find the epiphany to be inspirational.

The narrator has a good bit of anxiety about raising a child on her own, particularly when she hears stories of parenting gone wrong. She often has libidinous dreams and wonders why she never dreams of hugging her child. Stories like this make it possible for readers to understand the emotional impact of domestic drama in a culture that they haven’t experienced, but I often found myself cringing at the narrator’s self-pity rather than developing empathy for her struggle. A novel like this should make me understand the protagonist, but I became ever more perplexed by her behaviors and attitudes as the year in her life unfolded.

I suspect that this is a book that appeals to Japanese divorcing mothers. Perhaps it appeals to other readers because they empathize with Japanese divorcing mothers who dealt with cultural burdens that were in place fifty years ago. It might appeal to fans of bleakness, whether or not they are Japanese. Yuko Tsushima’s prose is often elegant without quite becoming pretentious, and the protagonist’s character is developed in detail, so the novel has literary value. I can’t recommend Territory of Light without reservations because the novel did little for me, but I can recommend it with reservations because I can understand why it might speak to other readers.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS 

Newcomer by Keigo Higashino

First published in Japan in 2001; published in translation by Minotaur Books on November 20, 2018

A woman named Mineko is murdered, leaving behind an ex-husband and an estranged son. The victim was eating rice cakes before she died. Perhaps the person who brought her the box of rice cakes was her killer. The police, however, aren’t sure who brought them, so Detective Kaga begins to ask questions. Kaga is a newcomer, having only recently transferred to the precinct, but his intense curiosity will soon help him discover everything there is to know about the neighborhood.

Naho lives with her father and grandmother, who all work together in the family rice cake shop. The day after an insurance man named Takura picks up a hospitalization certificate from Naho’s grandmother, Kaga comes to the shop to inquire about the time of Takura’s visit. Could Takura have been the killer?

A young restaurant employee named Shuhei bought rice cakes from the shop at the direction of his boss, a man named Taiji. Could Taiji have been the killer? And what about the restaurant manager, Yoriko, who seems to have meddled with one of the cakes? Or Mineko’s friend, who promised to help Mineko get established after her divorce, but suddenly decided to get married and move to England? Are the friend and her fiancé suspects? And why did Mineko move to the neighborhood where she was killed without making contact with her nearby son?

Kaga is Tokyo’s Columbo, trying to add up all the loose ends, make sense of inconsistencies, and annoy witnesses by repeatedly turning up to pose new questions. As he prowls around the neighborhood where the crime was committed, his investigation takes him to a home goods store where Mineko ordered chopsticks, a cutlery shop where she bought expensive scissors, a clock shop where an owner claims to have seen Mineko while walking the family dog, a pastry shop where Mineko was a regular customer, and a handicrafts store where someone bought a top.

Kaga uncovers secrets and lies everywhere he goes, generally involving domestic drama, although the secrets aren’t necessarily relevant to the murder. In his own way, he helps people overcome the burdens of the secrets they conceal. Kaga thinks that finding ways to comfort people in their daily struggles is part of a detective’s job (an attitude that may be unique to Japanese police detectives, or perhaps to fictional Japanese police detectives).

I loved Newcomer’s episodic structure and its atmospheric depiction of a “premodern” Tokyo neighborhood. The story portrays women who are torn between traditional roles and a desire to lead interesting lives in a male-dominated workplace. In a number of the linked episodes, Keigo Higashino also illustrates the family tensions that arise as younger generations depart from Japanese traditions to pursue their own lifestyles.

But this isn’t a social justice novel or a detailed exploration of changing norms in Japanese society. Newcomer is an entertaining version of a Detective Columbo story that weaves Japanese culture in a Tokyo neighborhood into a murder mystery. Kaga is an entertaining character and his self-effacing interaction with a jealous colleague makes him all the more likeable. The plot is equally entertaining. Newcomer is the kind of police procedural that lets the reader follow a chain of evidence while wondering where it will all lead.

I became a fan of Higashino when I read The Devotion of Suspect X. Newcomer cements my fandom. The novel should appeal to fans of crime fiction generally, as well as being a treat for fans of Japanese crime novels.

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