A Fashionable Way to Die

"Manners. Maketh. Man."

"Kingsman: The Secret Service" 

Went to a very busy but small ramen restaurant in Kouenji once. It was run by an elderly man who did everything by himself, and it was very busy at the time, so when a group took its time to pack up and leave their table I could hear the owner grunt an angry "hurry up and leave" under his breath which was kinda funny but also scary. That's my Kouenji memory.

Kirigaya Kyousuke runs a small tailor shop in Kouenji, though his main occupation is being a kind of broker: he matches specific tailoring demands with the pop-and-mom kind of small-scale, expert tailors who are still to be found here and there, but not by the general shopping audience. While he is a tailor himself too, he's also an expert in artistic anatomy: while knowledge of anatomy is of course necessary for a dressmaker, Kirigaya's knowledge also works the other way around: his observations of the fit of clothes have in the past allowed him to make deductions about the wearer too. Sometimes, this is not appreciated, as him recognizing the signs of domestic violence only led to exaggerated denials and the victim feeling in fear, while recently, he recognized the signs of Parkinson's early via the gait of a friend's wife. He does realize he might sometimes be seen as someone meddling with other people's business, so he tries to keep it down. However, his expert attention is caught when the police ask for assistance in an unsolved case on television: ten years ago, a dead girl was found in an empty flat, having been hit hard on the head. She was only found weeks after her demise, and the police never managed to identify the victim. Now the police have released pictures of the dress the girl was wearing, and it absolutely awes Kirigaya: the fabric features a very unsual, retro design and the custom pattern of the dress is impeccable, revealing the designer was someone who had perfect knowledge of how the human body moves. But would it have been normal for a girl of the victim's age to be wearing such a vintage dress? Kirigaya also consults with Koharu, a young woman running a vintage clothing shop down the street, who immediately recognizes the design style of the fabric as "Atomic." The two wonder how a young girl, around her early teens, could remain unidentified for ten years: what about her parents, or classmates, her school? The two, feeling sorry for this girl forgotten by time, decide to pool their expertise in tailoring to help the Jane Doe in Kawase Nanao's 2017 novel Vintage Girl - Shitateya Tantei Kirigaya Kyousuke ("Vintage Girl - Dressmaker Detective Kirigaya Kyousuke").

Kawase Nanao is a fashion designer for children's clothing who started writing books in 2007. She became a finalist for both the Edogawa Rampo Award and the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, and eventually won the 57th instalment of the Edogawa Rampo Award. She has remained doing freelance design work while focusing on her writing career, and unsurprisingly, she has incorporated her expert knowledge topic in her books,which is of course very obvious in Vintage Girl, which is all about tailoring and fashion.

Vintage Girl, on paper, sounds like a rather cozy experience, with its focus on clothes, and Kirigaya even takes care of a stray cat in his shop so what more do you want? Surprisingly though, Vintage Girl can be quite dark: the investigation into the death of the young, anonymous girl reveals some horrible truths and the characters involved often have to shed a tear once they realize what events led to such a young girl dying in such a lonely manner, abandoned in a flat and not found for weeks. It is an emotional quest, especially as Kirigaya already has experience with trying to use his deductive skills to help young children who were being abused, but he never managed to help them before despite his efforts. Now his skills are used, perhaps, too late, but he still thinks it's his mission to at least bestow a name, an identity to the poor victim in her death.

The investigation that unfolds within the pages of Vintage Girl is not a fair-play mystery like the ones I usually discuss here though. It is very much a systematic procedural, where Kirigaya and Haruka have to dig up every detail for the very few clues they have, being the clothes the victim wore. Kirigaya manages to get a little bit more information from the police after making a creepily accurate portrait of the victim, based solely on the fit of the clothes, the reported age range of the victim and her age and length: while they at first suspect Kirigaya might even be involved in the murder himself because of the uncanny accuracy of his portrait of the victim, it's soon proven Kirigaya couldn't have been the murderer, so with that, Kirigaya and Haruka get a better look at the clothes, which soon reveals many strange details: the design of the dress is excellent, but why is the actual stitchwork clumsy and uneven? Why would a young girl have worn such an odd, retro design dress ten years ago? If it was her style, you'd think she'd have made an impression on the people in her vicinity, who would definitely have identified her when her murder was first reported ten years ago. In fact, a girl with such a unique sense in fashion would definitely not have "disappeared" without anyone noticing, so how come the victim still hasn't been identified? Other details of the dress, like the buttons, also offer interesting ways to commence an investigation.

It is here where author Kawase displays her knowledge of fashion: each trail is intricately connected to fashion history, from how certain fabric designs were imported to Japan to an examination of how small tailors survive in today's economy and a look into certain rare vintage trends. Kawase uses the book's plot to give little interesting glimpses in these specific parts of Japanese fashion industry, and I certainly find them more captivating than a look into "popular fashion history". But again, these trails are only usuable as clues to Kirigaya due to his specific knowledge of fashion (history), and there's no way the general reader can arrive at the truth without Kirigaya's guiding deductions that bring them from one point to another. Still, it's definitely an interesting subject to design a tale of mystery around, certainly not seen very often in Japanese mystery fiction, so it wins originality points there, and it's all brought in an interesting manner.

The mystery surrounding the unknown dead girl also finds its basis within specifics of Japanese culture, making it very much social school-aligned: people who enjoy the social commentary found in books like The Devotion of Suspect X, The Vessel of Sand (AKA Inspector Imanishi Investigates) and other such novels that incorporate social problems into their mysteries will find a lot to like here. While crying. For the story Kirigaya unveils to the reader, is truly tragic, and the realization the simple act of allowing Kirigaya to finally give a name to the anonymous victim is still one of the most hopeful things to occur within this book, is rather devastating.

As you can guess, Vintage Girl - Shitateya Tantei Kirigaya Kyousuke is certainly not reallly like the puzzle-focused mystery novels I usually read. Its methods invoke Inspector French in a way, with its eye for detail, but the subject matter of old fashion trends in Japan is highly original, and that alone kept me interested, even if I'm not interested in fashion in general. For those interested in a character-based mystery that not only focuses on retro fashion, but also the shortcomings of Japanese society, this is a book that will be right up your alley.

Original Japanese title(s):  川瀬七緒『ヴィンテージガール 仕立屋探偵 桐ヶ谷京介』

The Four-Headed Dragon

One little soldier boy left all alone; 

He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

"And Then There Were None"

Great cover!

Kubinohara is a tiny rural village in the cold north of Gunma Prefecture. It is rumoured to have once been the hiding place of soldiers-on-the-run in the Genpei War in the late twelfth century and houses two temples despite its small size. The Kouzuki family has been the most prominent family in the village for ages, with Kouzuki Eiichi being the 17th head of the family currently. His daughter Aya is finally getting married at age 27 and her circle of old childhood friends, most of them who have moved to larger cities for work, have all returned to Kubinohara to celebrate the joyful occassion. The girls of course have a lot to talk about on the day before the wedding, and they are all scheduled to stay at the very spacious Kouzuki manor, which because of renovations and extensions can easily hold so many guests while also housing three generations of Kouzuki members: from Aya and her younger sister, to their parents and even her grandmother Ichino. 

After a long day of catching up and preparing for the important event tomorrow, Aya excuses herself as she tries out her dress in a room, while her friends all retreat to their respective rooms, have a chat with Ichino or have a bath, all remaining in the old wing. When Aya doesn't appear anymore however, they go check up on her.... only to find her decapitated body! The local police, of course not experienced in such murders, quickly have support from the prefectural headquarters come down to investigate the murder on the daughter of the prominent family. Because no footprints are found in the garden leading away from the house and because Ichino herself had been in a position to keep an eye on the hallway connecting the old and new wings of the house, suspicion soon falls on Aya's friends, as they were the only people in the old wing with Aya. However, none of them have Aya's head in their possession, clearing them of the murder for the moment. Aya's head is later discovered at the offering box at the nearby Dragon Kneeling Temple, almost like how they used to display the heads of criminals who had been decapitated. Aya's death however was only the beginning, as more of her friends are decapitated too, with their heads each time ending up being displayed at the temple. Who is this killer and why are they after the heads of these childhood friends in Kojima Masaki's Ryuu no Tera no Sarashikubi ("The Heads on Display at the Temple of Dragons, 2011)?

Kojima Masaki is an author I haven't discussed before. His publishing history is quite interesting: he had a few short stories first published in Shimada Souji-related anthologies and then made his debut in 2005 with the book Ten ni Kaeru Fune ("The Boat Returning to Heaven"), which he co-authored with Shimada Souji. That book would also be the first work in a series featuring the amateur detective Ebihara Kouichi, who is also the detective in Ryuu no Tera no Sarashikubi. Kojima's second book followed in 2008, which also featured Ebihara, but this time the book was credited to Kojima alone, and since then, he has written nearly ten of them. The Ebihara Kouichi novels are very much inspired by Yokomizo Seishi and Mitsuda Shinzou's work, featuring isolated rural communities as settings with local legends/beliefs that act as a core for the gruesome murders that follow. Ryuu no Tera no Sarashikubi is no exception to that: in this novel, Ebihara Kouchi is hired by Kouzuki Ichino to investigate the murder on her granddaughter. It happens that one of the police detectives investigating the case is Hamanaka Kouhei, who is actually a relation to Aya, as his grandmother is a sister of Ichino. She forces Kouhei to leak information to Ebihara and while Kouhei initially refuses, he can't really go against his great aunt and he soon finds himself reluctantly feeding all the police findings to Ebihara, who however proves himself indeed to be the one to find light in the darkness.

The book actually starts with a prologue set in the past, where we learn a young Aya, as the heir of the leading family of the small community, was pretty much a bully who ordered the other girls around. We learn that because of her doing, one of her "friends" has a motive for wanting her and the other girls dead once they're adult, but the reader is not informed as to who this person is. As I mentioned, I had never read anything by Masaki before, but he's sometimes referred to as an author who tries to stuff too much in his novels: I can definitely see some of that in Ryuu no Tera no Sarashikubi: a lot happens in this rather thick book, with multiple murders and also mysteries revolving how the cut-off heads end up at the temple, and then more mysteries regarding the history of the Dragon Kneeling Temple and there's of course the puzzle of how the unknown "victim" of Aya's bullying in the prologue is precisely connected to the current murders. While Masaki does keep the plot fairly focused, not all elements are developed as strongly as others, with some parts of the mystery sometimes ending up significantly weaker than others. The riddles surrounding the first death (Aya's death) are developed in a great way for example, from how the head was spirited away from the house, to the clues indicating how it was done, the clues pointing at the culprit and the set-up of how it was all accomplished in the first place. There are a lot of moving pieces in this "set piece" of the novel, but Kojima plots the whole thing in a very competent manner and it's very satisfying to hear Ebihara reconstruct the murderer's movement in this segment. Compare that to a later mystery, where witnesses see the body of a murder victim appear out of nowhere at the temple, and there the whole set-up is just barely believable, as you'd think very few witnesses indeed would've been fooled by such a trick.

Generally though, I did like the book and I think readers who like Yokomizo's work will find a lot to enjoy in Ryuu no Tera no Sarashikubi. The book can be pretty dark at times by the way, and interestingly enough, it's Ebihara who functions as a comic relief character, as his interactions with Kouhei (and Ichino) are often quite funny, while the rest of the book focuses on these gruesome murders and the investigation into this circle of friends slowly breaking apart not only because of the deaths, but also because underlying dynamics and interpersonal history that had been festering for two decades are finally exposed because of these murders. The conclusion is full of twists and turns that more often than not reveal rather nasty revelations about what led to these murders in the first place. Kojima has some good surprises hidden in this segment too, with some seemingly obvious facts being proven to be completely wrong assumptions that have been hiding the truth up until then and it really makes you eager to read until the very end, because as the reader, you're just never really sure whether Kojima has more twists waiting or not. Again, I don't think everything is executed perfectly and sometimes the connections feel a bit forced, but I do like what Kojima's going for and most of it works as intended.

The Ebihara Kouichi series has been released by several publishers and not all have the books have seen re-releases. I believe most of them are now available as e-books, but Ryuu no Tera no Sarashikubi is one of those books that only has a physical release at the moment, and it has also only been released as a hardcover release. I happened to come across this book, which is why I started with this book even though this book was released around the halfway point of the series. But my interest has certainly been piqued now, so I will definitely read more by Kojima.

It's not something that affects the story by the way, but the chapter cover page of this book has a very weird mistake, where it features a completely different chapter title than the one actually printed in the table of contents and in the margins of the pages of said chapter. The title features a term not from this book, so it's not even a chapter title that was changed between drafts, it's genuinely a title that comes out of nowhere.  

Anyway, as a first encounter with Kojima's work, I did enjoy Ryuu no Tera no Sarashikubi. It is obviously whose works serve as an inspiration for the Ebihara Kouichi series, but Kojima's book does stand on its own and while not every trick and set piece is as strong as another, the overall product is a pretty solid mystery story that excels especially in atmosphere. It was certainly enough to make me interested in the other books in the series, and most of them are more easily found than this book, so expect more reviews of this series in the future.

Original Japanese title(s):  小島正樹『龍の寺の晒し首』

In Search of the Black Rose

With bony hands I hold my partner, 

on soulless feet we cross the floor

"Grim Fandango" 

Phew, was I glad to hear this was getting a normal re-release, because all those facsimile re-releases are rather pricey... 

Aku Naoto is an amateur detective who's friends with Saikawa Shinji, a cameraman who works for a local television station. He's usually teamed up with director Gamou Takumi, who loves the occult and often creates original programs where they investigated haunted houses and other cursed locations, much to the horror of Saikawa, as he really doesn't like ghosts. When he and Gamou recently went location scouting and stayed for the night at a haunted place, Saikawa swears a ghost tried to strangle him, making him even more reluctant to do these kinds of jobs. That is why he has asked Aku to come along as his "assistant cameraman" on the next job. Their next job is at the Curious Crooked Castle, a Japanese-style castle that stands crooked and which until a few years ago was open to the public as a kind of amusement park/wunderkammer, but after a mysterious suicide happening in one of the rooms, it has remained closed. The room where the suicide happened, with creepy paintings hanging from the wall, is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a fallen soldier. Director Gamou is to stay a night in the room to see if there's a ghost there, but Saikawa is afraid Gamou will ask him to stay in the room too, so Aku's supposed to take his place if that were too happen. They have already made all the arrangements for the shoot with Houjou, the owner of the house, who happens to be the uncle of one of the writers on the team, who are all coming along too. Another important member of the team is Kuro, a beautiful high school student who dresses completely in black. She has psychic powers and she's to act as the spirit medium to detect if there's anything supernatural going on in the Crooked Castle. Oddly, the very first thing she says to Aku is: "Do you like scissors?"

After the crew's arrival, Houjou and his secretary show the crew the castle, which has four "exhibition" rooms, which feature paintings, but also a collection of curiosities like a mannequin which might or might not feature real human hair and also a basement with a dried-up well. The team prepares for the midnight shooting of the stay in the suicide room, but there's still quite some time, so everybody goes about their own business, until they realize Gamou's been gone for a while, even though he was just supposed to check out the suicide room. They find the room bolted from the inside and there's no reply coming from inside. Houjou's secretary brings out her beloved chainsaw to break the door open, and inside they find... a decapitated Houjou. A storm prevents the police from arriving at the scene, but Aku quickly deduces who the culprit is anyway, but why would that person want to kill Gamou? That is the great mystery in Asukabe Katsunori's Kuro to Ai ("Black & Love, 2010).

By now it should be a familiar story, as I have repeated a few times over the last two years. Asukabe Katsunori was an author who was mostly active in the first decade of the 2000s, but after that first period, the books stopped coming, and with that, his earlier books also became difficult to obtain, slowly earning him the status of a cult author. However, a few years ago, bookshops Shosen and Horindo started putting out limited facsimile releases of his out-of-print works and the facsimile release Datenshi Goumonkei ("Torture of the Fallen Angels" 2008) in particular was a notable event, gathering a lot of attention. Since then, publishers have been re-releasing a lot of Asukabe's books from their catalogues that had previously been out-of-print for over a decade, like Lamia Gyakusatsu ("Lamia Massacre"). Leonardo no Chinmoku and today's book, which got a new re-release in 2026, sixteen years after its original release. Renewed awareness of his work has also led to Asukabe's return to writing and he has published at least two new books in 2025 and 2026 by the time this review is posted.

Interestingly, the murder mystery I described above only makes up half of the narrative of Kuro to Ai. The decapitation murder in the locked room in the castle takes up a bit more than the first fifth of the entire novel, which ends with Aku announcing they've solved the murder. The book however then jumps back in time and focuses on... the killer. The story is told from their perspective and set several months before the murder. The culprit turns out to be working at a school library, with the television writing being a side job, and it is at this school the culprit first encounters Kuro: she transferred a while ago to this school and stands out not only because of her beauty, but also because she doesn't wear the school uniform, but a black uniform, which is supposedly from her previous school. The question "Do you like scissors?" is asked to the killer too, who is immediately smitten by Kuro's mysterious attitude. They very quickly become completely obsessed with Kuro, following her after school to her home and wanting Kuro all for themselves, becoming jealous everytime they see Kuro interacting with two friends. Kuro seems to have developed some kind of liking to the librarian too and even invites them to her "death birthday", but when one of Kuro's friends says Kuro shouldn't, the killer becomes nearly insane, ready to kill that friend right there for interfering with their and Kuro's relation. The obsession becomes worse and worse as the killer sneaks into Kuro's house and discovers a horrible secret Kuro and her two friends have been hiding in a refrigerator there. However, nothing the killer does to attract Kuro's attention works out as planned and slowly but surely, things develop in a way that makes murder the only solution...

This obsession with a beautiful young woman/teenager is definitely a huge part of Asukabe's novels by the way, being a recurring theme in several of his works. These women are usually independent, enigmatic and also have an element of weakness, attracting the attention of men their own age as well of those well above theirs, who want to "protect" the woman and have her alone for themselves. Of the Asukabe's works I've read until now, I think he managed to portray this obsession the best in this book, as so much of the narrative is dedicated to such an obsessed mind: in other books, we often follow a character who is also interested in the girl, but doesn't become as obssessed at the one here, and we usually also have more things to think about while reading those narratives, while here we have a whole part dedicated just to this obsession.

Anyway, the account leading up to the murder is not really a mystery per se (even if it has a few unexplained parts that involve a mystery), though it will plant some clues necessary for the solution of the locked room murder in the castle. What this part is, however, is a truly creepy account of someone who is soon revealed to be a bit unstable at the very least, and who completely loses it once they become enthralled by Kuro, wanting her for themselves and obsessing every single secound about her. The portrayal of this obsession is genuinely unsettling, and can feel both unrealistic and realistic at the same time: it's weird how quickly the killer becomes obsessed with Kuro and how everything starts to revolve around how to improve their link to Kuro, culminating into the murder on Gamou, but at the same time, you probably have to be at least a little bit insane to become an obsessive stalker. This account is definitely the highlight of the book by the way: not that the actual murder in the castle is bad, but the way we see the killer go down the path of insanity is absolutely captivating, not in the least because the object of their obsession, Kuro, is such a mysterious figure, someone who is always dressed in black, asks people whether they like scissors, who celebrates her "death" birthday. The way the account includes foreshadowing/hints that help build up the story's finale is great too, for example when the killer learns about an impossible disappearance from a basement cell in the Curious Crooked Castle. 

After this examination of the killer, the narrative jumps back to the present, where we learn Aku has already finished explaining exactly how the killer managed to decapitate Gamou in a locked room and how that method allowed them to identify the killer, who has been put in a cell in the basement until the police arrives. Things however escalate from this point on: more characters present in the castle are revealed to have hidden agendas which they hope to execute before the police arrive, while Aku's solution is also shown to not be completely right, leading to more twists and turns awaiting in the last third of the novel. The reader who has read more of Asukabe's work might not be surprised by now, but the climax does become fantasy/science-fiction-esque at times, though I guess you could squint your eyes and handwave those parts away as "it was meant metaphorically", though going by Asukabe's other books, it's definitely meant to be fantasy. Your mileage might vary on how well you'll like this part of the book: I have to say I'm not a very big fan of it in general, but by now I've learned to accept it as a part of Asukabe's work. One of the characters in Kuro to Ai is also heavily hinted to be the same character from another novel by Asukabe by the way, but revealing the exact character would probably be spoilers, especially considering what they do here...

Anyway, as for the actual murder mystery, I am not really a huge fan of the actual mechanics of the locked room murder: the trick is acceptable, but it's simply of the type I don't really like. What works better is how this trick is then used to utilize the Queen deduction method of elimination to identify the culprit: Asukabe does here that could almost feel like cheating, but I think he did a great job at setting the twist up with proper clewing, and it's an interesting way to play with the elimination method of deduction. The clues hidden in the killer's account turn out to be quite well-placed, challenging you to identify mirroring elements in both the past and present narratives even if they apply to different situations. The base concept is not something that is very surprising, perhaps, but Asukabe's execution is done really well. There is a secondary mystery about two impossible disappearances from a locked cell in the basement of the castle, and the solution here is horrible. I mean that mostly in the sense of "the idea of that happening is just terrifying", though the actual solution itself is also rather ridiculous. Its sillyness only works here because by then, the book starts to show omens of the fantasy/science-fiction-esque climax.

Kuro to Ai is definitely one of the strongest Asukabes I've read until now, and certainly stronger as a mystery novel, and as a "horror" novel, compared to the two books by him I reviewed before this one. The book presents an alright locked room murder mystery, but it's definitely the look into the killer's obsessed mind that makes this book a great read, especially once you realize how it all also connects to the actual mystery later on. His first novel, Junkyou Catherine Sharin ("The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine's Wheel" AKA The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine.) is still relatively "normal", so in terms of length and contents, I think Kuro to Ai might be the most accessible work by Asukabe that gives the reader a good idea of what he does best: other books tend to be much longer or otherwise less well developed as this one. 

Original Japanese title(s): 飛鳥部勝則『黒と愛』