Physician, Murder Thyself

'The golden axiom of Chomel, that it is only the second law of therapeutics to do good, its first law being this—not to do harm—is gradually finding its way into the medical mind, preventing an incalculable amount of positive ill.’ So remarks Dr. Bartlett in a work (...)

"Physician and Patient"

I do think these realistic covers for the Matsumoto Seichou pockets look really good...

Sumida Tomokichi is attending a medical conference for internists in Nagoya, but once it's over, he informs the organizer he won't be staying that night at the reserved inn with the rest of the attendees for the after-party, as he's going to meet an acquaintance in the city of Nagoya. The next day however, he is found dead in a hotel room when he fails to check out on time. The man is found murdered in a rather gruesome manner: his wrist had been slit open and then his arm was put in a sink with running water, quickly draining him of his blood. The police try to find out who he was going to meet that night, and while his co-workers and wife don't think he was the type to have an affair, the police do think he might have been seeing a woman at the hotel, especially as they find out that before arriving at the hotel, he visited a cafe where he received a call from a woman. Nagoya police inspector Ootsuka hopes to find a trail for any motive and also looks into Sumida's connections to a haiku club, where he was a major member, being the one to select amateur haiku entries to publish in their self-published poetry magazine. The investigation soon hits a halt as no viable clues can be found, until some time later, a murder occurs behind Jindaiji Temple in Tokyo, where a surgeon is cruelly stabbed, and then intentionally let free by his attacker, knowing he'd bleed to death trying to find help at the nearby residences. The two cases are connected once the Tokyo police find a receipt on the victim for a souvenir from Nagoya dated the last day of the medical conference Sumida also attended. Inspector Suda of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police who had been asssiting the Nagoya police while investigating Sumida, of course starts investigating this Tokyo murder too. Why were these two medical men killed in such a cruel manner in Matsumoto Seichou's Soushitsu no Girei ("Rituals of Loss", 1969)?

Soushitsu no Girei was originally serialized in 1969 and published as a standalone book in 1972, and while this is not a major work by Matsumoto like Ten to Sen (Points and Lines) or Suna no Utsuwa ("Vessel of Sand", also known as Inspector Imanishi Investigates"), the book has been adapted for the small screen no less than three times, with the last one even dating as recent as 2016. Matsumoto Seichou is of course best known as the main figure of the shakai-ha (social school) movement, a post-war school of Japanese mystery fiction that places emphasis on the social backgrounds of crimes, which is usually often juxtaposed against honkaku orthodox puzzle plot mysteries. The best known Matsumoto stories has him zoom in on the people getting involved with the crimes in his books, not rarely victims of company politics who find themselves, often due to circumstances beyond their control, forced to commit some kind of crime. I am not a big fan of shakai-ha mystery in general (there are always exceptions), and I therefore don't read Matsumoto's work very often, but there are works I like very much (Ten to Sen and sequel Jikan no Shuuzoku are police procedural puzzlers like Crofts' work).  

Soushitsu no Girei was a book I honestly didn't know anything about. It certainly doesn't have the reputation of Ten to Sen as a puzzler, so why did I pick this book? Well, actually, the reason is very simple. I was just looking for a mystery novel with the case set near Jindaiji Temple and happened to come across this one. I quite often just look for mystery books with a specific location, or plot device, or something like that, so I just happened to find out about this book and it was on sale.

Having read the book now however, I wouldn't say this is a must-read by Matsumoto by any means. It's a very slow police procedural, where we follow Ootsuka and Suda in their investigations into possible motives and suspects for the murder, but I can't say the plot really impressed. The first part is very slow, with the police trying to learn how Sumida ended up in the hotel in the first place, but a lot of it turns out, in retrospect, to be just padding by the author, as there's no real explanation why Sumida used such a roundabout route to end up in that hotel: that part only exists to allow for a longer investigative segment. This happens more often, with parts that feel like they are only there to pad out the story, but which don't feel natural because while they temporarily offer "a mystery" to the reader ("Why did X go to this place first before going to the next?" etc.) the answer often barely changes anything about what we already know about the case, and in some situations, the answer still leaves you wondering why they did that, because no adequate explanation is given for what compelled X to do this or that, just an explanation they did it.

This becomes apparent when you start thinking about the actual way the investigation developed in this book. Coincidence plays a big role in this book, but not in an interesting meta way like in Yamaguchi's Kiguu! Here we have both the culprit and the police learning things by complete coincidence, like a police detective who happens to run out of cigarettes, walks into the store nearest by and there happens to be a person holding very vital testimony concerning the case. Or the culprit learning certain facts incredbibly convenient to know to commit the murder in that particular way, but again, the only they could learned that information is through luck. So much of the developments in the investigation feel artificial, which is weird because it should be down-to-earth police procedural with a focus on realism, following Matsumoto's own style, but much of what happens in Soushitsu no Girei feels very forced Why did the police for example need to examine the haiku group in such detail at that point of the story for example? Only because it'd become relevant again later on.

Not to say there's nothing to like about this book. I do like the broad strokes of the story: trying to tie the two murders in Nagoya and Jindaiji, the possible motives behind the individual murders and one that connects the two, the creepy way in which the murders are committed, some of the actions taken by the culprit to evade suspicion, the idea behind the parts concerning a mysterious woman with red hair, and the actual motive and the way it ties back to the title are all elements and concepts I do like, only the way the investigation is built up and tries to guide the reader from the initial murder all the way to the discovery of who it was and how and why has quite the few speed bumps that makes you hit your head more often than you'd want. Now it makes me curious to the adaptations, to see if they changed the flow of the investigation a bit while keeping the basic building blocks.

Soushitsu no Girei is thus not a must-read by Matsumoto. Not that I was expecting it to be one, but while it had a few points I did find interesting, I think the overall book is not remarkable enough to really warrant a recommendation, especially not if you're mostly reading this blog because you want to hear more about puzzle-plot focused mystery fiction. Oh well, I guess I was just reading this book only because it was set at Jindaiji, and at the very least, the book did exactly that!

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張『喪失の儀礼』

Deadline for Murder

“They always gives me bath salts," complained Nobby. "And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can't think why, 'cos it's not as if I hardly ever has a bath. You'd think they'd take the hint, wouldn't you?”

"Hogfather"

Matsumoto Seichou is best known as the main figure of the shakai-ha (social school) movement, a post-war school of Japanese mystery fiction that places emphasis on the social backgrounds of crimes, which is usually often juxtaposed against honkaku orthodox puzzle plot mysteries. It is commonly said that Matsumoto's success was what led to the decline in popularity of the puzzle plot mystery in Japan starting the fifties, which would only be turned around in the second half of the eighties with The Decagon House Murders and other novels that explicitly markes a return to the puzzle plot. There are Matsumoto works I enjoy a lot, like Ten to Sen (Points & Lines) and its sequel Jikan no Shuuzoku, which are books that focus much more on the puzzle plot, but in general, I don't really have much fun with the books where Matsumoto zooms in on some person who's getting involved with all kinds of company politics and eventually finds themselves, often due to circumstances beyond their control, forced to commit some kind of crime. This is just a personal preference, and the reason why you don't see Matsumoto often on this blog here, even if by all standards, he's an important figure in Japanese mystery fiction: he just doesn't write the type of crime novels I like to read.

Baiu to Seiyouburo ("The Rain Season and A Western Bath Tub" 1971) is a somewhat minor work in Matsumoto's long list of books, and I think it's perhaps the best example of a book that, thematically, might be interesting to a lot of readers, but I personally didn't really like the book very much because it has an interesting mystery idea deep, deep within the book, but it's nearly undetectable due to the focus on the set-up, characterization and focus on social issues. It is a work which in a way, symbolizes how I have experienced Matsumoto's stories until now, all within one single novel. This book starts with an introduction of Kanezaki Gisuke, owner of a sake brewery with political aspirations. He also owns a local newspaper, where he voices very harsh criticisms on the achievements of the current people in power in Mizuo City, though he is willing to drop hot stories if these people agree to contribute "advertisement money" to his newspaper. Eventually, Gisuke manages to get himself elected into the city council, as part of the same political party as those in charge now, but he belongs to the minority faction within the party, so he is currently trying to turn things around within his own party and get "his" people elected and chosen into the major positions in Mizuo City. Because of his current political responsibilities, he has decided to hire a new man to help run his newspaper. Doi Genzou was initially a slow-witted man who could barely write two sentences worth reading, but under the guidance of Gisuke, he's become a well-known figure in Mizuo City now as the "face" of the newspaper, focusing on stories that are of course critical of the people running Mizuo City now, while praising the exploits of that brave city council member Gisuke. With Genzou as his new editor-in-chief, Gisuke also has more time to persue an affair with a woman in a different town in the prefecture, which is a popular tourist destination. But as the months pass by, Gisuke slowly sees things slipping out of his control, from his aspirations within the party to the political alignment of his own newspaper and the agenda of his once-loyal pawn Genzou, and this culminates a murder that only seems to benefit Gisuke, but he has an alibi for the time of the murder...

And a few moments later, the book ends.

This book is twenty-two chapters long. The first nineteen chapters, focus on Gisuke's life, how he starts his newspaper, how he decides to hire Genzou and train him, Gisuke getting elected in the city council, starting an affair, trying to play the political game, things going not the way he wants.... and then a dead body is discovered lying somewhere in an alley by the police at the start of chapter 20, an unnatural death for which only Gisuke seems to have a motive, but he also has an alibi for the time of the murder. As you can guess, the book rushes towards the end as there are only twenty-two chapters. It's not hard to guess that it was indeed Gisuke who did it, and that he somehow provided himself with a perfect alibi, but any clever notions the trick has don't really manage to impress because the story moves too fast here. The whole murder and Gisuke's perfect alibi all feel like an afterthought, an epilogue to the nineteen chapter long story of Gisuke's fall and him arriving at the intention to commit a murder. The concept behind how Gisuke managed to create a perfect alibi for himself is actually pretty good, and silly: there are some good clues hidden in the long nineteen chapter-long set-up, but an attentive reader can put the clues together and figure out how Gisuke managed to fabricate that alibi for himself, and it's both memorable (especially if you visualize it) and plotted cleverly. But it all feels underwhelming because this part of the story is dumped on the reader in the last few chapters. The mystery has been presented to the reader for one second when the solution arrives, giving the concept no time to settle or develop in any way. A waste, because the core idea is fun, and could have supported a story as the main focus easily.

So the first nineteen chapters, you are just reading about why Gisuke decided to commit the murder eventually (emphasis on eventually), showing how he first built his political power in Mizuo City by exposing corruption and pointing at the people in power, only to become one of them himself (while still using his own newspaper to leverage his own position). Providing a criminal with a motive is of course not a bad thing by any means, and some might like the detail with which we are shown Gisuke's life, but for me, this is overkill. Nineteen chapters of set-up is just too much, and even though there are hints and clues pertaining to the murder/Gisuke's trick hidden in this first section, hiding one or two (good) clues in a section nineteen chapters long is not very difficult of course. Readers who like chracterization more than the puzzle aspect of crime fiction, will probably love this book though as it certainly does a very thorough job of "preparing" Gisuke's mental state for the murder, but it doesn't work for me at all. The reverse (three chapters for set-up, nineteen about solving the crime) would have been my personal preference.

I won't say Baiu to Seiyouburo is a bad novel: but I can safely say it is not the type of mystery novel I enjoy. It focuses more on the aspects I don't care much about, and far less on the aspects I do care about, resulting in the type of novel that seems to me to symbolize Matsumoto Seichou's work. Which, if you like Matsumoto Seichou's work in general, is probably a sign you should read this book, because it does what Matsumoto does pretty well, really delving into Gisuke's state of mind, but I think it comes at the cost of elements that I personally enjoy more.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張『梅雨と西洋風呂』

The Clue in the Antique Trunk

We are all rowing the boat of fate
The waves keep on comin' and we can't escape

"Life is Like a Boat" (Rie Fu)

To be honest, if I were to fish something out of the canals of Amsterdam, I wouldn't be expecting anything good in the first place...

It was a late August day in 1965, when a child noticed a suitcase floating in the canal of the Jacob van Lennepkade in Amsterdam. The men around lift the suitcase out of the water, but to the great shock of them, the smell and color from the suitcase immediately them it's no treasure they found, and they immediately notify the police. The contents of the suitcase are determined to be the torso of a man: the hands and legs are missing, as is the victim's head. It's obviously a murder and Inspector van Berkum is put on the case. While the hands and face of the corpse are missing, clues like clothing and the brand name of the suitcase suggest a Japanese link, leading to a search for a missing Japanese male. This man is eventually found in Belgium, where a businessman Sakazaki, who recently arrived in Brussels as his trading company's European local man, hasn't been seen since a while by his landlord and other acquaintances. The joint investigation between the Dutch and Belgian police forces isn't going smoothly however, and when the prime suspect dies in a car accident, it seems the case is destined to go unsolved forever. That is until several years later, a Japanese journalist and Dr. Kuma Ukichi make their way to the Netherlands to see if they can clear the name of the prime suspect in Matsumoto Seichou's novella Amsterdam Unga Satsujin Jiken (1969) which was released in Dutch as De Amsterdamse Koffermoord (1979).

This novelette by Matsumoto Seichou, father of the shakaiha movement of realistic, socially aware mystery fiction in Japan, is based on an actual murder case that happened in Amsterdam in 1965, where indeed the body of a Japanese man was discovered, assumed to be the missing Kameda Yutaka. The case was never solved, but the sensational details of the case were of course too good to forget. This novellette by Matsumoto Seichou was written a few years after the case (and he apparently even did fieldwork), but there have been other Japanese mystery writers who found a bloody muse in the case of a Japanese man being cut-up in pieces fished out of the canals of Amsterdam: Arisugawa Alice (Gensou Unga) and Tsumura Shuusuke (Gisou Unga Satsujin Jiken) for example have drawn inspiration from this case too.

Matsumoto's story is clearly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, which it also references. The first half of the story is a relatively dry account of how the body was found, and uses news articles and other sources to explain the efforts of the police investigation. I gather that Matsumoto was sticking relatively close to the actual case here, even if he did change the names of the people mentioned. Like with Marie Roget, the idea is that while the 'appearances' of the case may have been changed for the story (small details, names etc.), the important details of the tale are left as they are and that the story is thus like a thought experiment. In the second half, the duo of the narrator (a business journalist) and Dr. Kuma Ukichi are introduced, who travel to the Netherlands and Belgium on behalf of the deceased suspect, hoping to bring a new light to the case.

Which, unsurprisingly, they do (it wouldn't be much of a detective story, right?). Don't expect a mindblowing reveal based on long chains of deduction with a labyrinthine puzzle plot, because that's precisely what Matsumoto didn't like, but the story does a good job of presenting a story that can, more or less, be deduced beforehand. Most of the important information is presented in the dry accounts of the first half, and while the narrator and Dr. Kuma ask around a bit after their arrival in Europe, the attentive reader can definitely make an educated guess as to the truth behind the Japanese torso. Matsumoto makes clever use of contradicting news reports here to string the reader along, while it gives an interesting answer to one of the biggest hurdles of the investigation: why was the body decapitated and were both hands cut off, while the at the other hand, the murderer didn't seem very occupied with the idea of really hiding the victim's identity considering the suitcase and clothes. The answer Matsumoto provides is believable, but has just enough of the romanticism a mystery story should have.

The Dutch volume De Amsterdamse Koffermoord features three other short stories by Matsumoto by the way (one of them Kao, Matsumoto's debut story), while in Japan, this story was bundled together with Saint Andrews no Jiken ("The Incident at St. Andrews").

I do confess that my own interest in Amsterdam Unga Satsujin Jiken derives for 90% from the fact it's a story by a famous Japanese mystery author, about a case that happened here in the Netherlands. The case happened long before I was born and I have never ever heard anyone talk about it in any other context, so I guess I'd never even have known about the real case if not for this story, so it's interesting read in that aspect. It has a novelty aspect to it, and the story, while nothing phenomenal, is interesting enough if you happen to have an hour go read.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張『アムステルダム運河殺人事件』

Double Death

ざわめき Cry 大空へ飛び立つように時を通り抜ける

哀しい位ささやか　淡い記憶　やさしくそそぐ光

「Nostalgia」（Garnet Crow）

Noisy cry / Jump in the blue sky like you're passing through time

A memory so faint and small it's sad / The light gently pouring in

"Nostalgia" (Garnet Crow)

Every year, I try to return to Fukuoka, even if it's only a fictional version...

The dead man and woman lying on the beach of Kashiihama in Fukuoka seemed like a clear-cut case for the local police at first sight. Considering how neatly they were lying next to each other, a double suicide seemed like a reasonable conclusion. However, the deceased man was a ministry official who been the target of a large-scale corruption investigation back in the capital Tokyo, and fact is that his superiors can breathe a lot easier now they know he's dead and can't talk anymore. Detective Mihara of the Metropolis Police Department can't believe the man committed suicide and suspects someone set him as a scapegoat, while detective Torigai of the Fukuoka police too suspects the apparant love suicide might hide something more sinister. The trail eventually leads to a certain suspect, but there is one major problem: the suspect must have been in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyushu on the night of the double suicide, but he has an iron-clad alibi that puts him all the way in the northen outskirts of the country, in Hokkaido that night! Can Mihara and Torigai break this unbreakable alibi in the 1958 film Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines")?

The movie Ten to Sen is based on the first full-length novel written by Matsumoto Seichou with the same title. Matsumoto is best known as the main figure in the shakai-ha (social school) movement, a school in mystery fiction that places emphasis on the social backgrounds of crimes, and is often juxtaposed against honkaku orthodox puzzle plot mysteries. And while his first novel does include shakai-ha elements (the corruption scandal that lies at the heart of the case), it's also a classic alibi-deconstruction puzzle plot mystery in the spirit of Freeman Wills Crofts. The book ranked in 6th in the 2013 edition of the Tozai Mystery Best 100, making it one of the most respected Japanese mystery novels of all time. And speaking of time: the original novel must have been incredibly succesful from the beginning. For the original book was serialized between 1957 - 1958, and the film was released only a few months later in 1958!

The film follows the book quite faithfully, so what you get is a classic puzzle plot mystery about a detective attempting to break an alibi that seems perfect, as his one suspect was on the other side of the country. The story is definitely a bit outdated now, and a lot of modern readers will probably think the main trick seem obviously simple, but imagine yourself in Japan in the late sixties, and you might understand why it was more impressive back then. And even then: the mystery plot has much more than that. The story interestingly enough makes use of actual time schedules from 1957, resulting in one of the more famous "moments" in Japanese mystery fiction, often referred to as the "Four Minutes At Tokyo Station": you'll have to watch the film or read the book to get it. The short story Yonpun wa Mijikasugiru by Arisugawa Alice has a nice meta-discussion about the topic by the way). Anyway, if you like Crofts, I think you'll enjoy this film too. That said though, the film is fairly short at 85 minutes, so while it handles everything in the book, it goes really fast, so you'll need to pay attention, or else you'll miss the connections between the scenes. An additional ten, fifteen minutes would've done wonders for this film.

I'm not too familiar with older Japanese films, so I knew few of the actors, but I was surprised to see Takamine Mieko in a major role: she also played big roles in Ichikawa Kon's film adaptations of the Kindaichi Kousuke novels in the 70s (Inugami Matsuko in Inugamike no Ichizoku and Higashikouji Takako in Jooubachi). Main actor Minami Hiroshi on the other hand had only just debuted as an actor two films earlier, and his stilted acting creates some unintentional comedy: the way he suddenly decides the man in front of him is suspicious is hilariously odd, making him seem delusional.

Ten to Sen, as a story, is definitely a precursor to the travel mystery genre championed by Nishimura Kyoutarou, where travelling and domestic tourism becomes an integral part of the mystery story. The visual medium of the Ten to Sen film obviously strengthens this concept of travelling, as we actually see the police detectives travelling to Fukuoka, Tokyo and Hokkaido. An advantage of this film having been produced around the same period as the original book's publication is that everything looks exactly like'd you'd expect. Recreating the past through proper art design is of course a thing in TV drama, but nothing beats the real thing, right?

I have mentioned this countless of times, but I have lived in Kashiihama, Fukuoka during my studies there, my dorm being located about five minutes away from the crime scene in the opening. The presence of two stations nearby, JR Kyushu Kashii Station and Nishitetsu Kashii Station, plays an important role in the story, as the movements of the dead couple become the focus of investigation. It's pretty odd that those two stations are so close to each other (basically the same street), and the way it's described in the novel shows that Matsumoto really knew what he was talking about, as he ingenously incorporated the two stations in his story. I remember I myself got on the wrong line when I first lived there, arriving at a different Kashii station than the one I had expected. While the film was not filmed at location, the set was nearly identical to the actual Kashii Stations, if we compare old photographs of the stations to how they are portrayed in the film. By the way, the current building of Nishitetsu Kashii Station is moved slightly to the back compared to the original one, so they planted a cherry blossom tree at the place where the original building stood to commemorate it. It is called the Seichou Cherry Blossom as a reference to Ten to Sen, which made the station famous.

The film Ten to Sen is thus a faithful adaptation of the book, which really benefits from actually being produced in the same time the book was written in the first place. The main story about an unbreakable alibi is still a classic tale of mystery, even if it's a bit outdated nowadays. The film suffers slightly from its short runtime, with the story developing at a high pace, but it's an atmospheric, entertaining adaptation. There's also a two-part TV drama adaptation from 2007 by the way, starring Beat Takeshi, which in general has been lauded as a great adaptation too, as it's supposed to have done a great job at recreating the late 1950s atmosphere.

Original Japanese title(s): 『点と線』

Back in Time

"So how did you make the connection with the 8:13 which left six minutes earlier?"

- "Oh, er, simple! I caught the 7:16 Football Special arriving at Swindon at 8:09."

"But the 7:16 Football Special only stops at Swindon on alternate Saturdays."

"Yes, surely you mean the Holidaymaker Special."

- "Oh, yes! How daft of me. Of course, I came on the Holidaymaker Special calling at Bedford, Colmworth, Fen Dinon, Sutton, Wallington and Gillingham."

"That's Sundays only!"

"The Railway Sketch" (Monty Python)

When discussing mystery fiction, there are some which you can categorize without major problems, but some which cannot. For example, most people don't bother if you tell him a certain novel is a locked room problem. In fact, many readers want to read locked room mysteries, so they want to know beforehand what a mystery novel is about. On the other hand, you'd hardly want to beforehand that a certain novel features an unreliable narrator, because that gives away the whole trick right away. That's why I do have tags for things like impossible situations or locked rooms but not for narrative tricks. But with alibi deconstruction stories, you have roughly two sets. For some mysteries, you don't want to know that an alibi trick has been used, because it's part of the magic the murderer pulled off. He is safe because nobody suspects he faked his alibi. On the other hand, you have alibi deconstruction stories that often go hand-in-hand with the inverted form: we know whodunit, we know that he used an alibi trick, but now to find out how he pulled it off. With these stories, knowing beforehand that it's an alibi deconstructing story does not lessen the pleasure, I think. But because the spoil-factor can differ greatly per story, I decided not to use a dedicated 'alibi' tag for reviews featuring such a plot.

I am not a big fan of Matsumoto Seichou, the father of the social school (shakaiha) of mystery fiction, per se, but I absolutely love his first novel Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines", 1958). Partly because part of the story is set in a place where I lived for a year, but also because it's a darn fine alibi-deconstructing mystery. Over fifty years since its release, it is still regarded as one of the best Japanese mystery stories of all time. Jikan no Shuuzoku ("Customs of Time", 1962) is the sequel, set four years after Points and Lines. The murder on the editor-in-chief of a transport magazine in the resorts of Sagamiko, Kanagawa sets police detective Mihara Kiichi on the trail of a taxi company owner Mineoka Shuuichi. This man however has an ironclad alibi: in the night the murder took place in Kanagawa, Mineoka was all the way in Kitakyushu, attending the annual Mekari Shinji at Mekari Shrine. The photographs he took of the ritual and more show he was indeed there on that night. But Mihara thinks Mineoka's alibi a bit too well prepared and together with his collegue and old friend Torigai Juutarou of the Fukuoka Police Department, the duo once again tackle a seemingly perfect alibi.

I didn't even know that Points and Lines had a sequel until a few weeks before I read Jikan no Shuuzoku. And in the time between I ordered the book and it being delivered, I thought, why is there a sequel? Points and Lines was a great alibi-cracking story and I liked the main characters, Mihara Kiichi, the diligent and fast-thinking detective from Tokyo and Torigai Juutarou, the wise and experienced cop from Fukuoka, but why reuse the idea of an alibi trick set between Tokyo and Fukuoka, why use these cops again? I read a lot of series novels, but I wasn't sure whether I wanted to see Mihara and Torigai again, in a story similar to Points and Lines. I guess I was somewhere scared to see Matsumoto just going for quick cash by writing a book in title a sequel to his bestseller. With these doubts, I turned over the (strangely realistic) cover of the pocket and started reading.

And I was sucked into Jikan no Shuuzoku pretty much the moment it started.

The set-up is very similar to Points and Lines: a murder at one side of the country and a perfect alibi showing the suspect was on the other side of the country, a very sober and meticulous investigation into the movements of the suspect, many many dead ends and the final solution. Jikan no Shuuzoku resembles its predecessor a bit too much at times, but luckily, the main puzzle is quite different. Jikan no Shuuzoku is all about the photographs Mineoka took on the night as his alibi and I can tell you, the solution is probably not as simple as you might think. I have to admit, the moment I read it was about photographs, I thought I had guessed the solution, but Mineoka soon proved my theory wrong. So I went to my next theory. But that wasn't possible either and Mineoka was still safe. And then a third time. And a fourth time. Seldom have I been played so skilfully by a criminal in a detective novel! Every time I, and protagonists Mihara and Torigai, came up with a theory, it turned out to be wrong. Like trying to play chess with someone who was infinitely better than me. A minor point I do want to raise is that the trick is a bit outdated, similar to how the main trick of Points and Lines misses the impact it no doubt had when it was first published. Jikan no Shuuzoku's alibi trick involved some knowledge that was probably common back then, but mostly forgotten now. Of course, that's not a real fault against the story, which was awesome, but still, one should keep it in mind. But overall, Jikan no Shuuzoku is a great alibi-deconstructing story, just like Points and Lines.

A TV special of Jikan no Shuuzoku was broadcast earlt 2014 (with the always strong Kinami Haruka!), but it was quite different from the original story. The setting was changed to contemporary times and I already noted the novel's trick is outdated, so the main alibi trick was also changed quite a bit for the TV special. Personally, I thought the special was a bit of a disappointment. Much of the original's charm comes from the fact the distance Sagamiko - Kitakyushu was so immense back in the day, which made the alibi trick hard to crack, but nowadays the world is much smaller not only because of faster modes of transportation, but also mobile phones and the internet.

In my review of Points and Lines, I mentioned that I had been told that the novel was like a Freeman Wills Crofts novel. I had not read Crofts at the time, but I have now, especially the last few weeks. And yes, Points and Lines and Jikan no Shuuzoku share a lot with Crofts' Inspector French stories. From the sober writing and protagonist detective, to the carefully constructed alibi tricks and the way the plot keeps surprising you with new discoveries and developments, one can find many similarities and I'd recommend readers of Crofts to take a look at Points and Lines (and Jikan no Shuuzoku, if you can read Japanese) and vice versa.

If I had to choose though, I would say that Points and Lines was better than Jikan no Shuuzoku. The latter is not bad, far from it, but Points and Lines just has that edge. The distance between the alleged alibi and the crime scene is further and what's more, it has a more memorable moment with the infamous "Four Minutes" at Tokyo Station (readers of Points and Lines will know what four minutes!). Jikan no Shuuzoku has no such miraculous event and that's quite a shame actually. In Points and Lines, the almost impossible Four Minutes gave a reason for the police to start suspecting the criminal, while in Jikan no Shuuzoku, Lieutenant Mihara only starts doubting Mineoka's alibi because it seems so good. There was absolutely no reason for Mihara to suspect Mineoka of the murder other than his instinct. Which turned out to be right, but still...

Anyway, Matsumoto Seichou's Jikan no Shuuzoku is a very solid alibi deconstructing mystery. It is a bit dated though, but still, a good detective story is a good detective story, no matter when or where it was written, and no matter when or where it is read.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張　『時間の習俗』

Forever my Destiny

途中で放り投げないように　私らしく行こう

望み続けた場所で生きているんだから 

『氷の上に立つように』　（小松未歩）

I will go on as myself so I won't toss them aside halfway through

Because I am living in the place I had been hoping for　

"Like Standing on Ice" (Komatsu Miho) 

You know what, all of my other posts on works written by Matsumoto Seichou started with me talking about the shakai-ha (social school) of detective fiction already, so let's skip that for a change.

The award-winning 1974 movie Suna no Utsuwa ("Vessel of Sand", also known as The Castle of Sand) is based on the same-titled novel by Matsumoto Seichou (available in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates), directed by Nomura Yoshitarou. The police procedural starts with the discovery of a murdered man on some railtracks in Tokyo: some matches in the coat of the victim quickly brings Inspector Imanishi to a little bar, where the people remember having seen the victim with another, unknown man. They don't know who the two men were, nor where they came from, but they remember one little phrase that was said between the duo: kameda. With kameda as his only clue, Imanishi starts his investigation into the identity of the victim, which will bring him all across Japan.

The English translation of the original nove, Inspector Imanishi Investigates, was the first Matsumoto Seichou novel I ever read and I had quite some expectations for it, considering its reputation and its place in the canon of Japanese detective fiction. I was however quite disappointed by the second half of the book (with a ridiculous murder method that came out of nowhere), and I never felt really positive about the book in general. So what about this movie adaptation?

To start with the conclusion, I quite liked it. It was a lot better than the original novel (they changed that ridiculous second half murder!) and I can definitely understand why Suna no Utsuwa is considered one of the best mystery films of Japan.

The first two-thirds of the movie offer a great police procedural, where we follow Imanishi on his long journey to the truth. The story builds on post-war social changes like urban migration, but also (socio-)linguistic migration and dialects, fields that probably didn't interested me when I originally read the book, but I have done research on Japanese dialects and sociolinguistics in the meantime, so I actually loved it this time. The investigation is admittedly a bit slow and at times, and while not as bad as in the original novel, the story is only able to move forwards by sheer coincidence and luck, but it is definitely fun watching Imanishi slowly, but surely zeroing on the truth.

The movie is also fun to watch (in the meaning of a visual activity), because there are some great shots of the main island of Japan: Imanishi travels a lot all across Japan with the train, following every little hint he has, and we as the viewer are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of that. Like Matsumoto Seichou's phenomenal Ten to Sen (Points and Lines), traveling by train plays a large part in this story, and it's great to actually be able to see it happen on the screen. In the same sense, the movie is also great to listen to: especially when the plot brings up Japanese dialects and accents; it's one thing to read it (and even more confusing, read it in an English translation), but to actually hear it...

The last hour of the movie is quite different from the original novel however. At this point, Imanishi has already solved the case, and he needs to explain the case once again in full, including the motive, to his fellow officers. What follows is a heartbreaking montage of the poor, cruel history of the murderer and what drove him to the murder, accompanied by the fantastic track Shukumei (destiny), effectively making the murderer one of the saddest persons in Japan's fictional crime history.... But only in the movie. In the novel, he only gets like six pages or so. Nomura Yoshitarou's emphasis on the murderer's backstory would later prove to be so influential, that a later TV adaptation of Suna no Utsuwa actually dropped the mystery-aspect of the story, and making it be all about the history of the murderer!

As a shakai-ha (social school) detective story, a theme strongly advocated by Matsumoto Seichou, the movie Suna no Utsuwa is a lot more powerful than the original novel, and in fact better than anything I've actually read by him. But I have to admit that it does feel a bit too heavy, and maybe a bit forced: about eighty minutes of the movie are spent doing a police procedural, and the remaining hour a very thorough explanation of the murderer's motives. Sad as they may be, it does make Suna no Utsuwa is a long movie though, clocking in at 143 minutes and the sudden change in tone halfway through does feel a bit strange.

Overall, I think Suna no Utsuwa is a great movie though. It might have gone slightly overboard with the tears and sadness and all in the second half, but I would say that Suna no Utsuwa surpasses the original novel at all points and definitely recommend watching this movie over reading the book. And that's not something I say often.

Original Japanese title(s):  松本清張（原）　『砂の器』

Death on the Moor

 「なんだったら、僕が手伝うよ」

「 ありがとう。でも、初めは自分でやってみるわ。ほら、シャーロック・ホームズだって、なんでも自分でやるでしょ。ワトスンはただそばにいて、うろうろするだけだわ」

『高校殺人事件』

"I'll help you if it's OK with you"

"Thanks, but I want try it by myself first. You know, Sherlock Holmes also did everything himself. Watson was just hanging around doing nothing"

"High School Murder Case"

I already mentioned it in my review of Matsumoto Seichou's Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines"): I am not particularly a fan of his writings. I love Ten to Sen, but that is sadly enough only one of the few orthodox detectives Matsumoto wrote, as Matsumoto became famous as the pioneer of the shakai-ha (social school) that dominated the Japanese detective novel market until the late 80s. It might be a fantastic movement if you're into police proceduals and (relatively) realistic depictions of post-war Japanese society, but I prefer the locked room murder in the haunted mansion.

So I was not sure what to think about Koukou Satsujin Jiken ("High School Murder Case"). It was recommended by someone at the Mystery Club as an interesting juvenile detective novel. Which in itself was quite surprising, as I didn't even know that Matsumoto Seichou wrote juvenile fiction. Even more surprising was the fact that Koukou Satsujin Jiken was also supposed to be an orthodox detective novel! As such, this novel was very different from most of Matsumoto's works and when I came across the book for a mere 105 yen at my local bookstore, I thought I might as well take the chance. Originally serialized under the title of Akai Tsuki ("Red Moon") between 1959-1960, the story is set at the Musashino plains (Tokyo). We are first introduced to the high school student Konishi, nicknamed Noppo. Noppo would have been simply be characterized as a gothic nowadays, with his love for writing dark and edgy poems that are about despair, death and everything nice. And one day, he is found dead, strangled and thrown into a pond in the forest. Together with another dead body. The narrator Yajima and Noppo's other friends feel compelled to avenge Noppo's death and start an investigation into who killed Noppo and why.

The first thing I thought: wow, the narrator talks in a rather non-juvenile way. No juvenile talks like that nowadays and to be honest, I doubt that high school students in 1959 talked like this. I mean, I am aware that language changes and that especially youth language is very fast with changes, but all of the characteristics of the narrator's speech pattern are what is nowadays considered characteristics of elderly men in fiction. Did it really change this much in 40~60 years? It was really distracting at any rate and it certainly didn't feel like a young narrator telling me the story. The narration is also very dry and it was harder to get through the book than I had expected.

But to get more into the contents: it is very clear that this was a serialized story. Some parts are repeated over and over (explaining what happened earlier in the story), which really should have been edited in the final version. Matsumoto also seems to have written this story without a real outline, as he makes things up just as he goes. The result? A bland adventure story about how a boy goes out suspecting mysterious people who keep popping up for no particular reason until his supersmart cousin comes to solve the case in no time. The reader probably already solved the case 100 pages earlier, as there is absolutely nothing surprising to the plot. Oh, also note that Noppo's other friends have practically no function in the story and are highly inter-changeable. You'd wonder why Matsumoto bothered to give them all names and tried to give them personalities in the first chapter, when they are treated as one single entity (THE FRIENDS) the second chapter on.

Koukou Satsujin Jiken probably kinda worked as a juvenile detective novel when it was published. Kinda. But then you remember that you could also be reading Rampo's Shounen Tantei Dan or something like that and you realise how much Koukou Satsujin Jiken fails. The novel lacks a youthful, a playful heart. It misses the fun the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club novels have for example. Which are incidentally also set in Musashino. This is really Matsumoto Seichou trying to write a juvenile detective novel. Which at least in this time and age does not feel as a juvenile novel.

You know what, I don't even feel like writing more about Koukou Satsujin Jiken. It's really not worth the read. I'll just keep on re-reading Ten to Sen over and over again (oh, and I happened to have finally bought a Japanese copy of Ten to Sen, which features photos of the important locations of the story :3)

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張　『高校殺人事件』

Two Stations in Kashii

「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 lived in Kashiihama, Fukuoka for a year. I was 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』

「なんじゃこりゃ」

"On the main railway line to Kagoshima there is a small station called Kashii, three stops before the city of Hakata. From the station, the road inland, in the direction of the mountains, leads to Kashii Shrine; in the opposite direction, it goes down to the seashore from where Hakata harbor can be seen. 

Directly in front of the beach a narrow strip of land called Umi no Nakamichi extends in the sea like a sash, and at the end of it the island of Shika appears to float on the water. Off to the left lies the island of Noko, barely visible in the misy dis-tance. It is an exceptionally beautiful spot.

The stretch of seashore is called Kashii Bay. In olden times it was known as Kashii Inlet. In those days Otomo no Tabito, a government offical, was inspired by this same scene to compose the poem that appears in the manyoshu, a famous eight century anthology:

At low tide though our sleeves may

get wet, let us hunt

after sea herbs for breakfast in 

Kashii Bay."

"Points and Lines"

While there is a noticable gap in English translation of Japanese detective fiction, Matsumoto Seichou is one of the few authors who is relatively 'known' outside of Japan. Several of his books have been translated to English and reviewers always seem to be quite enthousiastic about his writing-style, praising his realistic depiction of the Japanese post-war society, the tension between classes and the workings of the Japanese justice system. Matsumoto is the starting point of the so-called shakai-ha ("social school") of Japanese detective fiction, a post-war movement that moved away from the fantastic plots found in orthodox Golden Age fiction, towards crime novels set in contemporary times, addressing contemporary (social) problems. Gonda (1993) (see the attic) quotes Matsumoto saying "[I] want to take detective novels outside the "haunted house"". Matsumoto was not a full-time crime writer by the way, but he's mostly remembered for being the whole starting point of the dominant post-war movement in detective fiction till the 80's. Which is kinda understandable.

And I don't really like it. I want imaginative plots and tricks!  I want a locked room, an intricate alibi trick, headless bodies and ancient curses! In fact, of all the Matsumoto novels I read until now, the only one I truly liked was Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines"). And I'll admit it's partly because the murder scene is set in Kashiihama, Fukuoka. See introducing quote. But it is a decent detective novel on its own, though I can imagine very well the solution is rather bland in this time-and-age. The trick doesn't age well.

So why did I buy the short story collection Kao? I'd like to know that myself. I think it had something to with 2009 being Matsumoto's 100th birthday (he is dead though). As he was from Kita-Kyuushuu, his books and movies were promoted quite heavily that time all over Fukuokan bookstores. Or at least, in the bookstore across my dorm. And it had won the Japanese Detective Writers Assocation Price! And it was released in the cool black-cover Japanese Detective Writers Assocation Price winners series, of which actually features great novels and secondary literature. So I kinda got swept away by the promotion. But note that while I bought the book in 2009, I've only read it now.

The short story Kao ("Face") starts the collection and is one of Matsumoto's most famous stories. It tells the story of a young stage actor, who is slowly getting more popular. He gets gigs in movies and before he knows it, he is seen as the next rising star of the silver screen. The problem is... he doesn't want his face to get known all over Japan. Or more exactly, he doesn't want to show his face to one specific person. Ishioka. Ishioka is the only witness who saw him that fateful day many years ago, when he was in the train with a girl he killed. Ishioka is the only person alive who can connect him to the murder. So he decides what every murderer would do, he tries to kill the witness. It is pretty decent as a thriller and I enjoyed it on that level, but I have no idea why Matsumoto won a price for detective novels with it.

Satsui ("Murderous Intent") is also rather disappointing. Here a judge examines the court records of a certain poisoning case. But what initially looks like a howdunnit, ends in a whydunnit. Which kinda took me by surprise. All my musings about how the poison was administred or who did it were pretty useless, as a bit for the finale the judge kinda decides rather arbitrary what the solution is and then asks himself the question why. The motive is not an original one though and while you might say it is interesting looking at it from the whole Japanese post-war economic miracle society angle, I won't.

Naze "seizu" ga hiraiteitaka ("Why was it opened at "star chart"?) is slightly more orthodox. A teacher was found dead in his study by his wife. The man had a weak heart from the start and had just come back home after several days of hunger strike at school, so there was nothing unnatural to his death, but because of his involvement with the strike, the police decides to look in things more thoroughly, just to be save. It seems the man was looking something up in his encyclopedia when he died, and the book is still opened at "star charts". Does it has anything to do with his death? Yes, it does and I guess the solution isn't too bad, but Matsumoto really had trouble making the problem relevant. The way the police suddenly decided that the open book had a) to be a clue and that b) it was intentionally opened at "star charts" was just weird.

My favorite story of the collection is Hansha ("Reflection"),  an inversed crime story very much like Edogawa Rampo's Shinri Shiken ("The Psychological Test"). A man comes up with 'the perfect plan' to kill his lover, steal her money and hide it where the police won't find it. To be exactly, in a bank. To be even more exactly, at several banks. In different accounts. And it works, the police somewhat suspects him, but they have no decisive proof nor any clue of where the money is. But like the protagonist in Edogawa Rampo's story, this man might have been too smart for his own good. And also like Edogawa Rampo's story, this is a good story, which I enjoyed very much. It was the only one in this collection though.

Shichou Shisu ("Death of the Mayor") is a bit like Naze "seizu" ga hiraiteitaka, in the sense that it is kinda like an orthodox detective story, only written more blandly and not particularly original. The mayor of a small town and several members of the town council were on a business trip in Tokyo, but on the way back, the mayor said he had somewhere to go and took a different train. Much later, the mayor is found dead in a small hotel in a town far away. Why did the mayor go there? I could say something about confusion casued by the war, the opening of the country due to economic prosperity or something like that, but I'll just say that the solution is a neat, simple one and more interesting than the story itself. It's not really original like I said earlier, but I have to admit I fell for it.

There was nothing to fell for in Harikomi (Stake Out) though, as this was .... I'm not sure what kind of story this is. Was there something? Anything? Like the titles suggest, the story is about a stake out of a woman, who used to be the lover of a wanted man. He is on the run, but the police suspect he might go look for his old lover. The woman is married now, lives in Kyuushuu and has several children. So the Tokyo police send a man to keep an eye on her. What follows is a long description of her daily routine, the wanted man showing up and taking the woman on a bus and the police capturing their man. The end. Maybe the twist was that there was no twist. Maybe I should focus on the working woman in post-war Japanese society as depicted here. Maybe I should really stop with reading Matsumoto.

Ah well, at least I got this over with.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張 『顔』,「顔」/「殺意」/「なぜ「星図」が開いていたか」/「反射」/「市長死す」/「張込み」