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』