Thicker Than Water

"Red... White... Blue..."

"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney"

Chin Shunshin was a Taiwanese-Japanese novelist who was born in Kobe, Japan in 1924 and moved to his family's home country of Taiwan after World War II. While he later became a citizen of mainland China, he became a full Japanese national following his criticism regarding the Tiananmen Square deaths. Due to his unique background, he has worked as both a translator and novelist, and many of his novels, both mystery and historical, deal with Chinese or Asian history. He wrote many novels in Japanese, and won several awards with his mystery novels like Edogawa Rampo Award and the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, as well as "general" literature awards like the Naoki Prize and the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize. The man lived a long life by the way, passing away as recent as 2015, but an English translation of 1976 novel Murder in a Peking Studio was released in 1986, but I don't think that many of his works have been translated in general, certainly not his mystery output.

Sanshoku no Ie ("The Tri-Color Building") is a 1962 novel which, if Chin Shunshin Japanese Wikipedia page is complete, should be his second mystery novel. The book starts in 1933, when Tao Zhanwen, a Chinese international student studying law in Japan (who also starred in Chin's debut novel), receives a letter from his former roommate Qiao Shixiu, who some time back moved back to Kobe to his father's marine produce factory and shop. In the letter, Shixiu pleads with Tao Zhanwhen to visit him before he'll return to China, because he's facing a dilemma. His father recently passed away making him the owner of the Tongshuntai Company, but before his father passed away, he took in a young man who was supposed to be Shixiu and his younger sister's older brother. According to his father, he actually had a wife and son whom he left behind when he crossed the sea to Japan, and for some reason, he has welcomed this son to Japan now. Shixiu's 'older brother' of course remained "home" even after their father died, but Shixiu has severe doubts about this man's identity, as his father told him his brother should've grown up in the countryside on a small farm, but from time to time he notices this man isn't the simpleton he pretends to be. And to Shixiu's frustration, he notices his younger sister is quite fond of their new brother. Shixiu wants Tao Zhanwhen, a gifted amateur detective, to visit him in Kobe not only to say farewell before Zhanwhen returns to China, but to figure out whether this man is really his brother. Tao Zhanwhen accepts his friend's invitation to stay for some time at the Tongshuntai Company: a three-storey building with brick walls in different three colors, giving it the name of the Tri-Color Building. The two upper floors are occupied by the living quarters of the Qiao family and the office spaces, but the ground floor is occupied by the marine produce shop and there are also warehouses and open spaces nearby to sun-dry and pack their marine produce to ship away. The neighbours are also marine-related factories and workplaces run by people from Chinese origin, making this a small Chinese part near the Kobe shore, and the various factories/workplaces all share a common backyard.

While Tao Zhanwhen starts familiarizing himself with the family, the employees at the Tongshuntai Company and the neighbors, the head cook of the the Tongshuntai Company goes out on the large rooftop terrace on the third floor (= rooftop of the wider second floor) of the head building, which is usually used to sun-dry all kinds of marine produce. The man was the confidante of Shixiu's father, having been with him since the very beginning, and every day, he loafes around on the terrace or takes a nap there as he only needs to start his work around dusk. During the time the cook's hanging out on the rooftop terrace Tao Zhanwhen and other people hear some noise coming from above, but they don't think much of it, but when later a help goes up to call the cook down, he finds the cook murdered on the rooftop terrace However, as the police investigation develops, it seems there were people hanging around the two entrances to the terrace around the time of the murder, being the door leading back to the third floor into the main bullding, as well as a ladder leading from the rooftop down to the shared backyard, where people had been working. So how did the murderer enter and leave the crime scene unseen? And why was the cook killed and has this something to do with Shixiu's brother?

Yes, there's basically a locked room murder situation here, as the cook was found dead at a spot where witnesses happened to be near the two entrances (exits) of the rooftop terrace. While this is definitely the main mystery of the book, there are other minor mysteries that play a role, like of course the matter of who the brother of Shixiu really is, and there's also some mystery regarding the cook's history with Shixiu's father from before they made it to Japan. Yet, I'd say that as a mystery novel, I wouldn't say Sanshoku no Ie is a must-read. Ultimately, the locked room mystery is a rather recognizable variation on ideas you'll have seen with other authors, even if you hardly read mystery, because there are some really well-known mainstream mystery authors who have used basically the same idea. I wouldn't say Chin Shunshin uses the idea better or worse, but it is very likely you'll have come across the same concept somewhere long before you ever thought of reading Sanshoku no Ie and I myself kinda feared from the start it would go a certain way once the main impossible situation was presented, and unfortunately, my "I hope it's not that because that's a very commonplace trick' ended up as the right one. Perhaps the less cerebral mysteries regarding the brother and the history of the cook and father may be interesting to some, but those parts of the story are more played from a suspense angle.

So is there nothing interesting about Sanshoku no Ie? Well, that's not the case. I do have to admit that the setting was quite unique. As mentioned above, Chin Shunshin himself was born in Kobe, explaining why this book was set in that harbor city, and of course, this whole book is about the Chinese immigrant community in Kobe. And that is quite unique. You'll probably not very often read (Japanese) mystery novels set in Japan, but with a minority as the main cast and as Chin Shunchin grew up in such an environment, you can sense his own experiences growing up in Japan with a non-Japanese background, and these minorities sticking together a lot, like having all these Chinese workshops and factories together and everything helping each other out. I had to think of Ayukawa Tetsuya's debut novel Petrov Jiken (disclosure: I translated Ayukawa's short story collection The Red Locked Room.) because that was set in Dalian in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, a place that doesn't exist anymore, but which did serve as a really unique backdrop for a mystery story.  This book is defnitely about the Chinese community in Kobe, focusing a lot on the character's backgrounds (like how and why they ended up in Japan) and of course how their culture works within the context of the Japanese society they are living in.

So yeah, I'm not super enthusiastic about Sanshoku no Ie. If you're interested in this book because you heard it features a locked room murder mystery, it'd be best to temper those expectations. The book is quite short, and as I mentioned above, the focus on the Chinese immigrant community in a pre-war Japanese society does result in a unique setting and if you're interested in that, the book is certainly worth a read, but don't be too focused on this book on its mystery merits alone. I have a copy of Murder in a Peking Studio too, but I'll probably save that for whenever when I'm the right mood.

Original Japanese title(s): 陳舜臣『三色の家』