Cross Purposes

「本当のことを言わねぇのが人間だ」

『羅生門』

 

"It's human to lie."

"Rashomon"

Finished the console original arc Kageboushi (the Answer chapter to Someutsushi) of Higurashi: When They Cry, so added my thoughts on how it involves the main mystery to the memo page for my playthrough of Higurashi: When They Cry. The chapters are only getting longer and longer now and I've been reading Higurashi for over a month now, so I'll probably slow down a bit now, because it does take up a lot of time... I do hope I'll be done with the main story by the time Haru Yukite Retrotica (The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story) releases in May...

There are prolific writers, and then there was Nishimura Kyoutarou. He is a household name in Japan when it comes to mystery fiction, which isn't strange onsidering the massive media output that is associated with his name. His Wikipedia page records nearly 650 books (!!!) And that includes short story collections, so that's even more stories, and anyone who's been in a Japanese bookstore, especially the used bookshops, will probably recall those long, long rows of Nishimura books you'll always find there. But that is not all: there have been countless of adaptations of his work for television, ranging from series to television films and there was a time where you'd find his name every week in the television schedule, as there'd always be a rerun of an old Nishimura Kyoutarou television film somewhere in the early afternoon. Even gamers will know the name, as there have been several games based on his work, especially in the Famicom (NES) era. It's simply impossible to not have heard of Nishimura Kyoutarou if you've been into Japanese mystery fiction somewhere in the last 40, 50 years, and even people with no interest in mystery fiction will know the name: so much has his name become part of "normal" Japanese popular culture. 

The unbelievable quantity of his output of course also influenced the quality of his work:  a lot of those nearly 650 books feel very samey and uninspired. There's a reason why everyone associated Nishimura with Stereotypical Nishimura Kyoutarou Story: a story starring Inspector Totsugawa and his team of detectives like Kame investigating a murder which will require Totsugawa's men to travel by train to a faraway destination and/or the victim/culprit used the train and the detectives have to figure out how the use trains is connected to the murder (alibi tricks etc.). If you do the association game with "Nishimura Kyoutarou", nine out of ten times you'll get "Trains" as the response. But while the bulk of Nishimura Kyoutarou's output is often assumed to be uninspired, by-the-numbers stories that just retell the same ideas in a slightly different way, his earlier output can be quite interesting. Koroshi no Soukyokusen was genuinely fun as an And Then There Were None-inspired novel and the crossover series with Ellery Queen, Maigret, Poirot and Akechi Kogorou is always entertaining.

Nishimura Kyoutarou sadly enough passed away earlier this month at age 91, so I decided to pick up one of his earlier, and better received puzzlers: Shichinin no Shounin ("The Seven Witnesses", 1977) is an Inspector Totsugawa novel, though it feels nothing like a Totsugawa story in terms of set-up. The book opens with Totsugawa waking up with an enormous headache, and he finds himself... in a recreation of a street, built in the middle of a small island. The intersection of two streets has been meticulously recreated here, complete with all the stores (with store inventory), parked cars and apartments. Totsugawa finds seven people who had also been knocked out the previous night and brought here: some of the people actually live or work along this intersection and can even show Totsugawa their rooms or shops, while others don't live here, but they do remember this place: one year ago, a murder took place around midnight at this intersection, and all seven people (besides Totsugawa) were witnesses in that case. Their testimonies eventually put young hoodlum Sasaki Nobuo behind bars: some of the witnesses had seen him have a fight with a fellow customer in a bar, others saw him stab the victim outside on the street with his own knife and yet others saw him flee the scene with the knife and the victim's wallet. It is at that point that an elderly man reveals himself to the eight persons on the island: Sasaki Yuuzou is the father of Nobuo. He had left Nobuo and his mother when Nobuo was young and had been working in Brazil, where he had been succesful, but upon return to Japan last year, he learned his son had died in prison, but that Nobuo had always maintained that he did not commit the murder, despite the testimonies of the seven witnesses. That is why Sasaki used his fortune to meticulously recreate the entire intersection on this small island and abducted the seven witnesses: he truly believes his son had been innocent, so there must be a mistake in the testimonies and he wants the witnesses to go over their own testimonies once again, with Totsugawa acting as a referee. The rifle held by Sasaki leaves the seven witnesses little choice, even though each of them swears their testimonies at the trial were accurate, but Sasaki's done his homework and little by little, he manages to point out little contradictions in each testimony. But while the party is going over the old testimonies, one of them is killed, and because they're all alone on this small island, it is clear that the murderer has to be one of them. 

Someone not content with the original verdict abducting witnesses to do a non-official reexamination/retrial? Yep, that reminded me of Settled Out of Court. Which reminds me I should really read more by Henry Cecil...

Shichinin no Shounin feels nothing like what I would expect from a Totsugawa novel: no trains, instead of an urban setting we have a closed circle situation on a small island and ultimately, Totsugawa can't even do much but look on while Sasaki's forcing everyone go over their testimonies again and pointing out contradictions in their stories. In fact, it wouldn't really take that much of an effort to rewrite this story to leave out Totsugawa's presence. It's definitely not the book I'd tell you to read if you wanted to read a Totsugawa novel, but I'd definitely recommend you to read Shichinin no Shounin if you were interested in Nishimura's more interesting mystery novels, as this one defnitely is one.

With Sasaki and his rifle cross-examining each witness' testimony and slowly poking small holes in each of them, I was of course reminded of Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games while I was reading this book, and I think that is also why I feel the execution of this book doesn't quite match the potential of the premise. The book is set-up in "testimonies", with Sasaki going over each of the seven testionies in turn. So he starts in the bar, where the owner of the bar and another customer saw how Nobuo had been arguing with the later victim and how after the victim left the bar, Nobuo went out too. As Sasaki listens to them, he reveals he had used this year to investigate the witnesses and the exact circumstances of that fateful night, so he then slowly reveals information that contradicts the witnesses' testimonies at specific points, usually not very important on its own, but having consequences for later testimonies. So then he moves on to the next witness (for example, those who saw him leave the bar and go after the victim), rinse and repeat. And the way Sasaki does this is fairly entertaining, pouncing like Columbo on very small points to pull out a bigger revelation. But the problem is: Sasaki is at an advantage here. The reader doesn't learn the new information Sasaki has uncovered, until he reveals it to everyone and confronts the witness with his findings/his suspicions, and Totsugawa too can only listen to whatever theories Sasaki has. Ultimately, Sasaki is proven correct on all his small points, slowly changing the testimonies of each witness, and while seeing this happen is fun, it's a bit frustrating the reader is never allowed to take on the puzzle themselves. You never get a chance to figure out the contradictions yourself because the relevant information isn't given to you beforehand, so all you do is watch Sasaki do all the heavy lifting. The contradictions ultimately are pretty solvable for readers if the relevant information had been presented beforehand in some manner, so it's a shame we never get a chance to solve the thing ourselves, especially as it's quite satisfying to see how all the smaller contradictions add up to something bigger. The type of contradictions and the "difficulty level" is about what you'd expect from one of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, which is exactly why I felt this was a missed opportunity: even with the exact same story and contradictions, the book could have been written in a more interactive way, rather the rather passive mode it now has. This extends to Totsugawa's role in this book, who most of the time is just standing there and listening to Sasaki's theories just like us.

Sasaki is focused on slowly poking holes in the testimonies and trying to find a way to prove his deceased son's innocence, but the witnesses also get a few breaks in between, and it is during one of this breaks, when everybody is somewhere else on the island, one of the witnesses is killed. Obviously, everyone suspects Sasaki did it to get revenge on the witnesses for putting his son behind bars and ultimately "killing" him, but Sasaki denies the crime, and Totsugawa too at least feels there's not nearly enough evidence to implciate Sasaki alone. But they are alone on this island, meaning the murderer must be one of the witnesses then, but why would any of them want to kill another of the witnesses, as the seven people basically don't know each other and only saw each other once, at the trial. It's here Totsugawa finally gets something to do, as he tries to protect Sasaki from the other witnesses, and the other way around. There are some interesting deductions regarding the "current" murderer near the end of the book, like about the motive and the murder weapon used, but there's also a large part of the story that is basically just Totsugawa making wild guesses and the only reason the current murderer is caught in the end is because they decided to react to Totsugawa's baseless accussations rather than just ignoring him, so the ending feels a bit weak/forced, There are some moments where the current murder ties in to the murder one year ago in interesting ways, but the focus is definitely on the past case.

Overall though, I think Shichinin no Shounin is an amusing courtroom drama-style mystery novel in the same vein as 12 Angry Men, Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney or something like Columbo, even if the book is not actually set in the courtroom. Seeing how a lot of smaller contradictions add up to one bigger reveal is always satisfying, and this book is no exception. It's just that I think this book could have been even more fun if the plot had been presented in a more interactive way, allowing the reader some time to contemplate the evidence and figure out the contradictions themselves too, instead of just listening to Sasaki playing the great detective. But still, this was a good early Nishimura novel and one I'd recommend if you'd want to read a detective novel by Nishimura that doesn't feel like just a standard formula.

Original Japanese title(s): 西村京太郎『七人の証人』