For those interested in the guess-the-culprit games as mentioed below, creative members of the Honkaku Discord venture each month to present a guess-the-culprit scenario to their fellow members, challenging them to solve their puzzle. Come have a look in the server if you want to try solving such a scenario yourself, or if you want to write one!
The first story in the collection is the title story, Yokochou no Meitantei ("The Great Detective of the Backstreets"), a story by Niki Etsuko and originally released in 1972. The story interestingly consists only out of dialogue between the characters (so no narration) and with the historical setting, it reminds of a rakugo play. The story seems to be set in the Edo period and starts with the discovery of a theft in a small village, so they go to the retired elder to ask him for help. A paper craftsman had finished a scroll for a client and was on his way to deliver the valuable goods when nature called. He placed the package on a rainwater bucket on the corner so he could relieve himself in the bushes, but when he came back, he found the package gone, and no sign of any thief, though there were other peddlers and salesmen walking in the vicinity, who are all called upon to testify who they saw around the time of the theft. The story is fairly amusing to read due to all the merchants chiming in, but the main mystery is simple in design, as you basically only need to identify a certain lie, though to do that, you do need to combine information from various people and the basis for pointing out the lie, is well hidden. There's not really a "trick" here done by the culprit, just the need to find out how the testiminonies of all people fit assuming everyone but the culprit tells the truth. Very decent start.
Alibi Fuseiritsu ("No Alibi", 1973) is a story by Ishizawa Eitarou, a writer I do intend to write more of because his main series is about a police detective in Fukuoka, where I once lived. Alibi Fuseiritsu too is set in that city and starts with police detective Wakumoto receiving a phone call at the police station who says Akama Gouzou is dead, and that's lying in the apartment building next to the police station. Akama Gouzou was the name a real estate swindler had adopted. He had been deceiving people by first befriending people and then offering to sell them land for a cheap price: people handed him all their savings for the dream of purchasing some land to build their own house on it. The police had been investigating Akama already, but someone got to him first, and it's likely the murderer is one of the four people who were deceived by him and had already been trying to track him down after Akama started to lay low. The police had already interviewed them earlier for the swindling case, but the four are visited once again to ask them about their alibis for the murder. However, it turns out none of them have one: each of them claims that they received a call that night by someone purporting to be someone else in the group, with the claim they had found Akama and that they'd all meet at a certain spot to catch Akama and hand him over to the police. However, the calls were fake and they had all been sent to a different lonely spot in Fukuoka, leaving them all without alibis. It seems obvious the murderer orchestrated this so nobody would have a clear alibi for the murder, so how is the reader supposed to find the murderer? Well, based on the clues of course. This is a story that has a great conclusion, but the clues actually pointing to the murderer aren't all as clever as presented. It follows the Queen tradition of having to identify a few characteristics which apply to the murder, but some of those conditions presented in the story are rather questionable, like saying people working in certain professions wouldn't know about something, while that something isn't even something that is exclusive to a profession. Other clues are better and as I said, I do like the idea of what Ishizawa was going for.
Tatsumi Masaaki is a critic of the genre, who has written one serialized novel (which has not seen a collected release) and a handful of short stories. Umoreta Satsui ("Buried Malice") is one of those short stories and deals with an interesting problem. Yajima Tarou is an amateur detective who is asked by Handa Shinzou, a friend of his father, to assist with a problem. Handa and Sone Tamio are both looking for the son of Furuyagi Denjirou: before World War II, the Furuyagi Company was a well-known sales firm and Sone Tamio had joined the firm in his twenties. He became Denjirou's promising disciple, but business didn't go well right after the war, so it was decided to dissolve the firm for now, letting go of all the employees but Sone and Denjirou and his wife retreating to a mountain village. Sone became gravely ill just as Denjirou's wife gave birth to a child. Not wanting to be a burden, Sone gave up his position, allowing himself time to recover at a friend's place while Denjirou and his wife would go back to the city to try and start the business again. Later, Sone learnt Denjirou and his wife had passed away soon afterwards. Sone had been given the business contacts and a full recommendation by Denjirou in case he might not make it, so later on, Sone managed to set-up his own business as a successor to the once well-known Furuyagi Company. But then he later heard Denjirou had actually given up his son before he died, and that the son had been brought up by another family. Handa, the family friend of Yajima Tarou, also heard about this, and now Handa and Sone are looking for the son of Denjirou and they even use a television show to ask anyone with information to contact them. But then it turns out two men called, claiming they are the son of Furuyagi Denjirou. When later the midwife who found the adoption family for the baby is also found, they try to have the midwife identify Denjirou's child, but she's killed before she can make the identification.
I think in some way, it's fairly easy to guess who the fake one is based on the set-up of the story, but I do like some of the clues and the logic behind proving that a lot: some of the clues allow for quite some deep logical reasoning, considering the length of the story, but I think the surprise is a bit weakened because you can instinctively guess the solution to the main problem pretty easily even without those otherwise well-planted clues.
Dial 7 was written in 1979 by Awasaka Tsumao and deals with the underworld: Kitaura Shinya, boss of the Kitaura gang is found murdered in his house. As a gangster boss, he of course has many enemies, ranging from enemy gangs to people in his own gang who may have found themselves treated unfairly. The police have more than enough suspects, but can't seem to find any good clues at the crime scene until they notice the murderer must have used the phone after the murder. While the murderer was smart enough to not touch the phone directly, and used a pencil to turn the dial on the phone, the police was able to find out that the murderer called a number that did not use the numbers 8, 9 or 0. However, this was enough for the police to find the murderer. Though modern-day detectives might have problems with solving this mystery. I like the clues and set-up of this story a lot, but even if you know those old-fashioned phones with a dial, you still probably lack certain "common knowledge" information to solve this mystery, as it really isn't common knowledge now anymore. I do think it's a really clever story with subtle hints, that however is really strongly imbedded in the time/setting it was written for.
Sei Valentine Day no Satsujin ("The Murder on Valentine's Day", 1984) is a very short story by Okajima Futari, set at a baking school, where a group of nine students all made a chocolate-based sweet for Valentine's Day. The idea was to judge each other under the watchful eye of a teacher. They would all bring their creation, cover them up and the chocolates would be assigned a number. They'd then draw lots, and each person had to try out the sweet with the number they got and honestly review the sweet. The second person to try a sweet died however, as it turned out the sweet had been poisoned. But when they match the sweets to the creators, it turns out... the victim ate his own poisoned sweet. What happened here? Very short story, so the solution is also very short and simple. Neat idea, not sure if it's really suitable for this format though.
Hitori ja shinenai ("I Won't Die Alone", 1989) was originally written by Nakanishi Tomoaki as a guess-the-culprit scenario for the Kyoto University Mystery Club, but was also reprinted in a literary magazine in 1990 for a special on the Guess-the-Culprit tradition of the Mystery Club, with Ayatsuji Yukito and Norizuki Rintarou acting as the reader's guide. This is a very complex story and revolves around a group of friends, of whom most are either current or graduated members of a high school cooking club who often hang out with each other. Kouichi, a graduate, recently committed suicide, as his girlfriend Remi (a current member of the club) left him for someone else in the club. They still have gatherings where they cook together, but at the first gathering after the funeral, one of the members falls dead after consuming something: the food was poisoned, but the police thinks it's likely not murder, as no murderer could make sure one specific person would consume that food. They suspect it's suicide, but then the same thing happens again at the after-funeral gathering... If it is murder, how is the murderer making sure their intended victim dies? The answer lies in a series of intermezzos for the reader, where the murderer confesses they are just doing things randomly until their truly intended victim dies, but how is that fair to the reader? Well, it's still incredibly fair, with Nakanishi parading some clues very daringly in front of the reader, and yet, it's likely they will miss it. This is a very good example of a great guess-the-criminal story and certainly among the best in this collection. It's a bit long, but there's so much going on, it never bores and in hindsight, you'll see it's a very tightly writte story due to all the clues.
The final story, Tokeikan no Satsujin ("The Clock House Murder", 1990) by Imamura Aya has a somewhat confusing title. Ayatsuji Yukito has indeed written The Clock House Murders, known as Tokeikan no Satsujin in Japanese (disclosure: I translated the book in English!), but while both stories are pronounced the same in Japanese, they are written differently (different kanji). Both are about houses with clock collections though. In the Tokeikan no Satsujin in this anthology, an elderly man who had been many collecting clocks in his house, but his wife, thinking the house is too big for just the two of them, has them reform part of the house so it can function as a boarding house. Two clocks remain in this boarding house, though these clocks give the wrong time, because the owner likes his clocks to be 'free' and not chained to time. Ookuzu Junya, a writer of mystery stories became their first tenant, and since then, he has introduced more industry-related tenants to his landlord, like an editor and critic. The owner's nephew and niece also stay there, resulting in a rather crowded house. One winter evening, after dinner and Ookuzu has retreated upstairs, an editor arrives at the Clock House to visit Ookuzu to pick up a manuscript. When Mariko, story narrator, niece of the landlord and huge mystery buff, goes up to Ookuzu's room, she finds a letter, where Ookuzu says he's sorry he didn't his manuscript and that he will sneak out of the house and return when he's done. However, Ookuzu couldn't have left the house, as there were people in the sitting room (with a view on the entrance door) that whole evening. Ookuzu however is indeed gone. The following morning Mariko and her brother go out to make a snowman, but they find... a dead Ookuzu outside, covered in snow. How did Ookuzu leave the house, and reappear in the garden as a snowman? This is a delightful story: Mariko is so much fun as the snarky narrator badmouthing people as she sets the scene for the mystery. The mystery of how Ookuzu disappeared from his room is simple in essence, but Imamura builds on that simple concept to turn it into something much more complex, with plenty of clues that allow for some deep reasoning. What is also great is that this story also includes a bookending narrative, that adds another meta-layer to the mystery, making this perhaps my favorite of the collection.
So Yokochou no Meitantei - Hanninate Shousetsu Kessakusen is a very solid collection indeed. It collects stories from the late seventies until 1990, so most of the stories are quite a bit older than the Guess-the-Culprit stories I usually read, but some of these are really good, and I think the collection on the whole is worth a read. I have more of these books already purchased by the way, so expect more reviews about these game-like stories in the future too!
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