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』