I Just Didn't Do It

‘We were thirteen. Some fellow failed at the last minute. We never noticed till just the end of dinner.’

"Lord Edgware Dies"

Anyone seen the movie I Just Didn't Do It? (Soredemo Boku wa Yatteinai). I remember we watched it in class while I was studying in Japan, which was... ages ago.

While there are certainly also merits to analyzing works of fiction as being pieces of art on their own, as completely independent, standalone creations, I always read mystery fiction with the awareness that a certain work is just one part of a larger context, with, ideally, more recent works building on, and going beyond what previous works in the genre have done. The mystery fiction genre has always been a very meta-conscious one, so if you're just going to copy an idea from G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown series for your mystery story in 2020, readers will be aware of that, and will likely take that with them in their final thoughts on the work. Of course, it's impossible for anyone to know all stories that have ever been written, so it's quite possible that a best-selling puzzle plot detective story published in English in 2020 turns out to have the exact plot as a story originally written in Tibet in 1920, only that the latter never manages to gain as much attention due to lack of translations/lack of readers etc. But in general, whenever I read a mystery story, I do tend to compare it to all the stories I have read previously: sometimes elements are used exactly the same, sometimes a story does something surprisingly different with the same basic elements, etc. Especially with popular tropes like the locked room mystery etc., you're usually inclined to see connections between the work in question and other stories. But context also means time: when was a book first published and what was "the normal" back then, and in what way is that utilized in the story? For example, Queen's The Tragedy of X has a pretty famous dying message that probably made more sense back then, but people nowadays are not likely to guess the meaning of that.

Ashibe Taku's Juusanbanme no Baishinin ("The 13th Juror", 1998) is a novel that was ahead of its time, even too much perhaps, in a way: so many elements seem less surprising or innovative now, but it must've been an incredibly original mystery novel when it was first published in 1998. After a short prologue that talks about an unforeseen disaster at a nuclear reactor (yep, long before 2011's Fukushima disaster), the reader is introduced to Takami Ryouichi, a young man without much luck in his life. One day, he's approached by an acquaintance in the publishing world with a very curious offer. This Funai is working on a series of non-fiction documentary novels supervised by none other than the legendary journalist/non-fiction writer Kohinata Akira and they want Ryouichi, aspiring writer himself, to be their writer for their project on miscarriages of justice. They'll fabricate a murder case and frame Ryouichi for the fictional crime. The expectation is that the police and Ministry of Justice will jump on the flimsy falsified evidence pointing to Ryouichi, and when the time's ripe, they'll release the evidence to show how Ryouichi had been framed by the authorities for a crime that never even happened. Ryouichi will then write the book based on his own experiences as a murder suspect. Ryouichi agrees, and undergoes a special medical procedure that will allow them to even fool the police's DNA examination. The "murder" is played out by arranging to have a certain house to be under observation by a third party. They'll make it seem like a woman enters the house, followed by Ryouichi. He'll make a lot of ruckus and leave evidence suggesting a murder and then flee the house. The plan is executed as such and soon after, Ryouichi is paid a visit by the police. But to his great surprise, he's not only being investigated for the fabricated murder, but also for the rape and murder of a woman several months ago: not only did the M.O. of the fabricated murder correspond to the actual murder earlier, Ryouichi's DNA also matched that of the culprit in the rape murder. Ryouichi's utterly confused by this turn of events, as his plans to be falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit, turn to an actual case of being falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit. Luckily for him, the attorney Morie Shunsaku, who happened to be one of the people who had been observing the house, takes an interest in this case and intends to save his client in the courtroom. But Morie must not forget that this trial is different from others: it's also the very first trial with jurors in the region, which means he must play the game differently this time.

Ashibe Taku has a tendency to use his series detective Morie Shunsaku for a variety of story types. You have stories where Morie's like those old master detectives solving crimes in creepy manorsin the middle of nowhere with weird gimmicks like hidden passages, like in Wadokei no Yakata no Satsujin. Young and upcoming reporter/amateur detectives solving impossible crimes? Done that. Historical and bibliomysteries? Yep, got that covered. Great detective versus the great criminal? Yes. Science-fiction mysteries about parallel dimensions? Morie has been there... You'd almost forget that Morie Shunsaku is supposed to be an attorney. In the fifth novel in the series, Morie is finally back to doing his actual job, but in a setting that was ahead of its time. For while Morie's involved in a jury trial in this book, there were no jury trials in Japan in 1998. Japan would introduce the lay judge system in 2009, with the legislation for that being signed in 2004, so it's interesting to see how Ashibe's invention for this novel would come true later on. Note that Ashibe's version of the Juror system is based heavily on the American model, so the workings portrayed in this novel are very different from how they are in real-life now. Ashibe would later write another book where Morie tackles cases involving the real lay ludge system in Japan (Saibanin Houtei) and comparing the system as imagined by Ashibe in today's book, and then how it turned out to be in Saibanin Houtei can be interesting. In this book for example, we have twelve jurors and one professional judge (in the Lay Judge system, it's six lay judges and three professional judges), and the layout of the courtroom as imagined here is also quite different from how it turned out to be.

By the way, the introduction of the Lay Judge system in Japan did lead to an increase of mystery fiction involving jury trials. Besides Ashibe's Saibanin Houtei, I've also discussed the game Yuuzai X Muzai and the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney spin-off novel/guidebook Gyakuten Houtei (and the 2007 game Gyakuten Saiban 4 also handled the Lay Judge system), all published around the same period. By now, mystery stories that do involve jury trials are therefore not rare anymore, but that's what makes Juusanbanme no Baishinin so special, as it was in a way pioneering, with a detective plot that involved jury trials in Japan back in 1998. Like with Ashibe's own Saibanin Houtei but also game Yuuzai X Muzai, there's a strong social school voice to be heard in this work. It's obvious that the author sees trial by jury as an important tool for a working democracy and a necessity to protect the public from political games. 

Anyway, the novel is split in two parts, the first part is where we see Ryouichi prepare for the falsified crime and eventually being prosecuted for an actual crime, while in the second half we have a good old-fashioned courtroom drama with Morie and the prosecutor battling in the courtroom to convince the jury of their respective stances and where of course most of the mystery-solving occurs. The mystery is set-up in such a way that over the course of the various sessions, Morie is able to address several unclear points in the prosecution's view of the events in succession. Some of these parts are perfectly solvable for the reader in classic puzzler fashion, like explaining how the woman vanished from the house under observation, while they did see Ryouichi go in and out of the house. The solution is simple, but fairly clewed. Other parts are a bit too ambitious: as you may guess, Ryouichi's involved with a pretty large conspiracy in order to be in his current situation (a falsified falsified crime) and the scale of the background story reminds more of those social school mystery stories of Matsumoto Seichou with high-ranking government officials scheming things and stuff like that. These elements seldom make for good puzzle plot mysteries: this book is no expection.

And then you get to the part about how Ryouichi's DNA turns out to match a rapist-murderer from a case several months earlier and how the real culprit managed to fool the scientific investigation, and that part is... unsolvable unless you happen to know the trick. Which strangely enough, I did. For you see, I have read two other mystery stories that revolve around the same, fairly obscure, underlying idea, though those stories are more recent than this 1998 book. I assume that in 1998, this was a more surprising, exactly because it explains how DNA investigation also has pitfalls despite its pros, but this critique of DNA investigation is of course less surprising to the modern reader, and in my case, I had already seen the same in other stories, even if they are dated after this book. Still, this part of the mystery remains unfair to the reader, as there's simply no way they are going to guess that based on the little clewing/explanation in the novel: it just requires too much specialistic knowledge. It may be surprising if you haven't come across the underlying idea before (it's not that common, I just happened to have come across it a few times), but it's not like you'll think this was brilliant plotting (though I admit the plotting to support the main idea was okay.

Is Juusanbanme no Baishinin a puzzle plot mystery though? I think that it isn't for a large part, though the aforementioned disappearance from the house definitely is, as well as the conclusion of the trial. Morie's job is of course to save his client from a miscarriage of justice and the clever manner which allows him to do that, is ultimately found within the workings of the juror system as envisioned by Ashibe (so different from the actual Lay Judge system). The clewing is a bit vague, but it works and it does give a good reason for Juusanbanme no Baishinin to actually be a mystery novel about jury trials, rather than a normal courtroom drama based on the actual systems at the time.

Perhaps it's because I read them out of order, but the Morie Shunsaku novels tend to go all kinds of directions in terms of story types, and in Juusanbanme no Baishinin's case, it even has a rather eerie prophetic vibe going on with its criticisms on DNA profiling in police investigations, the introduction of jury trials and even a background event like the nuclear meltdown. It's a novel with a clear vision by the author, but as a mystery story, it's also a bit unfair at times. But as usual with this author's works, there's always something to chew on mentally and as a courtroom drama mystery, it's fairly entertaining.

Original Japanese title(s): 芦辺拓『十三番目の陪審員』