Missing a Body?

「どすこい」

『ストリートファイターII』

"Dosukoi"
"Street Fighter II"

I don't know much about sumo, but I remember one time in Fukuoka when there was going to be one of those big annual sumo events there and it became noticably crowdier...

Sometimes you can tell what must've been a driving force in writing a certain work. For example, when a locked room murder trick is so ridiculous and over-the-top, you just know the idea must've come first to the author, and they decided to write it down as a story to have it published. Or an author developed an interest in a certain topic, like a specific period in history, or a certain profession, and decides to write a mystery novel set in that time or setting. Komori Kentarou's Oozumo Satsujin Jiken ("The Grand Sumo Murders") is a 2008 short story collection with interconnected stories, and I can almost imagine how Komori would have been chuckling to himself while writing this novel, as it's basically a parody of the mystery novel, and of sumo wrestling. It makes fun of both mystery fiction and sumo from start to finish, and while I'm sure he likes both topics, he also sure likes to tease the two themes very much and the result is a book that is a bit hard to recommend to "serious" mystery fans, because none of this is really meant to be serious and some of the stories and murder tricks employed here are beyond nonsensical, but it's a short, and often funny read. The opening story introduces us to Mark Hideaway, an American young man who one day appears in Tokyo hoping to enroll in a Japanese university to learn about Japanese culture. But because he doesn't actually know much Japanese, he ends up enrolling into the Chiyoraku sumo wrestling stable by accident (thinking it's a university). While eventually, the misunderstanding is cleared, Mark remains at the small, but famous stable with a long history, because he is actually built for the sport and because he's late for the actual university enrollment period anyway, so he might as well earn some money while waiting for the next period. Satoko, the teenage daughter of the master of the stable, is the only one in the stable who can speak "some" English, so she's appointed as his interpreter for the time being, but Mark's arrival at the Chiyoraku stable is the start of bloody period in the history of sumo wrestling, with sumo wrestlers exploding in the ring, wrestlers being decapitated and cut up in pieces and even an insane serial murder case with over a dozen of sumo wrestlers killed.

While the base idea of an American joining a sumo wrestling stable and him ending up solving cases with a teenager as his sidekick could easily have been used for a "serious" book, it is obvious Oozumo Satsujin Jiken is written as a parody, starting with Mark's very loose Japanese and English leading to him joining the Chiyoraku stable, and then absolutely ridiculous murders occuring from that point on. The first story for example literally has two sumo wrestlers who have an important match explode on live television, one of them belonging to the Chiyoraku stable. The solution is very straightforward and thus it doesn't really make an impact as a mystery story on its own, but the idea of people just suddenly exploding in a sumo ring is just so outrageous, I'm sure at least the set-up of this story will be remembered by many. And I think that is the case for most of the six stories in this book: as mystery stories they are very simple and the solutions often feel very absurd, but the most of them have somewhat memorable set-ups. There's a lot of information on sumo wrestling and the workings of a sumo stable to be learned between the lines which can be interesting, but this book is definitely a parody first, so it should not ever be taken too seriously.

Because these stories just tend to be so short and also not really meant to be super original mystery stories, but more about making fun of the weird premise and just coming up with more and more ways to kill sumo wrestlers, I won't write in length about all the stories included in this collection, as a lot of them feel the same, but to highlight a few: the second story revolves around the discovery of a decapitated wrestler in the bath room of the Chiyoraku stable, with the wrestler who was keeping the fire going for the bath being pointed at as the obvious suspect, as the crime would've been impossible for the others. The solution is one you probably have seen in some form or another elsewhere, though I guess that of all the stories in this book, at least the motive was kinda understandable... Which is less the case with the third story, which is when Mark is starting to get a good series of wins going as Makunotora, but not because of his own doing. For some reason, the wrestlers he's going to fight in the ring all get killed, giving him an automatic win and allowing him to rise in the rankings. Which of course makes him a suspect. The story is absolutely nuts, with Mark's reaction about his scheduled opponents getting killed off in different manners just "Oh, so I am the winner?" and a motive that comes out of nowhere, but I guess it's that crazy set-up that makes this one memorable. There are also stories inspired by Shimada's debut novel The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, involving an "Azoth" of sumo wrestler parts and another inspired by Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but these are all more about the shocking and weird story set-ups and of course many dead wrestlers, rather than about really presenting original mystery takes.

The fourth story, The Locked Room Forbidden for Women is the story that actually first made me aware of this novel. In 2018, there was a real-world incident when a mayor making a speech on the sumo ring suddenly collapsed, and one of the people rushing to administer first aid to the man was a female doctor. The sumo judge however sent the doctor and other people wanting to help away, as women are considered "ritually unclean" to enter the "female" sumo ring, which understandably caused quite a commotion. It was during this commotion I happened to spot people referencing The Locked Room Forbidden for Women from this book. Satoko and a younger wrestler in her father's stable are visiting a newly built stadium with a sumo ring for 'reconnaissance' and run into the female governor debating with other women about the outdated, discriminatory stance regarding women in sumo, not even being allowed to stand in the ring. Later, a sumo judge is found murdered in the middle of the sumo ring in the stadium, which... is somehow a locked room murder, because the three female suspects aren't allowed to enter the ring according to the beliefs, meaning none of them "could" have entered this locked space. The idea of a psychological locked room (as in, it's physically possible to enter/leave but there are psychological/moral/societal limitations) is one that really appeals to me, and knowing they actually send female doctors away from the ring trying to save a man's life in real-life does make it an interesting problem. While the motive is strangely serious compared to most of the other stories, it's still a story that is more memorable based on its set-up rather than the actual solution.

On the whole though, I think Oozumo Satsujin Jiken is a book that is hard to recommend. If you're in the mood, it can be a funny parody of sumo wrestling using a mystery novel's structure, but the comedy is incredibly over the top and often involves... well, sumo wrestlers die left and right, so it's definitely not the book to pick up if you're looking for a logical puzzle-type of story. The stories all have memorable set-ups, but the solutions are never really truly surprising as they often end up variations of ideas you are likely to have seen elsewhere, or just going for a very straightforward explanation and while the book does portray an interesting world of sumo wrestlers and their stables, the parody style kinda undermines it too. So if you're in the mood for a really ridiculous, grotesque parody of the mystery novel and sumo wrestlers, this is the one you want to read and I have to admit, I read it between two "more serious" books so it worked perfectly as a change of breath for me, but I think that if you're not in the mood for this, you're really not going to like this.

Original Japanese title(s): 小森健太郎『大相撲殺人事件』