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』