浩寧の事件簿

「迷宮」

2012-01-31T00:00:00.000+01:00

愛する人がどんどん増えてく

それって素敵な事ね　きっと人生

宝物なんだ

『ありがとう』　（レミオロメン）

More and more people I love

That is a wonderful thing

Life is really a treasure

"Thanks" (Remioromen)

Second part in the Tantei Gakuen Q ("Detective Academy Q") case by case review series. Yes, I am going fast, but it's also because I kinda skimmed throught the stories I still remembered. Which was about half of the stories here. The previous four volumes formed a solid foundation for this teamwork based detective series, but volumes five to eight are more focused on developing the characters and the main storyline.

Detective Academy Q
「迷Ｑ!?」: Volumes 1 ~ 4
「迷宮」: Volumes 5 ~ 8

Kateikashitsu no Nazo ("The Mystery of the Home Economics Classroom") continues the trend of cases tailor made for individual students of Q Class. This time the story is set at Kazuma's primary school, where Kazuma's favorite teacher gets attacked by somebody with a cursed poison blowpipe in her office. The would-be murderer flees into the home economics classroom, next to the office, but when Kazua enters the room, he is astounded to find it completely empty, with every window locked from the inside and no other ways of escape. Oh, I did mention cursed poison blowpipe, right? Those things apparently can be found at primary schools. Anyway, the trick behind the impossible disappearance of the assailant is really smart and it is almost a shame that it was 'just' for a story two chapters long!

Alibi Ressha de Ikou ("Let's Go With The Alibi Train") is one of my favorite stories of the series, even though it is nothing special. I just have a thing for inverted detective stories. Kyuu and Kinta are sent away on an assignment for DDS and travel by train to their destination. The same train an illustrator (and murderer-to-be) has chosen for her alibi trick. She starts up a conversation with Kyuu and Kinta, making sure they remember her as she will need them as decisive witnesses she couldn't have commited the murder during the ride (of course, she did). Of course, using two members of the prestigious DDS's Q Class as pawns in your murder plan is definitely going to fail. Especially if one of them is Kyuu. The story mirrors a series of short inverted stories of the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, complete with the humorous tone and the elegant simplicity of the slip-up and it is really a shame there are so few inverted stories in Tantei Gakuen Q.

The trio of Megu, Yukihira and Kuniko (of A Class) are sent to help Kyuu and Kinta, as they were mistaken for gropers on a train in the last case. Thus Bishoujo Tantei (Trio The Beauty) Kikippatsu ("Beautiful Girl Detectives (Trio The Beauty) In A Pinch") starts off with our three girls taking the train (which is packed because of the rain), but during the trip Kuniko is molested by a groper. As Kuniko screams, the groper's arm disappears into the mass of people, but Megu is able to find the groper thanks to her photographic memory and bring the man to the train police. The suspect denies all charges though and claims that he wasn't even on the train during the period Kuniko was being molested.

By now, we've seen quite a lot of gruesome murders in this series, yet I was kinda surprised to see a story addressing sexual harassment here. The story is pretty simple, but the problem of proving someone's guilt or innocence in a grope case are quite well known in Japan. Famous are the 'women only' sections in trains during the busy morning rush in Tokyo. I have the unforgetable memory of being squished every morning in the train in Tokyo for three months and I can say that as a male you do make an effort to make sure the position of your hands isn't going to be mistaken for a more criminal act. Which isn't always easy if there is literally no place to move because everybody is leaning against you. The movie Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai (based on a true story) is pretty famous, where a man is accused of molesting a high school girl in the train and he sees no way to proof he did not do it.

Gensoukan Satsujin Jiken ("The Gensou Mansion Murder Case") goes back to the format of a long Kindaichi Shounen-esque story. In fact, this story is remniscent of Akuma Kumikyoku Satsujin Jiken ("The Devil's Symphony Murder Case"), originally a Kindaichi Shounen audio drama. Both stories are about the legacy of a eminent musician, with a lot of rivalry and hatred amongst his disciples. In this story, the disciples of Yuge (who is still alive, by the way) are all hoping to get the Testa di Drago, a magnificent violin. A threatening letter has been sent to Yuge, supposedly sent by a disciple who died six months ago, saying the Testa di Drago belongs to her and that she'll come get it. But what is even more interesting is that the Testa di Drago was made by Kuzuryuu Takumi, the mysterious allround artist who also designed the old school building with a hidden prison (volume 4). Thus Dan Morihiko sends Q Class to investigate the case, hoping they will find out more about Kuzuryuu too. And of course people die during Q Class' stay at the Gensou Mansion, a mountain villa where Yuge and his disciples reside.

I think this is one of the last stories incorporated in the anime and it is a pretty interesting story, even if a bit straightforward. The scale of this story is mostly derived because the murderer commits several murders, but the individual murders are not all that interesting to be honest (except for a cool alibi trick used in the first murder). Suspense in this story is mostly derived from the fact the people in the Gensou Mansion are cut off the outside world because of a storm, while Kinta and the DDS teacher Hongou are still on their way to the villa. The closed circle setting and the motive behind the murders is definitely a throwback to Kindaichi Shounen, but 'fresh' in this series.

Maybe the more interesting part of Gensoukan Satsujin Jiken is that Hongou finally explains the truth behind Pluto, the criminal organisation that sells perfect murder plans, to Q Class and its connection to the cases Q Class has solved in the past. They also manage to capture Miss Kaori, one of Pluto's agents, but not before Ryuu was stabbed by the murderer (who was hypnotised to fight back if he was caught). Ryuu also finally realized his connection to Pluto in this story, which is made even more clear in Shisha wa Kurayami Yori ("The Messenger from the Darkness"), a transition chapter that introduces Kerberos, a high ranking Pluto agent who will act as the face of Pluto for the time being.

Shounentachi no Yoru ("Boys' Night"), Kuzuryuu Takumi no Nazo ("The Mystery of Kuzuryuu Takumi"), Shiunryuu no Hen'i ("The Change of the Shiunryuu"), Uketsugareshi Mono ("He Who Inherits") and Kuzuryuu Nikki no Himitsu ("The Secret of the Kuzuryuu Diary") is a little story arc that I think is missing from the anime. After the events surrounding Pluto, Ryuu decides to leave his home and decides to live in Kyuu's home. There the two boys decide to do more research on the mysterious Kuzuryuu Takumi, whose art seems to have the strange power of bringing the worst out of people. Thanks to a lucky break (Kyuu's mom once had a translation assignment connected with Kuzuryuu), the duo manages to track down the Shiunryuu, a beautiful vase Kuzuryuu made. There is a little disappearing case with the Shiunryuu during their visit, but they manage to solve that and also a small secret behind the vase. It appears that there is a secret behind every thing Kuzuryuu made (for example the secret prison in the old school building) and when the boys get hold of a translated copy of Kuzuryuu's diary, they suspect there is a secret code hidden there, but they can't solve it.

Leaving the secret behind the diary, Q Class is sent away on another assignment in Mayahime Densetsu Satsujin Jiken ("The Princess Maya Legend Murder Case"), because a threatening letter has been sent to a politican regarding the construction of a dam. Q Class quickly find out that many villagers of Jinchuu, the politican's hometown, are not happy at all with the plans and it should not come as a surprise that the murder of this story turns out to be the politician. No, the surprise lies in the fact that the man was found inside a locked storage house. And with locked I mean it was blocked by a block of concrete used for building the dam. What has this to do with the legends surrounding the human pillar sacrifices that are told in this village? A funny code is also added to the locked room mystery, but the latter is certainly the star of the story. Why use a key or a bolt to lock a door if you can also use a concrete block? Just going that extra mile in the presentation makes this an interesting locked room story.

Mittsu no Yubiwa ("The Three Rings") is a supplement story about a ring Megu wears, but nothing special (cute though!). Hikari to Kage no Kizuna ("The Bonds of Light and Darkness") is another transition story, where we learn a bit more about the fate of the Pluto agent Miss Kaori, who has lost her mind ever since Kerberos hypnotised her. Dan Morihiko still has no idea how to retrieve her mind (so he can question her about Pluto). At the DDS, Megu is presented with a code she has to solve herself, which is I guess to be considered her 'own' case like Kyuu, Kinta and Kazuma got? Or it was volume 5's Bishoujo Tantei (Trio The Beauty) Kikippatsu, but that was actually done with three people...

Kochira DSD Kagaku Kenkyuushitsu ("This is the DDS Laboratory") is a short story that introduces Doctor Skull, the man responsible for the gadgets used by the DDS. He is short on hands and he asks Kyuu, Megu and Ryuu to solve a case for him (while smart, Doctor Skull is technically not a detective, so he leaves this up to the real detectives). The case involves a murder of a woman in her own flat, with the main suspect living two apartments above her. The problem is that the suspect has an ironclad alibi, as he had friends over at his apartment during the time of the murder. The trick is a good and simple one, which is also the best way to describe this story. While this case is solved completely at the DDS laboratory, the live action drama turned this story into a case Q Class actually has to investigate themselves. And added in a weird idol otaku subplot.

Shinrei Camera de Scoop ("A Scoop With a Ghost Camera") is the first in a series of stories related to supernatural phenomena. During school, Kuniko of A Class shows off some of her ghost photographs. Most of the students think that they are fun, but nothing more than retouched pictures, so they don't think much more about it. On their way back home, Ryuu and Kyuu are witness to an awful train accident and help out a bit with identifying the man. They have a feeling something is wrong though and visit the victim's closest relatives, his brother and sister-in-law, but come up with nothing. But imagine the surprise as Kyuu makes a photograph of Ryuu (Kyuu has been playing with his new camera for some time) and they discover the face of the deceased man floating behind Ryuu on the photograph! The mystery the ghost picture is surprisingly clever and one of the most original tricks in the series. This might be a short, relatively light-hearted story, but the quality is still as high as any other story.

Contuining the investigation into urban legends, Q Class investigates the mystery of the headless woman dressed in kimono who is supposed to haunt a certain neighbourhood in Meirokouji no Kubinashi Onna ("The Headless Woman of the Road Labyrinth"). Kyuu, Megu and Kinta stake the place out and actually see the headless woman and they decide to chase and catch her. The ghost (?) runs into a small labyrinth of walled off alleyways, with Q Class right behind her, but when Q Class arrive at the end of the labyrinth, the ghost has disappeared. This is a really light and easy mystery, not much more to be said about it.

After ghost pictures and monsters, now aliens in UFO Kara Ai wo Komete ("From UFO with Love")! Kazuma has a mail-friend from Hokkaidou who has made a picture of an UFO and she also says that a certain class of her school has been acting very strange ever since the appearance of the UFO. Q Class flies to Hokkaidou (paid by Kazuma) to investigate the case, but who would have expected that even crop circles would appear near the town?! A case of misdirection, with some smarter mysteries hidden behind the main mystery, which is not really difficult to deduce.

The previous stories already refered to an upcoming exam at DDS, that determines your class ranking. Q Class naturally has to take the exam too and there is a real danger of being degraded to a lower class. The five students therefore decice to go on a training camp in Kurayamidera Yuurei Jiken ("The Kurayamidera Ghost Case"). Their training location is at the summer house of Kinta's family, a place deep in the mountains where he spent his youth. There they meet Sumire, an old friend (love interest?) of Kinta and she convinces the five members of Q Class to do a kimodameshi (test of courage) in the Kurayamidera temple, involving passing a candle in a relay. But even though one of them chickens out of the test, the relay doesn't end in a failure. Which is impossible with just four members due the rules. The only conclusion: a ghost took over the place of the one who chickened out! Another light-hearted story, but this story is actually set up to serve as a meaningful introduction of the following story. The kimodameshi is a trope that is used a couple of times in Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo actually. They always ended up in murder.

Setsugekka Satsujin Jiken ("Setsugekka Murder Case") is a very long and complex story, probably the longest of the series save the last case and includins substories titled Q Class De Aru Tame Ni ("Because We Are Q Class"), Abakereta Katachi ("The Blown Cover") and Setsugekka no Shinjitsu ("The Truth Behind Setsugekka"). The Setsugekka are a set of scrolls painted by Kuzuryuu Takumi and in the possesion of the Kiryuu family. Kiryuu Ukon, the youngest son of the family, is a childhood friend of Kinta and Sumire and was once known as a genius trickster, but some years ago his mind suddenly turned for the worse and nowadays has a very childish personality. He is still best friends with Kinta though and happily shows Q Class the three Setsugekka scrolls, depicting a demoness with a snow, moon and flower setting.

But the Kuzuryuu Takumi art objects are always connected to crime and the following night one of Ukon's stepsisters is found stabbed in her neck in the room of the scrolls. Seeing only Ukon and his father have keys to the room (and Ukon's father isn't able to walk anymore), Ukon is seen as the main suspect of the case by the police. Kinta has to solve the case to save his friend, but little does he know that Kerberos, the top Pluto agent, is behind this case.

And what a case this is! The live action drama did a poorly distilled version of this story, but that really didn't do any justice to this impressive case. It's a very deeply layered case that is sure to fool most readers and is made even more impressive as Amagi ups the Pluto storyline, by letting Kyuu discover Ryuu's connection to the criminal organisation. This story is also the first time we see Kerberos in action and what a debut! He takes his cues from Kindaichi Shounen's Hell's Puppeteer, as both are extremely smart criminals who sell murder plans, but don't dirty their own hands (which in turn builds on the identity of the criminal in a certain famous novel I won't mention by name). Kerberos easily uses several psychological tricks on Ryuu, tricking him into making rash deductions and it takes the likes of Nanami Koutarou and Dan Morihiko himself to cope with the watchdog of Hades. This is the most satisfactory story in the whole series until now, splendidly mixing in the whole idea of detective teamwork, visual clueing and the idea of fighting a criminal organisation that are central to this series with a really complex detective plot. One of the subplots also eerily mirrors the Conan story KID and the Four Masterpieces (volume 53).

Amagi seemed eager to further the main story line and in thus deals with the 'mystery' behind the mysterious detective who taught Kyuu everything he knows in Sono Na wa Renjou Satoru ("His Name is Renjou Satoru"), Oshie wo Tsuide ("Inheriting the Lessons") and Takusareta Inori ("The Entrusted Wish"). It shouldn't be a big surprise to hear that Kyuu is the son of the (deceased) first assistent of Dan Morihiko and while it makes for a nice 'now-the-circle-is-complete' feeling, no mystery is present in these chapters. Well, except for the fact that Kazuma makes the daring (yet perfect!) guess that Pluto might have infiltrated the DDS, seeing as several of Pluto's actions lately seem to rely on information that must have come from the DDS itself. This is confirmed in Akuma no Egao ("The Devil's True Face"), where Dan Morihiko manages to release Pluto agent Miss Kaori's hypnosis and asks her the question: who of the people he brought with him here is the spy inside DDS?

Volumes five to eight really show the difference of this series with series like Conan and Kindaichi Shounen, by focusing much more and better on the main storyline and the fight with Pluto. There are some great short and long stories in these volumes, which really shows off the diversity of this series and it also moves away from the impossible crime-oriented beginning of this series. We also see that Amagi tries to develop the characters a bit more by giving everyone their own story arcs and while Ryuu and Megu seem to have little attention at this point, their importance will be shown in the last part of the series, so Amagi was able to pay a little bit less attention to them.

Even though I already read this series, I am actually really excited to read the last part now!

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）& さとうふみや（画）『探偵学園Ｑ』　第５巻～８巻　（文庫）

『誰が女神を殺したか?』

2012-01-30T00:00:00.006+01:00

「勇気を振り絞り、私はここらであの有名な言葉を書いておこうとおもう。

‹私は読者に挑戦する›」

『占星術殺人事件』

"Gathering all my courage, I'd like to leave those famous words here:

I challenge the reader"

"The Astrology Murder Case"

I think I'll stop my series of reviews of English translated Japanese novels for the moment, but the final one just had to be this novel.

Shimada Souji debuted in 1981 with The Tokyo Zodiac Murder Case (Original title: Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken - "The Astrology Murder Case"). At the time it was not well received that very good with the public, as the novel was quite different from the dominant style at the time. The late seventies - early eighties were the years after the Yokomizo boom, when the social school (usually represented by Matsumoto Seichou) reigned and dry police procedurals were considered the way to go for detective fiction. So what chance did Shimada had with his debut novel, that was a clear homage to the Golden Age detective novels, with an amateur detective who outsmarts the police, with references to great detectives of old like Sherlock Holmes, with its preposterous complex murder plot including a locked room murder and its pretentious Challenge to the Reader?

Luckily, Shimada was not the only writer in Japan who felt an urge to return to the old orthodox detective fiction and The Tokyo Zodiac Murders showed these young writers the possibility of modern orthodox detective novels. Shimda inspired and helped several authors during this important time. Ayatsuji Yukito, whose novels were first marketed as New Orthodox detectives, got his pen-name from Shimada actually, just like Abiko Takemaru. Shimada should thus be considered the driving force behind the New Orthodox detective fiction movement and it all started with The Tokyo Zodiac Murders. It is thanks to this novel that I can still enjoy classically structured detective novels complete with locked room mysteries and Challenges to the Readers in this time and age. Thank you.

Oh, and you know, the plot of this book is actually awesome too. The story starts with the will of Umezawa Heikichi, an artist with an obsession with alchemy and astrology. Haunted by the image of Azoth, the perfect woman, he decides to murder his six daughters and nieces and to use their body parts in order to construct Azoth himself. And indeed, 1936 is the year the Umezawa family gets slaughtered, with the bodies (minus the parts used for Azoth) of the poor girls being found all across Japan. Oh, but as we have Umezawa's will, we know he did it right? Well, the problem is that Umezawa was killed, inside a locked room, before any of the girls were murdered. Which makes it somewhat difficult for him to have commited the murders. Or was it? The case became known as the Umezawa astrology murders and while the police and amateur detectives have challenged the case countless of times, it still remains unsolved after 40 years. Until fortune-teller Mitarai Kiyoshi (who occassionally works as a detective) gets hold on a manuscript that brings another light on the case and he declares that he will solve the baffling case within a week.

The main trick behind the novel is simply brilliant and not enough words can exist to praise it. Shimada has a talent for coming up with fantastically grand tricks that surprise the reader because they are just so unbelievable. With most novels, you think 'Oh, that's pretty smart' when you find out the trick. With Shimada, it's more like "Wha... WHAT? YOU'VE GOTTA....BUT... AAH, IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!". As if Shimada is working on a totally different scale than most readers. If the traditional locked room is created with a thread and needle, then Shimada's tools are a gigantic steel wire rope and iron bar and he would still be subtle with them. The grand trick is something typically Shimada and can also be seen in for example his second novel, Naname Yashiki no Hanzai ("The Crime at the Slanted Mansion") and the short stories Shissou suru Shisha ("The Running Dead Man"), Yamatakabou no Ikaros ("Icarus with a Bowler Hat") and Aru Kishi no Monogatari ("A Story of a Knight").

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders develops similarly to Ellery Queen's A Study In Terror, as in both stories the detectives are solving a case based solely on old documents. This turns the story in a pure logic puzzle, as it misses the excitement that comes from a case that is developing in the present progressive. More than half the novel consists of old manuscripts and Ishioka telling Mitarai about the case 40 years ago and I have to admit that at times these segments seem to drag on a bit because they are quite dry. Even if quite bloody and messy. In Shimada's second novel, Naname Yashiki no Hanzai, he wisely chose to depict the crime in real-time, which was much more appealing.

Mitarai Kiyoshi (whose name is hilariously written as a clean honorable toilet) is also the first in the long line of amateur detectives in new orthodox detective novels. In good detective fiction tradition, Mitarai starts off the adventure by talking very badly about his literary predecessors and especially Holmes is the victim of Mitarai's foul words. What is even more hilarious is that Shimada actually included a lot of Mitarai's comments about Holmes in his own Holmes pastiche, Souseki to Rondon Miira Satsujin Jiken ("Souseki and the London Mummy Murder Case"). Mitarai is here a fortune-teller with an interest in crime, like in the next novel, but he trades in his occupation to become a private detective in the short story collection Mitarai Kiyoshi no Aisatsu ("Mitarai Kiyoshi's Greetings"), introducing himself as criminologist with an interest in astrology.

The Challenge to the Reader in this novel really caught on with subsequent authors (who may or may not be new orthodox writers). Even if I limit myself to the writers mentioned in the side bar, you'd have Abiko Takemaru, Amagi Seimaru, Arisugawa Alice, Ayatsuji Yukito, Higashino Keigo, Maya Yutaka, Mitani Kouki, Takemoto Kenji, Yokomizo Seishi who I remember having used explicit Challenges to the Readers in their works (and probably more I forget. And even more writers work with implied Challenges (for example, Aoyama Goushou's stories are almost always structured so that Conan figures out everything at the end of a chapter, while Nikaidou Reito's Jinroujou no Kyoufu ("Terror of Werewolf Castle") has two implicit Challenges, mirroring the two Challenges presented in Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders).

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is one of those rare books that is not only amazing at what it was supposed to be (a detective story), but also stands symbol for important changes within the literary history of detective fiction. As such, it is a novel everyone should have read. And this is one of the few recommendations I can make that actually has an English version available!

One note of warning: the second Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo story arc, Ijinkanmura Satsujin Jiken ("The Ijinkanmura Murder Case", published in the US as The Mummy's Curse) plagiarizes the main tricks of this novel. There were quite some troubles surrounding this at the time and all publications nowadays include a clear warning for those who have not read The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (which seems to be missing in the US publication).

Original Japanese title(s): 島田荘司『占星術殺人事件』

「この番組的には、流行語大賞はＯｈ！ガメオベールと思います」

2012-01-29T00:00:00.004+01:00

「ラーク？タバコを吸う奴おったっけな・・・・　神宮寺しかおらへんで！」

『ゲームセンターＣＸ　134: 解決しろ！「探偵神宮寺三郎新宿中央公園殺人事件」』

"A Lark cigarette? Was there a suspect who smoked...? Jinguuji is the only one smoking!"

"Game Center CX 134: Solve it! Detective Jinguuji Saburou Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case"

So this might be because of the whole connection with Japanese culture and the average age of bloggers out there, but is the only blog dedicated to detective fiction that actually discusses (detective) games at all? Am I the only one who uses a 'game' tag? I really can't see why a mystery fan wouldn't try the Ace Attorney games for example...

Anyway, I have discussed my random thoughts about observing other people while they are tackling a piece of detective fiction earlier, using the fantastic program Game Center CX as an example. In the program, section chief Arino Shinya (of comedy duo Yoiko) is locked up with a retro (and usually hard) videogame in a room, which he needs to beat. He has challenged detective games earlier, but luck has it that this week's episode was actually of the section chief playing Detective Jinguuji Saburou - The Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case, the first game in a series I absolutely love and have mentioned quite often here. In fact, I have sorta reviewed the game here too, so for the basic game mechanics I refer to that post. Anyway, as a fan of both the game and the program itself, I was really interested to see how section chief Arino would handle the role of the hardboiled detective and the case of the mysterious murdered girl who was found in the middle of Shinjuku Central Park.

What makes the Game Center CX's episodes with graphic adventure games so fun is the fact that Arino is forced to talk a lot more than usual. In most episodes, Arino's challenges concern action games and humour is derived from the fact that Arino is, to put it lightly, usually not very good at those games. And with not good I mean that is very likely that he will get stuck for hours on on just one level. Maybe just one part of a level (looking at you, Castlevania III episode!). Thus much time of a episode is spent on just watching Arino falling from a cliff again. Or walking into an enemy. Or accidently forgetting to press continue. Or forgetting to equip the super special awesome rare sword he spent hours forging, making him unable to fight back and die miserably. Which makes it seem likes Game Center CX is only fun if you have like to see others fail, which isn't true. It is so awesome because Arino keeps on trying despite failing constantly.

These events just don't happen often in adventure games though. Though to be honest, I was quite surprised to see Arino getting a game over screen almost immediately in The Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case, because he insisted on treating the police detective in charge of the case as a suspect. Interactivity and unpredicability of videogames at his best. Heck, I didn't even know you could get a game over screen so soon! Seeing him running around looking for 'the disappeared' Youko for a long time in the park only for him to find out that Youko is Jinguuji's assistent and just waiting at the office is just hilarious.

To make up for the lack of action and humour derived from the footage itself in this game, Arino just talks a lot. Usually it is just seeing him making hilarous comments about the game and the dialogue (he is technically a tsukkomi in Yoiko, or at least the lesser boke). But at other times you hear him seriously voicing his thoughts about the case and see an 'actual' detective at work. This is something really fun you'd practically never see in real life: see how a fellow 'reader' (in this case a gamer) handles a piece of detective fiction: how he interprets the evidence, how he thinks about the suspects, how he connects the little puzzles of the plot into one cohesive net of murder. To aid the TV audience, but especially himself, Arino for example has the neat habit of writing everything down on a whiteboard in a chart. He organises all the evidence, testimonies and his own suspicions in a grand scheme, with arrows pointing here and there. I know that some people indeed sometimes write these things down when reading detective fiction (I tend to keep it all in my head), so it is really funny to see how someone handles a detective story.

Which is made even more clear by the fact that this is a videogame. While there are limits to your freedom within a game, especially in older adventure games, it is still clear that Arino moves according to his deductions. He visits the people he suspects first and is clearly less polite to them (there is a threaten command in the game) than to people he thinks are innoccent. There are some psychological researches on how people handle detective fiction, looking at how people come up with deductions and hypotheses based on the story itself, experience with the genre and knowledge of tropes (see the attic for some Japanese sources). Because of all these parameters, very different interpretations are made of the same situation and it is within the realm of interactive detective fiction that you really clearly see what for results this can have. The way the plot develops in The Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case is relatively an on-rails experience, but here it was clear that Arino did same stuff different from me. I for one didn't get a game over screen five minutes in the game.

Arino makes some big deductions during the episode and is asked to make his final thoughts clear just before the big finale. Receiving a pack of chocolate cigarettes of the director Inoue (the legendary assistent director who only seemed to work against Arino when in cooperative play), Arino mimicks the smoking private detective Jinguuji and actually comes up with some great deductions during his play of the game. Or were it guesses? Fact is that he has an impressive track record with detective games (Kamaitachi no Yoru and Ohotsk ni Kiyu) where he keeps on solving cases long before the finale. Seeing Arino actually being incredibly good at games is also fun at times.

It was strange to see no in-game smoking scenes though, even though there is a special command to smoke. Yes, you can actually opt to choose to smoke in this game series and sometimes, it is even required to advance in the game.

Anyway, it was interesting to see in details how someone else solves a detective story. And even better that it was a game I know and like, in the setting of a TV progam I love.

Original Japanese title(s): 『ゲームセンターＣＸ　134: 解決しろ！「探偵神宮寺三郎新宿中央公園殺人事件」』

『鬼は夜歩く』

2012-01-28T00:00:00.002+01:00

「しかし、そこで警部がふいに立ち止まり、右手を軽く上げながら「あ、そうそう、もうひとつだけ」といいだしたので、おれは祖教師ヶ谷警部の口から「うちのカミさん」の話が飛び出すのではないかと内心ハラハラした。コロンボの真似をしたがる警部さんは、きっと大勢いるはずだ」

『学ばない探偵たちの学園』

"The inspector suddenly stopped his steps and rose his right hand lightly. He started with "Ah, one more thing please" and I became worried whether inspector Soshigaya wasn't about to give me a story about his wife. There are probably many police inspectors who pretend to be Columbo"

"The School of the Detectives Who Don't Learn"

If you'd be visiting this blog for the first time, you'd almost think I only discuss translated novels! You might also be tempted to think that I am a very active blogger, while in reality I wrote most posts of this week in one day. Heh.

Uchida Yasuo is best known for his travel mystery series starrring Asami Mitsuhiko, an investigative freelance writer for a travel magazine. He travels across Japan writing articles on local legends and history of popular tourist spots, but he always ends up caught in some kind of murder case. The Asami Mitsuhiko stories are thus a strange mix between travel guide, history books and detective novels and quite interesting if you are into that. The detective plots are usually not very complex, but entertaining enough.

Uchida's The Togakushi Legend Murders (Original title: Togakushi Densetsu Satsujin Jiken) is not part of the Asami Mitsuhiko series however, but of the Inspector Takemura Iwao series. Takemura is known as the 'Columbo of Shinano' (because he keeps wearing the same coat) and considered the sharpest inspector of the Nagano Prefectural police. This time, he is placed in charge of the investigation of a murder commited in the town of Togakushi. The victim was the influential businessman Takeda, who was found poisoned in an area commonly known as the poison plains. Togakushi apparently was the setting of the legend of Taira no Koremochi slaying the demoness Momiji, who was planning to poison him. What bothers Takemura is the fact the murderer bothered to poison Takeda and drag the body all the way to the poison plains. Has someone taken up the role of the murdering demoness Momiji herself?

Having read several translations in a row now, it became clear quite quickly how odd this translation feels. It just doesn't feel right. It is a bit stilted and several editorial / translator's choices to render the Japanese and cultural references felt very unnatural. I do admit that part of the problem lies with Uchida's own writing style, which has a tendency to turn out very dry and pragmatic. It does fit the police procedural format of this story, but on the other hand, it does make the fact that someone is mimicking murders according to the Momiji legend a little less scary. The Asami Mitsuhiko novels actually feel quite different, with a distinct lighthearted, humorous tone to them (especially when low-ranking policemen who suspect Mitsuhiko of murder find out who his brother is). The Asami Mitsuhiko novels also seem more to be more focused on legends, providing more background information. For this release, I find it a bit disappointing no maps were provided. While probably not included in the original Japanese release, maps and a bit more background information (in footnotes?) would also have been welcome to convey the feeling of the area.

The mystery itself is not very exciting and it is almost like the investigation of the police (Takemura) was not even needed for this story. There are few suspects and the story develops at the murderer's pace until Uchida thinks it is time for the novel to end. And he does it with a rather forceful conclusion. It is not really satisfactory. Which is not to say that this is a bad novel, it just has some moments that make you think that it will be better, only to reveal that it is really nothing more than an average mystery. Which, in a way, is even more disappointing.

Which is pretty much all I have on this book. It is really just a 'meh' book and you are not missing out on anything if you choose to ignore it, but it is not a bad way to kill some time either.

Oh, and I have to admit that I find the Hannya mask on the cover truly horrifying and I always make sure it doesn't face me when I return it to the ~~bookcase~~ pile of books. I hope it disappears from the first page of this blog soon.

Original Japanese title(s): 内田康夫『戸隠伝説殺人事件』

「迷Q!?」

2012-01-27T00:00:00.004+01:00

"I wanna be a pirate!"

"The Secret of Monkey Island"

And every time the hardest thing about writing a post is coming up with a title that is related to the subject matter and finding a fitting quote. And every time I think about letting go of these silly rules of mine, but hey, they are still around after how many years now?

Tantei Gakuen Q ("Detective Academy Q") is a detective series I absolutely love, but for some reason practically never mention here. Which is mainly because it is a finished series I read a long time ago and I tend to focus on recently read material. But now is as good as any time to rave about this series, right? Tantei Gakuen Q is written and drawn by the same team behind the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series (Amagi Seimaru and Satou Fumiya), but is actually quite different from that classic. The story revolves around Q Class, a special class at the Dan Detective School (DDS), an academy for future detectives. The five members of Q Class have been selected as possible successors to Dan Morihiko, the legendary detective and head of the school. Besides taking classes on tailing persons, code-cracking and reviewing old cases et cetera, Q Class, like all students at the DDS, often also cooperate with real police investigations and private investigations (because Dan Morihiko also runs the detective agency DDC). Q Class thus differs greatly from the amateur detective Kindaichi Hajime.

Q Class consists of Kyuu and Ryuu, both deductive geniuses (but every different in character), Megu with a photographic memory, Kazuma the wizzkid and Kinta, the brawn of the group. They thus all thave their own role within the team. Detective teams are not particularly rare in fiction. We have for example Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin and the Beresfords. Q Class works kinda like the Beresfords, with everyone working on a case according to their own judgement and making use of their own strong points. It results in a very pleasant read, because the cases are tackled with diverse methods simultaneously, making it much more interesting to look at their investigations. Kinta's way of investigation is totally different from how Ryuu's way for example and it is this diversity that keeps investigatons from getting boring.

The premise of the series might sound a bit childish, with children going to detective school learning to be detectives with detective classes and stuff, but Tantei Gakuen Q is really a fantastic series. Amagi and Satou really took everything they learnt from Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (Tantei Gakuen Q was produced after Kindaichi Shounen's first season ended) and improved on it immensely. Tantei Gakuen Q mixes the humor and charm of the Kindaichi Shounen short stories with the grand-scale impossible murders of the main series and adds a main storyline that actually develops (Conan, I am looking at you!). With a bit over 20 volumes, this is a really powerful series that is satisfying overall, but also on its individual parts (the murder cases).

Too bad for those who watch the anime though (which is out there completely subtitled in English) is that the anime only goes halfway through the main storyline. The live-action series of Tantei Gakuen Q reimagines the story in a more geek-hip Akihabara setting, but is pretty satisfying and includes stories not done in the anime (including the last case).

I intend to do a complete review of every case of the manga, similar to what I did with Detective Conan. The difference being that Tantei Gakuen Q is not as ridiculously long as Conan. I discuss about four volumes of the bunkobon release a time, meaning this will be a series of three posts. And I'll probably stick the supplemental Tantei Gakuen Q Premium volume at the end of it all. Like with Conan, there is the problem that even if I don't spoil any of the solutions to the individual cases (which I won't), there is a main storyline to this series and I will mention important events that bear upon the development of said storyline.

Tantei Gakuen Nyuugaku Shiken ("The Detective Academy Entrance Exams") is like the first four or five hours of an RPG. You know, the first couple of hours where you find your companions to accompany you on your quest. And naturally, our heroes all have different stats and characteristics. Funnily enough though, we are introduced to our hero Kyuu in a Monkey Island-esque way. Because Kyuu basically only says he wants to be a detective. He enters the entrance exams for the Dan Detective School (along with masses of other people), which consists of several exams that test an examinee's deductive, tailing and physical skills. Other examinees include Megu, who has a photographic memory and Kinta, a physically impressive young man with an amazing intuition. For people familiar with shounen anime and manga, this is pretty much like any exam part (see for example the exams in Naruto and Hunter X Hunter), only the topics are quite different.

This first story pretty much shows a glimpse of the way the series will progress, even though it is masked by the shounen exam formula.Visual clueing is something often done very well in detective manga (and was often used in Kindaichi Shounen), but Megu's photographic memory is pretty much telling the reader that the illustrations are not just to meant to dress up the story, but that they are an integral part of the way the cases in this series are presented. Having someone like her in the series really reminds you that you have to pay attention to everything. In the Holmes stories, Holmes has that trick where he tells Watson the conclusion of his deductions, before he explains them. The problem there is that Holmes often tells you about visual clues you had no access to. In Tantei Gakuen Q, words and images are working together to bring you a story and it works wonderfully. The most interesting of the exam is probably the first test, where the examinees have to deduce who the murderer is based on two pictures. It is an excellent example of how the visual and the text cooperate.

Kyuu, Megu and Kinta all made it into the last round of the exam in Kirasakijima no Satsuriku ("The Kirisaki Island Massacre"). All the examinees who made it to the last round, including wizzkid Kazuma and the silent Ryuu, are all transported to Kirisaki island for the last exam. The island was famous for a massacre that had happened many years ago, commited by someone calling himself Jack the Ripper. What's more, the murderers happened within a locked room! The exam consists of solving the locked room murder, but when the examinees enter the scene of the crime for their examination, they discover that one of the examinees has murdered there. Ripped into two to be exact. The exam turns into a practical exam, as the examinees have find out who killed their fellow examinee and how.

This story initially feels like a Kindaichi Shounen story, with all the examinees trapped on an island, locked room murders, the fear of Jack the Ripper having come back to life and such and I suspect that Amagi wrote this story to mess around with the readers' expectations. Any reader would instantly recognize it as being written by the person behind the Kindaichi Shounen series, yet Amagi also shows what is possible if he is freed from Kindaichi Shounen's formula, creating a superior story that subverses the expectations one would have. It is thus a really entertaining story, with a decent locked room mystery and one of the best meta-hints I have ever seen in a story. It is too bad they removed it from the anime version!

Tantei Gakuen Hatsu Toukou ("The First Day at the Detective Academy") and Kamikakushimura Satsujin Jiken ("The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case") are linked stories and definitely one of my favorites of this series. The story starts with an introduction of the DDS and the old school building where Dan Morihiko first started out his career (and Q Class's base of operations). Dan then presents Q Class with a puzzle: they have to solve an impossible murder of a person who was killed in the middle of a wet paddy field, with the only footsteps on the field being those of the victim. It does not take long for Q Class to solve it, but they are told that this was an actual murder case that happened at Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) Village, deep in the mountains, that is still under investigation. Many people have been reported missing from that place since a long time ago and people seem to have started to disappear there again recently and Q Class is sent on their first official investigation of an unsolved case.

This case invokes Kindaichi Kousuke more than Kindaichi Shounen, with a rural village that is literally hidden deep within the mountains: one has to enter a mountain through a tunnel to reach Hyoutan Village and one has to enter another tunnel to reach the even deeper Kamikashi Village, which is ruled by a suspicious sect that worships epidemic deceases. Q Class is split into two teams, as only two members are allowed into Kamikakushi Village. As they work on their investigations into the mysterious disappearances and murders from both ends of the mountains however, new murders happen in both villages and it is up to Q Class to solve their first assignment for the DDS.

Like I said, this is one of my favorite stories, because it really does so much right. With the possible exception of Megu, everyone in Q Class makes a valuable contribution to the solving of the case. Which is the whole point of the series. The murder case itself is also really captivating, with impossible murders and even more hidden behind it all. Seriously, there is one revelation in the story that is so awesome I am almost tempted to spoil it. Almost. But seriously, The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case should persuade any people who are still hesitating about the series.

Oshie wa kakumo Kibishiku ("A Hard Lesson") deals with the aftermath of the previous case and serves as a brief introduction of Nanami Koutarou, the right-hand detective of Dan Morihiko and master of disguise, but it quickly continues into Hajimete no Shukudai ("The First Homework"), where Q Class is presented with an old case Dan Morihiko solved. The problem is that of a lady who was deceived by her own brother when they split the piece of land they inherited from their father, leaving her with a smaller piece of land. The funny thing though, she herself was the one who measured up the new boundaries and she swears she split it in two equal parts. The problem is a small, but interesting one, but this story is also one that shows that Tantei Gakuen Q is not solely built on long cases like Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, but also mixes in short case studies done at the DDS. It also works a bit on the whole Kyuu - Megu relation thing that does not go anywhere for a long, long time.

Kiken na Houkago is another short story, where Megu finds out that there is a burglar hidden in her apartment as she returns home together with Kyuu and Kinta. The three quickly deduce where the burglar is hidden, but this story also shows hints of a mysterious organisation that is monitoring Q Class. In hindsight, this turns out to be a very important story actually.

Kyuu gets a request for an investigation of one of his 'normal' friends in Koureijutsu Satsujin Jiken ("The Necromancy Murder Case"). Kyuu's friend's mother has died in an airplane accident, but a psychic claims to have been able to come in contact with her. While not all members of the family are convinced, they agree in participating in a seance, with Q Class present to see if nothing funny goes on. But something does happen during the seance session and they find the psychic stabbed to death. But everybody was standing in a circle around her holding each other's hand, making it impossible for anyone to have stabbed the victim!

This story continues the series of impossible murders and the problem of the stabbed psychic is as alluring as the other impossible crimes up until now. The visuals are once again an important part of the story and show the possibilities of visual detective fiction. I guess the trick and the hinting could be done in text, but I do not think it would be presented as naturally as it was done here. One is supposed to hide a leaf in a forest, so where better to hide a visual hint than in a comic? It would really have been too obvious if this was a text and a map had made been made to accompany it, but it works perfectly in comic-format. Koureijutsu Satsujin Jiken also shows Q Class' first encounter with murderers who are the victims of post-hypnotic suggestion by Pluto, a criminal organisation which the teacher at DDS seem to know more about.

Q tai A ("Q Vs A") is set back at the DDS, where the five top students of A Class, the former top class before Q Class was created, challenge the five members of Q Class in a series of deduction battles, in the hopes of getting into the prestigous Q Class themselves. Dan Morihiko (?) agrees to this match and organises a series of 1 against 1 deduction matches, based on his old cases. Three of the battles are pretty minor, but Ryuu is presented with a great problem about a dead man who is found sitting at the dining table with a full course meal set before him! It is a wonderful ridiculous and mysterious situation, which makes the case so much fun. The solution also makes so much sense that you might be inclined to say you would have done that too if you were a murderer. And, most importantly, I love food in my detectives.

The match between Q Class and A Class is stopped just as the final contestants, Kyuu of Q Class and Yukihira of A Class are presented with their problem, an unsolved locked room mystery that happened just a couple of days ago. Though the class matches are over and nothing can be gained from it anymore, both Kyuu and Yukihira decide to go the actual scene of the crime of 'their' problem in Q tai A Enchousen ("Q VS A Extra Inning Game"), as the problem piqued their interest. The victim was a campaign girl and she was found dead in her room, which was locked from the inside and with a small barred window being the only other way out of the room. But the case didn't stop with one murder and more murders happen even under the watchful eye of both Kyuu and Yukihira.

By now it seems that all longer cases are impossible murders, which is not a bad thing. The solution to the puzzle is not very hard once you pick up on a particular hint (that sadly enough is hard to convey in any conventional type of media) and while the detective plot itself is not particularly memorable, this story is interesting as it is the first case where Kyuu works seperate from the other members of Q Class, something that will happen more often as the series continues. We also get to learn a bit more about the mysterious Pluto, as DDS teacher / detective Nanami Koutarou and a member of Pluto finally have a direct confrontation. The actual explanation about Pluto is in Meiousei no Kage ("Pluto's Shadow"), a single chapter story where Dan Morihiko tells Superintendent Touyama (Kinta's father) about Pluto, an organisation that sells murder plans for those interested. They keep their own hands clean, but arrange things that if one of their clients is caught, that they will commit suicide through post-hypnotic suggestion (as seen in several cases earlier). Q Class however knows nothing about Pluto yet.

Kinta Jishin no Jiken ("Kinta's Own Case") is exactly what the title says it is, a case that Kinta, who is probably the least smart of Q Class, handled completely on his own. Kinta works at a construction site to earn a living and one day he is witness to a suicide jump of his boss from the top of the building they're working on. Kinta does not believe his boss would have commited suicide and swears that he'll solve the case (in the name of his forefather, Touyama no Kin-san). It is not a difficult case, thought the hint that points to the murderer can be missed quite easily, I think. This case was actually adapted as the first episode of the anime, making it the case where Kyuu, Megu and Kinta met for the first time.

Kyuukousha no Himitsu ("The Secret of the Old School Building") differs greatly from the previous stories. Kyuu and Megu discover a secret room in the old school building of the DDS, but they get locked inside by an unknown person. To make things worse, Megu is bitten by poisonous snake. Half of the story is about how Kyuu and Megu try to communicate with the outside world, but the other half is about the strange discoveries they make inside the room. Their prison is literally a prison and they find an old diary of the person who was locked inside here before them. The old school building was designed by an allround genius artist called Kuzuryuu Takumi and it seems that there is a big secret connected to this prison, the prisoner (who Kyuu deduces has escaped from the prison) and Kuzuryuu Takumi. While at first sight, this seems like a minor story, Kuzuryuu Takumi will actually turn out to be one of the most important characters in the series, as Q Class will encounter more cases that are connected to this mysterious artist.

Satsujin Collector ("The Murder Collector") is one of the better stories of the series, featured heavily in both the anime and live action series. Rumors have been spreading on a high class prep school about the snuff films of someone called the Murder Collector, who is supposed to be one of the students at the school. Most people think it is just a urban legend, but a girl has actually disappeared from the school a month ago and she might have been the victim of the Collector. Ryuu and Megu go undercover at the school to investigate whether the rumors are true. It does not take long for a snuff film to be sent to Ryuu with the actual murder scene of one of his classmates!

Not actually an impossible murder this time and the slip-up the murderer makes is kinda clumsy, but that does not matter, because this is just a really fun story! The best part is the setting at the stressful prep school, with performance-oriented students trying to outsmart each other and an intranet used to harrass each other. No, this is not a nice place, but it sure makes for one exciting locale! It also plays with a theme also addressed by Amagi in his Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo novel Dennou Sansou Satsujin Jiken ("The Computer Lodge Murder Case") and it is nice to see how he develops the themes of earlier works in subsequent works. This is actually one of the few stories in Tantei Gakuen Q I feel that could have been used in Kindaichi Shounen without feeling out of place, due to the rather Kindaichi Shounen-ish setting and conclusion.

This first third of Tantei Gakuen Q offers the reader some great impossible murder stories that should please any fan of orthodox detective fiction. The beginning is very much like a shounen fighting manga and the premise might sound silly, but this is really an outstanding series made by people with a solid background in the genre. As a whole it easily trumps Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo through better storytelling and a wider variety in story types and includes an actual overall storyline (that doesn't take ages to develop, unlike Conan). It had been a while since I last read this series, but this reread really made me realise what a must-read this is for fans of the genre! And hey, I noticed that I don't remember much of the later cases, so I am actually excited about rereading this series now!

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）& さとうふみや（画）『探偵学園Ｑ』　第１巻～４巻　（文庫）

The Trial

2012-01-26T00:00:00.002+01:00

「われわれは、あらゆる手段を使って、被告を攻撃する。　しかしそのたびにどんな絶望的な状況でも、決して諦めることなく

食らいついてくる男がいた。悪夢のような信念を持って。　そして私はいつしか‥‥その男を信頼しはじめていたのだ。　だれかが、どんなにキタナイ手を使っても‥‥真実はかならず、カオを出す。　われわれにできるのは、全存在をかけて戦うことだけだ。‥‥やがて、ナゾは１つずつすがたを消して‥‥　最後にわれわれは、たどりつく‥‥かならず‥‥１つしかない“真相”に」

『逆転裁判２』

"We attack the defendant with everything we got. But there was always someone who, no matter how hopeless the situation, would take it all and never give up. With an amazing power of trust. And in time, I began to trust that person myself too. No matter how dirty our methods, the truth will always come out. The only thing we can do is to fight with all we have. By doing so, the mysteries will disappear one by one and finally, we will definitely arrive there... at the one truth"

"Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All"

Kinda bummed out because I wasn't able to get tickets for the worldwide premiere of the Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney film held in the Netherlands. So I did the next best thing, I went back to a classic courtroom story that heavily influenced Takumi Shuu when he wrote the script for the original Gyakuten Saiban videogame.

Shaberisugita Otoko ("The Man Who Said Too Much") is the first episode of the second season of Furuhata Ninzaburou, the famous Columbo-inspired TV drama. It is an inverted detective series starring Tamura Masakazu as the titular Furuhata Ninzaburou, a somewhat eccentric, yet amazingly sharp police lieutenant and considered one of the classic TV detective shows of Japan. Befitting a season opener, Shabesugita Otoko starts things out with a bang. The succesful defense laywer Oshimizu (Akashiya Sanma) feels forced to kill his lover as she was endangering his engagement with the daughter of an influential lawyer and arranges things to make it appear as his lover's admirer was the murderer. And that admirer just happens to be Imaizumi, Oshimizu's friend and Furuhata's (bumbling) sidekick. Who panicks when he discovers the victim, leaving even more incriminating evidence and testimonies than Oshimizu himself did!

The interesting problem of this episode is that Oshimizu is hired by Imaizumi (who obviously has no idea that his friend is the murderer) to be his defense lawyer, leaving him in the perfect position to get his scapegoat convicted! He convinces Imaizumi to plead guilty to accidental death, saying it is better than being found guilty of murder. And so Oshimizu manages to trap Imaizumi his web of deceit. Until Furuhata appears on the scene. Imaizumi might be the worst police officer he knows, but he is also sure that he would never kill anyone. And so Furuhata has to save his friend (?) while the trial nears its conclusion.

Mitani Kouki was strongly influenced by the Ellery Queen TV show when he created Furuhata Ninzaburou and he even cited The Adventure of the Wary Witness as one of his favorite episodes, so it was not strange to see Mitani write an episode set at a courtroom. And what a episode! Sanma makes for an impressive villain-of-the-week, who not only commits a murder, but spends most of the episode making sure Imaizumi gets convicted for the crime! It changes the dynamic of the series too. The suspense in most episodes is derived from seeing how the murderer gets cornered by Furuhata, similar to Columbo, but in this episode most of the suspense is actually deriven from seeing how Oshimizu is completing his perfect crime, making sure his scapegoat gets convicted by acting as his defense laywer! It results in a different viewing experience that is certainly nice to have occasionally.

The inevitable slip-up of Oshimizu that Furuhata discovers is a pretty ingenious one and can be easily missed. I earlier said that Shaberisugita Otoko was one of the important influences of Takumi Shuu's Gyakuten Saiban videogame series. That was not only because it is set in a courtroom. The way Furuhata manages to prove Oshimizu's guilt is in fact the bread and butter of the Gyakuten Saiban series. Especially the first chapter of the first Gyakuten Saiban game, The First Turnabout, borrows heavily from this story, but it is safe to say that every chapter of every game borrows a bit of Shaberisugita Otoko. It would be spoiler-ish to actually point out what this is, so I will just say that Gyakuten Saiban owes a lot to this episode.

The courtroom during a (murder) trial naturally provides an exciting setting by its nature anyway. A place where someone's future is decided (or if you are playing Gyakuten Saiban, where ideally the truth is brought to light). Both China and Japan have a history in narrative court records being told as a kind of detective stories (see for example Judge Dee and Judge Ooka), but for example the first hit 'translation / adaptation' of famous Meiji period translator Kuroiwa Ruikou was also Houtei no Bijin ("The Beauty at the Trial", adapted from Hugh Conway's Dark Days). More 'recent' novels I know with trial segments are from Carr's The Judas Window, Christie's Sad Cypress and Queen's Halfway House. But the Gyakuten Saiban series is probably the best of all these courtroom based detectives, as it actually places the player himself in the role of detective. And it features awesome music and witty writing that few can match.

Which reminds me: I shouldn't forget my tradition of playing the three Gyakuten Saiban games every year!

Original Japanese title(s): 『古畑任三郎：しゃべりすぎた男』

『心理の密室』

2012-01-25T00:00:00.001+01:00

"You people have allowed yourselves to be chased into a psychological locked room. You're stuck in that metaphorical room, making no progress at all, and you haven't been able to set foot outside it since the case began"

The Tattoo Murder Case

Yes, I am still doing my English translations of Japanese detective novels reviews series. At this rate though, it will not take long before I have gone through that pile too though.

Takagi Akimitsu's The Tattoo Murder Case (Original title: Shisei Satsujin Jiken) was published in 1947, a few years after the war. A time when Japan was still occupied by the US army and the economy still had not recovered completely from the shock. Matsushita Kenzou is one of those young students who survived the horrible war and tries his best at returning to a normal life. One day, he comes across an old school friend of his, Mogami Hisashi, at a tattoo contest. Kenzou also meets Kinue at the contest, daughter of the famous tattoo artist Horiyasu and the lover of Hisashi's brother. Kinue is also the owner of a beautiful Orochimaru tattoo on her back, something so impressive that Hisashi's uncle, a well known tattoo maniac who has the nickname Dr. Tattoo, even offered to buy her skin if she happens to die. For preservation.

Kenzou and Kinue start an affair, but their love is still young when one day Kenzou discovers a dead Kinue in her bathroom. Or to be more exact: he finds her arms and legs in a locked bathroom, but no sign of her torso. It seems like somebody murdered here and took off with her tattoo. This seems to be connected with the curse of Horiyasu's three children. Among tattoo artists there are certain taboos: for example you are not supposed to tattoo a complete snake covering someone, or else the snake might suffocate its bearer. Yet Horiyasu seemed to have cursed his own children by giving them tattoos of Jiraiya (Kinue's brother), Orochimaru (Kinue) and Tsunade (Kinue's sister), who are bound to fight each other. And what else but a curse can explain the locked room? The police tries everything, but are helpless in their investigation. That is, until Kenzou comes across his old friend Kamizu Kousuke, a gifted young man who was once called the Boy Genius.

Takagi debuted in 1947 with this novel and it is still considered a classic as it is one of the earliest and best Japanese locked room mysteries. The Tattoo Murder Case was released only a year after Yokomizo Seishi's Honjin Satsujin Jiken and in fact forms an interesting pair with it. While both novels were written after the war, Honjin Satsujin Jiken is actually set in a rural area just a bit before the war, while The Tattoo Murder Case is set in Tokyo a bit after the war. The differences in these settings are pretty big, with themes like the small village under control of an illustrious family, class status and face playing an important role in Honjin, while the distinct metropolitan setting, the effects of the war and the anonymity within urban spaces turn out to be an important theme in Tattoo. These two novels thus form opposite images.

Yet their main attraction point, the locked rooms, are very similar. Not in execution, but in their importance. The locked rooms in both Honjin Satsujin Jiken and The Tattoo Murder Case are set in Japanese-style houses, something pre-war critics thought to be unsuitable for locked room mysteries. Japanese-style houses were open, with connected spaces and made with easily removable and replacable materials. In Rampo's Yaneura no Sanposha ("The Walker in the Attic") for example, a man succeeds in spying on his neighbours in a lodge house by climbing up to a connecting loft. Japanese-style houses just did not seem suitable to portray an imprenable locked room situation.Yokomizo and Takagi were the first authors to challenge the problem succesfully. Honjin has the splendid situation of a double murder in an annex where the murderer seemed to have disappeared into thin air, while Tattoo has a locked room murder in a bathroom, one of the few rooms in a house that has its own lock and cannot be accessed from other rooms through a loft or cellar because of the tiles. These two novels showed the possibilities of a Japanese orthodox locked room mystery and paved the way for future writers in the genre.

The locked room mystery, which is good, is certainly not the only mystery in the novel and The Tattoo Murder Case is a actually a surprisingly well-polished debut novel. There is also a sea of information about the tattoo culture in Japan discussed in this novel that is really interesting, but it is also in fact of importance for solving the mystery. There is a distinct difference in how the topic of the 'curse' of Jiraiya, Orochimaru and Tsunadehime is handled by Takagi here and how Yokomizo would have handled though. Yokomizo is a master in creating creepy atmospheres linked with curses, legends and other supernatural beings and his novels are often very close to horror-stories. In The Tattoo Murder Case, Takagi plays a lot with the idea of tattoo curses, but it never becomes really creepy in the story. It is all too pragmatic, down to earth in this story. If you play with the idea of a curse in your detective story, you should present the 'supernatural explanation' (the curse) as a plausible explanation for the events. Usually by making the case look unexplainable unless you accept the supernatural explanation. For example by creating such horrifying settings that a curse seems a plausible cause. That never happens in The Tattoo Murder Case. The same holds for Takagi second novel, Noumen Satsujin Jiken, that's about a curse of a Hannya mask, but it never turns really creepy and the 'supernatural explanation' is never seen by the reader as an acceptable explanation of the events.

The translation of the English version is good, as far as I could judge as I do not actually own the original Japanese text, but the little things did bother me. Like how Tsunadehime was translated as Tsunedahime. And how sometimes the short cultural explanations incorporated into the body of the text felt very unnatural. It is of course a translator's (and editor's) choice how to work out cultural specific customs (expansion of the text to exlain it, footnotes, no explanation, deletion etc.), but here it felt too obtrusive at times. And strangely enough a thing like itadakimasu was left in Japanese without any explanation. As far as I know, that is not considered common knowledge Japanese. The English translation also precedes a Japanese revised edition. I am actually not sure what was revised and who revised the novel though, because I think Takagi was already dead then.

Anyway, this is a classic that anyone should have read and it is actually available in English too!

Original Japanese title(s): 高木彬光　『刺青殺人事件』

Smoke and Mirrors

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

「放課後の魔術師・・・お前の仕業なのか？　この事件、絶対解決してみせる。名探偵と言われた、ジッチャンの名にかけて！！」

『金田一少年の事件簿：学園七不思議殺人事件』

"After-School Magician, was this your work? I'll definitely solve this case. In the name of my grandfather!"

"The Young Kindaichi Files: The Seven School Mysteries Murder Case"

And as I reread Tantei Gakuen Q ("Detective Academy Q"), I thought, if Tantei Gakuen Q and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo are set in the same universe, why would Hajime have chosen to go a normal high school? He would have been a great student there. Oh, because of Miyuki of course.That explains everything. That's when I realized that I had been reading too much of both series lately. Oh, and hey, I've almost posted half the amount I posted in 2010 in total within the month.

Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken ("The Seven School Mysteries Murder Case") was originally serialized in 1993 as the fourth story arc in the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series, but it has been used as the pilot story in both the TV drama starring Doumoto Tsuyoshi (1995) and the anime (199７) and acquired a very prominent place within the Kindaichi Shounen mythos. People might wonder why the story order was changed, but it was actually a very wise choice of the producers of both the TV drama and the anime to choose this story as their opening story, as what is a better way to introduce a high school student detective than in his own natural habitat, the school?

Slacker (and grandson of famous detective Kindaichi Kousuke) Hajime gets recruited into the school's Mystery Study Club (and Miyuki tags along to keep an eye on them) and it is decided that the club is going to investigate the Seven Mysteries of Fudou High School, a set of urban legends surrounding the old school annex building. It is said that if a student gets to know about all seven of the mysteries, he will be killed by the After-School Magician. It also seems that someone calling him the After-School Magician has sent a threatening letter to Fudou High's director, telling him to stop the plans of breaking down the old annex. The club members thus start their investigation into the Seven Mysteries, but it does not take long for the After-School Magician to appear before the eyes of the eager student. With the hanged body of their club's president. What's even more puzzling is that the After-School Magician manages to escape, together with his victim, from a locked and watched classroom in just seconds!

Well, let's start out with saying that it does not take a masterdetective to solve the puzzle of the instant disappearance out of the locked room, because the solution screams at you the moment the investigation starts. The TV drama tries to mix things up a bit by adding an original subplot, but the basic idea is still very basic and will not fool anyone. The way the Seven Mysteries of Fudou High are connected to the murder is done pretty good though and definitely one of the high points of the story.

This story misses the big closed circle serial murder cases-angle of the previous stories, but Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken does work a lot better as the introduction to the series. The manga's pilot story, The Opera House Murder Case, does involve school activities, but the setting of a high school as a high school detective's debut is much more natural. Furthermore, the story has several plot twists that involve Hajime's own friends, making Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken a much more personal story compared to the previous stories.

While the story does not feature a particularly memorable trick, it is still one of my favorite Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo stories and to be honest, I do not really know why. I have an at times irrational weak spot for Kindaichi Shounen, but there is more to this than that. Part of it is probably because Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken was the first detective story that introduced me to the world of Japanese high schools. To be precise, the world of high schools as depicted in horror stories. By now, I've come across many, many stories that reference urban legends surrounding Japanese schools and it is an often used trope in horror stories (Hanako-san is a famous example), but the Seven Mysteries of Fudou High were the first school urban legends I got to know. But the old school annex is also an often seen trope in horror stories and in my totally poluted mind, a Japanese school just needs a ghost and a haunted annex before I can properly call it a school. Actually, Kyushu University's Hakozaki campus has quite some buildings that fit the image.

But Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken also made quite an impression on me because I first saw the anime version of this story. I usually prefer the original manga to anime adaptations, but the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo anime is really a well-made production. One of the biggest characteristics is how creepy the anime is in comparison to the manga. The whole atmosphere of the TV series is a lot darker than the manga and the production team really nailed the whole horror-tone the series in general tries to invoke (but it does not always succeed in the manga because of the way scenes are cut). I also have to praise Wada Kaoru for an awesome soundtrack. Shissou / The Wild Run (the main theme) and Jicchan no Na ni Kakete / In the Name of My Grandfather are memorable tracks that really set the more epic tone of the anime series.

And this is slightly offtopic, but am I the only one who prefers traditional cel-animation to digital animation? It might be my age, but I really feel there is something special to cel animation. I know that there are some simply amazing things out there animated digitally, but watching some of the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo anime really made me realize how awesome traditional cel-animation was and how much of an impact it had on the overall ambience of a production. Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo ran from 1997 to 2000 and started out as a traditionally animated series. Those episodes are really the best part of the series, as they really convey the feeling of terror and fear of the stories. It is the way the colors are displayed on the screen, the movements, the whole way a cel animated show turns out be. The later episodes are animated digitally and suddenly everybody looks all shiny with saturated colors and gone is the whole creepy atmosphere! The jump to digital animation really took away an important aspect of the anime I think. Compare the Hajime above to this Hajime! You can just tell that cel-animated!Hajime is much more awesome!

OK, I admit that digital animation was the best thing that could have happened to the Conan anime. But even you have to admit that the cel-animated episodes feel less... almost sickenly clinically clean compared to the digitally animated episodes.

While not a perfect story by a long shot, Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken really works well as an introducing story of the series and I think the school urban legends angle makes this a story worth watching. And as I write this conclusion, I remember that I should praise the English translation of the manga a little here, for a simply brilliant adaptation of a particular message that was originally very dependant on a cultural specific thing (not going into details here): the adaptation actually makes it possible for English readers to solve it themselves. It's pretty ingenous in the original story too, by the way.

And no, I am not going to review every episode of the anime. I might do one on the two original stories of the anime though.

Original Japanese title(s): 『金田一少年の事件簿：学園七不思議殺人事件』

The Lost Special

2012-01-23T14:30:00.001+01:00

なんなんだなんなんだ

この毎日はいったいなんだ

窓に映る僕は誰だ

ここはどこで　どこまで行くんだ

「ファイティングポーズの詩」 (馬場俊英)

What is this? What is this?

What kind of life is this?

Who is the me reflected in the window?

Where am I and where am I going?

'Fighting Pose Song' (Baba Toshihide)

It would have been so much more logical if I had started out reviewing English-translated Japanese novels and then moved on the non-translated novels. No offense meant to anyone, but moving back to English does feel like taking a step back.

One of the most prolific writers in Japan is Nishimura Kyoutarou. He is famous for his travel/train mysteries, that seem like a mix between detective stories, the railway schedule and a tourist guide. Keenfully constructed alibis that make use of the detailed and complex railway system in Japan and cops who have to travel across Japan by train to investigate their cases, it's the formula Nishimura has used for many, many years now and what made him popular. He is also strongly connected with TV productions and if you're watching an afternoon rerun of a two-hour mystery drama in Japan, there is a one in a three chance it's based on a plot by Nishimura (the other candidates are Uchida Yasuo and Yamamura Misa). Wikipedia tells me he has written 469 novels as of today, at the rate of almost a book a month. Sometimes two. And yes, that does has effects on the quality of his novels. I've seen a couple of the TV dramas and read one or two of his train mystery novels, but they are usually not really that interesting (I liked the first DS game though!). But no, I am not a big fan.

In fact, the only Nishimura Kyoutarou novels I've discussed here until now were the four novels of his Great Detectives series. Not Afraid of Great Detectives, Too Many Great Detectives, Even Great Detectives Don't Have It Easy and Cheers To The Great Detectives feature the four detectives Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Maigret and Akechi Kogorou in a grand murder investigation crossover. These are some early works by Nishimura and the books are out of print (also because Nishimura never bothered clearing the rights for the use of the characters), but they are 'normal' orthodox detectives and not train-mysteries at all. The series started out pretty fun but ends in a mess, but the idea is fun. Anyway, it is pretty strange to have discussed four novels of Nishimura without any of them featuring a train...

The first Nishimura Kyoutarou novel I read was The Mystery Train Disappears (original title: Misuteri Ressha ga Kieta), which is as far as I know the only novel available of him in English. The novel was originally published in 1982, with the translation dating eight years later and is part of Nishimura Kyoutarou's Inspector Totsugawa series, his most famous creation. I have to admit that I know very little about Totsugawa, but there is actually little to tell about him except for the fact that he is a homicide inspector at the Metropolitan Police Department, who with his partner Kamei has been solving crimes since the 1970s. And he's also the hero in Nishimura's most recent work (to be released this Wednesday), Totsugawa Keibu Seibu Shinjukusen no Shikaku ("Inspector Totsugawa - The Dead Angle of the Seibu-Shinjuku Line"). So Totsugawa's been around for some time.

The title of The Mystery Train Disappears tells the reader everything, actually. The Mystery Train is a special train run by the Japan National Railways with an unknown destination and schedule. All people know is that they are promised an entertaining ride on a train that is to leave Tokyo on a Saturday and return the following Monday. And this sense of mystery of course attracts people. Over 8000 people applied for a seat, but only 400 passengers were lucky enough to receive tickets for this exclusive train. A day after the Mystery Train's departure, the JNR's director receives a phone call: someone claims to have taken all 400 passengers hostage and demands ransom money. At first, nobody believes this story, but a couple of a phone calls makes it clear: the Mystery Train has indeed disappeared! The train definitely left Tokyo on Saturday, but it never arrived at Tottori, one of the secret destinations of the Mystery Train's schedule. The trains that were scheduled after the Mystery Train were all running on time, so there couldn't have been an accident on the track midway. How did the kidnappers manage to get hold of a complete train and all 400 passengers?

The problem with the disappearance of a train has traditionally been that there are not many ways to make a complete train disappear. I think I've read Conan Doyle's The Lost Special and Queen's Snowball in July, and I like the latter's solution more, but let's admit, there are only so many things you can do with a gigantic heavy metal tube that usually needs some kind of rails under it to move. Nishimura's solution to the problem is interesting, but though I am no railway fanatic, even I see several problems with the way Nishimura explained how the Mystery Train disappeared. Indeed, the Japanese wiki-page for this novel even makes an explicit statement that the disappearance trick used here is not possible now and not even when the book was originally published. Which kinda kills the magic. A big problem also lies with the scale: Nishimura's trick might have worked on a smaller scale, but certainly not with a 12-wagon train with 400 passengers.

There are actually two investigations going on at the same time: one is the search for the disappeared train and another is related to the transfer of the ransom money and the latter one is actually more interesting. The criminals manage to get away with the ransom money from a running train, even though the windows were locked and every passenger searched by the police. This disappearance trick overshadows the trick of the Mystery Train as it is more believable, which could not have been Nishimura's original intent.

I am also not exactly sure whether a series detective like Totsugawa was needed in this book at all. The police and the JNR are being played with by the hostage takers throughout most of the book and in fact, the story reaches its conclusion pretty much on its own, without any real interference of the police. I am not a Totsugawa fan at all, but I can imagine that some readers might have felt unsatisfied with his portrayal, because literally any police inspector could have filled in the role of Totsugawa here.

In the end, I do wonder why this novel was selected to be translated. As far as I know, it's considered pretty average even among Japanese fans of Nishimura, so why not one of his better books? Most of the Japanese mysteries translated to English are pretty good / considered classics, but The Mystery Train Disappears does not really feel worthwile. If in need for an awesome Japanese train mystery, see Matsumoto's Points and Lines.

Original Japanese title(s): 西村京太郎　『ミステリー列車が消えた』

Two Stations in Kashii

2012-01-22T00:00:00.001+01:00

「ずいぶん寂しい所ね」

『点と線』

"What a lonely place!"

"Points and Lines"

I'll just start this post with admitting right away that I am not a big fan of Matsumoto Seichou. And that's actually not completely his fault. It is more because of how (mostly English) reviewers and scholars can't seem to stop raving about the realism in his novels and how Matsumoto manages to capture the social problems of postwar Japanese society, like class-struggles and the unfair justice system, perfectly within his stories. English reviews of Matsumoto's Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines") and Suna no Utsuwa ("The Sand Vessel", published as Inspector Imanishi Investigates) therefore often have the tendency to turn out almost the same, even though technically the stories are quite different. Historicizing when discussing fiction is something I do too, even though at times it seems a bit as an excuse to 'justify' reviewing genre fiction, but I have the feeling the (English) Matsumoto Seichou reviewers have a tendency to exeggarate this.

Matsumoto has written some interesting stories though. While Matsumoto's more orthodox detective stories sometimes suffer from being rather bland, several of his short stories like Kimyou na Hikoku ("The Strange Defendant") and Hansha ("Reflection") are pretty fun to read. But the one novel by him I really, really like is Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines").

Matsumoto Seichou debuted in 1957 the short story Kao, but the Matsumoto-boom in Japan started one year later, with his first novel Points and Lines (also available in English). The discovery of the dead bodies of Otaki, a waitress and Sayama, a senior offical in a ministry, on the beach of Kashiihama, Fukuoka is what sets the story in motion. The case is initially handled as a love suicide, but one of the local detectives suspects that it was actually murder, also because Sayama was wanted by the Metropolitan Police Department in relation with the investigation of bribery case at his ministry. This man's death is rather convenient for his superiors. A important suspect comes up during the investigation, but there is one problem: the suspect has an ironclad alibi. The suspect had to be in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyuushuu on the night of the murder, but that would have made it impossible for him to be in Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaidou the next morning. How did the man manage to teleport from one side of Japan to another?

And to admit another thing: one of the reasons I love this novel is because I have lived in Kashiihama, Fukuoka for a year. I lived only a minute away from the crime scene of Points and Lines. I have stood there at the beach dozens of time. Kashiihama was a wonderful place to live. So rereading the novel really brought up some great memories of this little neighbourhood in the eastern ward of Fukuoka. More than fifty years have past since Matsumoto first wrote this story and things might have changed a bit in those years (nowadays the road from the station to the beach of Kashiihama is not really lonely, for example), but Matsumoto's description of Kashii and Kashiihama is not as outdated as one would think and conveys the ambience of the quaint little block wonderfully. Matsumoto's writing might seem dry at times, but he actually has a wonderful knack for describing ordinary day scenery and customs expertly in just a few words. His short story Harikomi ("Stakeout") for example also features some great descriptions of Kyuushuu, the problem with it is just that it is not a mystery story at all. Matsumoto himself was from Kokura, so he must have have been familiar with Kashii. Interesting is that the two stations at Kashii (a JR station and the private Nishitetsu line), that play an important role in the story, are still in use today. Points and Lines actually made Kashii famous and even now there is a Seichou Sakura to commemorate Points and Lines planted at the Nishitetsu Kashii station.

But nostalgia is a dangerous thing, Tezuka Osamu's impressive series Phoenix taught me, so what about the story itself? Is Points and Lines worth reading if you have not lived in Kashii? As can be guessed from the summary, this is a story that revolves around the deconstruction of the main suspect's alibi and it is actually pretty ingenous. Matsumoto (the murderer) really did his best in coming up with a seemingly ironclad alibi with several safety nets for himself. It's a bit of a shame the English paperback version does not feature a map of the whole of Japan (it has a couple of maps of the Fukuoka area though), because for readers not familiar with Japan's topography, it might be hard to imagine how the distance between Kashii and Sapporo. It is really, really far away. Which makes the alibi trick all the more awesome. I actually want to write a bit more about the trick, but I guess that be nearing that ever-dangerous spoiler area, which is something I want to avoid.

And now for my third confession, I don't think I've ever read anything written by Freeman Crofts. But the focus on alibis and trains in Points and Lines is similar to many of Freeman Crofts' stories, I've been told. Trains play a big, big part within the world of Points and Lines and that's not strange. Trains have been a very large part of the Japanese culture ever since their introduction in the early Meiji period (post-1868) and was crucial for nation-building. Many people have heard about the bullet-trains developed in Japan. Trains are still an important means of transportation for longer domestic trips and there is even a whole culture around the so-called eki-ben, boxed meals sold at stations with local specialties. Heck, the whole subgenre of travel mysteries and train mysteries (mostly by Nishimura Kyoutarou, but I haven't reviewed any of his travel mysteries yet) in Japan is pretty much built upon the whole train culture, linking domestic tourism and the detailed railway schedules of trains that magically never seem to be late. I assume that countries like the United States don't have such a tradition in train mysteries. In the Netherlands, I guess most train mysteries are doomed to fail because the time in the railway schedule seldom seems to correspond with the actual times, you usually have to count in a five minute lag. Or maybe ten minutes.

Points and Lines also occasionally relies on what some people like to call 'typical Japanese customs / way of thinking', which are actually not really such unique indigenous customs as those people seem to make them out be. Matsumoto's stories do often seem to feature some cultural customs as crucial plot-points. In fact, one of the more important insight the detective in the story has, is pretty much copied from Matsumoto's own debut story Kao ("Face"), which also revolved around a certain way of thinking. Point and Lines however makes much better use of the same 'trick', almost like Matsumoto himself thought the trick in Kao could and should have been used for something better.

Like I admitted, I love Points and Lines partly because it is so strongly related to a place dear to me, but it is also a good alibi deconstruction mystery that is satisfying not only to those reviewers who praise Matsumoto for describing how a chair looks like in Japan in his novels, but also for people interested in a good old mystery that happens to be set in Japan.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張　『点と線』

Detective Movie

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000+01:00

「僕も映画界の巨匠蔵沢明の孫なんだよ。お互い偉大な祖父を持つと苦労するね・・・」

「別に？そんなことないっスよ！ジッチャンのことは誇りに思うけど、俺は俺だからさ！！」

『金田一少年の事件簿：銀幕の殺人鬼』

"I am the grandson of Kurasawa Akira, the grand master of the film industry. We both suffer quite a bit by having such illustrious grandfathers, right..."

"Not really! ... I am proud of my grandpa, but I am myself!"

"The Case Files of Young Kindaichi: The Murderer of the Silver Screen"

A sharp mind is of course essential to a fictional detective, but what is also important is.... a distinctive silhouette. Sherlock Holmes. Edogawa Conan. Kindaichi Hajime. Kindaichi Kousuke. One glance and you instantly know who the character is and what kind of story you can expect. I've written several times how important Ishikawa Kon's movies, and especially Ishizaka Kouji's acting, have been for the visual image of Kindaichi Kousuke. The shoddy hakama, the long hair, it was all in the original novels, but it was Ishizaka who first succesfully depicted Yokomizo's creation on the screen in 1976's Inugamike no Ichizoku. It's that image that people nowadays recognize as Kindaichi Kousuke.

One year before Ishizaka debuted as Kindaichi, Nakao Akira starred in a movie version of the first Kindaichi Kousuke novel, Honjin Satsujin Jiken ("The Daimyou's Inn Murder Case"). The novel itself is generally seen as one of the best, if not the best Japanese locked room mystery ever, but this 1975 movie is also widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best locked room mystery movie ever. The movie tells the story of the locked room murder of a couple on their wedding night, accompanied by the horrifyingly creepy sound of someone playing madly on a koto. For more details on my thoughts on the story and the importance of Honjin Satsujin Jiken within the literary history of Japanese detective fiction, I refer to the review of the novel, but it has to be said that it is almost surprising how loyal the movie generally is to the original story.

Generally I say, because there is one big change from the original story. The original story was set just before the Second World War, but the 1975 movie is set in contemporary times and even more surprising, has a Kindaichi Kousuke dressed in jeans. This was a radical (visual) change from the original character, who always walks around in an old hakama. Just compare Nakao's Kindaichi (left) to Ishizaka's Kindaichi (right)!

I thought I would totally hate this movie because of this, but I couldn't be more wrong. Nakao's choice of dress was a bit distracing at first, but he plays a wonderful Kindaichi Kousuke, who's a bit sharper and older than Ishizaka's one. In fact, most of the acting is good and the set, a gigantic old Japanese mansion (complete with annex) is simply gorgeous. Most of the story is set around this mansion and they really went out all out with it.

This movie is also widely praised because it managed to portray the trick behind the locked room murder in an understandable, yet impressive way. And yes, it does precisely that. The trick is so much more impressive when visualized and truly deserves the praise it gets not only as the first true Japanese orthodox locked room mystery, but also as a great trick an sich. The way it is reproduced on film is wonderful and I understand well why people consider this the best locked room mystery movie ever.

My only gripe with the movie is the way Kindaichi's explanation is portrayed in the movie: it is edited as a multi-part explanation with accompanying footage (if you see it, you'll know what I mean), but it drags on for quite some time and could have been at least ten minutes shorter without any real sacrifices, I feel. I vaguely remember the explanation being split in two parts in the original novel too, but it kinda kills the suspense you build up during a denouement scene if you cut it off halfway through only to continue it later. A smooth running explanation scene feels so much better.

Ishikawa Kon and Ishizaka Kouji never did a version of Honjin Satsujin Jiken. This might have also be because of the movie-rights, but they might have also felt that it was not really needed. It might have featured a visually different Kindaichi Kousuke, but Honjin Satsujin Jiken is really an excellent adaptation of the oriignal story.

Original Japanese title(s): 『本陣殺人事件』

Three Act Tragedy

2012-01-20T13:54:00.001+01:00

「私はオペラ座の怪人---思いのほかに醜いだろう？この禍禍しき怪物は地獄の業火に焼かれながらそれでも天国に憧れる！」

『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館殺人事件』

"I am the Phantom of the Opera. Am I not unbelievably hideous? But even while this ill-omened monster is being consumed by the inferno of hell, I still long for heaven!"

"The Case Files of Young Kindaichi: The Opera House Murder Case"

Happy birthday, Kindaichi Hajime! It's been 20 years since our young high school detective Hajime and love interest Miyuki first made their debut in the story Operazakan Satsujin Jiken ("The Opera House Murder Case") in 1992, but the duo is still going strong, with a new case waiting for them in March (The Cannabalism Laboratory Murder Case). I do hope they'll celebrate his anniversary with more events later this year! What about a new videogame (a good one please this time)? Or a new TV drama based on the second season stories?

It does seem that few people realize that the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series is pretty much what shaped the whole detective manga genre. Kindaichi Shounen was almost epoch-making as a manga inspired by orthodox detective fiction and series like Detective Conan and Q.E.D. are very much indebted to their grandfather. Kindaichi Shounen popularized the fair-play mystery comic genre and introduced little touches too, like catchphrases that serve as challenges to the reader (the infamous nazo wa subete toketa / all the mysteries have been solved). It also spawned a gigantic media mix franchise: an anime (including movies), several widely popular live action series and movies, audio dramas, a novel series, videogames and probably more stuff I can't think of right now.

And so, to commemorate Kindaichi Shounen's twentieth anniversary, a review of a special set of stories from the Kindaichi Shounen canon. And we begin with the very first Kindaichi Shounen story, Operazakan Satsujin Jiken ("The Opera House Murder Case"). Kindaichi Hajime and childhood friend/love interest Nanase Miyuki, together with members of the theater club of their high school and their supervising teacher, travel to the Opera House Hotel at Utashima island to rehearse their play of Gaston Leroux' The Phantom of the Opera. It does not take long for Kindaichi, who is not actually a member of the club, to notice that there is some underlying tension between his companions, all tied to the suicide of an ex-member of the club. The whole thing explodes however when a murder is commited by dropping down a stage light on top of one of the actresses. More murders happen, including one under impossible circumstances and they seem to have been commited by someone dressed like the play's Phantom. But little did the murderer know that Kindaichi Hajime is the grandson of the famous masterdetective Kindaichi Kousuke...

The Yokomizo Seishi estate later objected to the use of Kindaichi Kousuke's name actually, so in later volumes Hajime usually just refers to 'his grandpa'. But it was indeed fitting for Hajime to be the grandson of Kindaichi Kousuke, and not only because they both represent the first in a wave of orthodox detective fiction. Kousuke's most famous cases, like Akuma no Temariuta, Inugamike no Ichizoku, Gokumontou are all essentialy mitate-satsujin (a 'resembling' murder), an off-spring to the nursery rhyme murder. These are murders to are made to symbolize something else. Nursery rhymes are an example, but mitate-satsujin are usually more diverse as it has none of the 'storybook' annotations the nursery rhyme murder has. In this first case of Hajime, he also encounters mitate-satsujin, with the actual murders resembling the murders of the play, both commited by the Phantom. And yes, there are no (few?) actual murders in the original Phantom of the Opera, but it is later explained that the school club is performing a stage adaptation that features a lot of murders.

The overall story is entertaining for early Kindaichi Shounen standards, but the use of a well-known trick in the last part of the story pretty much points out who the murderer is. Of course, most Kindaichi Shounen stories follow a formula pretty strict, with the most common tropes actually introduced in this first story. The school club on a trip, a closed circle situation, an avenger of the past, persons playing multiple parts, locked room murders, impossible situations and a dramatic ending. Which makes the series predictable at times. When the series is on a roll however, it does these tropes wonderfully though and then these tropes don't feel as a burden at all. In this first story, it's clear what the major influences are, but it does not feel as a bad thing. The complete story is decent and to me it is clear why the story managed to draw in a large audience.

Regarding the production of the series, it has to be noted that this first story was actually written by Kaneda Youzaburou. Amagi Seimaru, the current script-writer, was the one who came up with the idea of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (, but Kaneda was the one who actually wrote a large part of the first season of the Kindaichi Shounen manga. Amagi took over the series about halfway the first season and he has been the story-runner for everything Kindaichi Shounen since 1998.

At the end of the story, Hajime, Miyuki and the other survivors of the tragedy leave Utashima and the Opera House Hotel, but they retutrned 2 years later, in Operazakan - Aratanaru Satsujin ("The Opera House - Murders Once More"), the second novel (and remade as the first anime movie) (penned by Amagi). The owner of the Opera House Hotel, a former playwright and director, decides to reopen his hotel as a proper theater and has invited several old friends, including Hajime, Miyuki and inspector Kenmochi to the first performance in his theater. And yes, it is The Phantom of the Opera. Hajime naturally feels worried about a new performance of The Phantom in the Opera House Hotel and he is right. The first night a gigantic chandelier falls on top of the actress playing Carlotta. More murders happen and once again Hajime finds out there's a secret in the past of the cast.

This is a really strange story to rate. The murders here are also made to resemble the ones that appear in their version of The Phantom of the Opera and as a result, this story really resembles Operazakan Satsujin Jiken. The light-source falling on top of someone (this time in a locked room), a hanged corpse, someone found in a water-vessel, this story feels more like remake of the original story than a proper sequel. They are just too alike. Overall, the first story feels better constructed, even though the impossible chandelier murder in this novel was actually quite good. The other murders just seem less satisfying.

At one hand, the novel feels a bit different because of the heavier themes compared to the manga. Which isn't all nice to begin with. The other Kindaichi Shounen novels also feature this. On the other hand, the quick switches between points of view, between segments and the short dialogue sections really make this book feel like a glorified storyboard for a manga or anime. It's moving fast, too fast for its own good. This is a story that could have improved from a longer page count. I saw the movie a long time ago and in my memories, the movie is a lot better than the novel in regards of pacing.

The final appearance of the Opera House Hotel is in Operazakan - Daisan no Satsujin ("The Opera House - The Third Murder Case"), the second story of the second season of the manga (post-2004). The old owner of the Opera House Hotel has passed away and has been in the possession of a friend of his for some time. She decides to tear the place down and has invited a group of old students of the deceased stage director, and Hajime, Miyuki and Kenmochi for one final performance of The Phantom of the Opera in the Opera House Hotel. By now, you would think that performing this play there could be considered attempt at murder, but enfin. Hajime feels uneasy about it all and it doesn't take long for the chandelier to fall on top of a poor actress. Again. It's the start of a new series of murders on Utashima and the main suspect is... once again the Phantom.

This time, the murders don't really follow the ones of the play anymore, so the story avoids feeling too similar to the previous two stories set at the Hotel. Also different from the previous two stories is how the first murder (the falling chandelier) is actually the least satisfying murder of them all. Which is not to say that there is a bad trick, but the overall standard of the tricks in this story is pretty good and certainly the best of all three murder cases at the Opera House Hotel. Ignoring The Phantom of the Opera for the murders themselves (it is used for background settings though) was a wise choice by Amagi this time and really made this an enjoyable story. It also allowed him to explore the island of Utashima a bit more (this is actually the first time we get a full shot of the island and we get a glimpse of the other points of interest at the island), which was pretty interesting, considering that despite Hajime and Miyuki having visited the island several times, we never got to see much of the island.

Thematic, this story also forms a nice evolution / reconstruction of the previous two volumes, with several established tropes being reversed in this story. It really strengthens the story if you read it after the first story, as it does feel like a set then. This story has also been made into a TV anime special in 2007, which my memory tells me was a somewhat shortened version of the original story which did not feel as satisfying as the manga.

For all three stories, it is interesting how the presentation of the Opera House Hotel as a yakata-mono (mansion story) never really succeeds. The creepy Western-style mansion on Utashima island is clearly meant to be presented as such, but The Phantom of the Opera completely overshadows the Hotel's presence. In fact, the only real presence of the Hotel is focused within the chandelier of the hotel's theater that has a tendency to fall on people. Which is pretty creepy yes, but the rest of the building just seems like filler. Which seems like a shame, because the setting really had potentional, especially as it was being re-used several times.

For the moment, it does not seem like Hajime, Miyuki and inspector Kenmochi will return to the island for a fourth time because of how the last story ended, but who knows? Utashima and the Opera House Hotel are so much part of the Kindaichi Shounen mythos that I wouldn't be surprised if one day, our trio will come back to their place of birth.

And remember, never ever stand beneath a light source in a theater. It will crash on top of you.

Original Japanese title(s): 　金成陽三郎（原作） & さとうふみや（画）『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館殺人事件』 / 天樹征丸（原作） & さとうふみや（画）　『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館　新たなる殺人』　『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館　第三の殺人』

Secret of my Heart

2012-01-18T00:01:00.001+01:00

「聞くは一時の恥。聞かないは一生の恥じ」

『428　～封鎖された渋谷で～』

"Asking will make you feel ashamed for a while. Not asking will make feel you ashamed for a lifetime"

"428 ~ In A Sealed Off Shibuya~"

This second entry in the Short Shorts certainly came earlier than I myself had guessed. I guess I pick up small, insignificant things at a faster rate than I thought. Like the previous time, this is just a series of unrelated thoughts that wouldn't have made for interesting seperate posts.

Aah, the hours that pass by as I scour websites like YouTube and Nico Nico Douga. Which is probably not nearly as long as the time it took the creators of the following Detective Conan related movies. One is an impressive statistical research of all the deaths in the series. The title says I counted the persons who died in Detective Conan (including the anime and such). Yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds. The creator even went through the trouble of categorizing the deaths in homicide, suicide, accidental death, illness and unknown causes. It goes up until the first 68 volumes of the manga, episode 574 of the anime and the Lost Ship in the Sky movie. There were actually fewer deaths than I had expected. Even more ridiculous is the movie where someone counted the times the word barō (a Conan-specific swear word based on the longer bakayarō) is said. And I thought reviewing the Conan manga from the beginning was insane. Random fact: it is barō in the manga, but pronounced more like bārō in the anime, which is why most people write it as the latter.

And ooh, a new videogame of Conan! Kako kara no Prelude ("Prelude from the Past") is a sequel (prequel?) to Rondo of the Blue Jewel, which was sorta decent. It's a DS/PSP release, which means I don't have to switch hardware yet. Wondering how they'll differ. I prefer DS games as they are cheaper and I can play a lot longer on my DS than on my PSP, but I'd totally go for the PSP version if they included voice acting.

Because Edogawa Rampo mostly wrote unorthodox mystery stories, I sometimes hesitate writing about them here, but I guess they fit this short shorts segment. Hito De Nashi No Koi ("An Unhuman Love") is a pretty famous horror short story by Rampo, that actually seems to start out as a detective. The narrator, Kyouko, tells the reader about an incident that happened when she had just married, a local heir who was known as being stunningly handsome, but there were also rumors of him being misogynist. Luckily for Kyouko, those rumors seem to be false, but she does discover that her husband sneaks out of bed every night to go to the second floor of the small storage building. Following him, she hears her husband and another woman talking silently there. Kyouko naturally thinks of an affaire and waits outside the building to confront the pair, but only her husband comes out. This is repeated several times, with her husband's lover seemingly disappearing into thin air every night. Up until this point the story seems like an impossible disappearance story, but the ending clearly places this in the horror subgenre. I sadly enough already knew the ending because Hito De Nashi no Koi was mentioned a paper on a certain theme in Edogawa Rampo's works, but it is still a pretty interesting short story.

Rampo's Monogram is even shorter than Hito De Nashi No Koi, but also less interesting. The story starts with two men who just happen to sit next to each other on a couch in the park. The two men start talking with each other and they both can't seem to shake the feeling they have met before, even though they are both sure they never did. This story is really, really happy and sweet and light-hearted and everything nice, which is very surprising for an Edogawa Rampo work. Heck, even his Shounen Tantei Dan series is darker than this. It thus felt surprisingly fresh, even though the story is pretty simple and nothing special an sich. Rampo himself didn't rate this story very high either, but he had an interesting note about how he wrote this story, basically a love story surrounding a 'code' of some sorts. Hiding behind a code was what fitted his own personality, Rampo said, as he himself was pretty shy and didn't dare to show his own feelings himself too. Awww.

Around the same time the TV drama of Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de ("Mystery Solving Is After Dinner") started, NHK produced a radio drama of the series. Or to be more precise, they made a radio drama based on the first story of the first book, Satsujin Genba de wa Kutsu wo O-nugi Kudasai ("Please Take Off Your Shoes At A Murder Scene"). I didn't really like this radio drama, because it featured a narrator who was absolutely unneccessary for the story. The complete story could have been perfectly conveyed with just the two characters of Reiko and butler Kageyama and that would have made for a much more enthralling show. The story itself is still a very entertaining one, that revolves around the simple question: why was the murder victim wearing shoes inside her apartment (which is simply not done in Japan). It seems like a very trivial question, but butler Kageyama manages to solve this case based on this little fact alone. In fact, most stories in Nazotoki seem to revolve around almost Queenian strange murder scenes.Which makes the series the more fun. It's kinda sad NHK didn't do this radio drama within their own NHK Youth Adventure series, as I've been very content with those productions until now.

Original Japanese title(s):　江戸川乱歩　『人でなしの恋』『モノグラム』 / 東川篤哉　「殺人現場では靴をお脱ぎください」

The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter

2012-01-17T09:00:00.002+01:00

「パトカーの中で、〇〇〇は同じ言葉を何度も、何度も呟いていたらしい。何で自分は日本人じゃなかったんだ、何で彼女はアメリカ人じゃなかったんだと。まるで壊れたからくり人形のように、何度も、何度も繰り返して・・・」

『名探偵コナン』

"In the patrol car, X kept muttering the same words over and over again. Why wasn't I Japanese? Why wasn't she American? Like a broken puppet, repeating those words over and over again..."

"Detective Conan"

My reading pile of detective fiction is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet his maker. Which means that I'll have to be content for the while being with my reading pile of secondary literature. Which is pretty fun actually. As a student, I have to write papers regularly and I do like it when I am able to use detective fiction for my academic writings. Even if I have to be a bit... creative at times. Imagined communities and early Japanese detective fiction was a bit of a stretch though. Even by my standards.

Hasabe Fumichika's Oubei Suiri Shousetsu Honyakushi ("A History of Western Detective Novel Translations") is precisely what the cover says it is: a history of translations of Western detective novels in Japan. To be more precise, early Western detective novels. The book was originally published in 1992 and won the Japanese Detective Writers Assocation Price (like Shakaibu Kisha, Kao, Honjin Satsujin Jiken and Geneijou). And it is certainly an entertaining and informative read. Hasabe looks at the history of Western detective novels in Japan by focusing on a set of authors he considers influential to Japanese writers. He looks at both the original publication dates in the country of origin as well at as the various publication sources / various translations in Japan and is thus mainly set in the Taisho and early Showa period (1912~36). Which is not always easy, because not only did early Japanese translations of Western fiction often have altered titles, some early translations were also more like free adaptations of the original story. Which is also where I have to correct myself. I once wrote that R. Austin Freeman's The Eye of Osiris wasn't translated into Japanese until the 1950s, but that's not true. A serialization of the novel had actually started in the very first issue of Shinseinen in 1920 already (the mystery magazine of that time, where Edogawa Rampo also made his debut) under the name Hakkotsu no Nazo ("The Mystery of the White Bone")

Hasabe discusses the following writers in their own chapters: Agatha Christie, S.S. Van Dine, Johnston McCulley, R. Austin Freeman, Gaston Leroux, Freeman Will Crofts, Joseph Smith Fletcher, Alfred Machard, Maurice Leblanc, Edgar Wallace, John Dickson Carr, G.K. Chesterton and several authors he groups together as French writers, German writers and early short story writers. While most names are familiar, a name like McCulley (of the Zorro novels) might seem surprising. Which is what makes this book interesting to read, as it is a Japanese reception history of Western detective novels and occasionally you see how some writers were received differently across the sea. There are sometimes even surprising revelations, like for example when Hasabe writes that Japanese critics had low expectations of American writers in that time and that Edogawa Rampo thought that Van Dine's novels were OK, considering they were written by an American! Hasabe also gives an interesting description of the role of translators, who were actually very active with the material themselves. Translators often identified the materials suitable to translate and some of these men were very good in reading the market, for example finding and translating Agatha Christie's short stories to Japanese at a very early stage of their English publication.

Hasabe's study is pretty detailed on the supply side of the story, with much information on the many translations, publications, adaptations and children's adaptations of the various stories of the authors, but is sadly enough somewhat short on the demand side of the market. There is little to no information about the market itself, with most of Hasabe's story focusing on translators and publishers. He also does not explain why he deemed the authors he chose important. I assume it's because these authors / works had a great influence on early Japanese writers, but it is odd that Hasabe does not try to show this explicitly. He sometimes quotes Edogawa Rampo (mostly from his Forty Years of Detective Fiction memoirs) on how Rampo felt about certain books, but that is pretty much it. It would have made this book so much more interesting if Hasabe had made the connection between Western authors / novels and the Japanese authors / novels more clearly.

The book also misses a clear introduction or contextualization, which is actually quite necessary for the topic. The book is structured by the authors, but is quite unclear how Hasabe decided on this structure. Why Christie as the first author? This book needs more contextualization, especially in the sense of how the period this book describes forms a continuation on the Meiji period translations / adaptations (like by Kuroiwa Ruikou). Yes, I know there are specialist books for that (I have one actually) and I know that this is not a book 'beginners' in the genre would pick up, but I can very well imagine that this would be a somewhat confusing or boring read if you can't place it in the proper context.

Oubei Suiri Shousetsu Honyakushi is certainly a well-researched book, but it lacks a bit in portraying the information Hasabe gathered as actually being relevant. It is a bit ambiguous now and some readers might find the list of translation publications bit boring to read without proper contextualization within the book. As a standalone book, it is too vague I think and while the topic concerns Western authors, I don't think a translation of this book would work at all, without the larger context of early translation practices and the introduction of detective fiction in Japan.

Original Japanese title(s): 長谷部史親『欧米推理小説翻訳史』

The Adventure of the Dying Detective

2012-01-16T12:43:00.001+01:00

"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

"The Hound of the Baskervilles"

The question that dominated my mind while watching Sherlock: why was Sherlock broadcast at a later time every week?

The Sherlockian winter, consisting of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and the second season of Sherlock was a bit short, but certainly entertaining. While A Game of Shadows turned out to be a pleasant surprise because of low expectations, I had been expecting much of Sherlock's continuation. Partly because the final episode of the first season ended with a cliffhanger, but mostly because the show was just insanely fun. It was simply wonderful as a contemporary remake of the classic Holmes canon. The episodes were a fantastic mix between the original stories by Conan Doyle and the scriptwriters, there was witty writing and expert editing and certainly had its own face despite being a Sherlock Holmes remake. There were some minor gripes I had with the show, but it was in general a really great show and I was happy to see that the second season managed to build on the foundation laid in the first season.

Little secret: the only thing I like about A Scandal in Bohemia is the very first line of the story. 'To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman'. It is a simple, yet powerful sentence that manages to describe Holmes' impression of Irene Adler perfectly. I however never thought Adler to have acted so impressively in the original story though. Anyway, so I don't really like Bohemia, but I quite liked A Scandal in Belgravia. The first half is indeed mostly based on the original story, but the second half expands on that and makes more plausible for someone like Holmes to consider her THE woman. The episode also features some seed planting for later episodes, most prominently the growing popularity of Sherlock Holmes and the deerstalker hat, which in hindsight is pretty interesting. I do have to say that the way the cliffhanger of the previous episode was 'resolved' was very cheap. This really felt like 'OK, we made an awesome cliffhanger the last time so we could sell another season.... but we have no idea how to get us out of this mess'.

The Hounds of Baskerville featured a very welcome change of scenery for the show. The cramped, urban setting is fun, but you really need Dartmoor if you're gonna to remake the creepiest Sherlock Holmes story, right? This was actually a fairly faithful modern update of the original story, with a rather predictable explanation for the gigantic hound, but it was also very entertaining. Like the original book, this episode was leaning very, very hard to the horror-side of things and that was a good thing. What was fun though, was how the scriptwriter intregrated the villain and modus operandi of the original novel into a small subplot that was hilarious if you had read the original. Of course, that is pretty much what they have been doing all the time, from little references like a sack of thumbs in the refrigerator and cases like 'The Geek Interpreter' (in A Scandal in Belgravia), but this was more fun because it was a clear poke at the original novel.

The Reichenbach Fall has a fairly farfetched title (yes, I know they explain it at the end. But it is farfetched) that is naturally sorta based on The Final Problem. Which makes it tempting to compare it to A Game of Shadows, but the two have a very different take on the original story. A Game of Shadows, like The Final Problem, is about Moriarty taking rather conventional means to stop Holmes (attempts at his life), while Sherlock's Moriarty seems to take a very different approach. It plays with a lot of theories and interpretations Holmesians have come up with in all these years, so it is not particularly original, but fun all the same. The show also takes a 'Batman - Joker' dualistic approach to the two characters, which felt a bit strange. The ending... well, it is based on The Final Problem and there is the Fall in the title of the episode, so you can expecting some falling... but because of the original approach of this Moriarty, there is still a surprise to be found in the confrontation between Sherlock and Moriarty even for veteran Homesians.

The season was overall quite good, with actually the last episode being the... dullest(?) of them all. Belgravia was a pleasant surprise because I didn't like the original story. Baskerville was fun as a modern take on the original story and because of the change in tone of the show. For some reason Reichenbach just felt a lot more predictable than the other episodes (even though it actually differs the most from the original story).

And I still love the game-like presentation to the show! I already mentioned it in my post on the very first episode and Kotaku also ran an article on a bit ago, but the show is full of videogame-language, from text that hovers above the screen to mini-maps that show in Sherlock's head and other HUD-like information. Or for example the simulation of the impossible death in Belgravia during Irene and Sherlock's discussion about the case! The 'memory palace' of Sherlock in Baskerville (which was really like Heavy Rain)! I don't know how these things feel to a non-gamer, but for me, this all felt very natural. I like having information on my screen. I like context-sensitive information. Videogame literacy is something I have and take for granted, but I do sometimes wonder how non-gamers view these things. Anyway, I thought that the HUDs were a pretty cool way to convey information (most importantly, Sherlock's observations) to the viewer without feeling to obtrusive as when done through dialogue or close ups. Yes, I think that gigantic floating text is more natural than close ups or dialogue.

Oh, and Freeman (Watson) is certainly the one who stole the show! It also seems that the actors themselves are interested in a third season, so....

『意外な犯人　－　フーダニット』

2012-01-15T15:20:00.003+01:00

「犯人は、この中にいる！」

『金田一少年の事件簿』

"The murderer is among us!"

Pretty much all stories of "The Case Files of Young Kindaichi"

Wait, I actually have a collection of short short stories that is fun and easy to translate.

The very first translation posted here was that of Higashino Keigo's Trick no Shoutai - ??? ("The True Identity of the Trick - ???"), a short story that was collected in Meitantei no Okite ("The Laws of Great Detectives"), a great meta-parody of the tropes that exist within detective fiction. From locked room to alibi tricks, from the headless corpse to the nursery rhyme, nothing is safe for Higashino and his stories show the (hilarious) extremes of these well-established tropes and also allows him to muse about what it is to be a detective writer who is always trying to deceive his readers. Author Higashino is helped by his protagonist Tenkaichi Daigorou and police inspector Ookawara, who are actually aware that they are characters in a detective novel. Thus you'll never see Ookawara making grand deductions (at least, not out loud), because that's the role reserved for Tenkaichi.

Ever since that first translation, which was made while under influence of severe jetlag and less severe culture shock, I've read and written a lot more, but sometimes it's fun to go back to the beginning. And a lot easier too: the stories collected in Meitantei no Okite are wonderfully short and easy to translate. A bit under 30 pages is just perfect. Yes, I am lazy. An Unexpected Criminal – Whodunnit is like the name suggest a parody on the old whodunnit form of a detective story and saying more would be spoiling the story, so I'll just conclude this saying I expect a bunch of angry readers when they reach the end.

意外な犯人　－　フーダニット

著者：東野圭吾

An Unexpected Criminal– Whodunnit.

Author: Higashino Keigo

The notice that a murder had happened at the Ushigami mansion came the first thing in the morning. And that meant it was time for my appearance, Ōkawara Banzō, police inspector of the homicide department of the prefectural police. But the readers already know that I will not solve this case. The people related to the case I will meet later on are probably expecting nothing of me either. The Ushigami mansion is a North-European building located deep in the mountains. It seems that the victim, Ushigami Teiji was a famous oil painter, but I had no heard of him.

When I arrived, five men and women were already gathered in the Western living room.
“Who are those people?,” I asked a nondescript officer, as I looked at the five persons who sat on the expensive-looking leather couch.
“The people who were present last night. One of them is the maid, two of them are Ushigami Teiji’s relatives and the other two are Teiji’s disciples and the last one…,” the young officer stopped there and looked around, “Hey, the last person isn’t here”.
“There was another person?”
“Yes, a very strange man”
“Well, let’s leave that for later. I’ll first take a look at the scene of the crime”.

Ushigami Teiji was murdered in his atelier. The atelier was located in an annex, which was connected to the main building through a roofed passage. I was led by the officer inside the atelier, where the body was lying in the middle of the room. But what took my attention was the state of the room itself. All the glass windows were broken and the fragments were spread all over the floor. But it were not only windows. The glass doors of the cupboard had also been broken. The canvas on top of the easel was also been ripped to pieces and it was not possible anymore to see what was drawn there.

“What a mess. Like a typhoon passed through this room only”.
Just when I placed my hand on my head as I said that, a sound came from the corner of the room. There, between a couple of canvasses that were placed there, a man dressed in a frayed checkered suit was moving about.
“Hey!,” I yelled to the man’s back, “What do you think you’re doing?! You’re not allowed in here!”
The man turned around. “Ah, it is inspector Ōkawara ! Hard at work, I see”.
“Ah, yo… you!,” I said like an actor. The man was Tenkaichi Daigorō, a detective who always appears in this author’s stories. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hired for an investigation by the victim. So I was making use of his hospitality last night”.
It seems that the very strange man the officer had told me about, was this man.
“A request by the victim Ushigami Teiji. What kind of investigation?”
“I usually don’t reveal the details of my investigations, but I guess I have no choice. The master artist Ushigami suspected someone was after his life and wanted me to find out who it was”.
“What? Really?”
“Why would I lie about that?”. Tenkaichi swung his walking stick around.
“What did he mean someone with after his life?”
“The first time was when he was having an afternoon nap, when he was almost strangled to death. He struggled, but when he came too, the culprit was already gone. The second time was poison. Just as he wanted to put some sugar in his coffee, he noticed that agricultural chemicals were mixed in the sugar. He noticed it because the reflection of the light on the sugar was a bit different. The chemicals had been in the storage room, for gardening purposes”.
“So why didn’t he come to the police? Of course you’re gonna get yourself killed if you rely on an amateur detective…,” I said angrily as I looked down upon the body.
“Ushigami said he had gone to the police. But the police wouldn’t do anything as long no real incident had happened, so that’s why he came to me”.
“Well, that’s…”
Being put on a hard spot by Tenkaichi’s words, I turned to my subordinates. “What are you doing loafing around! Check the body!”

Ushigami Teiji was dressed in his working clothes, which were covered by paint. His body was lying face upwards. A knife was stuck in his breast. There were no other wounds on his body.
“Inspector, this is…!”
My subordinate had picked up a square standing clock from the floor. The glass face had also been broken. The arms of the clock stood still at 6.30.
“So this is the time of the murder. Wait, it might be a fake left by the murderer. Who discovered the body?, “ I asked one of my detectives, but Tenkaichi butted in.
“it was the maid Yone who first found the body. But you might also say that everybody in the house discovered the body”.
“What do you mean?”.
“At half past six, that is, the time that the clock is pointing at, a loud scream was heard all over the house. It seemed like Ushigami’s voice. And the sound of glass breaking continued on and on. I was still lying in bed at that time, but I sprang right up. The other people also came out of their rooms one by one. Then we heard Yone’s scream, so we made our way to the atelier. And that’s where we found the body”.
“Hmm, I see”.
I stroked my mustache while I was thinking and finally said to my subordinate: “OK, let’s hear what they all have to say. Bring them in one by one”.
“Yes, sir,” the officer said and went out the room. Having seen him leave the room,

I then turned to Tenkaichi and smiled.
“Seems like this time we’re only looking for a murderer. There’s not even a locked room”.
“I feel relieved about that”.
Tenkaichi smiled too.
“I was really worried about what to do if we came across a locked room again. When I heard that the door to the atelier wasn’t locked, it was like a weight was lifted from my heart”.
“Five suspects. Well, for appearance’s sake, I should treat you as a suspect too, but what are the odds of the murderer being the series’ detective?”
People would probably get angry if something like that happened, I thought.
“What about the probability of the criminal being someone from outside?”
Tenkachi’s eyes flashed.
“I’ll have to look into that too. The police always looks into the probability of the culprit being someone from outside”.
In these kinds of detective stories, it is pretty much impossible for the murderer to have been someone from outside, but to run around doing useless investigations, is my function within the Detective Tenkaichi series.
“Even so, there are only five suspects…”.
Tenkaichi scratched his unkempt hair.
“It’s difficult to catch the reader by surprise with such a limited range. What’s the author planning to do?”
“He wouldn’t go as low as suicide, right?,” I said anxiously.
“No way,” Tenkaichi said and frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“No, it just seemed like the author’s face turned a bit pale”.
“What do you mean?,” I said surprised, but at that time my subordinate brought in one of the suspects. Tenkaichi and I returned to the world of fiction.

My subordinate had brought in the cousin of the victim Ushigami Teiji, Umamoto Masaya, a middle-aged man. He claimed to be a broker who worked with imports of foreign goods, but it seemed like his work was not all that clean.
“I have no idea what has happened. Teiji was so energetic yesterday, and then to have this happen… What? What I think? Really no idea. Who would murder such a good person? It was probably a thief who was out for some money. Yes, that has to be it. Inspector, please find the man as fast as possible”.
Having said that, Masaya started to cry. Or wait, to be more precise, he just put his handkerchief besides his eyes the whole time, but it did not seem like tears were actually coming out.

We then asked the other suspects. Because it would just confuse the readers if we just came up with all these characters, so we’ll do it with a list like those dramatis personae you often see at the beginning of a detective novel.

Dramatis Personae
* Ushigami Teiji (60)
Oil painer. Owner of Ushigami mansion. Holds a fortune.

* Umamoto Masaya (42)
Self-proclaimed imports broker. Cousin of Teiji, lives in the Ushigami mansion.

* Umamoto Ayae (38)
Masaya’s wife.

* Torada Shōzō (28)
Teiji’s disciple. Lives in the Ushigami mansion.

* Tatsumi Fuyuko (23)
Teiji’s disciple. Lives alone near the Ushigami mansion.

* Inuzuka Yone (45)
Ushigami mansion’s maid.

* Ōkawara Banzō (42)
Police inspector (homicide department, prefectural police)

* Suzuki (30), Yamamoto (29)
Detective and police officer

* Tenkaichi Daigorō (unknown)
Great detective

“Hahahaha”
As I looked at the list, I just had to laugh. It was already weird to have normal detectives and officers on the list, but the best was Tenkaichi’s part.

Great Detective.

“Hahhahahahwhahahaha”
Who writes down great detective in a dramatis personae? Just ‘detective’ is enough, right? Don’t write great detective! It’s embarrassing! What is this author thinking?

Tears came out as I laughed inside the reception room, when my subordinate Suzuki came in.
“Inspector, I’ve brought Inuzuka Yone”.
I became serious again.
“Ok, bring her inside”.
Urged by Suzuki, Yone came in. Her face was all pale and hung down.
“You know what this is, right?,” I said and I took out the sugar can. There was caster sugar inside. Yone nodded silently.
“You have heard that there was poison inside this, right? Agricultural chemicals”.
Yone opened her eyes and showed an expression of surprise.
“No, I haven’t heard anything about that”.
“You really know nothing about that? Where is this can normally placed? The kitchen? So the person who has the easiest access to this, is the person who is usually always in the kitchen. That means you”.
“But… I, I don’t know anything about that. Why would I kill the master? Such… such a horrible thing…”
Yone’s shook her head and her body writhed.
“Then I’ll ask you. Where were you when you heard Ushigami’s scream this morning?”.
“In my own room”.
“Can you prove it?”
“Prove it... No, I can’t”.
“Just like I thought. By the way, all the others came out of their own rooms after the scream, so they can all vouch for each other. They all have an alibi”.
“I also came out of my room when I heard the scream. I went to the atelier, saw the horrible sight of the master and screamed”.
“Really? Didn’t you murder Ushigami first and then screamed like you had just arrived?”
“You’re wrong, wrong! I didn’t do it!,” Yone cried out.

I sighed and looked at her with a face that said that crying was not going to help her. But of course I knew deep down in my heart that this poor woman was not the murderer. That was the reason I was able to be so persistent with her. What we as supporting cast in a detective story always have to watch out for, is to never arrive at the real murderer before the great detective does. I have to buy him time by doing useless investigations until Tenkaichi arrives at the truth. I actually had several proofs of Yone’s innocence. First of all, she wasn’t beautiful. This author seems to have the habit of making the murderer beautiful if she’s a woman. Secondly, there were no blank spots in her past. It is hard to come up with a hidden motive at a later stage in the story if someone’s past is clear. And finally, her name. Yone was not a name suitable for a murderer.

As I looked at the crying Yone, someone knocked on the door. Tenkaichi entered the room.
“Yone isn’t the murder,” the detective suddenly said.
“What is this? This is no place for an amateur detective! Get out!,” I said the standard phrases for such a situation.
“Please listen. I told you this morning that someone tried to strangle Ushigami as he was taking a afternoon nap, right? I have investigated the alibis of everyone for that time, but Yone was out at that time doing groceries”.
“What? Is that true?”
“Yes”
“Hmm,” I groaned. To quickly pick out a criminal, but to be proven wrong almost immediately afterwards was also my function as a member of the supporting cast.
“So this woman isn’t the murderer…”
“By the way, I just heard this from the officer, but it seems that Ushigami’s own fingerprints were found on the knife, right?,” Tenkaichi asked me.
“Aah, yes, that’s right. But that’s just a trick the murderer used to make it seem like suicide. They were prints from his left hand. And everybody knows that Ushigami was right-handed”.
“I see. But then the murderer would have known that too. And despite that, he used the left hand…”
“He was probably in a panic,” I decided lightly and at that time my subordinate entered.
“Inspector, a letter was send to a merchant who handled the pictures of Ushigami Teiji”.
“A letter?”
I took out the contents of the envelope my subordinate gave me. The following was written on the stationary inside:

Ushigami Teiji’s works are not painted by Ushigami himself. He sold the works I painted as his own works. Ushigami Teiji has to pay for his crimes

“What? Ushigami stole other people’s paintings?”
“That’s impossible!,” Yone said sharply, but still crying. “The master painted everything himself”.
“Who wrote this?” I looked again at the letter and turned my head.
“Allow me for a second”. Tenkaichi extended his arm and took the letter from me. “Awful handwriting”.
“Naturally faked to fool handwriting analysis”. I made a face that said that this is why amateurs will always be amateurs.
“Hmm, could it be…” Tenkaichi had the habit to start scratching his unkempt hair when he started his deductions inside his head. Dandruff was flying around.

Like we just discussed, this is a whodunnit. But that does not mean that a reader will be able to solve this case just by taking notes while reading and to be honest, it does not matter from what angle you look at the case, with this kind of detective stories it is almost impossible to arrive at the truth relying only the in-universe hints. But there is nothing wrong with that. Because in reality, there are no readers who logically try to deduce the criminal like the in-fiction detective. Most readers just try to guess the criminal based on instinct and experience.

There are sometimes readers who say’ I knew who did it halfway through!,’ but these people did not arrive at their conclusion through deduction, they just randomly target someone and simply say ‘it was him’ . What is difficult for the author however, is the fact that there are so many targets for this. Guessing who the reader thinks is the criminal, is like guessing the outcome of a horse race. For example, with this case, the authors thinks the guesses of the readers are something like this:

[No 1] Tatsumi Fuyuko. Young and beautiful. Would make for a great murderer. Is the saddest about the victim’s dead, but that seems to be an act.

[No 2] Torada Shōzō. Depicted as a youthful lad. Not suspicious at all and therefore suspicious.

[No 3] Either Umamoto Masaya or Ayae. Monetary motives are rather standard, so they are probably just characters created by the writer to mislead the readers.

[No 4] Inuzuka Yone. Plain and not conspicuous at all, but it might be a surprise ending where she turns out to be pure evil.

[No 5] One of the police officers. There are such kinds of stories, so keep this possibility in mind.

[Extra] Suicide or fake suicide. Or everyone worked together.

With this list, the author is prepared for his readers. But no matter who the murderer is, there is always someone who will say “I knew it is was him or her”.

“Hey, is this really going to be alright?,” I asked Tenkaichi who was waiting for his performance. He was to solve the case now.
“Is it really going to be a truth that is going to surprise the readers?”.
“Leave it all to me,” Tenkaichi said confidently.
“But no matter which of the persons on the list turns out to be the murderer, the readers aren’t going to be surprised, you know”.
“Probably”.
“You don’t seem worried at all. Hey, I know that this is meta-fiction, but don’t tell me the author or the reader is going to be the murderer?!”
“No, no. Lately, readers have even been guessing those kind of solutions”.
I groaned, as I knew that to be true.
The door to the living room opened and my subordinate’s head popped out.
“They’re all here, sir”.
“OK. Well, let’s go”.

I took Tenkaichi with me inside. All the suspects were sitting in the living room. I coughed.
“Errr, Tenkaichi here has something to tell us regarding this case. It’s only the deduction of an amateur detective, but he insisted, so please listen to him”. The standard phrases.
I sat down and Tenkaichi took one step forward.
“Ladies and gentlemen”. This was also a standard phrase.
“This case has really been odd. Even I was confused for a while. But I finally found the murderer”.
“Who is it?,” one of the suspects exclaimed.
“He is…,” Tenkaichi turned to the group of suspects, “a male”.
Someone gasped.
“It was you, you right?”
“No, I didn’t do it!”
“Me neither!”
The suspects started to cry out, but Tenkaichi calmed them down.
“Please listen to me. Our male murderer had been living for a long time in Ushigami Teiji’s shadow. The works he painted were stolen by Ushigami and sold as his paintings. And he got nothing from Ushigami for that. Which he resented. And finally his hate exploded, which led to the murder of Ushigami”.
“Who was it?” I stood up and glared at the suspects”.
“Who?”
“Who was it, tell us quickly!”
“That person is...,” Tenkaichi breathed slowly, “the other personality that lives inside Ushigami Teiji”.
“….”
Everybody stared silently at the detective.
“Ushigami had undergone brain surgery when he was young to treat an illness. As a result, a new personality was born in his right brain. A personality who painted. I found out that even though Ushigami was right-handed, the fingerprints on his brushes were all from his left hand. That’s because the left hand is controlled by the right brain. That letter that exposed Ushigami was also written so horribly because it was written with his left hand. Like I just said, this personality had started to harbor hate for Ushigami’s main personality. He tried to strangle him when the main personality fell asleep, he added poison to the sugar, but it all failed. And finally, he stabbed him in the chest”.
“And why was all the glass broken in the atelier?,” I asked, as I felt the ambience in the room had turned for the worse.
“That was because Ushigami’s image was reflected in the glass. The other personality had gone mad and destroyed everything with Usigami’s face on it. Mirrors and even the glass face on the clock. And the canvas was also torn to pieces. It was a self-portrait of Ushigami”.
“Hmmm,” I groaned and then whispered: “But isn’t this just suicide?”
“No! This is fundamentally different from suicide. This is murder,” Tenkaichi said strongly. The other people were still looking perplexed.
“Alright, I understand now”. I stood up.
“The other personality was the criminal. Hmm, I had no idea. As expected from the great detective Tenkaichi. I really have to my hat off for you”. I desperately tried to praise Tenkaichi.
“No this was also thanks to the inspector’s help...”
At that point, something came flying towards us. I picked it up. It was an empty beer can. Next, a banana peel was thrown towards us.
“Wha… what are you doing!,” Tenkaichi covered his face with his hands.
I suddenly realized it.
“The readers! The readers are angry!”
They were throwing garbage and horse manure by now.
“Help me!” Tenkaichi ran away.
“Wait! Don’t leave me here!” I also quickly left the scene.

Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès

2012-01-14T12:35:00.000+01:00

「そのころ、東京中の町という町、家という家では、ふたり以上の人が顔をあわせさえすれば、まるでお天気のあいさつでもするように、怪人「二十面相」のうわさをしていました」

『怪人二十面相』

"In every neighborhood and in every home, whenever people came together, they would, as if talking about the simply weather, start swapping out rumors about the Fiend with Twenty Faces"

"The Fiend with Twenty Faces"

The amount I read and wrote about Edogawa Rampo's Shounen Tantei Dan ("Boys Detective Club") series this week this week is a bit more than should be considered healthy, but I still love it. It made me realise that we need more stories about master-detectives versus master-criminals. Yes, we have the crossover stories between Arsène Lupin and a thinly disguised Sherlock Holmes, but as those stories are written by Lupin's Leblanc, Holmes' depiction is never completely fair. And on the topic of Holmes, he and Moriarty are indeed an example, but Moriarty's appearance in the original canon is so brief and sudden that his impact is less than you'd expect it to be. No, we need more of the rivalries like Conan vs KID! Kindaichi vs Hell's Puppeteer! Q Class vs Pluto! Ranko vs Devil's Labyrinth!

Writing this also makes me realize that these are all Japanese examples. There are probably non-Japanese examples, but I can't think of one right now. Anyway, for the Japanese examples, it's pretty easy to point to the Shounen Tantei Dan series as the grandfather of the trope. Edogawa Rampo's legendary series about master-detective Akechi Kogorou, asssisted by young Kobayashi and the Boys Detective Club and the confrontations they have with the master-thief the Fiend with Twenty Faces pretty much shaped the model for both children's mystery fiction and for stories about master-detectives and master-criminals and it is tempting to think that without this series, we'd never have something like the rivalries mentioned above.

Edogawa Rampo's works never age, so they keep getting remade for all kinds of media. Akechi Kogorou tai Kaijin Nijuu Mensou ("Akechi Kogorou VS The Fiend with Twenty Faces") is a 2002 TV special produced by TBS. The story is a mix of several stories of the Shounen Tantei Dan series (and some non-Shounen Tantei Dan novels featuring Akechi), but also features an original take on the characters. Set in postwar Japan, the bulk of the story is naturally about the Triforce of Akechi, Boy Detective Club (represented by Kobayashi) and Twenty Faces, but the scriptwriter also added a subplot that links Akechi Kogorou and Twenty Faces personally. Because that's more fun, right? When Things Get Personal?

No, wrong. The Personal Subplot That Is Supposed To Make The Rivalry Significant is one of the many problems with this special. The subplot renders the Fiend with Twenty Faces to a poor victim of the war. But that's not the real Twenty Faces! He is supposed to be a genius criminal with the air of Arsène Lupin, he should be grand, he should be invincible! Twenty Faces is a criminal in a children's series, he is supposed to be nothing more than a (pleasant) evil! Making Twenty Faces a poor misunderstood war-victim is just an amateuristic way of trying to make the story more suitable for adults, but that is totally missing the point of Edogawa Rampo when he created the character!

Part of the problem is created by Edogawa himself though. He used the character of Akechi in all kinds of stories, from the Shounen Tantei Dan series aimed children to his work for adults. As a result, Akechi appears in both light-hearted and darker stories, which makes him an ambiguous character at times. Twenty Faces however is different, he was always meant as a children's character. The special mixes up several scenes from different Shounen Tantei Dan novels and it is clear that those spectacular scenes are in fact aimed at children, with a certain boyish naiveness to them. The "dark" subplot with Twenty Faces and Akechi really feels out of place.

Another problem is the casting. I love Tamura Masakazu. Really. Yes, he pretty much acts the same way in most of his roles, but in a good way. But if you put him in the role of a dandy gentleman detective dressed in black, I will think he is Furuhata Ninzaburou. Not Akechi Kogorou. Yes, I admit there are some differences (as Akechi, Tamura at least seems more sincere than Furuhata), but the two characters are just too similar. The other problem is Beat Takeshi, who plays the Fiend with Twenty Faces. There are just too many things wrong with this. Age is one thing (like I said, Twenty Faces should be more like youthful Lupin). The second problem is... is that he is called Twenty Faces. Because he is a master of disguise who is forgotten his own face. Why would he run around the whole time looking like Beat Takeshi then?!! There is a reason that the masked Twenty Faces is the most 'accepted' visual image of him! In fact, the movie K-20, based on an original novel by Kitamura Sou, had a really kick-ass suit for Twenty Faces. Actually, K-20 had a much better Akechi Kogorou vs Fiend with Twenty Faces story than this special, especially the more light-hearted approach is a lot more enjoyable.

The fact that the only enjoyable parts of this special were the parts that were lifted directly from the original novels says something about the strength of Edogawa's writing, but this was really an example of how not to do a TV adaptation of Edogawa Rampo's work.

Original Japanese title(s): 『明智小五郎対怪人二十面相』

「心に並べても未完成なパズル」

2012-01-10T21:39:00.001+01:00

「事件に大きいも小さいも無い」

『踊る大捜査線』

"You don't judge cases by their size"

"Bayside Shakedown"

Welcome to another entry in Short Shorts. Or wait, this is actually the first Short Shorts. Am I really going to call this Short Shorts? Hmm. Anyway, this is where I post things that aren't nearly interesting enough to justify a whole post on their own, but are somewhat acceptable if thrown in with some other bits and pieces. The bits and pieces are unrelated, but who cares?

I bought Speak of The Devil over a year ago and decided yesterday to finally read it. Speak of the Devil was a radio drama (this being the script) written by John Dickson Carr and is basically an enhanced version of She Slept Lightly (which is collected in 13 to the Gallows). A historic mystery where a man is haunted by his desire to meet a girl who is supposed to have been hanged some years earlier, but the mystery is rather light and the sappy love story really asked a lot of tolerance of my part. Speak of the Devil and She Slept Lightly are also extremely similar, so there is actually no need to read both stories. Are there actually scripts available for Suspense? Carr had some interesting stories there, which would have been much more enjoyable to read than Speak of the Devil.

Reverse Thieves has a pretty interesting segment where they discuss homages / parodies to detectives in non-related anime/manga series. To name some of my own favorites: The Serizawa Family Murder Case, a chapter in the classic Golgo 13. In fact, Golgo 13 is a name that might be mentioned more often from now on. The titular Golgo 13 is the world's number one professional assassin. And that's pretty all to the story. The stories often involve international politics in the background, but most of the interesting stories are when Golgo is forced to make an impossible snipe. Thieves like Lupin might be experts on how to make a seemingly impossible theft, but Golgo 13 is an expert in overcoming the odds and assassinate people in seemingly impossible situations. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I really should write something more extensive about Golgo 13 sometime.

But anyway, The Serizawa Family Murder Case is might be an origin story for the perfect assassin. The story has a slow start, but presents the reader with a very interesting impossible disappearance halfway through the story. A woman is seen entering a hotel room, shortly after followed by a man. Police officers have all exits under surveillance. After some time however, the man exits the room, complaining that the woman still has not come! The police has no idea what's going on: they swear they saw the woman enter first, but the man says she was never there and simply thought that she was late. A search of the room shows that she has really disappeared from under the police's nose. The solution is a pretty suprising one if you weren't expecting a locked room mystery in your Golgo 13.

Another locked room mystery I had totally forgotten about is in King Ottokar's Sceptre, the eight album in the Adventures of Tintin series. I will refer to Tintin as Kuifje (his Dutch name) from now on by the way, because Tintin just feels strange. I haven't seen the new movie (and I seem to be the only one who genuinely enjoyed the videogame), but rewatching the 90's TV series reminded me of the locked room mystery in King Ottokar's Sceptre. In it, the titular sceptre disappears from a guarded room, with the only person inside being knocked out. While the solution is pretty simple and arguably maybe a bit childish, it's still a pretty entertaining story.

For me, reading/watching detective fiction is something I usually do on my own, so I naturally keep all my thoughts I have to myself. Occasionally I cry out some incoherent stuff, but it's usually a silent process. As I watched some episodes of (the awesome) Game Center CX however, I realized how strange it is to hear someone else think out loud while confronting a piece of detective fiction. In episodes 105 and 113, section chief Arino challenges the two detective games Hokkaidou Serial Murder Case - Disppear to Ohotsk (sequel to Portopia Serial Murder Case) and Kamaitachi no Yoru. While in episodes with action-based games, most of the fun of the show is derived from seeing how Arino struggles to progress in the game, these two episodes show a surprisingly sharp Arino trying to solve the murder cases in those games. Most Game Center CX episodes are filled with expressions like "Aaah, game over!", "Jump!!", "Need more lives!!", but as these kind of tensions are usually not present in detective games, Arino is forced to think out loud, to voice his deductions in order to fill out the 60 minutes of the show.

And it's actually really fun, hearing how someone tackles a detective story. When you watch a detective show with someone else, you'll occasionally voice your deductions, but in these two episodes, Arino has to talk constantly because he is the only person in front of the camera and he has to pull the viewers in. It is really strange to follow a person's complete train of thought while playing a detective game, or engaging in any kind of detective fiction, but it's really interesting to see how people's way of thinking and deducing differ, even if the input (the story/clues) are the same. It's more fun that simply comparing solutions, because here we see the complete picture of how Arino progresses through the story and changes his ideas as he encounters new evidence. And sometimes bumbles around. Greatest moment of the Kamaitachi no Yoru episode? When the protagonist in the game exclaims he know who the murderer is, while Arino exclaims in return that he has no friggin' idea who the murderer is.

Thus ends this short short. I'll probably forget about the existence this type of post.... by the end of next month and will probably invoke it again in six months or so. That increasing pain in my head is also probably trying to tell me I should sleep now.

「分かってんだよ、自分でだって。本物のヒーローになんかなれないってことぐらい」

2012-01-08T19:42:00.002+01:00

「花園絵里香です」

「おー、いい名前だね。うん。花園・・・　ちょっと待った。花園って・・・その、花園一家の花園？」

「え、まぁ」

「整理すると、君はその花園一家の親分のお嬢さんで・・・」

「次女です」

「で、さっきの２人は学校の送り迎えをしてくれる、その子分の人・・・」

「あり得ないですよね。２０歳を越えた大学生に、送り迎えなんて」

「うん。で振り切って、こう逃げてきたと。で、途中で俺をこう巻き込んだと」

「巻き込んだっていうか、一緒に逃げてくれたから」

「あぁ。分かった。よし。車降りよう」

"My name is Hanazono Erika"

"That's a nice name. Yeah. Hanazono.... wait. Hanazono... Hanazono of the Hanazono Clan?"

"Yeah"

"So let me get things straight. You are the daughter of the head of the Hanazono Clan..."

"Second daughter"

"And those two gangsters were the ones protecting you on the way from school..."

"Can't believe it, right? A student over 20 years old being protected on the way to school..."

"Well... so you shook them off and fled. And then got me involved..."

"It's more like you fled together with me..."

"OK. Got it. Get out of the car"

It's a bit worrying that three of the six posts until now this week have the tag Higashigawa Tokuya. It's getting really skewed now....

I've been writing this often about Higashigawa Tokuya's work lately, because it's fun of course, but also because his popularity in Japan really grew last year with the Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de novels and the TV drama based on that series. Last year, short movies and audio dramas were also made based on his popular novels. Having all these adaptations and such, makes it really tempting to try something by Higashigawa. And it does help that his work is usually really fun. Earlier this week, a TV-special was broadcast based on Higashigawa Tokuya's Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai ("I Won't Kidnap Again"). The original work is one of the few non-series stories Higashigawa wrote, but Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai is of course a comedy-mystery like all of Higashigawa's other works. The TV-special follows the original story reasonably accurate as far as I know, with some minor changes in for example the ages of the protagonists. Because Arashi's Ohno does not look like 20. Just no. Aragaki Yui might have passed for a high school student, but her character also had her age bumped a bit.

Anyway, the story starts when Hanazono Erika (played by Aragaki) bumps into the lost-in-life Shoutarou (Ohno) as she is fleeing from two gangsters. Shoutarou helps her in her flight, but discovers that Erika is in fact the second daughter of the head of the Hanazono Clan, the main tekiya in town. Erika wants to raise money for a hospital operation for her half-sister (by her mother who left Erika's father / the clan), but because she does not think that her father will give her the money, Erika plans to pretend like she has been kidnapped to get the ransom money. She convinces Shoutarou and his senior Koumoto to help her and the three of them actually manage to pull off the heist. Which is all good and well, until they find out the next day after receiving the ransom money that someone has gone off with the money, that someone has left a dead body (of someone of the Hanazono clan) on their boat and that the police was tipped off.

I have to admit, I was once again fooled by Higashigawa. Like always, he manages to lure you into a false sense of security, in a false sense of 'ha, your story is simple and consists of nothing more than humor, so no way you are going to surprise me'. I should really learn to be more suspicous whenever I feel like this when reading Higashigawa, because it always comes back to bite me. You'd think I'd have learned by now, but no. The story starts out very predictable and it takes quite a bit of time before the actual ransom-handover scene starts, but the great stuff only starts after our protagonists have retrieved the ransom money. And after the dead body has been discovered.

The first half of Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai is about how the three protagonists plan to retrieve the ransom money, which is pretty interesting on its own, but in the second half the heroes have to solve a crime they didn't commit and escape from the police and the Hanazono Clan, making things a lot more exciting. And even at this point, most viewers will just think that this is 'just' a standard mystery special, but then Higashigawa reveals something big that will definitely surprise most people. I have to admit that the main trick of this story is very much like the main trick in Higashigawa's debut work, Misshitsu no Kagi Kashimasu, but that doesn't make it less fun. It did caught me by surprise, maybe because it was so similar (even though I did solve it when I read Misshitsu no Kagi Kashimasu.... which is weird).

As a stand-alone work, the characters in Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai were surprisingly different from other Higashigawa characters. The protagonists in his series are usually simultaneously both incredibly genre-savvy and ignorant, which results in very interesting (and funny!) narration and conversation. This was not the case with Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai and I have to admit I didn't nearly laugh as much as with other Higashigawa stories. Maybe the fun conversations were cut from the story for the running time, maybe it was like this in the original story too. The TV-special had a certain pleasant light-heartedness to it and was definitely made to leave a typical drama-esque good feeling with the viewers, but does make me wonder how the atmosphere of the original book differs from this special. On the other hand, I doubt I'll ever read the book now I've seen the special... The main surprise is fun enough, but the rest of the story is not as interesting as Higashigawa's other stories.

Oh, and there was of course a small Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de guest appearance, seeing both TV shows are based on books by Higashigawa and feature Arashi members as the main roles...

And totally digging Gakki's short hair look. Yep. Liked it better in the Ranma 1/2 special, but still.

Original Japanese title(s): （原作：東川篤哉）　『もう誘拐なんてしない』

『霧ヶ峰涼の放課後』

2012-01-07T16:26:00.006+01:00

「探偵は犯人を選べないが、犯人は探偵を選ぶものである」

『学ばない探偵たちの学園』

"A detective can't choose his criminal, but a criminal can choose his detective"

"The School of the Detectives who Don't Learn"

Another translation within a month?! Sometimes, the best way to get your mind off of things is to shut down your own brain and mindlessly translate detective stories you like. Or something like that.

This time a special kind of translation. For this is actually a translation of the radio drama of Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, produced for NHK's Youth Adventure series last year. Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni is a spin-off series to Higashigawa Tokuya's Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series, featuring the vice-president of the titular club as the protagonist. Kirigamine Ryou is a passionate vice-president, but sadly enough usually not smart enough to be the actual detective in the story and usually has to settle with a Watson-like role in the stories. The stories are all very light-hearted, as the mysteries Kirigamine tries to solve are just the cases she encounters at school (people usually do not get murdered in locked rooms et cetera at school), but that doesn't mean that they are not interesting.

I chose the short story Kirigamine Ryou no Houkago ("Kirigamine Ryou's After-School Hours") to translate, because it is a fun little story that kinda reminds of Ellery Queen's famous short story The Mad Tea Party. The school-setting also feels the most natural in this story compared to the other stories collected in Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni. This story has also actually been made into a short movie, that is available at the 'official' Koigakubo Academy website. Also note how I am trying to tell you nothing about the contents of the story.

It was interesting doing this though. I have translated short stories before, but as I didn't have a script to this story, I had to type down everything as I was listening to the radio drama (which are episodes 6 and 7 of the 10-part series, by the way). Which requires a very different way of working. There were some spots I just couldn't pick up, so I totally winged my translation at those points. Luckily, those moments were few and very short. Translating from an actual text is a lot more easier!

Anyway, I think it speaks for itself. The text in italics is from the narrator (Kirigami Ryou herself), SOUND is of course for the sound effects in the radio play. The story's also quite easy to read and short because it's mostly short conversation. Anyway, this is Kirigamine Ryō’s After School Hours:

霧ヶ峰涼の放課後

著者：東川篤哉

脚色：福田卓郎

Kirigamine Ryō’s After School Hours

Author: Higashigawa Tokuya

Script: Fukuda Takurō

Tōkyō, west of Kokubunji. This area, which still reminds of old Musashino, has been called Koigakubo since long ago. The school I attend is located in a neighborhood within Koigakubo. The official name of the school is Koigakubo Private Academy for Higher Education and has a geinō class, for young actors and idols and such. I am Kirigamine Ryō, a beautiful sixteen year old high school student from the normal classes, a mystery maniac, carp fan and vice-president of the detective club

SOUND: SWIMMING

It all happened right after the swimming class in the sixth period. After I had changed back in my half-sleeve blouse and mini-skirt in the dressing room, I went back to the classroom together with my classmate Nao. Koigakubo Academy’s girls dressing room is located in an old building together with the gymnastics equipment storage room, next to the pool in the corner of the athletics field.

SOUND: WALKING
NAO: Hey, what’s that?
KIRIGAMINE: What?
NAO: There, from the window of the gymnastics storage room. Like there’s smoke coming out of there. Wait, that is smoke! A fire?!
KIRIGAMINE: No way! Probably just a delinquent student smoking. You know, the places where delinquents smoke have traditionally been behind the gymnasium, or around the storage room.
NAO: Really? It might be a fire, you know.
KIRIGAMINE: Well, if you’re really worried… let’s go take a look.

---

SOUND: DOOR OPENING
KIRIGAMINE: Anyone here?
NAO: And?
KIRIGAMINE: Nothing. Just the vaulting box, mats, balls, hurdles, the balance bar. The usual. This is the gymnastics storage room…
NAO: Maybe just my imagination… A broom is just lying here. Let’s clean this up.
KIRIGAMINE: As expected of our class president.
NAO: This is the cleaning equipment closet, right?
KIRIGAMINE: Yeah.
SOUND: LOCKER OPENING
NAO: Aaaaah!

There was a someone in the locker!

KIRIGAMINE: Look out! Out of the way, Nao! Take this!!
SOUND: BALL HITTING PERSON
???: Aaah!

The basketball hit him, and the ghost from the locker fell down painfully. Nao hit the ghost with the broom.

SOUND: PERSON GETTING REPEATEDLY HIT BY BROOM
???: Stop it!!
KIRIGAMINE: Wa… wait, Nao! That’s Arakida! Arakida from the class next door!
NAO: Arakida Satoshi?
KIRIGAMINE: Yeah
NAO: Aaah, I’m so relieved! It was just a delinquent!
ARAKIDA: What the hell were you doing?! Attacking me?!
NAO: Sorry. I thought you were some kind of pervert…
KIRIGAMINE: The locker is for cleaning equipment, you know.
ARAKIDA: I know! I heard something at the entrance, so I thought that it was some damn teacher and hid myself there.
KIRIGAMINE: Hmmm… So you were doing something that you didn’t want a teacher to see. Were you… smoki…
ARAKIDA: I wasn’t smoking!! I don’t… I don’t smoke!
SOUND: DOOR OPENING
???: I heard that. You’ll get suspended from class for smoking at school!

It was Shibata Kouzou. Even among the wild gymnastic teachers, this teacher dressed in a jersey was considered the most aggressive.

ARAKIDA: That’s not fair! I wasn’t smoking! Where’s the evidence, the evidence?! Do you have any evidence that I smoked….. Sir?!
SHIBATA: Who do you think you are! OK, I’ll do an inspection of your belongings. Show me what’s in your pockets. Don’t try to hide it!
SOUNDS: COINS
ARAKIDA: Only got some change. And? Finished?
SHIBATA: No. If you don’t have it on you now, then it means you hid it somewhere in this storeage room. Your cigarettes and lighter will be all the evidence I need.
ARAKIDA: No problem. Search until you’re satisfied.
SHIBATA: What brand do you smoke?
ARAKIDA Lucky Mild. And my lighter is a special commemoration zippo for Kanemoto’s 2000th base hit!
SHIBATA: Ok, got it. I’ll find them. You two, look too!

He had already confessed before we even started looking. What a pair.

SHIBATA: Kirigamine! Search the vaulting box!

A vaulting box had been placed right against the wall separating the girls dressing room and the storage room. With mats and baseball equipment in the way, I couldn’t move it, and it was only used once a year, at the athletics festival.

SHIBATA: Inside the vault. Lift up the upper layer and check it!
KIRIGAMINE: Hm… heaa…
SHIBATA: And?
KIRIGAMINE: Looking… looking, but there’s nothing. Just the floor.
ARAKIDA: O.. of course there’s nothing there!
NAO: Isn’t this enough looking around? Do we have to look through everything for just one delinquent?
SHIBATA: You’re right. I’ll let you off this time. The next time I’ll definitely get you! Remember that!

Who is the delinquent here?

----

SOUND: PEOPLE TALKING, WALKING AT SCHOOL GROUNDS
KIRIGAMINE: Where did Arakida hid his cigarettes in the end?
NAO: I wonder.
KIRIGAMINE: The storage room is small, but there are a lot of places to hide stuff there.
NAO: yeah. Even if you’re not that smart, you’d manage if you tried.
ARAKIDA: Wait a second!

Arakida was waiting at the school gate.

ARAKIDA: You’re coming with me.
NAO: Wh…what? Don’t complaining to us! We’ll leave now.
ARAKIDA: You can go. Just leave. I only have business with Kirigamine.
KIRIGAMINE: Me?!
NAO: I se…see. Well, I’ll go then. I’ll leave this all to you, Ryō. Don’t worry, you’ll figure out something. Bye!
KIRIGAMINE: NAO---!
ARAKIDA: I’ll have to pay you back, Kirigamine… What do you like?
KIRIGAMINE: Heh? …. Carp.
ARAKIDA: No, what kind of food do you like?
KIRIGAMINE: Food? Bacon, I guess.
ARAKIDA: Bacon? I was guessing parfaits or crepes, but bacon? A difficult one… Bacon…bacon… Think! Think, Arakida Satoshi!! Ah, I have it! Come along!
KIRIGAMINE: Where to?
ARAKIDA: The café I usually hang out at.

---

SOUND: PLATE BEING PLACED ON TABLE
ARAKIDA: What do you think? The owner’s special, ultimate bacon burger! It’s my treat, so eat!
KIRIGAMINE: Bread. Lettuce. Bacon. Lettuce. Tomato. Bread. Lettuce. Tomato. Bacon. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Bacon, bacon, BACOOOOOON! Like a mille-feuille of bacon and lettuce!
ARAKIDA; Stop talking and eat!
KIRI: I humbly accept!
SOUND: KIRIGAMINE EATING HAMBURGER
KIRIGAMINE: Mut my mmyoummeammingme?
ARAKIDA: Speak after you’ve eaten! Or eat after you’ve spoken!
KIRIGAMINE: Why are you treating me?
ARAKIDA: Be..because of just now.
KIRIGAMINE: The storage room? Oh, but you were smoking there, right? Pretty good place where you hid your cigarettes! Lucky the teacher didn’t find it, or you would have been suspended.
ARAKIDA: Good place… ? I just happened to see it… Anyway, I repay the favors I get. Or else people start talking about you…
KIRIGAMINE: What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to deserve getting treated. I only did like anyone would have done.
KIRIGAMINE: if you really think like that, well, that makes me feel easy too. You have some male chivalry within you. Aah, this is great! I really feel relieved knowing you feel like that!!
KIRIGAMINE: Err… I have no idea what you’re talking about.
SOUND: CELLPHONE RINGING
KIRIGAMINE: Excuse me. Hello?
NAO: Ryō? Help me!
KIRIGAMINE Nao?
NAO: When I tried to pay the bill at the family restaurant, I discovered I had only 370 yen left in my wallet . I ate for almost 3000 yen… Ryō, do you have that much on you?
KIRIGAMINE: You eat too much!

And so I was forced to go the family restaurant to save Nao.

KIRIGAMINE: Well, Arakida, thanks for the hamburger!
ARAKIDA: OK!

----

???: Wait! Kirigamine!

It was the popular actress Ogasawara Reika, third year student of the geinō class of Koigakubo Academy, who called out to me as I was heading for the family restaurant. I think her real name is Yoshida Miyuki.

REIKA: Can you accompany me for a while?

---

SOUND: OKONOMIYAKI BEING FRIED
KIRIGAMINE: Aonori. Sauce. Dough. Pork belly. Egg. Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage, cabbage, CABBAGE!! Wow! Like a cabbage squat call! I humbly accept!
REIKA: I’m sorry there is no bacon.
KIRIGAMINE: Hm?
REIKA: I was right besides you at the café just now.
KIRIGAMINE: I didn’t notice. But today’s a strange day. Delinquent Arakida treats me on a hamburger, now the popular actress Ogasawa Raika invites me to eat okonomiyaki… Are you all planning to make gain weight?
REIKA: Maybe it was a bad idea to eat okonomiyaki right after a hamburger?
KIRIGAMINE: No, I have a different stomach for that.
REIKA: What a strange stomach. Hahaha

That smile. That was the smile that made the hearts of middle aged men all over the world go wild.

REIKA: About the talk you had with Arakida at the cafe… it wasn’t like I was eavesdropping though, I just happened to hear it… But it seemed like that Arakida was smoking in the storage room, was almost found out by the teacher, but that he got away thanks to you…
SOUND: KIRIGAMINE WOLFING DOWN OKONOMIYAKI
REIKA: Listen to me!!

Reika grabbed the okonomiyaki iron I held in my hand strongly with her chopsticks.

REIKA: What about a bit more self-control. Are you listening? Who do you think I am? I am Ogasawara Reika. The number one young talent, the heroine! Normally I wouldn’t be eating okonomiyaki with someone from the normal classes like this. Got it?
KIRIGAMINE: Do.. don’t get mad, Yoshida…
REIKA: Don’t call me Yoshida! … That conversation you just had with Arakida, I had the feeling you were talking at cross-purposes. Right?
KIRIGAMINE: Yeah.. I was forced to search for the cigarettes by the teacher, so there was no reason for Arakida to get mad at me, nor to treat me.
REIKA: Maybe Arakida was thinking as follows: You found the cigarettes he hid. But you pretended you didn’t see them. So he got away without suspension. And that’s why he treated you on a bacon hamburger.
KIRIGAMINE: That means…
REIKA: You actually searched the place where Arakida had hidden his cigarettes. That’s why he thought you knew where they were.
KIRIGAMINE: So I must have blind, for not seeing them even though they were there.
REIKA: Maybe… but there is another possibility. Where did you search?
KIRIGAMINE; Err… the baskets, between the mats that were lying on top of each other, inside the vaulting box at the wall, the bags of lime…
REIKA: I see, precisely like I thought.

I didn’t miss those words that came out of Ogasawara Reika’s beautiful lips

REIKA: Thanks, Kirigamine. Your story helped me. I’ll pay the bill here.
KIRIGAMINE: I can’t… I will pay too! … Err? Aah? That’s strange, I thought I had 3000 yen… Well… if you insists… Thanks for the food!
REIKA: No problem.

---

SOUND: DOOR CLOSING
KIRIGAMINE: Thanks for the food!
REIKA: Well, I have to go somewhere, so…
KIRIGAMINE: The storage room? If so, I’ll go too. I can’t leave feeling all confused like this.
REIKA: You’re probably wondering why I’m so interested in a delinquent’s cigarette, right?
KIRIGAMINE: No…no.. not at all….haha.
REIKA: I’m not interested in a delinquent’s cigarettes. I think there is something bigger behind this. Much bigger.
Kiri: Something…big?

Part 2

After the swimming class, class president Nao and I left the girls dressing room and discovered smoke coming out of the storage room the next door. It seemed that that the delinquent Arakida had smoked there, but even though the violent gymnastics teacher Shibata teacher ordered us to look for Arakida’s cigarettes and lighter, we couldn’t find them. Apparently, I had searched the place where had hidden them, but I didn’t notice them. Arakida thought I was covering for him and he treated me on my favorite food with a special bacon burger. It was Ogasawara Reika, popular actress and third year student of the geinō class, who pointed out this misunderstanding of Arakida.

REIKA: I’m not interested in a delinquent’s cigarettes. I think there is something bigger behind this. Much bigger.
KIRIGAMINE: Something…big?

----

SOUND: DOOR OPENING

We came back to the storage room after school.

REIKA: I think that this vaulting box is the key to everything.

Reika walked to the vaulting box that was pushed against the wall, lifted the upper layer and looked inside.

KIRIGAMINE: Is there anything there? Cigarettes?
REIKA: Nothing. But is that really so?
KIRIGAMINE: Really…?
REIKA: Kirigamine, pretend you’re a delinquent. You skipped class and are smoking in the storage room.
KIRIGAMINE: Err…
REIKA: You’re smoking somewhere near this vault. Just try it!
KIRIGAMINE: What??
REIKA: Got any cigarettes?
KIRIGAMINE: Of course not.
REIKA: Then use this handkerchief instead. Ok? You’re a delinquent. Or the boss of a girl gang. Become the part!
KIRIGAMINE: Err? I a…. am a delinquent. I’m the boss of a girl gang!
REIKA: Ok, let’s go! Camera…. And action!

I leaned against the vault and pretended the handkerchief was a cigarette.

KIRIGAMINE: Aah…. Boring. Who’s going to class now?! Haha, skipping class and smoking is the best! Gonna smoke like hell!
REIKA: You’re kinda like a 80’s delinquent, don’t you think? Well, no matter. Suddenly, the sound of someone outside! A teacher! Gotta hide your cigarette. Where are you going to hide it? You’re looking at the vault. Aaaand… hide it!

I pushed the handkerchief in one of the holes in the lowest, tenth layer of the vaulting box.

KIRIGAMINE: What’s with this play-acting?
REIKA: This is not a play-acting. It’s magic. Come. Open this and look inside.

I lifted the upper layer of the vaulting box and looked inside.

KIRIGAMINE: No…nothing! The handkerchief has disappeared!
REIKA: Don’t panic. Observe. The bottom of the vaulting box looks like the floor of the storage room, right? That’s a fake bottom. There is a fake bottom between the ninth and tenth layer of the vaulting box. Looking from above, you can’t see the difference and you can’t reach it with your hands, so you mistake it for the floor. It’s just a trick.
KIRIGAMINE: This vault has a fake floor?
ARAKIDA: Yes. Arakida hid his cigarettes and lighter in the hole of the tenth layer of the vaulting box like you did just now. When you looked inside the box from above like the teacher told you to do, Arakida must have thought that it was all over.
KIRIGAMINE: But I didn’t notice the fake bottom and told the teacher there was nothing there.
REIKA: And so Arakida thought you were just pretending to have seen nothing and that you were covering him. He should have treated the bacon hamburger to the person who made this fake bottom.
KIRIGAMINE: Wow, incredible. You’re like a great detective.
REIKA: To me, this mystery was child’s play.
KIRIGAMINE: But why is there a fake floor here in the first place? Don’t tell me it was made to help out Arakida.
REIKA: Of course not. I don’t know who the person is who made this fake floor. But I think I know why it was made. Let’s pull out the fake floor.

We lifted the layers of the vaulting box down to the ninth layer and there was a thin vinyl plate placed there that looked like the room’s floor.

KIRIGAMINE: This is made pretty good. No wonder I was fooled.
REIKA: Don’t get impressed by this. Let’s pull it out.

We pulled it out, there were the handkerchief I had pushed in, the Lucky Mild cigarettes and the special commemoration zippo for Kanemoto’s 2000th base hit.

KIRIGAMINE: So Arakida really hid it here. Hmm? What is this black box here?

The black box looked like thick book and a tube was sticking out of it like an insect’s antenna.

KIRIGAMINE: This tube… goes all the way into the wall.
REIKA: At the other side of this wall…
KIRIGAMINE: Is the girls dressing room! This.. this is…
SOUND: BOX BEING PULLED FROM THE WALL
KIRIGAMINE: Look, there is a lens here! This is a camera! A mini camera!
REIKA: Precisely like I thought.
KIRIGAMINE: You knew?
REIKA: You must have heard the rumors about hidden cameras in the girls dressing room? Famous people like me are the targets, so it had been on my mind for a long time now. Then I heard the conversation you and Arakida had and when you told me the details… it just came to me. The vaulting box was suspicious.
KIRIGAMINE: You deduced that the location of the cigarettes, was also the location of the camera.
REIKA: Yes. The culprit probably planned it for the swimming class, placing the camera here and switched it on. Everything in the girls dressing room is filmed until its memory is full. Afterwards, the culprit retrieves the camera. Probably something like that.
KIRIGAMINE: So this camera has footage of us changing clothes?!
REIKA: Really horrible that someone would do something like that. I can’t forgive him. We can’t just leave this here. The teachers won’t tell this to the police, they will think it’s shameful to the school’s reputation. Let’s destroy this. Completely.
KIRIGAMINE: What? Destroy it?
REIKA: of course.

Saying that, Reika raised a metal bat.

KIRIGAMINE: HOLD IT!

The metal bat hit the floor. Because I had kicked the vaulting box, with the camera, away.

REIKA: What are you doing? Why are you interfering? What do you think you’re doing?!
KIRIGAMINE: What are you think you are doing, Reika? Lying to me…
REIKA: Lying? When did I lie?
KIRIGAMINE: You said you happened to hear the conversation I had with Arakida, but that was a lie, right?
REIKA: What?
KIRIGAMINE: Reika, you said this at the okonomiyaki restaurant.

>>“I’m sorry there is no bacon”<<

KIRIGAMINE: How did you know that my favorite food is bacon? Because I was eating a bacon-lettuce-burger? But normally, you’d just think that I like hamburgers.
REIKA: It was… because..
KIRIGAMINE: The only I confessed my love for bacon was during my conversation with Arakida at the school gate. So that means you heard that conversation. You didn’t happen to be at the cafe, you had been following us from the school gate, or maybe even earlier.
REIKA: Why would I have been following you?
KIRIGAMINE: Because… you are the culprit behind this case.
REIKA: Hahaha…. I’m the culprit? Don’t joke around. You’re saying was the one filming the girls dressing room? Haha, you know, Kirigamine, people filming girls dressing rooms are usually hopeless men and such… Furthermore, I am from the geinō class! I am normally the one being filmed…
KIRIGAMINE: I didn’t say you were the culprit behind the filming.
REIKA: Heh?
KIRIGAMINE: You are guilty of theft! You took money from our wallets, right?
REIKA: What’s this so suddenly? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
KIRIGAMINE: My classmate Nao found out she had not enough money to pay the bill at the restaurant and asked me for help.

>>“When I tried to pay the bill at the family restaurant, I discovered I had only 370 yen left in my wallet . I ate for almost 3000 yen… Ryō, do you have that much on you?”<<

KIRIGAMINE: And from my wallet bills had disappeared too.

>>“That’s strange, I thought I had 3000 yen… “<<

KIRIGAMINE: Nao and I were sure we both had several thousand yen. Is it possible that we were both mistaken about the money in our wallets? It is more natural to suppose that someone took money from both my and Nao’s wallets at the same time. That was only possible in the girls dressing room during swimming class. I am sure there are more victims.
REIKA: Even so, do you have evidence that I am the thief?
KIRIGAMINE: Yes, you are the thief. I became sure when you swung that bat. Why did you try to destroy this camera? Why… didn’t you even check the footage on this camera?
REIKA: Because…
KIRIGAMINE: You couldn’t risk anybody seeing you, right? Because you were filmed as you snuck into the girls dressing room and stole money from our wallets.
REIKA: No!
KIRIGAMINE: You were near the girls dressing room and noticed the ruckus in the storage room. Worried, you followed us. That’s when you heard the conversation I had with Arakida at the school gate.
REIKA: If I were the thief, I wouldn’t have dragged you here. I would have come here alone to get rid of the camera.
KIRIGAIME: Yes, a normal thief would have done that. But you are… an actress. As you were talking about the case with me, you got into the role of the great detective and became enthralled in playing the part. And a great detective needs a foolish Watson like me… Am I right?
REIKA: You’re wrong… I didn’t steal anything, I am not a thief!
KIRIGAMINE: Then you won’t mind if I show the footage on this camera to the teachers. I am going to the teachers room now…
REIKA: Don’t joke around! As if I am going to let you!!
SOUND: BAT BEING SWUNG AROUND
KIRIGAMINE: Aaah! Wha… what are you doing!!
REIKA: I am an actress!!
KIRIGAMINE: I know!
REIKA: Do you know how stressful it is to be in the center of attention constantly?!!
KIRIGAMINE: I don’t know, but relax! Relax!
REIKA: I can’t stop myself anymore!!
SOUND: BAT BEING SWUNG AROUND
KIRIGAMINE: Aah! It grazed me!
REIKA: If not for you… Stay still! Stay still!

Just as the iron bat Reika swung grazed my head…

???: Aaaaah!
REIKA: Aaah!
SOUND: THINGS FALLING AROUND

It was Arakida who had body slammed Reika and had knocked her out.

KIRIGAMINE: Did you come to save me?
ARAKIDA: I… I only came here to get some things I had left here… My important, important special commemoration zippo for Kanemoto’s 2000th base hit.
KIRGAMINE: Aaah, I’m saved!! But you were still wrong for smoking…
ARAKIDA: No, you don’t have to thank me! I only did was right. By the way, I love unagi. Don’t forget it!
KIRIGAMINE: Heh?

Afterwards, Reika transferred schools. The teachers are still looking for the person who secretly filmed the dressing room. And I took Arakida to the cafeteria where he had treated me on the bacon-lettuce burger.

SOUND: PLATE BEING PLACED ON TABLE
ARAKIDA: Wha.. what is this?
KIRIGAMINE: Unagi. The owner’s special unagi-lettuce burger!!

「時の流れには逆らえず、色褪せてゆくものもあり」

2012-01-06T17:01:00.001+01:00

さすが巨匠。当たり前だが、なんでも知っているので・・・

有野：　「巨匠。これ・・・巨匠に聞くのもおかしいと思うんですけど、犯人誰ですか」　

『ゲームセンターＣＸ』 #105

As expected of the Master. He naturally knows everything about the game, so...

Arino: "Master, it... it is kinda awkward to ask you this, but... who is the criminal?"

"Game Center CX #105"

We were just a week in January and I've already reached my monthly quotum! Yay! And it's even nicely rich in variety with games, manga and novels. Like I totally planned this.

Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("Portopia Serial Murder Case") is one of those games any self-respecting (detective) adventure gamer should have heard about. It is often seen as one of the earliest examples of the Japanese visual novel and has inspired many game creators afterwards, for example Metal Gear's Kojima Hideo. But then again, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken is created by one of the greatest names in games history: Horii Yuuji. Whose name is probably most strongly connected to Dragon Quest. Apparently, Horii wrote and programmed the whole game on his own in six months. It was released for the PC in 1983, apparently the first original Japanese PC adventure and the very first detective adventure. It was later ported to the Famicom by Chunsoft and was a huge success in Japan. Whereas the original PC version featured an old-fashioned verb-noun parser system (where the player had to manually input commands), the Famicom version featured command buttons, a feature that can be considered to have defined the way detective adventures looked like on the Famicom and later. For example, on the Famicom itself, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken's success resulted in similar detective adventure games like Famicom Tantei Club and Tantei Jinguuji Saburou, but even now the command-style adventure is very common (and even parodied). In short, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken is detective gaming's The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Set in the city of Kobe (which explains the name Portopia), the story is played in a first-person perspective, with the player assuming the role of a police officer in charge of the investigation into the murder of Kouzou, a wealthy man who was found with a slit throat inside his (locked!) study. You're assisted by your subordinate Yasu, who funnily enough forms the link between the player and the game-world: all the commands are in fact orders you give to Yasu for him to perform. The two of you thus start investigating, coming across a wide variety of suspects, false leads and red herrings and because the title of the game says it is a serial murder case, there will be more murders. Yep.

To be honest though, time has not been kind to this game. The lack of music and the simple graphics, that is something I can live with, but this game has some really frustrating moments. A gigantic first-person maze for example, with no map or clue to how the complete maze looks like (yes, there is the hint to get to one room in the maze, but there are actually two rooms in the maze and there is no hint to that). Famicom Tantei Club 1 also featured a maze at the end of the game (probably as a homage), but there was actually a hint to how the maze looked like. There are also several instances in Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken where you have to manually look for clues on the screen, although there is no hint, no sign that something might be hidden there. So you just have to guess that something is there. Which is frustrating. And like in its spiritual sequel Hokkaidou Rensa Satsujin Jiken: Okhotsk ni Kiyu ("Hokkaidou Linked Murder Case: Disappear to Okhotsk"), Horii also programmed several instances where the player needs to fumble around before the story continues. So you have to aimlessly select commands until you have fulfilled a certain condition ('choose all commands once', or 'go away once and then come back'), which is again not linked with the story an sich, only way to frustrate the player.

Thus as a standalone game, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken is not so memorable, but there is no denying its importance in Japanese (detective) adventure gaming. It was apparently the first game on the Famicom where the story was actually the main course. Not just some lines about saving a princess or stopping an ancient evil before the action started: the plot was the game itself. It also featured some form of non-linearity, with multiple conversation trees and optional dialogue and background information. The game also allows the player to make arrests, and with several fake endings / 'solutions', it is up to the player to judge who to arrest and when. In this sense, it is a revolutionary game that, together with its command-style input, definitely forms the foundation of the modern visual novel. In fact, Chunsoft, the company that ported this game to the Famicom, was probably strongly influenced by this (and they have of course strong relations with Horii), as Chunsoft was the company that invented the sound novel genre. And their second sound novel was a mystery game too! Metal Gear's Kojima said that it was the story-telling and characterization of Portopia that made such an impression on him, and while we can definitely argue whether Kojima hasn't gone to far with his story-telling, it is clear that Portopia stands symbol for a shift from pure action-based console games to more story-oriented console games.

And of course, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken is still fondly remembered for its denouement and the identity of the true killer. And this sense, it really does not differ much from Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue. Amongst the Japanese internet community, it is actually quite really popular to comment on mystery movies / books by saying The Murderer Is [Name Murderer of Portopia] as a joke. It shows how well known Portopia is, as well as how much an impact the story made on the players. In fact, I also knew who the murderer was before I started this game, as I had seen the comment often enough, yet I can't say I'm really mad for being spoiled. Penny Arcade explains this the best.

Oh, and that mystery movie with Edgar Allan Poe as the detective? Not sure what to think about that...

Original Japanese title(s): 『ポートピア連続殺人事件』

「ＷｅｌｃｏｍｅＴｏＴｈｅＥｎｄＯｆＴｈｅＷｏｒｌｄ」

2012-01-05T21:30:00.000+01:00

「真ん中の時計は現在の時刻を、左の時計は十分遅れた過去の時刻を、右の時計は十分進んだ未来の自国を指していると云われます」

『『クロック城』殺人事件』

"They say that the clock in the middle shows the current time, the clock on the left ten minutes in the past and the clock on the right ten minutes in the future"

"Clock Castle Murder Case"

Sometimes, all the signs in your life come together and urge you to read certain books. It had been on my reading list for years now (and I had actually already the first part), but the planets aligned, the signs came together and I finally decided to actually read and finish Dazai Osamu's Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human) two days ago. Which was very impressive. And immensely heavy. Really heavy. But I'm glad I finally read this classic!

And afterwards, I read 'Clock Jou' Satsujin Jiken ("Clock Castle Murder Case"), which was luckily less heavy. 'Clock Jou' Satsujin Jiken is Kitayama Takekuni's debut work and winner of Mephisto price in 2002. And as always, I discovered the book won a price after I read it. Actually, I knew next to nothing about this book, which explains why the science-fiction theme the story starts out with was kinda confusing. It is the year 1999. Five years earlier, a sunspot thirty times the size of Earth appeared out of nowhere, messing up the magnetic fields on Earth. Machines started to stop working, communication became impossible. Slowly, human civilization as we know it came to a stop. In this world, it is said that September 1999 will be The End of the World. Minami Miki (assisted by childhood friend Shinomi Nami) is a private detective, even though there is little demand for his services, well, because the Earth is going to end pretty soon. A missing cat or a cheating husband just seems less important in such times. Miki has another talent though: he is able to see and exorcise 'fragments of gestalts', ghost-like appearances. It is because of this talent that Kurou Ruka hires Miki. She is an inhabitant of the Clock Castle and a couple of days ago faces started to appear on the walls in the cellar. Ruka thinks it is the work of Skipman, a ghost that is supposed to haunt the Clock Castle with the power to rip holes in time itself, and she want Miki to excorcise it.

The strange family of Ruka lives in the Clock Castle, far away from cities and (what is left of) society. Clock Castle is divided in three parts that each have their own corresponding clock on the front wall of the mansion. The clock in the middle of Clock Castle shows the current time and is connected to the "Present Mansion", the middle part of Clock Castle. The clock on the left is ten minutes slow and is connected to the "Past Mansion", while the one on the right is connected to the "Future Mansion". Miki starts his investigation in the wallfaces, but it doesn't take long before murders happen. Murders of the decapitating kind. Bodies are found in the Past Mansion and the Future Mansion, while the heads are found in the Present Mansion, but it seems impossible for anyone to have done all this, because the connecting hallway to the three mansions was under constant observation. Was it the work of Skipman?

There is a lot going on in this relatively short novel. Besides the bare-bones detective plot, there is the whole End of the World-thing that plays quite a big part in the story, with two organisations working in the background trying to find someone / something called the Midnight Key, which can either cause or prevent the end of the world. Throw in some more information about sleep illnesses and ghosts ('fragments of gestalts') and we have a lot that is usually interesting, but it at times distracts from the main plot. In my head, these themes also remind me very much of those late-time anime that quickly gather fandom with presumed adult and deep themes, but somehow don't really interest me.Well, at least it doesn't go the whole way to anime-esque themes and storytelling like NisiOisiN did with his Zaregoto series.

With ghosts and exorcisms and stuff, I also had trouble gauging how 'fair' this mystery was going to be. I had read Kitayama's 'Alice Mirror Jou' Satsujin Jiken earlier, and while there were certainly some science fiction / fantasy elements there, it was not as strongly present like in this book. With ghosts and exorcisms and other things, it was just hard to predict how 'Clock Jou' Satsujin Jiken was going to turn out. In the end, it is an orthodox mystery and perfectly solvable without resolving to witchcraft, but the fact that this book has a strong science-fiction / mystery setting will make you hesitate at times and you'll keep that feeling until you reach the end.

With the clocks and the three-in-one mansion and all, 'Clock Jou' Satsujin Jiken is of course a yakata-mono (mansion-story), but like I said, there is also so much going on besides that, that despite the weird architecture, the Clock Castle does not feel as impressive as a mansion as for example the Slanted Mansion or Werewolf Castle. It just gets overshadowed by all the other things. Anyway, a lot of the little plotlines are also left open at the end of 'Clock Jou' Satsujin Jiken and while this might not be a bad thing per se, it does feel like Kitayama might have tried too much in this book.

The main trick of the impossible murders, is sadly enough very easy to see through. While the idea is good, it is just way too obvious and actually the first idea that came in my head. It might have worked better in a shorter story / novelette form. However, I can't praise the reason Kitayama had for the decapitated bodies enough. It fits the theme of the book perfectly and I doubt anyone will think of that reason while reading it. I have seen many reasons for cutting heads of dead bodies in all these years of reading detective fiction, but never have I seen such an impressive and original one. This is really one that is hard to surpass.

I had fun with the book, certainly, but I have to admit that I thought the setting was kinda distracting. A lot of the fluff feels very anime-esque. Which is not something I dislike, except I... don't expect such things in novels.Well, light novels, maybe, but not in serious orthodox detective novels. It's just distracting. The bare-bones plot is quite too easy to see through and not as impressive as 'Alice Mirror Jou' Satsujin Jiken , but Kitayama Takekuni is certainly an author to keep an eye on.

And yes, 'Clock Jou' Satsujin Jiken has one of the most disturbing book covers I've ever seen.

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦『『クロック城』殺人事件』

The Adventure of the Three Students

2012-01-02T11:10:00.004+01:00

「無理でしょうね、久保先生がいうような軽業は。話になりませんよ。オラヌータンやチンパンジーじゃあるまいに」

「ははは、そいつはいい。真犯人はオラヌータンだったりしてな」

「ははは、馬鹿な。そんな話は、仮にミステリとしても三流ですよ。そんな小説書く人がいたら、みんなの笑い物ですね、きっと」

「・・・・・・・」久保はふと笑うのを止めた。「つかぬことを聞くが、君、本当に探偵小説研究部なのかね」

「え、ええ、そうですよ」

あれ？あれ、なにかマズイこといったのかな

『学ばない探偵たちの学園』

"It's not so easy as you make it out to be, Mr. Kubo. That's just not possible. It's not like you're an orangutan or a chimpansee"

"Hahaha, a orangutan as the murderer!"

"Hahaha, that's just stupid. Even if such a story existed, it would be just a third-rate mystery. Everyone would love at someone writing that!"

"....," Kubo stopped laughing. "Are you really a member of the detective fiction study club?"

"Ye...yes!"

Hm? Hmm? Did I say something wrong?

"The School of the Detectives who Don't Learn"

The long awaited continuation of Sherlock was surprisingly fun. While the first couple of minutes were kinda cheap, I thought the story was actually a lot more interesting than the original Scandal in Bohemia (which I don't like that much, thus I had no high expectations for this particular episode). Might write something about all three episodes when they're done later this month, as I don't really feel like doing episodic reviews this time. Looking forward to Sherlock's The Hounds of Baskerville next week!

I've become quite a fan of Higashigawa Tokuya lately. The way in which he mixes humor with actual orthodox detective plotting is simply wonderful. His stories aren't just [detective stories] + [humour], but the humour is actually an integral part of his plots, as humor is often used as either a smokescreen or a hint (or both) by Higashigawa. I also love his protagonists, who usually act as the Watson to the detectives. They seem a bit clueless at times, but are often just genre-savvy enough to come up with surprisingly sharp observations. There's also often a slight gap between the narration of these protagonists and 'reality', which is really funny to see in text. It's the gap between [serious detective story] - [humour], the gap between [narration] - [reality] that makes all three of Higashigawa's series (the Ikagawashi series, the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series and Mystery Solving is After Dinner series) stand out in the crowd.

Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen ("The School of the Detectives who Don't Learn") is the first book in the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series. The titular Detective Club of Koigakubo Academy used to be the Detective Fiction Study Club, but for reasons unknown (to even the president) changed its name to the Detective Club, meaning that their main activity is... to detect. Because the Detective Club's activities are rather vague and irregular (unless you're name is Conan, you are not going to come across a mystery a day), the club is not officially recognized by the school and even though they have a teacher willing to be the club's supervisor, they are not allotted a classroom for their extra-curricular activities. Akasaka Tooru, transfer student and narrator of Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen was actually fooled by this, as he foolishly thought that the people present in the Literature Club room were in fact people of the Literature Club and that he was signing up for that club. Who would be so dumb as to ignore the possibility that the two persons there were actually people from the Detective Club who were 'borrowing' the Literature Club room?

One day, as Tooru, the club president and Yatsuhashi, another member of the Club, stayed late at school discussing how the most suspicious people in a locked room mystery are 1) the one who opens the the locked room and 2) the first one approaching the body and 3) the one who says it was a locked room, they happen to find a student stabbed in his chest in the nurse's room. Which was of course locked. And to make it even more interesting, the three teachers who were present there too did precisely what makes them suspicious in a locked room mystery. Our three students, for the honor of the Club, naturally try to solve the mystery themselves.

The story develops in its own pace with subplots concerning Koigakubo Academy's geinou class (a class for students who work in the entertainment industry as idols, singers, actors etc.) and another locked room murder, but I have to admit that Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen is not as good as other Higashigawa mysteries. It's still very funny, with some great slapstick-esque scenes you'd never expect in a detective and the school setting is, like in Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, something that makes this series stand out, but its problems lie with the locked rooms and the structure of this book. The solution to the first locked room is a bit too farfetched to be credible, while the second is actually quite good, but it is introduced late in the story, resulting in lesser sense of mystery. Furthermore, the solutions to both locked rooms are more of a mechanical type (opposed to the psychological type), which is simply something that doesn't feel as fitting to Higashigawa's writing style. Higashigawa's best impossible stories hinge on some kind of (often humorous) gap between observations of the people involved and that's what is best suited to his funny writing style. The synergy between these elements is not present in Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen, making this feel like a less accomplished Higashigawa work.

The structure forms a second minor problem. Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen, because of its setting, is also a gakuen-mono (school-drama-ish) and it kinda follows the rather high-paced structuring of those works. The detecting method of three detectives (who end up as the Watson to supervising teacher Ishizaki) is quite chaotic and there is a lot going in this relatively short book. It's this chaos that makes Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen feel a lot less polished than the short story collection supplement Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, which excelled in its simple, short brilliance.

I love the Detective Club though. It is certainly not an unique thing, as they actually exist in Japan and are thus often used in (meta)-fiction too. Jukkakan no Satsujin for example features one heavily, but Kindaichi Hajime and Miyuki are also members of the Mystery Fiction Study club at their school, just like Nikaidou Ranko and Reito. The difference here is that the members of the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club are in fact, not really detectives themselves (like Kindaichi en Ranko), nor are they so brilliantly meta like the people in Jukkakan no Satsujin who spout random quotes from detective fiction and refer to themselves with nicknames like Carr en Queen and act like those detectives. The members of the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club are precisely what you'd expect from high school students who are a bit of a mystery geeks: they have a lot of passion for their hobby, but not much besides that. In fact, they are the most human of them all, and certainly feel the most familiar to me.

While a bit disappointing, Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen is still a very funny book that shows that detective fiction does not have to be serious (or realistic even, as this borders on slapstick humor at times) to be offer genuine orthodox detective plots. He doesn't even have to reach out to the old parody-method. Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni is the better installment in the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series, but Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen is certainly recommendable to anyone who wants to laugh while reading orthodox detectives.

And hey, a post title that relates to both the introduction and the main topic of the post?! Rare indeed.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉『学ばない探偵たちの学園』

「告っといてそのあとなーんもないなんてまずありえへんしなっ！」

2012-01-01T04:50:00.002+01:00

「和葉！電話や！」

「け、警察に！？」

「ああ！探偵の目の前で人、殺しよってドアホがここにおるってなァ！」

『名探偵コナン』第７４巻

"Kazuha, call 'em!"

"Who, the police?"

"Yeah! Tell'em there's an idiot here who dared to kill somebody in front of us detectives!"

"Detective Conan 74"

And no, even in the new year I won't stop writing about Conan. Oh, and congratulations Conan, for having passed the 800 installments mark. Yes, I know that this was last month's (last year's!) news, but it took some time for Conan 74 to arrive at my home.

Detective Conan 74 starts with the final chapter to The Female Detective Writer Murder Case, which is actually two cases in one: at one hand we have a murder on the titular female detective writer, with the investigation being focused on the enigmatic nicknames the victim had for the three suspects. On the other hand, we have a slightly more desperate situation at the Mouri Kogoro Detective Agency, as the victim's brother is keeping the three victims, Mouri Kogorou, Ran, Conan and not-sure-what-she-is-and-not-even-whether-she-is-really-a-she Sera Masumi hostage there, until they figure out who killed his sister. Of course with the intent of then killing the murderer himself. I am not a big fan of figuring out codes (in this case, what names correspond to which people), so not too big a fan of this story. Conan stories also occasionally address the question of what the implications are of a detective's actions, but the if-the-detective-solves-the-case-the-murderer-is-going-to-die scenario is a bit too obvious.

The Movie Site Kidnapping Case is a rather minor Detective Boys story (though it seems big in at first). Ayumi gets kidnapped while she's at Agasa's house, and the Scooby Gang are forced to find a cat for the kidnapper to get Ayumi back. Yes, it is exactly as silly as it sounds. There is something behind the whole case of course, but I'd say that the most interesting part of this story is the attempt of Aoyama to depict Sera Masumi as a candiate suspect for Black Organisation member and disguise specialist Bourbon, who should have infiltrated the Conan cast by now. And I guess there's also a Beware-What-You-Post-On-The-Internet lesson for kids too. Remember, glasses reflect!

Who's the Great Detective? features our favorite Osaka duo, Hattori and Kazuha, so yes, this is the best story in this volume. Kazuha (and another familiar face) get involved with a poisoning case in a restaurant, with the only clue being that the murderer is someone from Osaka. What follows is a fantastic story for anyone interested in dialects, local speech-styles and stereotypes. Which is exactly where I specialized in with my Japanese studies. So I might be a bit biased. From a linguistic point-of-view, this really is a puzzle that makes good use of the linguistic and cultural diversity (and the stereotypes of said items) within Japan. From a translator's point-of-view, this seems like a nightmare though, precisely because of that. I guess lots of footnotes? Oh, and there is a funny sub-story here, with Sera Masumi wanting to know whether Hattori or Kudou is better. Cue heated deduction battle.

In comparison, The Distorted Optical Illusion Murder Case seems less interesting, even if this is supposed to be the 'main' Hattori story. Appearances of Hattori are often split in two: it usually starts with a short story just as Hattori arrives in Tokyo to visit the gang, followed by a longer story that is about the actual reason for Hattori visiting Tokyo. Which is also true for this volume. The reason Hattori came to Tokyo was because Hattori was challenged by a murderer to solve a crime that happened a bit earlier in Karuizawa. The gang visits the family of the deceased, but murder strikes again and Hattori and Conan are forced to reconsider the theories about the first murder. This is quite a large case, with a disappearing dying message, an unknown poisoning method and much more beneath the surface, but the story is kinda chaotic and a bit too bloaty to be considered really good. Even though I have to admit that the story continues into the next volume and I have no idea yet what happened.

While not a bad volume per se, volume 74 feels like 'just' a transition volume. The last volume featured Sera Masumi's introduction, so this volume was more focused on making Sera Masumi seem like a totally suspicious person and the two Hattori stories here are definitely just "let's throw in Hattori now, because I can't do an plot-important story so close to Sera's introduction, but I need to come up with something to hook the readers"-stories. Which again isn't bad per se, but the The Distorted Optical Illusion Murder Case certainly is not as amusing as regular Hattori stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第７４巻

The Oracle of the Dog

2011-12-31T12:00:00.001+01:00

「たしかに、　遺体の第一発見者を疑えというのは、殺人事件の鉄則である。あまりそんな話が広まると、誰も遺体の発見を届け出てくれなくなるので、警察も、おおっぴらには言わないが」

『犬のみぞ知る DOG KNOWS』

"Suspect the one who found the dead body, that's a fundamental rule in murder cases. But nobody would come report finding dead bodies if everybody knew this, so the police does not say this out loud"

"DOG KNOWS"

Kishi Yuusuke's The Glass Hammer was one of my favorite novels of 2011. While the story certainly suffered because of the two-part structure, the solution to the triple-layered locked room murder was simply incredible, which was made all the more impressive because I knew nothing about the book or Kishi. It was just a blind purchase based on a single mention of Kishi by a friend. In retrospect, I don't even think my friend recommended Kishi as a mystery writer, but she probabl just said she liked his novels. Luckily, The Glass Hammer really made an impression.

Security consultant (and probably burglar-in-his-free-time) Enomoto Kei and attorney Aoto Junko return for more impossible crimes and locked room mysteries in Kitsunebi no Ie ("House of the Will o' the Wisp"), a short story collection and second in the series. This collection once again shows what was so fun to The Glass Hammer: Kishi's creativity. While there is no triple-layered locked room in this collection, even the mundane locked rooms are made interesting by Kishi's fantastic use of his two protagonists. While Enomoto is definitely the detective in this series (being a thief is useful when trying to get in and out of 'sealed' spaces), Aoto is certainly more than 'just' a sidekick and as a highly intelligent laywer, she comes up with great deductions and hypotheses that many readers wouldn't even come up with. Even if the locked room situation seems kinda boring, the way the two protagonists keep making hypotheses based on the evidence, point out the faults in each others hypotheses and slowly move towards the truth is really exciting. The pacing in these stories is fantastic and I finished the book in a record time.

The titular Kitsunebi no Ie ("House of the Will o' the Wisp") is the most reminiscent of The Glass Hammer, both in structure as in story-type. Aoto is hired to defend a man living in a small village in Nagano Prefecture who is accused of killing his own daughter. The man claims that his daughter was already dead when he came back home, but also swears that there were no footsteps around the house when he arrived there (rain had made the ground muddy). A eyewitness also states that the man only came back to his home after his daughter's estimated time of death. All the doors and windows were locked from the inside, except for a window near the back, facing a forest. If there was a killer, he must have escaped there, but there are no footsteps to be found at the back either. Security consultant Enomoto is once again hired by Aoto to prove how someone could have escaped the house without leaving any traces. Similar to The Glass Hammer, the ending is told from the murderer's point of view, but this time it was just a few pages instead of half the book, so it felt less disjointed from the main storyline. All in all a great locked room mystery that keeps the reader guessing.

In Kuroi Kiba ("Black Fangs"), Aoto's client is claiming that a woman is planning to kill the pets she inherited from her dead husband. Aoto and her client meet the woman, trying to get her to hand over the pets she clearly does not want to her client. The fun part in the first part of the story is that Aoto at first assumed that her client was talking about cats, but she discovers quite late that her client was talking about a totally different kind of pet. We enter the second part when Aoto starts to suspect that one of the two killed the woman's husband. However, the police say it was an accident and furthermore, he died inside a locked room. The rest of the story unfolds as she holds a phone-conference with Enomoto in order to discover how the murderer could have created the locked room. And interestingly enough, the story actually has two locked room mysteries, as one of the pets seems to have gotten out of its holding place. As a locked room mystery, this is definitely what the Japanese call a bakamisu, a "What-the?!!-Mystery", because the first reaction you will have when you get to the solution, is "What the...?!!". This does not necessary mean that it is a bad solution, it is just so surprising that that the reader is not sure how to react (it's something I have with some of Shimada Souji's tricks, which are so grand that it almost seems silly). Also definitely not for people with a certain kind of phobia.

Bantan no Meikyuu ("The Board Labyrinth") seems like a simpler story than the previous two stories, but its plot is actually constructed quite complex. A famous shougi player is found stabbed in his hotel room, with the chainlock locking the door. Who stabbed him and how was the locked room created, seem like obvious questions, but what Enomoto focuses the most on is why the locked room was created in the first place. Once again, the constant examination of hypotheses is what makes this story. The solution does require a lot of imagination if you want to arrive there on your own power. The setting reminds of the Furuhata Ninzaburou episode Kegareta Oushou ("The Tainted King"), both stories set during an important shougi match and with shougi playing a big role in the problem itself too.

Inu Nomizo Shiru DOG KNOWS ("Dog Knows") is very different from the other three stories. The main problem revolves around the classic curious incident of the dog in the night-time, but the solution is so simple that any reader think of that. The story is also very short and the characters act so surreal, that Dog Knows might be regarded as a humorous mystery / parody mystery, but Kishi's writing style is so ambiguous here, that I'm not sure whether that was his intention. A disappointing story, but because of its length and place in the collection, maybe I should just regard it as a light bonus story.

As the second entry in the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series, this is a robust collection and certainly recommended if you liked The Glass Hammer. There was less information on security this time, which is a shame as I really liked that in The Glass Hammer, but Enomoto and Aoto's teamwork certainly makes a lot good. I definitely want to read more of this series.

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介　『狐火の家』: 「狐火の家」 / 「黒い牙」 / 「盤端の迷宮」 / 「犬のみぞ知る DOG KNOWS」

"Ah, the days of my youth... Just like the scent of fresh lemon, you see"

2011-12-29T11:56:00.003+01:00

「しかしある先輩が、ぼくにひとつの福音を与えてくれた。それは、名探偵の名前は漢字三文字がよい、ということ。金田一、加賀美、二階堂。そうだ！霧ヶ峰はエアコンなどではなく、名探偵にこそ相応しい名前だったのだ！」

『霧ヶ峰涼の放課後』

"But then a senior told me something good. All great detectives have three characters in their name. Kindaichi. Kagami. Nikaidou. Yes! Kirigamine wasn't a name for the air-conditioning, it was the name suitable for a great detective!"

"Kirigamine Ryou's After-School Hours"

If I were to exclusively review audio dramas, my post-count would explode, I think! They take no time at all! Hmmm, let's go back to my homework. A paper scheduled for right after New Year is just evil (or: A Lesson In Planning: How To Avoid Doing Everything The Last Few Days).

Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni ("After School, together with Mystery") is an absolute hilarious supplement short story collection to Higashigawa Tokuya's Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series.The series is of course about a detective club at the titular Koigakubo Academy. Note that it is actually a detective club and not a detective fiction club, so the members don't discuss detective fiction there, they actually detect. Or at least, that's what they are supposed to do, but because their activities are rather irregular (despite popular belief, it is not likely to come across a case every day), the club has not been officially recognized by the school yet. And thus the members spend their after-school hours looking for cases to solve around campus. These range from 'simple' theft cases to full-blown murder cases. At school.

As a supplement novel, Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni features a different protagonist from the main series: Kirigamine Ryou, a tomboyish second year student and vice-president of the detective club. Her heart is definitely in the right place, having an almost surreal passion for finding mysteries (especially of the impossible kind) and even already having made her name-card, but she is actually usally not playing the detective part in the stories: she is certainly not dumb, but it seems there's always someone better around her (even though she's the vice-president!). As a protagonist, she is awesome though, being both sharp and clueless at the same time and she is certainly strong enough a character to carry her own series. The setting is also fun: the mysteries are all set around the after-school campus, with club activities going on. The stories convey an actual school-feeling (without convining it to 'class' situations), which actually few mysteries set at schools manage to do (without resorting to the old school festival setting).

I had actually been waiting for Momogre's adaption of Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, which was scheduled for today, but then I discovered that NHK already did a 10-part radio drama adaption of the book in their Youth Adventure serials earlier this year. I totally digged the Youth Adventure's adaption of Norizuki Rintarou's Ni no Higeki, so I had high expectations for this adaption. Which were totally justified. I love Asagura Aki's Kirigamine Ryou and even though the adaption may seem short, with 10 episodes of 15 minutes each, the pacing of the stories is just impeccable (which is also probably because of Higashigawa's writing style) and never feels too hasty. The original book featured eight short stories, but they sadly enough only adapted six stories (leaving out Kirigamine Ryou and the Invisible Poison and Kirigamine Ryou and the Tragedy of X, the latter being one of Higashigawa's own favorite stories, having spent 10 years (!) plotting this short story). Making it interesting to see what Momogre's going to do.

In Kirigamine Ryou no Kutsujoku ("Kirigamine Ryou's Humiliation"), our hero gets assaulted by a thief in the audiovisual materials room as she visits the E-Building, an annex built in the shape of the letter 'E'. She and some other people she meets on the way chase the thief across the building until they reach the only open exit of the building, but it seems he has disappeared: someone was near the exit the whole time and swears nobody left the building. How did the thief escape from the E-building? The solution might seem obvious, as it certainly invokes a certain mystery in a room of the yellow kind, but that's actually Higashigawa's specialty: making you think that the story's probably simple and easy to solve because it's so light-hearted and funny, but there is usually something deeper behind it. The solution is good, because it really fits the school-setting, something that not many mysteries set at school can say.

Kirigamine Ryou no Gyakushuu ("Kirigamine Ryou's Counterattack") starts with Ryou who comes across a paparazzi camera-man one day after school. The cameraman had been waiting in front of an apartment the whole day, trying to get a picture of a rising star actor and his girlfriend, both of them alumni of Koigakubo Academy. The cameraman is sure both of them entered the apartment (seperately), but needs a picture of them both together. After some events however, Ryou and the cameraman are invited to the room themselves by the woman, who says that she knows what the cameraman is thinking, but that she is not dating the actor and nobody entered her room at all. Ryou and the cameraman search the room and discover that the room is indeed empty. Was the cameraman wrong? Or did the actor just disappear from the room? Once again Higashigawa plays with the expectations of the reader/listener, luring him in a false sense of security and 'ha, I already know this trick', only for him to reveal his layered trap. It has parallels with Higashigawa's own Jisoku Yonjuu Kilo no Misshitsu, both stories featuring a room under observation and an impossible escape, but the latter story is also burdened by a rather hard-to-believe murder trick.

Kirigamine Ryou no Zekkyou ("Kirigamine Ryou's Scream") is the only story adapted that was only one episode long (15 minutes), but it was enough to convey this short, yet fun little story about a student who was attacked on the running grounds of the school. There were no footsteps around him except for his own and the girl who discovered him lying unconcious on the ground (and she couldn't have hit him, as seen from the footsteps), so who attacked the boy and how? A somewhat incredible solution, but it fits the humorous tone of the collection.

Kirigamine Ryou no Houkago ("Kirigamine Ryou's After School Hours") is a really fun misdirection story, that starts out with Ryou and her friend Nao discovering a delinquent student smoking in a little storehouse, but the story develops in rather unpredictable ways from that point on, so I don't want to spoil it. A lot of fun in this story is because Ryou (and therefore the listener) has no idea what's going on. Higashigawa did a very nice job with this story, having carefully clued everything, yet at the same time succeeding wonderfully at hiding the truth. There is actually an official web-movie version available of this story (to be found at the 'actual' Koigakubo Academy website), which I really recommend to people who want to have a taste of Higashigawa's unique sense of storytelling (no subtitles though!). The production is pretty good though and the way they did the first-person narrator thing... is just genius. And cute.

Kirigamine Ryou no Okujou Misshitsu ("Kirigamine Ryou's Locked Rooftop") features something that totally seems like an urban legend: as Ryou and a teacher are on their way back home, a girl falls on top of the teacher. Ryou checks the rooftop right after the girl landed on the teacher, but it finds it empty and the staircase was watched the whole time, so Ryou concludes that it must have been an attempt at suicide. Which the girl (who fortunately didn't die) denies, saying that she was called to the roof and pushed off there. What happened on the roof? Did the would-be murder just disappear in thin air? A somewhat flawed mystery: the solution is rather simple and a bit disappointing even, but the same elements could have resulted in a more impressive impossible crime, which they mention it themselves in the story. On the other hand, the elements that could have made this a more impressive mystery can only be made known the listener after the solving of the crime, or else there is no mystery at all. A conundrum.

Kirigamine Ryou no Nidome no Kutsujoku ("Kirigamine Ryou's Second Humiliation") is once again set at the E-Building, like the first story. And once again features an impossible disappearance. Ryou happens to find a student who was attacked in the art room in the E-Building and is then attacked herself. Her attacker runs back into the hallway of the E-Building and Ryou wouldn't be the vice-president of the detective club if she didn't give chase immediately. Like in the first story, the attacker manages to escape even though all the exits being watched. Despite the story being set at the same place, with the same type of impossible situation, this story is quite different from Kirigamine Ryou's first humiliation, featuring a totally different kind of solution and even features a second, hidden problem and thus feels surprisingly fresh.

All in all a very fun short story collection, that manages to combine humor with orthodox detective plots with great success. It works great as an audio drama too, with a great Kirigamine Ryou voice-actress. Now I'm very interested in Momogre's adaption too: as I wonder how the adaptions of Momogre and NHK's Youth Adventure differ.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉（原作）　ＮＨＫ青春アドベンチャー　『放課後はミステリーとともに』: 「霧ヶ峰涼の屈辱」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の逆襲」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の絶叫」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の放課後」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の屋上密室」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の二度目の屈辱」

The Robots of Death

2011-12-24T00:01:00.002+01:00

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

The Three Laws of Robotics

Yes. It has finally happened. I've reviewed more English-language works than Japanese works this month. (The Japanese audio drama of Christie's The ABC Murders is a special case though). But actually having discussed more non-Japanese works than Japanese works feels.... really weird. Almost disturbing. Shouldn't do this too often.

Anyway, earlier this week I took a look at the classic in the science-fiction mystery subgenre: Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel. I doubt Asimov needs any introduction (or else I refer to wiki). The story of The Caves of Steel is set in a faraway future, where space-travel has been perfected and planets near Earth have been colonised by mankind. The descendants of these colonists, Spacers, are rich and make extensive use of robot labor on their planets. Earth itself is having troubles with overpopulation and man has started to live in so-called Cities, gigantic building complexes covered by metal that are barely able to economically sustain the millions of inhabitants inside it. Spacers have taken a rather imperialistic stance towards Earth, while Earthmen in return don't like Spacers.

The story starts with the murder on a Spacer ambassador / scientist in the Spacer outpost on Earth. The Spacers think it was someone outside their outpost (i.e. a non-Spacer) who killed their man and low-level Earth cop Elijah Baley is charged with the job. Elijah is forced to work with the Spacer robot R. Daneel Olivaw (R. stands for Robot) to solve the murder, all to prevent a gigantic diplomatic incident. Yes, it's a buddy cop story.

There is a locked room element to the murder of the Spacer, but I feel that it is hard to describe it without making it all too obvious what the solution is. Which makes it seem like a very obvious solution, but I have to admit that Asimov wrote a very satisfying mystery set in the future. Yes, this is definitely SF, with Asimov describing his future Earth in great detail, adding in speculations about the way human society is going to evolve and technical advancements, but we also have a very competent mystery plot. The hinting, a locked room situation, it even features false solutions. It's a very competent novel that is exactly what it was intended to be: a science-fiction mystery that is fair and fun to read.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the 2001 movie Metropolis (loosely based on Tezuka Osamu's manga) borrowed some its plot-elements (especially concerning robotics) from The Caves of Steel. Then again, The Caves of Steel is apparently a science-fiction classic, so that's not really surprising, I guess.... (hey, I really know nothing about science fiction).

The only science fiction mysteries I've read are The Caves of Steel and Sonada Shuuichirou's Dakara Dare Mo Inaku Natta ("And That Is Why There Were None"), but I have to admit that I like the latter better. The latter is purely a puzzle plot built on the Three Laws of Robotics, a compact thing that never feels too big to me. It was definitely set in the future with robots and all, but they were clearly just part of the mystery story. Just the three rules. The Caves of Steel is fun and there is no mind-boggling technobabble in it, but the extensive attention to the future world, to the future society do give the book a distinct 'future' feeling, something I am not too familiar with and is thus a bit distracting at times.

But I do like the way Asimov clearly indicated what was possible in his future world and what was not. It seems there is always a need to make very, very clear what the rules are for the mystery. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics as they are used in The Caves of Steel are a clear example, but Mitsuhara Yuri's fantasy story Hana Chiru Yoru ni ("On the Night the Flowers Scattered") also went out its way to describe the workings of the Devil Fruit in detail. The use of these non-meta rules (as opposed to the meta-rules by Knox and Van Dine) to create clearly definied mystery that still manages to surprise is something I have enjoyed for a long time. Take a look for example at the usage / interpretation of rules in the popular manga Death Note and Liar Game.

And yes, my reviews of non-Japanese works are always written this badly. Should work on that, actually. Hmm...

「古い戦術だね。細かいムジュンを突いて証人の動揺を誘う」

2011-12-23T12:01:00.004+01:00

"Well... it's monday night in San Francisco and we're keeping our weekly date with Gregory Hood and his friend Sanderson Taylor. Tonight's rendezvous is at one this city's oldest and best restaurants - Fior d'Italia. The furnishngs are tasteful, the music discreet, and the veal à la maison, so Gregory tells me, is incomparable. Let's join them, shall we?"

"The Black Museum"

Listening to audio-dramas is for me always a race against time. Or more specifically, sleep. I only listen to audio-dramas in bed and I close my eyes to concentrate on the audio. It probably doesn't take a genius to guess that I thus often, very often, very very often fall asleep while I'm listening to audio-dramas. It usually takes me days to finish a drama, because I keep falling asleep halfway through, forgetting most of the story. So then I have to re-listen from the point I do remember. Rince and repeat. Efficient, I certainly am not.

On one hand, scripts of audio-dramas are a solution to that problem, as I can actually read the stories. The downside is of course that I miss the audial element of the audio dramas. Which in some circles is considered a fairly important feature of audio dramas. Forcing me to choose between sleep and audio though, leaves the latter with no chance at all.

I have listened to... the first part of several radio plays in The Casebook of Gregory Hood series, but I don't think I ever finished one. Or at least, never while I was awake. So the book of The Casebook of Gregory Hood, collecting fourteen scripts of the radio play, was my way of cheating me out of it. The Casebook of Gregory Hood (the show) was an invention of Anthony Boucher and Denis Green, following the amateur sleuthing adventures of Gregory Hood in San Fransisco, assisted by his laywer Sandy. I could go on telling about Antony Boucher, or repeat everything that is said in the introduction of the book and is found in every review of the book on the internet about how the show came to be, but let's be honest: I see no reason in doing because it's out there already. Yes, I am lazy.

My third-rate writing style compels me to compare The Casebook of Gregory Hood to Ellery Queen's The Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries. Not original, but it gives me a structure to build my review on. Anyway, it is pretty natural that the stories in The Casebook of Gregory Hood feel like the Queen radio plays, considering Boucher worked on that show. This is hardly a bad thing though, as Queen's show was great. Gregory Hood thus also offer fair-play mysteries with all the classic staples of the genre and is generally also very rewarding to read/listen. Plotwise, we have adventures that feature some great mysteries: a woman who comes back to life (The Red Capsule), a psychic who can predict the future (The Derringer Society), a locked room murder with our hero as the main suspect (Gregory Hood, Suspect). And to top it off, a clown gets killed (The Sad Clown). There is no shortage to interesting settings. In true Queen-style, these mysteries are solved by Hood by carefully examining the clues and coming with a logical answer a listener / reader could have deduced himself. In this sense, The Casebook of Gregory Hood is an entertaining read.

Yet I do not find Gregory's adventures as interesting as Queen's adventures. Maybe it's the characters of Gregory (playboy/connoisseur of everything/importer) and Sandy (lawyer), whom feel a bit too much like Philo Vance / Markham duo. At any rate, the stories 'feel' less memorable than the ones in Queen's The Adventures of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries, which might be an unfair comparison. 'Cause most of the stories collected in The Casebook of Gregory Hood are good and fun. It's just that the other book, from the same publisher, in the same format, featuring similar stories is just better. Both books are good, but they are too much alike to escape the comparison in my mind.

I had forgotten though, how much fun reading a radio-script is. Writing a complete story in mostly direct quotes (conversation) is pretty difficult, but when it's done well, it results in a very pleasant read. Having read mostly Japanese novels lately, this more conversation-focused method of telling a story feels much more natural to me. Compare for example to Norizuki Rintarou's The Green Door is Dangerous, where most of the story develops through direct conversation.

Overall, The Casebook of Gregory Hood is an amusing collection of good old fashioned fair-play radio mysteries that is good. There is a better one out there, but this book is still a very, very solid silver medalist.

Oh, and why I didn't write something on every single story like I usually do? I'm just too lazy. You wouldn't believe how many transformations this review went through before I ended up with this. It first started as a radio script-styled review.

"You know my methods. Apply them"

2011-12-22T11:54:00.002+01:00

"'It has been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.'

'You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,' said I. 'Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.'"

"The Final Problem"

It had been years since I last went to the movie theaters here, but I guess it's normal to play with your cellphone during the movie, rest your feet against the seat in front of you and leave your garbage at your seat / on the floor / throw popcorn on the floor? Hmmm.....

As a friend worded so deftly, it's a Sherlockian winter. New Year will bring us the long-awaited second season of BBC's Sherlock, but our Victorian master-detective also makes an appearance at the theaters just in time for Christmas. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is the sequel to 2009's Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law and while the first movie was not without its flaws, it was certainly an entertaining action movie with an original take on the characters (though opinions on whether that was good or not differ widely). Downey Jr. played himself, and while I liked the basic concept of his Holmes, he at times felt too eccentric. I loved Law's Watson though and the bickering between the two was really one of the better points of the movie. At any rate, I filed it under the 'it was entertaining enough' files in my head, but I had somehow missed that the sequel (with Moriarty!) was to be released this winter (luckily a friend told me). So with 'it's probably entertaining enough' expectations, I went to the theater. I was also geeky enough to read The Final Problem on my way to the theater and afterwards listened to BBC Radio's audio adaption of it on my way back from the movie.

The story of the movie is very loosy based on The Final Problem, chronicling the battle of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. Having deduced the existence of the Napoleon of Crime and identified him with Moriarty, Holmes tries to find the evidence to get him hanged, but you'd hardly be a Napeleon of Crime if you'd just wait for Holmes to accomplish his task. As his organisation (led by Colonel Sebastian Moran), try to eliminate Holmes (and Watson and his wife, because Now It's Personal makes the stakes seem even higher), the dynamic duo discover the diabolical deviations of the dastardly....dangerous... man.

D...?

My 'it's probably entertaining enough' expectations changed to 'this is quite horrible' thoughts right after the movie started. Because it was quite horrible. Gone was the charm of the first movie and in return we got a chaotic mess of bits and pieces of plot and forced humor. The first part was to introduce some characters like Mycroft (who only got a very short introduction by the way), to establish that It's Personal and to plant some clues for later parts of the movie, but the way this was done was just awful.

And then Holmes and Watson get on a train and everything becomes awesome.

Once the story gets past the first one-third, pacing, structuring, the humor, the action, everything becomes better (except for an abudance of explosions past the half-way point) and becomes one thrilling ride all the way to a very impressive interpretation of the Reichenbach Falls incident. The ride towards the end is really entertaining and that might be because this movie is at its core quite quite different from the first movie. The first movie was essentially a classic detective plot, with the ressurected Lord Blackwood and the serial murders being the main mystery for Holmes to solve. In A Game of Shadows, it's more about the cat-and-mouse game between Holmes and Moriarty, resulting in several skirmishes between the two parties spread across the movie. If the first movie was about one big mystery, then its sequel is about several mysteries that solved one after another, but these mysteries are definitely linked. The hints for these mysteries are done better than in the first movie, in the sense that we actually get a good look at them, but the way these hints are conveyed to the viewer are almost painfully obvious. Oh, there we have a full close-up shot of a seemingly unimportant item for more than a second. Subtle, it is not. In fact, one hint for the very last surprise of the movie is inserted in the movie so clumsily, that it feels like an after-thought.

Like I said, the interpretation of the last confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls is pretty impressive and definitely my favorite part of the movie. It is a scene that does justice to the original story, without losing the particular, more action-oriented flavor of this movie series. I'd even go as far as to say that this might be my favorite Holmes - Moriarty, or even more broadly, master-detetive vs. master-criminal confrontation scene ever. It also helps that Harris' Moriarty is awesome.

For the viewer familiar with Holmes, there were quite a lot of little nods to the canon. Some lines are straight quotations, while the inclusion of Colonel Sebastion Moran as a sniper-Dragon to Moriarty in this story is a very logical choice. But there are also less obvious nods, Holmes' final trump for example builds heavily on a little reference in The Final Problem and a story-device used in another Holmes story. The movie also actually wonderfully tries to mess with your mind halfway through the movie by recreating a certain scene from The Final Problem. I don't think most viewers would have picked up on it, but it certainly had me doubting for a second!

Oh, and Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is once again great.

All in all, I had quite some fun with this movie. The beginning is bad, but when the plot hits its stride, it's really entertaining. It does not differ greatly from the formula set in the first movie, so it's safe to say that anyone who liked the first movie is sure to like A Game of Shadows.

『緑の扉は危険』

2011-12-19T17:39:00.004+01:00

図書館の自由に関する宣言

一、図書館は資料収集の自由を有する

二、図書館は資料提供の自由を有する

三、図書館は使用者の秘密を守る

四、図書館はすべての不当な検閲に反対する。

図書館の自由が侵される時、我々は団結して、あくまで自由を守る

『図書館戦争』

Declaration concerning the freedom of libraries

1. Libraries have the freedom of collecting material.

2. Libraries have the freedom of offering material.

3. Libraries protect the privacy of its users.

4. Libraries oppose any type of censorship.
When the freedom of libraries is comprimised, we will band together and protect our freedom.

"Library Wars"

I think this is the first time I have re-used an introducing quote, but it's alright, as the two posts are connected anyway....

Going through my documents in the weekend, I found a half-translated story and decided it might be a good idea to finish it now. Because it wasn't likely I would have time any time later this year, and it seemed doubtful whether I would remember the fact that I had been working on a translation next year. So a new translation, just in time for Christmas. Which wasn't even planned. And it's not even a essay like the previous translation. It's an actual detective story!

Like Kirisakima ("The Ripper"), Midori no Tobira wa Kiken ("The Green Door Is Dangerous") is part of the Library Detective Norizuki series, a subseries within the Norizuki Rintarou series. In the main series, writer-detective Norizuki Rintarou usally helps his father, inspector Norizuki, with hard to crack investigations in pure Queen-style. In the sadly enough short Library-Detective subseries, our writer-detective is confronted with several book/library-related mysteries (which are all collected in the short story collection Norizuki Rintarou no Bouken ("The Adventures of Norizuki Rintarou"). In these stories, Rintarou is assisted (?) by the librarian and love-interest Sawada Honami, who has a talent for making the poor writer work for her. In this story, the two are confronted with... a locked room mystery.

Writer / critic Arisugawa Alice actually considers this locked room mystery as one of the more interesting locked rooms in Japanese detective fiction, having included it in his An Illustrated Guide to the Locked Room 1891-1998.While Norizuki Rintarou (the actual writer, not the character) doesn't consider himself a real locked room specialist, his first few books (Mippei Kyoushitsu and Yuki Misshitsu) were indeed locked room mysteries. Midori no Tobira wa Kiken is probably the most fun though and Arisugawa indeed praises the trick as well as the humorous tone of the story in his reference work.

Finally, the usual things: This is not my story, just a translation. Don't copy translations. Don't steal translations. Don't cross until the little man turns green. Enjoy the story and please try not to pay too much attention to my making-translations-as-a-way-to-induce-sleep English. I really should work on that thing they call proof-reading.

Oh, and a spoiler warning for H.G. Wells' The Door in the Wall.

緑の扉は危険

著者：法月綸太郎

The Green Door Is Dangerous

Author: Norizuki Rintarō

“Do you have plans for tomorrow?,” Sawada Honami asked from the other side of the counter of the reference corner.
“I have a meeting with an editor of Shōsetsu Nova. Probably to ask me to write a short story”.
“Ah, too bad. Just when I wanted to ask you out on a date”.
Those were the words that came out of her mouth, but she didn’t look particularly disappointed. She looked at the other side of the counter with a serious face. The location: the second floor of the municipal library. Honami was the librarian of the public reading room.
Norizuki Rintarō did his upmost best pretending he was not interested.
“Hmm. I can cancel it, that is, if you really want me to go”.
Honami chuckled.
“That is a coincidence. I was just thinking of inviting you if the great author Norizuki really wanted to go”
The great author Norizuki? Those words hit him hard. He was totally being toyed with. It is at a time like this that a man has to maintain his dauntless attitude. I am not that far gone that I will do anything you say, you know.
Rintarō swallowed the words “I really want to go” that almost came out his mouth. Luckily, a man, probably a university student, came to the counter at that moment and returned some back numbers from magazines that were available for viewing inside the library. Honami checked the volume numbers, stood up and went down the archives. When she came back, Honami said: “I wear contact lenses in my free time”.
Rintarō glared at Honami. “That’s not fair”.
“Oh, I was just talking to myself”.
Ostentatiously, she pushed the frame of her glasses up. A hopeless fight, Rintarō thought.

Honami rested her elbows on the counter and pulled the telephone towards her.
“What’s the telephone number of the editor’s department of Shōsetsu Nova?”. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. In his mind, Rintarō clicked his tongue and then told her the number. When the line was connected, she started to speak politely like she was somebody else.
“Hello, am I speaking with the editor’s department of Shōsetsu Nova? I am Norizuki Rintarō’s secretary, Sawada. Regarding the appointment for tomorrow, I am sorry we have to cancel because some urgent business has arisen. Business? Well, don’t tell this to anyone, but an unprecedented locked room murder has occurred and Mr. Norizuki’s assistance is requested…”
Rintarō hurried to steal the receiver from Honami.
“This is Norizuki speaking. That wasn’t true just now. There is no unprecedented locked room murder, so please do not worry. But I can’t meet you tomorrow. Something urgent. Yes, urgent. No, it is not to rest up from playing around. I really have to attend to this, no, I am not refusing your request for a manuscript. I will write, I will write. With pleasure. Shōsetsu Nova is a wonderful magazine. Yes, yes. What? An impossible crime? An unprecedented locked room murder? Haha, no, no problem. Leave it up to me. Page count and the deadline…? Understood. Yes, I know. What? A beautiful secretary? No, that is a misunderstanding. Just a little joke. Please don’t come up with strange rumours…”
Emphasizing that, he put down the phone. Honami was laughing as if she had nothing do to with it.
“Do you always talk with your editors in such a flattering tone?”.
“You’re the one to talk. I was pretty desperate with you having said those weird things. An unprecedented locked room murder… please don’t use those words again so lightly. Because of that, I am now saddled with a difficult assignment.
“But a really urgent business, that has to be something of that caliber, right.”
Rintarō sighed. He had given up without even noticing. But he already knew this would happen in the end.
“I know, I know. Life, the universe and everything, you are always completely and a priori right. I am in love with even just the H of Honami.
“If you had just said that right away”.

As Rintarō shrugged his shoulders rather exaggerated, his thoughts went to the request he just accepted from Shōsetsu Nova. An unprecedented locked room murder? That may sound simple, but… If this is what happens just go get one date with her, then I’ll be a master of the impossible crime by the time I finally get the girl.

Maybe not too bad a deal.

---

The next day, Rintarō headed joyously to the place they were going to meet. Honami was already there. He called out to her, but she reacted furiously.
“I had a look at Shōsetsu Nova, but it’s a magazine with nude gravure shots of adult video actresses on the cover! If you write for such a magazine, then your female readers will turn away from you, you know. Of course, assuming you have female readers”.
“That’s not a nude gravure,” Rintarō said assuredly.
“Lies. If that’s not a nude, what is it?”.
“A calendar”.
Honami puffed her cheeks.
“You have an unbelievable male chauvinistic heart. With such ideas, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ll end up as a sacrifice for feminist fighters”.
Let’s write this down for later. This is like a conversation of a novel by Robert B. Parker. Rintarō then turned to his counterattack.
“Allow me to say something as someone with an unbelievable male chauvinistic heart. You lied to me. You said you wear contact lenses in your free time, didn’t you?”
“That’s not a lie,” Honami said calm and collected.
“Too bad. Today’s work”.
“Work…?”
Now that she mentioned it, her wear was rather neat and not meant for a day of fun.
“To keep it short, there was a proposal to donate a private collection to our library some time ago, but some trouble arose afterwards and we’re having difficulties with the other party now. And per orders of the library director, I have been dealt the role of doing the negotiations. I finally got an appointment to negotiate directly with the other party and we are going to visit the home of the books’ owner right now. As overtime work, of course. So I don’t deserve being called a liar. But the appointment is for two o’ clock at Kichijōji, so we have to leave now. I’ll tell you the details on the way. You did bring your car, right?”
In short, he was to be her driver. No, maybe even less than that. Who is going to pay his overwork time?

Murmuring, Rintarō grabbed the steering wheel. Honami showed some whimsical ardor and started to read the titles of the music tapes on the passenger’s seat.
“These are all old songs. Don’t you have newer tapes?,” she asked.
Rintarō finally chuckled and switched on the player with Chelsea Girl and Like A Day Dream. When the intro to Chelsea Girl came out the car speakers, Honami’s went wide open.
“… What’s this?”
“The new sound from Oxford”.
“This isn’t a demo tape?”
“A star of hope for ‘90’s rock.”
With powerful guitar-play that relied on youth as their background music, they went north on the Kanpachidōri drive. And life is what you make of it. Is having a drive with a girl, even if only as a driver, not more fun than a meeting with a magazine editor? Even Murakami Ryū said that. Or did he?
Honami stuck her elbows out.
“Can I turn down the volume? I still have to tell you the details”.
“Ah, that’s right. Sure, go ahead”.
Honami mercilessly switched the sound off. She looked as if she this was all she could bear.
“To be honest, the next one is one of Ride’s hit songs,” Rintarō said to save Ride’s honor. “Oh,” Honami said uninterested.
“The person who said he wanted to donate his books is called Sugata Kuniaki. The youngest son of a wealthy family. He’s like a fantasy literature maniac turned adult. He had been collecting rare and valuable books, mostly related to occultism and mysticism since he was young. After university, he worked at a bank for a while, but his interest only developed further, even participating in a fanzine, and he suddenly resigned his job. He was from a wealthy family anyway and probably not very suited for business. Ever since, he has been working as the president of his own fanzine, translated some minor works under the name Kurouri Arashita, living his life surrounded by the books he loves.
“Kurouri Arashita. A play on Alistair Crowley, known as the greatest ceremonial magician of this century”.
“Our library director became acquaintances with Mr. Sugata at some kind of party. Our director is a well-known person at the weirdest places. Thinking Mr. Sugata was an interesting person, we invited him several times for a lecture for one of our library’s ‘foreign literature seminar’-esque projects. Mr. Sugata was very happy to have been recognized for his expertise it seems and promised us to donate his complete collection when he were to pass away. He didn’t just say it, he really made a provision for us in his will.
Rintarō squinted.
“So that Mr. Sugata died recently?”
Honami nodded mysteriously.
“At the end of last year, he was found hanging in the study of his house”.
“So suicide?”.
“Yes. I heard this later, but it seemed like he had manic-depressive tendencies and he had been going to the hospital and taking medicine for that. It may be one of the reasons for him to have quit his job at the bank. He didn’t leave any note, but it was probably an impulsive suicide as he suffered from life”.
“That’s really sad to hear”.
“He didn’t had any children, and his wife was his only family. His widow however is a kinda suspicious woman and does not agree to giving us the books under all sorts of pretexts. Setting aside the legality of the will and all, we as the library can’t just ignore the wife and forcefully take the books, because they were the gifts to us from a deceased person out of good will. We are prepared to listen to what she has to say, but that woman is so vague and just running away from the negotiations, so we can’t even talk the matter out.
“For someone all keen on feminism, the way you said ‘that woman’ sounds rather harsh”.
“Don’t jump on everything I say”.
“Yeah, yeah. And, why doesn’t she want to give up the books?”
“We’re having troubles, because we don’t even know why. Maybe some private collector or book seller has been trying to buy the books, offering a small fortune. Because it is supposed to be a collection any fan would desire. If that is right, then the wife should just say so to us, then we’ll figure something out together, but we really don’t know what she is thinking and even the director is having difficulties with her. And that’s why I’ll be acting as a proxy today to find out what her real intentions are.
“I see”.
Rintarō’s interests were aroused. It wasn’t just what Honami said, but there seemed something fishy to this all. Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, he asked: “Was it really a suicide? Was there no doubts of homicide at all?”. Honami moved her fingers like a metronome and clicked her tongue.
“That was a rather predictable question”.
“My bad, my bad. Comes with the occupation”.
“Well, then I’ll answer in a predictable way. When the body was discovered, the door was bolted from the inside and they had to break down the door to open it from the hallway. Simply said, the room where Mr. Sugata was hanged was really a locked room and nobody could have entered or left the room”.
Rintarō’s eyes lit up.
“So, what you said yesterday on the phone, that wasn’t just gibberish you said”.
“Precisely. But too bad, I don’t think there is a novel-like ending to add to this case. Locked room murders only exists in fiction”.
Rintarō vehemently shook his head.
“No, no, it’s too fast to say that. Most importantly, it is very strange for someone who pretended to be the magician Crowley to commit suicide”.
“Maybe so”.
“It simply is so”.
“But isn’t that a rather imprudent thing to say?”
“That is a different matter”.
Honami looked doubtful and muttered while thinking: “I don’t think it was murder, but now you mention it, there was some strange episode surrounding Mr. Sugata’s suicide”.
“What?”
“Do you know The Door in the Wall?”
Honami suddenly asked this strange question.
“Yeah, a story by Wells with a green door that leads to a different world. Why?”
“The Green Door, it’s in Mr. Sugata’s study”.

The Door in the Wall is a fantasy story by English SF writer H.G. Wells, famous for works like The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. The story’s protagonist is the young and successful politician Wallace. One night, he confesses the following story to the narrator, with whom he had been friends since their student years.

When he was five, Wallace was playing outside on his own, he went through a green door in a white wall. What he found on the other side, was a different world, a magical country. Marble flowers, frolicking panthers, a beautiful woman, a sublime palace, he spent his time playing wonderful games there. Finally a woman with a faraway look showed him a mysterious book describing his life up until then in detail. As he was reading this book with his own memories, he returned to the city of London, to the gray everyday life. When he was nine, as he was playing, he came across the green door again. But because he had told his secret to his friends, the door disappeared. The third time he saw the door, was when he was seventeen. He saw the door several times after that, but he never took a look inside. Having found success in his life, he had lost his yearning for the world on the other side of the door.

After that, he continued his life working hard and he didn’t see the door again. But lately, as he was nearing his 40th birthday and staring to feel disillusioned with his life, the door had starting to appear again. Forgetting vulgar things like fame and economic interests, he walked around the town impatiently searching for the door.

The narrator doesn’t believe his story. But some time later, he finds a news article reporting the death of Wallace. He had fallen to his death in a fenced-off pit at a construction site. One of the workers had forgotten to lock up the door to the pit.

Had Wallace seen some kind of hallucination? At the end, the narrator asks the reader the following question. Did the door betray him? We think that this world is fair and normal. The pit was fenced off. From our point of view, Wallace went from a safe world to the darkness, to danger, to death. But did he think so to?

“Mr Sugata loved that story,” Honami said.
“He probably identified himself with the protagonist, leaving the real world to enter a fantasy world. He loved the story that much that he made his own green door in his study”.
Rintarō looked doubtful.
“How? Did he ask the devil to make him a magic door?”
“Of course not. He might have been a specialist on the occult, but of course even he couldn’t make a door to a different world. Mr Sugata’s house is an old Western mansion, and there were originally two oak doors in his study, but the hinges of one door were rusted or something like that and wouldn’t move at all. And so Mr Sugata painted that door green. That was his Green Door. There was another door to enter and leave the room, so he had no troubles there and they say the door hadn’t been opened for 10 years already. But it seems that in the end, the door understood that its master had died”.
“So that’s it. I was thinking about some kind of dimensional gap or supernatural phenomena”.
“Too bad. Anyway, when he was still alive, it seems Mr Sugata had said to his friends that ‘when I die, the Green Door will open again’.”
“And that locked door really opened?”
As if to dodge the question, Honami shrugged her shoulders.
“It didn’t really open, so he was wrong. The door that was busted open when they found the body was the other door and if the Green Door could have been opened, then the study wouldn’t have been a locked room. The police have examined it and they concluded that it was suicide, so it is probably so”.
“I see”.
Generally, occult maniacs love things like prophecies and looking into the future, but they are never right. This prophecy of Sugata Kuniaki was one of those examples too. Like Honami said, it was nothing more than a strange episode.
“But we may have to take a look at his study and the green door just to be sure. Can you play along with me in front of the wife?”
“Sure. But I really don’t think it’s a locked room murder. It’s not my fault if you end up making a fool of yourself”.
“Warning duly noted”.
A collection of occult books and a locked door with a story. It smelled slightly of crime, but he couldn’t be sure. There was a big chance it was just nothing, but he also had to consider his own dignity in front of Honami. A great detective capable of solving the impossible, or just a driver. Go for broke.

The mansion stood north of Kichiyōji Station, in the middle of a residential area near the border with Suginami Ward. Western mansion sounded fancy, but it was an decrepit wooden building with two floors, looking like one of those private hospitals.
“I had heard the rumors, but this is the first time I see it. Like it has trouble just keeping upright”.
“As the dwelling of an occultism specialist, it seems ideal though”.
“If this was my home, I would faint. Hello, is there someone home?”
Honami said and the door slowly slid open, making the sound like a frog croaking. There stood a woman dressed in dark indigo Japanese traditional clothing.
“Are you from the library?,” she asked.
Honami nodded.
“We talked over the telephone the other day. I’m the librarian Sawada”.
“Aah, yes, miss Sawada. I’m Sugita’s wife”.
The infamous widow. Her age was 37, 38 and good looking. Long-slitted eyes, a slender nose and shining lips. The white skin of her neck had something erotic to it.
“And your companion…?”
Her captivating look was turned to Rintarō and his heart started to pound fast.
“My name is Norizuki”.
“You don’t look like someone from the library. Are you a lawyer or something like that…?”
“No, I am just an innocent bystander. Ever since I went to Mr Sugita’s seminar last year, I have been a devotee of him and I really wanted to visit his home. I really begged miss Sawada here to allow me to come here today. If it is no trouble, I would like see his study. It would make me so happy”.
It was just a lie he made up together with Honami, but the widow didn’t seem to doubt it.
“I see. No, it’s no trouble at all. Please, come inside”.
The two were guided to the guest room. When the widow left the room to prepare some tea, he was punched on the shoulder by Honami as if she had been holding it in for a long time.
“That was really pathetic. Looking at that woman with that lecherous look!”
“I didn’t!”
“I know, I know. All men are weak to that kind of physically beautiful women”.
“Is this what they commonly call ‘jealousy’?”
“Too bad. It was just a warning before you fall flat on your face”.
“I now understand why the director sent you to do the negotiations with the widow”.
Then the topic of this conversation came back into the room, so the two stopped talking. As she was lining up some fancy porcelain tea ware on the table, the widow said: “Sorry you had to came all this way. I have a rather weak body and going outside tires me greatly, making me very sleepy”.
“Have you been alone ever since your husband’s death?,” Rintarō asked.
The widow sat down on the seat opposite to him and said: “A dispatch housekeeper comes here every other day, but I’ve been alone for the rest. For a widow, this house is too big. If only we had children…”
Honami suddenly coughed, interrupting her silly complaints.
“Mrs Sugata”. It was a sudden, harsh tone.
“This is rather abrupt, but let’s begin our business. The reason we came today is naturally to talk over your husband’s donation. I will ask you bluntly, why are you refusing to hand over the books?”
“Refusing is such a harsh word…”
“Until now we have made several attempts, but you are just giving us vague replies, so this is the only conclusion we can make. We are not criticizing you, but we would like to know why. If something has come up, please tell us. If you have a good reason, we will also be reasonable about that”.
The widow hesitated for a while, but after a short while, as if to show she had made up her mind, sat upright and placed her hands on her knees. She slowly opened her mouth: “I apologize for causing you troubles. I thought that if I would tell you, you wouldn’t believe me anyway so I kept silent about it, but actually, he appeared…”
“He?”
“My husband…”
The two looked at each other surprised.
Honami asked carefully: “ Do you mean… your husband’s ghost?”
“Yes,” the widow nodded as she averted her eyes, “it was a night about two days after the seven-day period of mourning. In the middle of the night it felt like my hairs stood up and when I opened my eyes, my husband was sitting near my pillow. I think they call it sleep paralysis, but I couldn’t move my body nor say anything. And when I looked into his eyes, he said: ‘Hey, Yoshiko (that’s my name), when I think about how my books are going to be given away, I just can’t find spiritual rest. ‘Cause those books I collected, they are my life, you know. It would be more fitting if they were to stay here and rot away together with the house. I was too hasty when I wrote that will. I hadn’t thought it through. I’m sorry, but I want you to protect my books and hand them to nobody while you are still here. This is the only regret of my life’. He asked me the same thing over and over again and when the sun came up, he simply disappeared. As a proof that it wasn’t just a dream, I found, the next morning when I opened my eyes, my husband’s bookplate placed near my pillow. There was no sign of that the evening before of course. That’s when I understood that my husband’s ghost really did come. I won’t repeat it all, but he came again several times after that, saying the same thing. I don’t think you will believe me, but I made up my mind at that time. So the reason I have been so reluctant in giving up the books, is because I was following my late husband’s wishes. The reason I have kept quiet about this until now, is because I thought that even if I would tell you this honestly, that you wouldn’t believe it. Even while I am telling you this, I understand that this is not a convincing story. Having come to this, I know that this is rather selfish, but could you, following my husband’s ghost’s wishes, maybe forget the whole donation?”
Having finished her story, the widow looked determined to Honami. It was a desperate attempt, but she had really tried her best on the story. Honami looked bewildered, not sure how to react. If she just called her a liar, it would end in an endless discussion. It didn’t seem like the widow would listen to reason. Honami would have troubles convincing her. Whatever it would be, Rintarō had no intention of being witness to a fruitless argument.
“As an outsider, I think it would better for me to leave. Could I maybe take a look at Mr Sugata’s books?”
“Yes, go ahead”.
The widow surprisingly easily allowed Rintarō to go.
“The library is on the second floor. Go up the stairs and then the door straight ahead. It’s not locked, so feel free to look around”.
“Mr Sugata’s ghost does not haunt the place?,” Rintarō said jokingly, but the widow said calmly: “It’s alright if you are just looking”.
“Well then, as you are so kind…”
As Rintarō stood up, he felt Honami’s eyes piercing him. As if looking at a soldier fleeing from the frontlines. He answered her look with a wink.

This is a joint operation, you understand. Your mission is to keep the widow here while I am investigating the study. I am counting on you.

He intended to communicate that, but he wasn’t sure whether she understood it. He had some troubles shutting the badly fitted door, but Rintarō finally fled out of the room.

When he went up the turning stairs, every step made a squeaking sound. It was like the house had grown old and become senile. If he would let one or two ghosts free in such a house, he doubted they would complain to him. He counted the steps of the stairway. Precisely thirteen. Someone had been attentive while designing the house.

The library ran from the eastern wing to the middle of the house, taking about one third of the surface of the second floor. Opening the door he was told, he was met with that particular damp, stuffy smell of old books. This wasn’t just a library, this was an archive. Bookcases that could be moved along rails were lined up neatly and were all stuffed with books. Even a rough estimate wouldn’t be a figure lower than 8000 books.
Struck with awe, Rintarō stared at the precious collection Sugata Kuniaki had left behind. Before he knew it, he had let out a deep sigh. This wasn’t something you could find anywhere. Rintarō fought for a while with the temptation and having killed the bookworm inside him, he returned to his duty as a detective and started his businesslike and illiterate investigation.

When he went down to the guest room, the women had stopped talking and were drinking their tea. It was like a short rest time after a fierce fight, but the tense atmosphere was almost painfully clear.

“That was long”, Honami said as if criticizing his long absence. If he wasn’t careful, she might vent all her anger on him. Don’t do anything to anger the gods. Rintarō pretended to have been distracted by all the books on the second floor and said: “Very impressive, Mrs Sugata, that was like a mountain of treasures. It feels like I had to be pulled away before I was able to leave the room. Even in one hour, I still hadn’t seen everything. Books that are too important to bury away”.
“It was my husband’s pride,” the widow said carefully.
“That’s why it would be better if more people could…,” Honami said, but Rintarō interrupted her.
“Especially Mishima’s Evil Spirit was surprising. I had heard the rumors, but I had never thought it would actually exist”.
Honami’s look became serious at once.
“Mishima’s Evil Spirit? What do you mean?”
“A detective novel Mishima Yukio wrote somewhere in Shōwa 40 (1965), under the penname Hirai Koutarō. A continuation of the half-finished story of Edogawa Rampo. Under the real mystery maniacs, it is rumored to be the ultimate anti-mystery novel, but because nobody has ever seen the real thing, people have doubts whether it really exists. There is a privately published version of Evil Spirit here”.
Honami was not sure whether to believe him, and simply said: “That seems amazing”.
“It is amazing! Right, Mrs Sugata?”
He turned to the silent widow, but she was looking at him as if he was speaking Chinese. Rintarō dropped the subject and went on: “By the way, Mrs Sugata, I want to ask you another thing. They say that in your husband’s study, there is a door painted green. And that Mr Sugata had said before he died that, he had said that ‘when I die, the Green Door will open again’. That is really interesting. For future reference, I would like to take a look at the real thing”.
For a moment, the widow looked very suspicious at him. She quickly hid her look again and said nonchalantly: “Of course. But that was a form of amusement for my husband, so you will probably just be disappointed when you see it. Miss Sawada, would you also take a look?”
“Yes please. For future reference,” Honami said, smiling like a Buddha.

The late Mr Sugata’s study was in the corner of the east wing of the first floor. It was located precisely under the library on the second floor that Rintarō had just investigated. The widow pushed open the old oak door. Rintarō noticed that the hinges on the door were new. Even though it was noon, the room was dark and the air was stuffy. Even after the widow had switched on the lights, it seemed like there was more shadow than light, making Rintarō think of a cave.
“Sorry for the mess. After my husband died, I didn’t feel like cleaning up the room, and it has been like this for three months”.
It was indeed messy. There were a sturdy writing desk and a warm air heater under the lights and surrounding that, a jumble of piled books and music records. The records were of baroque and religious music. In a stained couch, the impression of a man was still visible. It told Rintarō the custom of the former owner of this room. The north and south walls weren’t visible, blocked by slanting book shelves. The placing of the books were random and things like magazines and dictionaries stuck out. It looked like that everything of importance was just placed where it could be reached. It felt like the work room of a writer and was the complete opposite of the neat comprehensiveness of the second floor’s library.
Rintarō looked at the ceiling. The library on the second floor was a heaven made of books, while the study on the first floor was like a symbol of the imperfect life of man. That was probably an allegory thought up by the occultist.
“There is a window to lighten up the place at the back, but my husband nailed it shut and placed a bookcase in front of it, so no light enters the room. He said dark was better,” the widow explained. Honami found a bronze candle stand beneath a pile of books.
“There are traces of wax here. Did he really use this?”
“Yes. He read with the light of a candle. I told him countless times to stop it, as I was afraid of fire, but even until recently occasionally the smell of candles came out of the room. That man was really strange at times”.
Rintarō went to the Green Door. There was no bookcase only at the back of the room, at the eastern wall. Turning back, he saw that it was right across the door leading into the doorway. He turned his gaze back to the Green Door. It might have been brilliant green when it was first pained. But now the color had faded and had turned moss-green. Maybe that is why the door didn’t match his own image he made after hearing the story. If the protagonist of Wells’ story had seen this door, he would have been disappointed. Even the props at a high school play would have looked better.
“Can I touch it?,” he asked the widow. No problem, she said, and Rintarō grabbed the doorknob. The nob seemed a bit rusty, but would turn if you added a little power. He grabbed it strongly and pulled the door.
It didn’t move.
“Doesn’t it open outwards?,” Honami said from behind his back. Rintarō nodded and pushed this time. But it didn’t move an inch. When he rammed his shoulders against the door with all his might, he fell back.
Honami moved forwards.
“And?”
“It is made to open outwards. But it doesn’t budge at all”.
“I’ll help”.
With the help of Honami, he tried again, but even with the weight of two persons, nothing changed. Because the bookcases were almost falling because of the shock of their body slam, they had to stop their attempts to force open the door.
“It won’t open no matter what,” the widow said, seemingly trying to hide her smile.
“When my husband committed suicide, the police said they had to examine the room and five police officers pushed and pulled the door and made a big fuss about it, but the door didn’t move at all. If we force it open, the whole mansion might collapse. You often see that in those old comedy movies, right?”
“I see”
Rintarō wiped off the sweat on his forehead.
“But why doesn’t it open? Has it been like this since this house was built?”
The widow slanted her head.
“Maybe. I don’t know about the past, but it was already like this when we married. Maybe my husband nailed the door shut in a way that is not visible. My husband had a childish side…”
“But what about your husband’s prophecy? Didn’t anything change about the door after his suicide?”
The widow shook her head.
“Nothing at all. I don’t think my husband said that seriously. He probably said it as a wish of some sorts”.
Rintarō turned his look back at the Green Door.
“What’s on the other side of the door?”
“The garden. There is a little porch, so it was designed so you could leave the room and get into the garden directly. But because the door won’t open, it’s quite useless”.
“Is this door the same color on the other side?”
“No, the other side is still in its original color”.
Rintarō rubbed his forehead again and turned back from the Green Door and went to the writing desk. And then he asked the widow with a serious tone: “Your husband died in this study, right?”
“Yes. He had tied his belt to the hanging lights here and hanged himself from it”.
“I heard that when he was found, that the door was bolted from the inside”.
“Yes”.
“Could you tell me more about it?”
“You are asking me police-like questions,” she said a bit hesitantly.
“It was at the end of last year, on the 22nd . My husband had always been a late riser, but he didn’t wake up even in the afternoon, so I went to check up on him. He would often be up all night and fall asleep in the study. But the door was bolted, so I couldn’t get inside. I called out for him several times, but he didn’t react, so I started to worry. The housekeeper wasn’t in that day and I wasn’t able to break down the door on my own, so I quickly called for an ambulance through the emergency number”.
“An ambulance?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t call it a woman’s intuition, but I had a bad feeling about it. My husband had been diagnosed as manic-depressive and he attempted to commit suicide before. He even made a will even though he was so still young. I thought of the worst possible scenario. And if it turned out to nothing, then it would just be a funny story for later. But my bad feeling was correct…’.
The widow started to cry and stopped her words. Too bad it looked she was acting. Rintarō continued his questions.
“So it was the ambulance crew that forced the door open?”.
“Yes. I was just looking confused at them from behind, but because the door’s bolt was too strong, they had to break the hinges. When they opened the door, I saw the bare feet from my husband hanging in the air. I became unwell and left the place immediately”.
Rintarō placed his fingers on his jaws. If what the widow said is correct, then she wouldn’t have any opportunities to destroy any evidence after the discovery of the victim. This was a difficult problem.
“To come back at the topic of the prophecy, but did your husband say literally ‘the Green Door will open’?”.
“What do you mean?”.
“He for example didn’t say the green backdoor?”
The widow looked troubled.
“No, he didn’t say that. But what if he had said the green backdoor?”.
“It was just a thought I had,” Rintarō started his explanation, “Colloquially, they call American dollar bills green-backs there. Because dollar bills are green. And that door is at the back of the house, right? So it’s a back door. American dollars, green-backs. And Mr Sugata was so proficient in English that he could work as a translator. The green door might have been a play on the green dollar. So Mr Sugata might have hidden money there and intended to leave it to you. Couldn’t his prophecy be a message to lead you there?”
The widow laughed at Rintarō’s ideas.
“I don’t think he has hidden some treasure. Even if he had such money, he would have used it for his books. Your idea is interesting, but not realistic at all”.
“Indeed. Who would even say green backdoor?”
Even Honami protested against the idea. Rintarō grabbed his head and said: “That’s why I said that it was just a thought…”. At that moment, the standing clock in the hall rang four o’ clock. Time for the detective who forced himself inside to leave.
“Ah, is it this late already? I have to leave. You have been very kind”.
“Wait, but I still have business…,” Honami started, but Rintarō interrupted her.
“But you have time for a next meeting, right? We have to hurry, or else we won’t make it. So Mrs Sugata, let’s leave it at this for today”.
“Well, come back anytime again”.
Rintarō said his goodbyes and pulled away the furious Honami with him, rushing out of the Sugata mansion.

---

“Why did we have to leave this suddenly?,” Honami asked after they entered the car, “We didn’t make an appointment for a next meeting. We came to get a clear answer from Mrs Sugata, but we haven’t got anything. How do I explain this to the director?”
“I’ll explain to him. With that ghost tory, any attempts at negotiations would have been useless. She has no intention to hand over the books at all”.
“But I wanted to hear the reason for that at least”.
“She won’t tell you”.
Honami tilted her head. As Rintarō started the car, she sighed heavily.
“Maybe you’re right. Even when you were away, we didn’t go anywhere with our discussion. I had the feeling it was all over when she came up with that ghost story. Who is going to believe such a story!? It’s clear that it was just a way to buy time. There’s probably someone who wants to buy the books”.
“No, I don’t think so,” Rintarō said calmly.
“Why?”
“If there was a buyer, someone would have gone over the books after Mr Sugata’s death in order to make an estimate of the value. But as far as I could see, there were no signs of anybody having entered the library for a while now. Judging from the amount of dust accumulated, I was the first to have entered there after the case.
“You were kinda taking your time there,” Honami said as if she just remembered.
“Yes. So I think it’s safe to say there is no other buyer. There is also the possibility that, well, it has to do with what we just discussed in the study, but somewhere among the books there might be something important the wife doesn’t want to lose, but she doesn’t know where it is exactly, so she can’t find it. So, she might just be refusing to hand over the books to buy herself some time. But this seems a bit improbable, because she wouldn’t have let me, someone she had never seen before, go alone in the library, with the risk of me running away with a treasure”.
“That’s true”.
“Furthermore, looking at how we left just right now, I could have easily stolen one or two rare books and she wouldn’t have noticed anything. In other words, she has no interest in the value of the books themselves. No even that, I don’t think she has any knowledge of her husband’s collection at all”.
“What do you mean?”.
“I talked about Mishima Yukio right? That was just a made-up story”.
Honami looked angry at Rintarō and said: “I thought it was! I hadn’t heard anything about that at all. But that was a rather overblown lie, don’t you think?”.
“That was just the beauty of it. I wanted to see how she would react. I’m betting she doesn’t know anything about Mishima and Rampo. Such a person wouldn’t be interested in the collection at all. She has to have some sort of dark reason for not handing over the books”.
Honami nodded strongly.
“…So, so that green-back story just now was also to see how she would react?”
“It was more like a smokescreen to disguise my real intentions. I had been asking her all kinds of things about when her husband died. That’s also why we had to leave so fast. It would be bad if she started to have doubts about us now”.
“What do mean doubting us?”.
“I am sure she has killed her husband and made it seem like suicide. The reason she doesn’t want to hand over the books is probably because they are somehow connected to her crime,” Rintarō said with no pretenses at all. Rather than surprised, Honami looked indecisive.
“Her motive for killing Mr Sugata?”
“That’s what we have to investigate now”.
“But the room was a perfectly locked room. Even if she was a murderer, how did she escape from a locked room after the crime? It’s for certain that the Green Door doesn’t open and I don’t think she could have used some trick on the bolt as the emergency crew broke the hinges open”.
“No, I think calling the emergency number was actually done on purpose. She called an ambulance to have a third party witness to the locked room. Becoming unwell and not entering the study, was also an act to show that she had no chance to destroy any evidence. It was just one part of her perfect crime”.
Honami suddenly tilted her head.
“I see, but there no evidence to proof that. There is no entrance to the room except for the door to the hallway. The window has been nailed shut and there is no chimney or air vent or anything like that there. Or is it time for your favorite trick, the secret passage?”
“Hey, don’t say such things! That’s a forbidden trick!”.
“But there is no other way around it. Locked room murders like you read about in novels don’t lie around every corner you know. I am not trying to defend her, but the police consider her innocent of any crime and I don’t think she has been lying about that either. Just admit it was just a suicide. It’s just physically impossible to escape from that room”.
“Physically impossible…”.
As Rintarō repeated those words, Honami shrugged. She stared at Rintarō as if he had gone mad and asked in hesitation: “Don’t tell me you read some book in that library and got some strange idea in your head?”
“Strange idea?”
Honami said almost boastfully: “You know, like that the Green Door is the entrance to a parallel world and that the criminal fled there or that there is a dimensional gap in that room because of some gravitational force”.
Rintarō laughed and winked at her”.
“You are very close actually”.

That night, Rintarō returned home and had a long talk about the mysterious death of Sugata Kuniaki with his widower father, who worked at the homicide department of the Metropolitan Police Department. Police inspector Norizuki showed great interest in the case and made a plan to help his son. The following day, Rintarō and his father visited the Musashino police station to exchange information with the detective in charge of the case. At first, the people at the Mushishino police station weren’t cooperative, but after a long talk, Rintarō’s ardor and the police inspector’s persuasion paid off and it was decided that the same day a temporary investigation headquarters would be set up inside the station.

“She is quite an accomplished liar”.
Three days later, Rintarō visited the reference corner of the library to report to Honami.
“I got the cooperation of the Mushashino station after we split up and had Mrs Sugata’s close relations investigated. We found quite a bit. Firstly, a child”.
Honami rested her head on her arms.
“Child? But they don’t have any children”.
“That was a lie. When we investigated the files, we found out that they have a girl who is almost seven years old. It is really their child, but she isn’t living with her parents. After her birth, a congenital disorder was diagnosed and they put her in some kind of institution. They only pay the medical bills and never visit her, just leaving her to be. Mrs Sugata has never done anything mother-like for her”.
“That poor child”.
“Not only that, she even lied to the neighbors, saying that her child died at birth. She might just have been keeping up appearances, but it’s really a horrible story”.
“Precisely. But how is that related to Mr Sugata’s death?”.
“Let me explain this all in order. She is a failure not just as a mother, but also as a wife. She had betrayed her husband and is having an affair with a man called Fujimoto Shinji, a young director of a transport company in Nerima Ward. He is not married. She is two years older and they have been having an affair for about three years”.
Honami guessed what was coming.
“He found out about their affair”.
“Yes. Mr Sugata probably found out about his wife’s affair a bit before the murder. He of course had a big row with her. From about half December on, they had fights every day. I think Mr Sugata told her around that time that he was going to divorce her. She probably decided to kill him then”.
“Why do you think so?”.
Rintarō answered in a grave tone.
“It’s the old story, money. You said that Mr Sugata was the youngest child of a wealthy family, right? When I looked into that, I found out that he was one of the bourgeoisie. His father, more than 70 years old, is the major stockholder of a country-wide hotel chain and his personal capital is at least 5 billion yen. Because of he was a bit strange, Mr Sugata wasn’t usually treated as one of the family, but he was sure to inherit a great fortune”.
“So the wife has had her eyes on Mr Sugata’s father fortune from the start?”.
“Probably. She was waiting for her father-in-law to kick the bucket and for everything to fall in her husband’s pocket. But something unexpected happened. Mr Sugata found out about her affair so he decided to divorce. If they would have been divorced before her father-in-law would die, then she could say goodbye to the blessings of that fortune. And she would also have to pay compensation money because her love-affair was the reason of the divorce. So to save her future fortune, she decided to kill off her husband. And here is where their daughter’s handicap becomes important. Under stipulations of the Civil Code, article 887, clause 2 regarding inheritance by representation, the right to inherit goes to the daughter. And because her daughter is incapable to manage such a fortune, her mother would receive the supervising authority. That was Mrs Sugata’s plan. But I think that behind her back, her lover Fujimoto was the one pulling the strings”.
Rintarō stopped his words and a cloud came over Honami’s expression and she sighed heavily.
“This is a really disheartening story”.
“Precisely. But regarding this motive, you can consider it confirmed. The final problem is the problem of the locked study”.
“Is what she told us the other day true?”
“Yes. I have talked with every man of the emergency crew that was there when they discovered the body, and there was not a single lie in her story. The door to the hallway was locked completely. And she didn’t enter the room either”.
“And the details of the police examination?”
“The same. After the suicide was reported, they investigated the complete room, but they concluded there was no other exit except for the door to the hallway. The windows were really nailed shut and they actually tried to break open the Green Door with five men, but it didn’t budge at all. And there were no signs of the door having ever been forced open. And of course there was no secret passage”.
Honami, still leaning on her cheek, shook her head.
“As I see it, this seem rather hopeless”.
“Too fast to say that. Ah, before I forget it, let’s talk about the autopsy report. The estimated time of death was the day before the body was found, around 09:00 PM. Going by the evidence of a cable (the belt) having been used to hang him, it was concluded to be suicide through hanging and that was all in the report. The doctor in charge probably assumed from the start that it was suicide and overlooked any evidence pointing at murder. When I asked for confirmation with the doctor, he hesitantly admitted that his autopsy might have been insufficient. It happens often with these kind of cases”.
“Wait a minute. How could the wife have hanged the body of a man from the ceiling? That would be quite heavy”.
“I haven’t said that she did it by herself. I’m sure her lover helped her. In fact, Fujimoto has no real alibi for the night Mr Sugata died. He said he was drinking with young people from his transport company until morning, but that doesn’t count as an alibi. He’s the director, and everyone under him would say anything he would tell them to say”.
Honami thought for a while. She then looked up and pushed the frames of her glasses up.
“That really so?”
“What?”
Rintarō became a bit red.
“But there is something else that bothers me. The widow has been planning to rebuild the house in Kichiyōji. It was going to start in the long holiday in May. She said it was because the house had become decrepit and hard to live in, but it is to destroy the crime scene, to destroy every bit of evidence before anyone would look back at the crime and solve the mystery of the locked room. The fact that she is planning such a reconstruction is proof that she is guilty”.
“But that is hardly convincing evidence. As long as you don’t solve the locked room, you can’t prove her to be a murderer”.
Rintarō laughed.
“That’s true. I came to visit you because of that actually. I have to ask your director something”.
“The director?”.
“I need the cooperation of this library”.

---

Two days after that conversation, in the afternoon, with police inspector Norizuki sitting beside him in the passenger’s seat, Rintarō headed for the Sugata house in Kichiyōji. The wind felt cold on the skin, but it was a clear blue day. On the road in front of the house stood a truck of a transport company and men wearing orange work uniforms were carrying boxes of books in the truck. It was the truck Honami’s library had hired to get the books.
“An amazing amount of books,” the police inspector said. Rintarō got hold on one of t the workers and asked how the operation was going.
“We have cleared about eighty percent. We are a bit late on schedule, but we’ll be finished in another thirty minutes”.
Rintarō smiled. Everything was going as planned. As the two moved towards the building, they heard a shouting woman. At the entrance, Honami and the widow were having a row. Or rather, the widow was just yelling one-sidedly, while Honami wasn’t really making any efforts in actually listening to her.
“Don’t think that you can do this without any consequences! I’ll report you to the police for housebreaking!”
“Please calm down a bit”
Police inspector Norizuki stepped in. The widow stopped talking, surprised and hesitating at this unknown person’s intrusion. Norizuki ignored her expression, and while showing his police notebook walked towards her.
“I am Norizuki of the Metropolian Police Department”.
The widow’s expression turned blue in an instance. When she saw Rintarō standing next to the police inspector, her eyes squinted to be as sharp like knifes.
“… You are all in this together”.
Rintarō didn’t even smile and said: “ I’ve solved the mystery of Mr Sugata’s prophecy. I’ve come here to confirm my thoughts, so could you lead us to the study again. No, it won’t take long. We’ll just take a look from the garden”.
The widow stood still, staring at Rintarō’s face. Everybody was silent for a while. Finally the widow nodded, sighed and dropped her shoulders. Her expression however was sharp. As if she was prepared for the worse, she walked steadily along the house, towards the eastern wing of the building. The other three followed her.

At the mansion’s eastern wing was, like the widow had said before, a small porch. Without taking his shoes off, Rintarō stepped on the steps of the decrepit porch. The widow had stopped in front of the steps and didn’t say anything, looking down. Rintarō stood in front of the door. Because it had stood there in the outside air for many years, it had turned black. He placed his hand at the doorknob, and pulled softly. While it did feel like it was stuck a bit at the beginning, the Green Door opened unexpectedly easy.

Rintarō turned around. Inspector Norizuki nodded and said to the widow: “We have questions regarding the death of your late husband. Would you please come with us?”. The widow nodded without saying a word.

---

The next day. The library’s reference corner.
“Mrs Sugata confessed,” Rintarō said.
“Her motive and method were precisely like I thought. The arrest warrant for the accomplice Fujimoto will be out today”.
Honami stopped with her work and sat back in her seat.
“So she was refusing to give us the books because she didn’t want someone to find out the trick behind the locked room, right?”
“Yeah. The main point of this case doesn’t lie in the value of the books, but in the weight of the books. When you notice that, then the mystery of the Green Door is easy. Because of the build of the house and because it had gone decrepit, the weight of the books in the second floor library was focused on the door facing the garden one floor below. The Green Door couldn’t be opened because of that pressure. You shouldn’t underestimate the weight of books. It’s not strange that five adult men could move the door even an inch”.
Honami listened carefully to his words and reacted: “Now that you mention it, I once heard a story about an university teacher who used one room in his apartment as a library and the weight of the books cracked the concrete floor. It’s a miracle nothing happened when Mr Sugata’s body was hanging from the ceiling. And Mr Sugata already knew this?”
“Of course. That’s why he left a prophecy saying ‘when I die, the Green Door will open again’. If his collection was to be donated to the library, then the pressure on the door would disappear and it would be possible to open the Green Door again. Just like how I opened it yesterday. Mr Sugata was someone with a very playful heart. It would have been interesting to talk with him”.
Rintarō leaned back on his chair, and crossed his arms. That was his only regret.
“It’s ironic that his playful heart is what gave his wife the idea for the locked room murder. And, how was the crime committed?,” Honami asked.
“She got help from her lover. Fujimoto runs a transporting company. He had ordered his employees to move the books in and out of the library in the middle of the night. After killing Mr Sugita and making it seem like suicide, they worked together to move the books from the second floor to the first. That way, he was able to open the Green Door, so he bolted the door to the hallway, and left through the Green Door. Then he closed the door, and they moved the books back to the second floor. The employees who were there are professionals at moving and did their work fast and efficient. That day I investigated the library, I hadn’t seen any irregularities among the books, so they must have been working very carefully. Anyway, quite some people were involved with this crime. Just keeping everyone’s mouths shut alone must have been difficult. Which means that to Fujimoto, the fortune of the Sugitas must have been very tempting. According to the widow’s confession, they had promised to give them half of the fortune for their part in the crime”.
Honami placed her elbows on the counter and thought for a while. Then she suddenly opened her mouth, confusing Rintarō.
“That first day when we went to Kichiyōji, you said something strange. What did you mean?”.
“Strange?”.
“You know, you were hinting at some kind of occult phenomena or something. Was that just a joke?”
“No, it was then that I found out the truth behind the locked room. I wasn’t really thinking of something occult. But your comment is quite interesting. Don’t you remember what you said?”.
Honami tried to remember, but shook her head.
“Not the details”.
Rintarō laughed.
“You mentioned a dimensional gap because of some gravitational force. And that’s when you happened to hit at the secret of the Green Door”.
Honami wasn’t looking particularly happy. Maybe that’s to be expected from an intelligent woman.
“And another question. You had already solved the case, but why did you need to use our library’s name and move the books out of the house? I had to suffer quite a bit being yelled at by that woman”.
Rintarō shrugged.
“I’m sorry for that. But like you said, I hadn’t anything to prove my deductions. So I couldn’t get a search warrant either. So to get Mrs Sugata to confess, we had to solve the mystery of the locked room in front of her, making her understand the game was all up. So that’s why I resorted to that”.
“Well, I’ll forgive you for that this time”.
“I’m grateful”.
Rintarō looked calmly at his wrist watch.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go now. Anyway, I just came to tell you she confessed. Now I have to quickly start on the manuscript for Shōsetsu Nova”.
“The unprecedented locked room trick, it’s going to be that?”
Rintarō nodded and stood up.
“Yep. I have to thank you for that. Because I accompanied you with your work, I came up with the idea for my story. I’m still not satisfied with the contact lenses thing, but that’s something I’ll look forward to the next time”.
“I see. The next time, we’ll just go out privately, without any work,” Honami said laughing, “Because I’ve had enough of murder”.

浩寧の事件簿

「迷宮」

『誰が女神を殺したか?』

「この番組的には、流行語大賞はＯｈ！ガメオベールと思います」

『鬼は夜歩く』

「迷Q!?」

The Trial

『心理の密室』

Smoke and Mirrors

The Lost Special

Two Stations in Kashii

Detective Movie

Three Act Tragedy

Secret of my Heart

The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter

The Adventure of the Dying Detective

『意外な犯人 － フーダニット』

Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès

「心に並べても未完成なパズル 」

「分かってんだよ、自分でだって。本物のヒーローになんかなれないってことぐらい」

『霧ヶ峰涼の放課後』

「時の流れには逆らえず、色褪せてゆくものもあり」

「Ｗｅｌｃｏｍｅ Ｔｏ Ｔｈｅ Ｅｎｄ Ｏｆ Ｔｈｅ Ｗｏｒｌｄ」

The Adventure of the Three Students

「告っといてそのあとなーんもないなんてまずありえへんしなっ！」

The Oracle of the Dog

"Ah, the days of my youth... Just like the scent of fresh lemon, you see"

The Robots of Death

「古い戦術だね。細かいムジュンを突いて証人の動揺を誘う」

"You know my methods. Apply them"

『緑の扉は危険』

『意外な犯人　－　フーダニット』

「心に並べても未完成なパズル」

「ＷｅｌｃｏｍｅＴｏＴｈｅＥｎｄＯｆＴｈｅＷｏｒｌｄ」