Long Shot

一射入魂

(四字熟語）

One's whole soul into one shot

(Japanese idiom)

Disclosure: I translated Abiko Takemaru's The 8 Mansion Murders. Also: the cover of today's book is amazing (the angle!).

Shinozaki Rin is a high school student who has been practicing the art of kyudo, or Japanese archery, since junior high. She's quite good at the martial art too, but as of late, she feels she might've hit a ceiling in her development cycle. While she trains several times a week in the school's archery club together with the other club members, she has also arranged she can visit the home of the retired teacher Tanahashi for some extra training. Tanahashi, who is an excellent archer herself and who used to be in charge of the school club, has a small private archery dojo built inside her own garden, and while she does not coach Rin anymore, she has allowed Rin to make use of the dojo for an hour or so in the weekend. One day however, Rin arrives at her old teacher's home only to find her path blocked by the police. A man was found dead with an arrow in his chest inside Tanahashi's archery dojo, and it is suspected that Rin's old teacher accidently shot the man when he walked into the dojo from the back door. Rin's knowledge of all the customs of Japanese archery allows her to poke a hole in the police's story and point the finger in the direction of the real murderer, and Rin unwittingly becomes famous a her school as the attractive prodigy archer detective. To Rin however, that's just more noise in her head as she tries to become better at archery in Abiko Takemaru's short story collection Rin no Tsurune ("The Sound of Rin's Bowstring", 2018).

I definitely have a weakness for mystery stories that involve specific fields or professions, and of course utilize those fields to come up with unique mystery plots. Come to think of it, I haven't read many stories that really utilize specific sports in the plot, save for the semi-frequent ones in Detective Conan (which can be both fun and educational). Anyway, I certainly knew very little about kyudo/Japanese archery and I can't think of any mystery story that's really built on that theme, so in any case, Rin no Tsurune wins points with its original subject matter. The specifics of kyudo are explained pretty well in this novel, emphasizing the fact that kyudo isn't 'just about shooting an arrow in the target', but also a highly ceremonial martial art where the spiritual/meditative aspect of the sport is at least as important as being able to aim and shoot.

Rin no Tsurune is both a mystery story and a YA novel, and perhaps it's best mentioned right away that while the book starts off with a fairly strong mystery vibe, this becomes less and less as you progress in the book. The first few stories feature some "classic" mystery situations that involve archery: the first story is about the murder at Tanahashi's home, but there's also a story for example about an expensive bamboo bow which has disappeared from the school dojo even though everyone was there training and the exit was being watched. The solutions to all these "conventional" mysteries involve specifics to kyudo, but it's a shame Abiko's not always playing fair: some deductions are based on facts about kyudo or the circumstances which aren't disclosed to the reader in advance, but only when Rin explains what has happened. So it's unlikely the reader, even if they had the knowledge about Japanese archery, would be able to completely solve these cases, and most of the time, you'll just go "Alright, that makes sense given the information you have just given me but not before". The way Rin deduces in the first story why it's at least unlikely the victim was shot by accident makes absolute sense for example in a logical way, but you'll never be able to guess it if you don't have knowledge about Japanese archery, and even then it's not really solvable, as the physical clue on which the deduction is based isn't explicitly mentioned until Rin does in her explanation.

After the first three stories or so however, the emphasis of the book definitely shifts towards the more conventional young adult novel, with some minor everyday life mysteries. Rin learns how other people see kyudo, she has her own teenager problems with what to do in the future and how she'll give kyodo in place in her life, and we also have semi-funny parts with Nakata of the school's newspaper club, who wants to make a movie about the "prodigy archer detective" Rin and the beautiful captain of the archery club Yuko (semi-funny, I say, because he's basically just stalking two girls with a camera). At this point however, the "mysteries" presented are hardly anything solvable to the reader however, and are more related to the psychology and motivation of the characters ("Why did they do that?"-type of mysteries). Some might enjoy this better than I did, but I was rather disappointed the "classic" type of mysteries were completely gone in this second half of the book.

As a YA sports novel, Rin no Tsurune can definitely entertain though. We follow Rin in her year as she slowly learns more about the sport she already thought she knew, and we see how all the characters all see kyudo in a different manner and want something else from the sport. We even have a tournament, because every sports story needs that!

Rin no Tsurune can perhaps better be described as a YA sports novel, that also has a few episodes featuring a mystery plot, than a mystery story with a sports element in it. I myself would've preferred the latter to be the case to be completely honest, but I did find the book entertaining as a sport comedy-type of story, especially as I knew next to nothing about kyudo before. But yeah, it's not as focused a mystery novel as you would first hope or expect and I wouldn't recommend this one if you're specifically looking for a puzzle plot mystery about Japanese archery.

Original Japanese title(s): 我孫子武丸『凛の弦音』