Outrageous Fortune

Chance chance

Chance Chance

Catch your dream tonight

 

『Chance』（神谷明）

"Chance"(Kamiya Akira)

This is one of those books I got "started on" like three different times, every time reading the same first few pages again and me only really getting into the right mood the last time, but it went pretty fast once I got past that first part.

Disclosure: I translated Yamaguchi Masaya's Death of the Living Dead.

Mystery novelist Hiwatari Miyabi is one day driving along the highway, when there's an explosion at the nearby nuclear powerplant in Komaura. While he is quite some distance away, he can't help be somewhat worried whether he was affected by the leaking radiation, though he does not have himself checked. Three months later, he finds himself visiting a casino with his editor to discuss his planned book. It is the eleventh of September 2011, and they happen to catch the news of the terrorist attack in the United States while at the casino. There Hiwatari notices a man with a distinctive yin-yang-patterned tie, whom he remembers having seen twice before this week while outside, though he doesn't know him. They watch the yin-yang tie man, who is losing money continuously at the craps table: a little person is throwing the dice, but for some reason this man has managed to throw sixes consistently after each other: the other man keeps betting against that, but the double sixes won't stop coming. Baffled by how the little person could've beaten the odds of throwing so many double sixes one after another, Hiwatari hopes to interview the man, but the latter tells him to try another day. Later that night however, Hiwatari spots the yin-yang tie man again outside the casino building, but at that exact moment, the gigantic neon dice on top of the building break off, dropping straight on top of the man... throwing double sixes. That same night, Hiwatari suddenly loses sight in one of his eyes, which might be connected to him being near the nuclear power plant three months ago. Having lost sight in one eye, Hiwatari becomes desperate, as he needs his eyes for his work, but at the same time, he reflects back on the last few days, and realizes he had been witness to a lot of coincidences, culminating in the death of the yin-yang tie man. But was it really all a coincidence? What is coincidence actually? That is the matter of Yamaguchi Masaya's 2002 novel Kiguu ("Coincidentialea").

In the past, I have reviewed Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, Dogura Magura and Kyomu he no Kumotsu, which are known as the sandaikisho, or The Three Great Occult Books, which are considered the pinnacle of the anti-mystery genre in Japan. The three books take on the form of a mystery novel, but at the same time show the limits of the genre, often by taking the genre conventions to the extreme or simply using a detective story as a device to go off on tangents. The term Three Great Occult Books is actually a play on the Four Great Classics from Chinese literature, but give another meaning to the word ki: In Chinese, the same word is used in the context of "outstanding", but in this Japanese instance, the word is used in the meaning of "strange", "occult" or "deviant". Oguri Mushitarou's Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken (1934) for example is in fact Philo Vance on crack, being a "detective story" that uses the murders as an excuse to discuss topics including (but not exclusively) occultism, mysticism, criminology, religions, astrology, astronomy, psychology, heraldry, medicine and cryptography. It basically ridicules the concept of solving crimes based on evidence and logic by presenting incredibly farfetched deductions based on obscure trivia and symbolism of said themes. Yumeno Kyuusaku's Dogura Magura (1935) simply removes a sense of reality, as the protagonist might or might not be a mental patient is presented with contradicting documents, records and accounts about a murder case that might or might not have happened. Finally, Nakai Hideo's Kyomu he no Kumotsu (1964) utterly deconstructs the notion of logical reasoning as a means to arrive at the truth, by having a group of people deduce the most fanciful, yet convincing theories about a death that might not even be a murder, and about a series of hypothethical murders that may or may not happen in the future. All because they think serial murders in faction are fun, so they want the tropes of mystery fiction to apply to real world too. Takemoto Kenji's Hako no Naka no Shitsuraku ("Paradise Lost Inside A Box", 1978) is often considered the fourth book in this series, as it builds on the themes of the aforementioned three books, and it would influence a lot of writers in the shin honkaku movement (of whom most at the time of the publication of this book would just not quite have made it to university yet).

Kiguu is, at least going by the blurb on the back of the book, seen as a fifth book in this series, though there is much less consensus in the mystery world about whether this is the fifth great book, or even whether there is a fifth one in the first place. At any rate, whether one considers it the fifth or not is not really relevant: the matter is that this book at the very least does fit the pattern of the previous mentioned four books, being steeped in anti-mystery themes, and thus being a book that takes on the form of a mystery novel, but isn't really one. So if isn't a mystery novel, what is this book about? Well, I assume it's clear by now: it's about coincidences.

Coincidences and mystery fiction don't really mix well. Van Dine says "The culprit must be determined by logical deductions--not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession", Knox too poses "No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right" and for the most part, most readers of puzzle plot mystery, of mystery novels that are solved through logical reasoning, probably don't like the idea of luck in a mystery novel, as luck or a coincidence aren't topics that allow for logical reasoning. But is that really so? That is the question Yamaguchi asks as he takes the reader on a journey riddled with chance, "the forbidden trope" for mystery fiction, and attempts to tell a mystery story solely about coincidence.

We follow Hiwatari Miyabi as he recounts the many coincidences he has experienced lately, from seeing the same man a few times in one week, to people he gets to know having similar names, to dice falling on the same numbers, or small accidents leading to him bumping into the people he wanted to meet that exact moment. He discusses these coincidences with the many people he meets, from the little person to his editor, his roommate Silphy and a fellow patient at the hospital after he had his eye examined. These discussions on coincidence and luck are the meat of this book, and what this book is really about. The concept of coincidence is discussed in many, many forms, and up to great length, ranging from historical views on coincidence, anecdotes about accidents, philosophical views on coincidence, probability mathematics, synchronicity, quantum theory, yin yang philosophy, and so, so so much more. Yamaguchi basically researched the concept of coincidence from various angles, from social sciences like history and philosophy, to the role of coincidence in "hard" scientific fields, and he shows the reader that in this book. Often, this does lead to really captivating subjects to read about, but personally, I do think very often, the discussions went on far too long, which made this book sometimes a bit tiresome to read. I understand it's probably also intentionally done like that to invoke a certain atmosphere for the book, but I personally would have liked a slightly trimmed down version, for I do think the many ways to look at coincidence are really interesting.

As the book progresses, Hiwatari gets involved with an almost cult-esque organization, and "coincidentally", more people involved with this organization die in seemingly freak accidents. But are they really accidents? While Hiwatari gets more and more entranced by the idea of coincidence, he also can't help but suspect something else might be at play here, especially as a few clues he picked up (...by chance) seem to indicate something might behind all of this after all. This culminates in what is essentially a locked room murder, when two people are found dead in a room that is mostly sealed (the door had been cemented tight, but there was a small ventilation on top of the room, and there was a AC unit). Can this locked room mystery be solved with pure logic, or should Hiwatari somehow just consider the deaths a coincidence? Ultimately though, this locked room murder is of course not the crux of the book: it is just a device to talk about coincidences even more. A few logical solutions are proposed to explain the murders, though physical proof can not be produced now at this stage, but at the same time, how could coincidence then explain how the deaths occured? While we never learn how much is true or not in Kiguu, I do have to say I like the last proposed solution to the locked room mystery in the context of the book. Obviously, coincidence does play a role in this solution, as you can guess from the whole theme of the book, but I genuinely like the set-up to provide for this solution, but it is something you can really only pull off in this book. Memorable however, it certainly is.

Kiguu is certainly a unique read: the book intentionally takes on the challenge of telling a detective story based on coincidence, accidents and luck and the result is a captivating read. It certainly isn't a book you're going to read if you want to read a straighforward, conventional mystery story focusing on logical reasoning, but as a book about coincidence, it's absolutely stunning as the concept of coincidence is examined through so many angles, resulting in a very educative and entertaining read. I do think many of the discussions go on for too long, and while I personally think the locked room murder has a memorable solution, one shouldn't read Kiguu with high expectations for it as a pure mystery story alone. But it's definitely worth a read, and is highly recommended, if you want to try something different for a change.

Original Japanese title(s): 山口雅也『奇偶』