These Names Make Clues

The more that you read, the more things you will know.

"I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!" 

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! 

Last year, I reviewed the anthology Suiri no Jiken Desu ("It's Inference Time", 2024) and earlier this year, I discussed Anata mo Meitantei (AKA What A Great Detective You Are, 2022) and Kibun wa Meitantei ("Feeling Like the Great Detective"). The stories in all these anthologies were designed as guess-the-culprit whodunit puzzels, with the stories clearly divided in a "Problem" part and a "Solution" part: all the necessary clues to solve the problem are presented within the first part of the story, so there's often an explicit Challenge to the Reader between these two parts: "this is a fairly written mystery and you have all the clues at this point, so try and solve it!" As someone who loves the puzzle-ness of mystery fiction, I just can't get enough of these stories, so when I heard publisher Tokyo Sogensha was doing an anthology series collecting past guess-the-culprit stories from various writers, I was of course immediately intrigued. I skipped the first volume (released in August of 2025) for the moment, as I already knew a large number of the stories included, but I decided to pull the trigger on the second volume: Yokochou no Meitantei - Hanninate Shousetsu Kessakusen ("The Great Detective of the Backstreets - The Best Whodunits", 2025), which also has the simple English title The Best Whodunits 2, collects seven stories selected by editor Fukui Kenta, who also wrote the foreword in which he looks at the history of such stories and similar anthologies.

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!

 Original Japanese title(s):　福井健太（編) 『横丁の名探偵　犯人当て小説傑作選』: 仁木悦子「横丁の名探偵」/ 石沢英太郎「アリバイ不成立」/ 巽昌章「埋もれた悪意」/ 泡坂妻夫「ダイヤル７」/ 岡嶋二人「聖バレンタインデーの殺人」/ 中西智明「ひとりじゃ死ねない」/ 今邑彩「時鐘館の殺人 

Circle of Blood

潔くカッコよく生きていこう・・・

たとえ2人離ればなれになっても・・・

take my revolution 

「輪舞 - Revolution」（奥井雅美)

Let's live on bravely and heroically...

Even if the two of us will be seperated...

take my revolution

"Rondo - Revolution" (Okui Masami)

I tried to delay writing this review a couple of times: I just have so little to say about it. I really dislike writing reviews about books I feel somewhat indifferent about. With books I don't like, I can at least point out what I don't like and make comparisons with better examples with similar ideas. With great indifference comes... a great distinct lack of writing hooks. At least in my case.

Getting in the special crimes division had been rookie detective Kominato Shinsuke's wish, so there was much joy when he was appointed there as the subordinate of the veteran Umikata Fusanari. At least, that was until he learned that Umikata was an extremely lazy detective and that Kominato was mainly appointed to him to keep an eye on his boss. So he cherished his free days when he was released from babysitting Umikata, but his day at the horse races turned into a normal working day nonetheless. The man standing behind Kominato in the crowd was stabbed, falling on top of him, making him the first person to "find" the victim. When Umikata arrives at the scene, the veteran quickly recognizes the murder as the handiwork of Tsutsumi, a local gangster he knows. While not a professional assassin, Tsutsumi has committed several murders for his gang and Umikata says there's no need for the police to look for him: the orders for these kind of men are not just to kill their target, but also to confess to the murder with some fake, private motive and do the time for them so the gang won't face any trouble from this. The news that Tsutsumi himself was killed right after the first murder therefore came as a surprise to Umikata, but they quickly figure out who Tsutsumi's murderer is. But then this person is killed too... What lies behind this chain of murders in Awasaka Tsumao's Shisha no Rinbu ("Rondo of the Dead", 1985)?

This is the first of Awasaka's two novels starring the duo of police inspectors Umikata and Kominato, which now I think about it is pretty interesting, as practically all the books I've read by Awasaka up until now featured amateur detectives (EDIT: Yeah, I read this book and wrote this review long before I read Youtou S79-Gou. I shuffled a lot with this review) Well, A Tomoichirou was technically a secret agent of the Tokugawa Shogunate so something like a police officer, but his descendant A Aiichirou is a photographer, and other books featured for example magicians as detectives, or an ex-boxer-turned-financial-detective... I was kinda surprised to see a normal police detective duo as the protagonists. But once you see the banter between Umikata and Kominato, you're quickly reminded that you are indeed reading an Awasaka novel, as the comedic tone is instantly recognizable. In this novel, most of the comedy is derived from the very lazy inspector Umikata and the way he uses his subordinate Kominato. Umikata is actually a fairly competent detective when he puts his mind to it, being capable to make sharp deductions based on the smallest of hints, but he usually prefers the easy way out of things, and would rather have things sort themselves out than having to interfere himself.

We are not presented with an impossible crime or something similar this time, but an enigmatic problem that is featured in both the title of the novel, as well as revealed quite early in the narrative: there is some kind of murder relay going on, with the murderers of one case turning into the victims of the next one. This theory is proposed by Umikata very early on, and most of the novel is therefore not really spent on figuring whodunnit, or even howdunnit, but finding out why this is happening, and how they can stop it. One gripe I have with this novel is that the device of a murder relay is made clear very early on in this book, but there's little extra added to the plot from that point on. Most of the book is seeing how the relay further unfolds with the police as mere onlookers after the fact, so for a very long time, it feels you're reading about events you already knew were coming. As a mystery novel, I think the idea is that the appeal comes from guessing how this relay will eventually end, and Awasaka does play with the conclusion of this game, but on the whole, I'd say Shisha no Rinbu is a better in idea than execution. Whereas his debut novel 11 Mai no Trump was a tour-de-force in clewing, Shisha no Rinbu's clewing is pragmatic at best, as it's boring and hastily done, without properly going through the process of foreshadowing ~ pay-off.

"Simply going through the motions" is not the right way to explain it, but Shisha no Rinbu's plot feels so...bare compared to other Awasaka's novels. The initial idea of the murder relay is definitely alluring, but then it just... happens and there is little there to turn the idea into a real experience. The comedy between Umikata and Kominato is okay, but never as fun as in the A Aiichirou series. The captivating insight into special fields of interests like stage magic or toys as seen in other novels isn't here either. The expect and subtle clewing and foreshadowing that made other novels a delight is nowhere to be seen here. There's just too little in addition to the first idea, and while I wouldn't say Shisha no Rinbu is a bad novel, I have read enough Awasaka by now to know he could do much, much better than here.

And because the overall plot is fairly light, there's little I can add to what I've already said by now. Shisha no Rinbu has a great starting point with a murder relay as the focus, but it does not try to go far beyond this initial idea, resulting in a novel that feels a bit barren. The conclusion too will not come as a total surprise, and yet you feel it could've been pulled off better if we had seen more of Awasaka's A game here. So a missed chance here.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『死者の輪舞』

The Stolen Turnabout

「いや、奴はとんでもないものを盗んでいきました。あなたの心です」

『ルパン三世　カリオストロの城』

"No, he did manage to steal something very precious. Your heart."

"Lupin III - The Castle of Cagliostro"

It's been a while since I did a review of a short story collection, let alone one where I actually discuss all of the stories!

Resort towns across Japan have been hit by a nasty series of jewel thefts lately and all of the incidents all have one thing in common: the capers, some of them committed in what seems to be impossible circumstances, were all done with both genius and audacity, which has led to the police's conclusion the thefts were all committed by one and the same person. This thief is indicated with the codename S79 in the police files and a special task unit was formed to investigate, and capture S79. Just like how Lupin had his Ganimard, S79 has to watch out for inspector Tougou and his subordinate Ninomiya, who see S79 as their arch-enemy and will stop at nothing to capture the brilliant thief. Awasaka Tsumao's Youtou S79-Gou ("Phantom Thief S79", 1987) collects all twelve of the S79 short stories with impossible capers and more.

Awasaka Tsumao (1933-2009) should be a familiar name on this blog now. The mystery author and stage magician has written some of Japan's finest mystery stories, from the wonderful A Aiichirou  short stories (many of the A Aiichirou stories rank among the best impossible shorts from Japan), while I have also been enjoying his novels as of late, with 11 Mai no Trump being a true gem in the genre. Youtou S79-Gou marks a return to his short stories for me, though I have to remark that Youtou S79-Gou is a linked short story collection, like Yamada Fuutarou used to write them: while the short stories (originally published between 1979-1987) can be read apart, the best experience is gained by reading them in order, as they are actually interlinked and there are often references made to events from earlier stories or characters reappearing.

Youtou S79-Gou is also a remarkably varied short story collection. In essence, the S79 stories are 'phantom thief' stories in the spirit of the Arsène Lupin stories, with the focus lying on the mystery of how S79 manages to pull off some of these fantastic thefts, though there are also some interesting differences with what you'd usually expect from such a collection. For example, there is no one single detective character in this series. S79 always manages to escape with the loot, but the character who eventually figures out how the theft was committed is not limited to only police detectives Tougou or Ninomiya: a character who only appears in that one particular story is just as likely to solve the impossible crime. The stories aren't all (impossible) capers either: many of them are 'traditional' howdunnits, but there are some screwballs there too, and some of the impossible capers become really impossible to solve if you focus only on the impossible aspect.

The collection starts with three fairly traditional howdunnit capers. In Ruby wa Hi ("Ruby is Fire"), we first learn about the thief S79 when a ruby is stolen at a small beach at a resort, with only a few people on the beach. Inspector Tougou and Ninomiya had been watching the place all the time, so while they don't know who S79 is, they know that one of the people present on the beach must be the thief. They figure that a simple body search should solve the problem of S79, but to their surprise, nobody is possession of the ruby, so how did S79 get rid of it? While the solution is simple, it's also very cleverly clued, and there's even a good fake solution! Ikiteita Kaseki ("The Living Fossil") is the direct sequel to the previous story, as Inspector Tougou is still convinced one of the people on the beach was S79. He has invited all of them to a exhibition featuring an extremely rare seashell, hoping that he'll tempt S79 into trying to steal the shell. The seashell is kept inside a glass display, watched by guards and with an alarm that'll go off the instant somebody touches the glass. And yet, the seashell disappears from the watching eyes of the guards, the policemen and other visitors! The solution is highly original, but also highly unlikely to be succesful in real life.  Sapphire no Sora ("Sapphire Sky") has S79 help a young girl stage a fake kidnapping, as the girl doesn't like her stepmother. She only wants to see her stepmother suffer, so she asks for her sapphire as the ransom money and wants to see it fly away into the sky tied to a balloon. S79 can keep the sapphire if the thief can figure out how to retrieve the balloon. But even with policemen tracking the balloon the moment it is released from the top of a temple, S79 manages to do the impossible: the container tied to the balloon holding the sapphire only has a thank you letter from S79! This is an ingeniously plotted impossible situation, which had a great piece of misdirection, but also some minor points which make the whole trick a bit less practical than you'd think. Still a surprising good story.

The following four stories are not all howdunnits, and are perhaps more surprising in seeing how more obsessed Tougou is becoming with S79, imagining the thief behind everything. In Koushinmaru Ibun ("The Curious Tale of the Koushinmaru"), Tougou and Ninomiya received tickets for a New Year's performance of a "hyper-realistic" performance of the kabuki play Sannnin Kichisa. The performance is hyper-realistic, so the actors not only speak normal dialogue instead of 'theater dialogue', they also all speak "realistically" (i.e. not loud so the audience can actually hear them), and other elements like their hairstyles and even the fights are done 'hyper-realistically'. Near the end of the play though, Tougou suddenly announces to the whole audience S79 is in the theater! The mystery lies in how Tougou figured out that S79 was connected in any way to this play, and the solution is brilliant. This story is similar to many of the A Aiichirou stories, where you'd never even suspect you're reading a mystery story until it's suddenly set loose upon you and you see how much foreshadowing there was. Kiiroi Yaguramasou ("Yellow Cornflowers") has Tougou and Ninomiya set a trap for S79 during an elementary school's sports competition, as they know a necklace the thief stole is hidden in the school garden. The way S79 manages to get away with the necklace is brilliant, and incredibly funny. In Moebius Bijutsukan ("The Moebius Museum"), two museums receive letters from S79 that some paintings will be stolen, and despite Tougou and Ninomiya making their rounds in the museum, S79 does manages to get away with the paintings. This is a very tricky story, as there are several plot-lines running simultaneously, but the way in which the thief manages to fool Tougou and Ninomiya in order to steal the painting is brilliant, yet very, very impractical, as it's unlikely nobody would've noticed (as there were other visitors in the museum). By Mizunotototori Kumi 129537 ("Water Rooster -  129537"), Tougou is really seeing S79 everywhere, as he suspects with no real reason that the thief will try to cash in on a lottery using a proxy representative. A suspicious figure does appear who wants all the money cash, but no matter how hard they look, the lottery ticket Water Rooster -  129537 seems genuine, and the man leaves with the money. The policemen tail him, but a simple, but smart trick shakes the men off. The way how S79 managed to get the lottery money is devilishly simple, yet effective, though in no way could it ever work in the modern day and age. There's a nice piece of misdirection too.

In the following three stories, S79's targets are rare pieces of art and while they are technically impossible capers, you aren't likely to solve them by focusing on the impossibilities, as the solutions require some very out-of-the-box thinking. Kurosagi no Chawan ("The Black Heron Tea Cup"), Nanpo no Yuurei ("The Ghost of Nanpo") and Himouji no Kannnonzou ("The Kannon Statue of Himou Temple") are similar in the sense that a piece of antique art manages to disappear from a place under observation. Kurosagi no Chawan is interesting as this caper happens within Ninomiya's home. The theft is a bit simple, but there's an interesting subplot running too that makes the thing more complex and entertaining. The other two stories hinge upon a similar idea actually, but you'll never recognize that in time, and the way these pieces of art managed to disappear is absolutely stunning. 

The collection ends with S79-Gou no Taiho ("The Arrest of S79") and Tougou Keishi no Hanamichi ("The Crowning Achievement of Superintendent Tougou"). In S79-Gou no Taiho, Tougou and Ninomiya travel to France, as it appears S79 has been active in Paris for some months now. S79's latest target was an art piece in the possession of the Sernine (ha!) family. While Ninomiya recognizes the Japanese woman visiting the Sernine family as their main S79 suspect, she still manages to walk off with a priceless piece of art due to a brilliant piece of misdirection. A very surprising story, as besides the theft, there's another very clever trick pulled by a different person. The S79 series ends with Tougou Keishi no Hanamichi, which isn't a mystery story per se, but it has Tougou finally figuring out who S79 really is and gives a happy ending to the story (complete with everyone from previous stories appearing again).
  
Youtou S79-Gou is a very good, at times absolutely excellent short story collection that manages to mix brilliant originality with very humorous characters. While some of the tricks are arguably repeated within this collection, Awasaka is very good at redressing these tricks into completely different ideas, with different results and new surprises. There's also a lot of variety within these stories, from normal capers to kidnappings to stories that only reveal themselves to be proper mystery stories at the very end. While I'd say the A Aiichirou shorts are still the best I've read from Awasaka, Youtou S79-Gou is certainly worth the read.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫 『妖盗S79号』：「ルビーは火」/「生きていた化石」/「サファイアの空」/「庚申丸異聞」/「黄色いヤグルマソウ」/「メビウス美術館」/「癸酉組一二九五三七番」/「黒鷺の茶碗」/ 「南畝の幽霊」/「桧毛寺の観音像」/「S79号の逮捕」/ 「東郷警視の花道」

The Haunted Showboat

The show must go on

There are many mystery stories set on means of transportations, like ships or trains, but I wonder how many there are set on a bicycle. For example, what about an impossible murder where the rider is stabbed in their back, while there was someone else sitting on the carrier in the back (who isn't the murderer of course).

Awasaka Tsumao's Kigekihikigeki ("Comedia Tragedia Magica", 1982) introduces the reader to Kaede Shichirou, disciple of a renowned magician and once a fairly succesful magician himself, but he became more interested in the bottle after his wife ran off with a man, and the last few years, he's been barely able to make a living with his performances. An old friend however manages to find a job for him that might change his life. He's to fill in as a magician for the variety show held on board of the Ukon-Gou: an old transport ship refurbished to look like a paddle steamer, which will provide various forms of entertainment like revue shows and dining as it cruises along the Japanese coast. The original magician who got the contract has disappeared, while the Ukon-Gou's maiden voyage is scheduled for tomorrow, so Shichirou is hired for a month, with an option for a longer contract. He's also appointed a new assistant, Makoto, who's a young, but enthusastic amateur magician herself. But Shichirou soon regrets taking the job. The diverse entertainers on the Ukon-Gou include not only fire eaters, clowns, tigers and dancers, but also Utako, his wife who left his side. When the clown is murdered however, Shichirou sees how the manager is doing everything to keep the murder under wraps for the sake of opening day, and he realizes that the magician he was sent to replace also died under very suspicious circumstances on the ship. And the strangest thing about both murders is that the only thing connecting the two victims is that the names of both victims were palindromes, and due to the manager's hobby, several other entertainers aboard have palindromes as names.

Kigekihikigeki has an alternative English title Palindrome Syndrome, which is an apt title, though not a palindrome (or kaibun) like the original Japanese title. In the Japanese mora/syllable alphabet, ki-ge-ki-hi-ge-ki is read the same both ways, so a palindrome. Due to certain qualities of the Japanese language, like the syllable-based alphabet, but also the fact that voiced and unvoiced consonants count as the same (for example, /ki/ and /gi/ are the same), it's fairly simply to make palindromes in Japanese, and author Awasaka has a lot of fun with this. Many characters have palindromes as names, and they become potential victims of course. What Awasaka does brilliantly is hiding some of the palindromes at first. Some names are very obviously palindromes, but other people are revealed to have palindrome names too in surprising ways, that make you hit yourself on the head because you should've seen that coming. Palindromes play an important role in the story itself, but they are also important at the meta-level: the title of the book isn't the only palindrome, as all the chapter titles are palindromes too. And yes, this would be a very challenging book to translate.

As mentioned in earlier reviews, Awasaka was not only known as a mystery author, but also as a stage magician. His debut novel 11 Mai no Trump was a masterpiece featuring amateur magicians, but this time, we're presented with a professional magician (and his assistant), as well as other performers and artists in a circus-like setting. Awasaka shows once again he knows his stuff, as he expertly uses his knowledge of stage magic to spin a tale. Some of the tricks are used for the murder plots, but other tricks are simply revealed to give the reader more insight in how stage magic and illusions work. While Kigekihikigeki is not as focused on stage magic as 11 Mai no Trump, it's still obvious from reading this that Awasaka really loves his magic. We are also given a glimpse in other performances, like fire eating. And while the characters make it feel like a "normal" circus, I have to say that the show boat setting is really unique. The fact that this troupe is performing on a ship is definitely integral part of the mystery plot, making the Ukon-Gou (also a palindrome in japanese by the way: U-Ko-N-Go-U, with the ko and go being the voiced and unvoiced version of the same mora) a very memorable setting.

I do have to say I found the overall story a bit dragging. The first half of the story is very slow, and spends a lot of time focusing on Shichirou, his past and his drinking problem. His assistant Makoto is a great foil to him as the peppy girl assistant who manages to surprise her boss with her detailed studies in magic, but still, things don't move really fast. Even after the halfway point, which introduces some more suspenseful (and comedic) plot points (somewhat reminiscent of Awasaka's A Aiichirou series), the plot feels like its moving only at eighty percent speed. This isn't helped by the rather nondescript individual murders. While the murders do make good use of either stage magic or other performances (there's for example someone burning alive on stage), the tricks behind them are fairly simple. The emphasis lies on the whodunnit plot, but even that is surprisingly uncomplicated. By the time the motive is introduced, you're basically left with only two suspects, and only one of them is really viable as a suspect. There's a pretty neat hint placed earlier in the story to allow the reader to deduce which of the two it is, but the reader is barely given time to process that themselves, so that segment too felt rather underwhelming. And while the murderer did do one thing that might seem impressive/surprising to the reader, it does feel very similar to what was done in 11 Mai no Trump (which was also about magicians/stage performances), so there was a bit of déjà vu there.

Kigekihikigeki was in a way very similar to the other Awasaka novels I read the last few months, focusing on one theme or topic (in this case, palindromes) and running with in surprising ways.  And it's something Awasaka is good at, at mixing comedy, mystery and a unique topic he obviously adores. But in comparison with Awasaka's debut novel 11 Mai no Trump, which featured a similar magicians/performers setting, Kigekihikigeki feels less refined, with simpler murders and a less impressive structure leading to the identity of the murderer. I love the setting of the show boat, but as a mystery novel, Kigekihikigeki is just a decent work, compared to the masterpiece that is 11 Mai no Trump.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『喜劇悲奇劇』

Foul Play in Funland

やさしい音色に

まばゆい光

心ん中に秘められた

愛しい人は目の前で笑う

確かなmarionette fantasia

「Marionette Fantasia」（Garnet Crow)

A gentle sound

And a blinding light

And hiding within the depths of my heart

A loved one is smiling in front of me

Truly a marionette fantasia

"Marionette Fantasia" (Garnet Crow)

I find dolls, or human-like puppets, incredibly creepy, to be honest. Just like clowns. There's probably a perfectly sound psychological reason for that, something to do with deformed human characteristics or something like that, but all I know is I think they really really creepy.

After giving up on a career in boxing, young Katsu Toshio is forced to find another way to earn his living, and he decides to answer to a job advertisement of the Udai Economic Research Group. He is surprised to learn that the Udai Economic Research Group is in fact an one-woman detective agency, specialized in performing financial background checks on businesses. Udai Maiko hires Toshio on the spot, and drags him along to help with a little private side-job she was offered by a previous client. Mawari Tomohiro, production chief of his family's toy firm, wants Maiko to tail his wife for a day and Maiko and Toshio do find evidence of her infidelity. The duo shadow both husband and wife at the end of the day, hoping to get a chance to speak with the husband, but they all get caught up in a freak car accident, in which Tomohiro dies. Toshio manages to save the wife Masao, but tragedy seldom travels alone, and it's only a few days after Tomohiro's accident when their two-year old child also dies because of an accident. While at first this seems just like a very unfortunate series of events, a visit to the Screw Mansion inhabitated by the main Miwari family (Tomohiro's uncle and cousins) also ends with a death in the family, and one that is surely not accidental. What is lurking behind all these deaths in Awasaka Tsumao's Midare Karakuri ("A Clockwork Gone Wrong, 1977)?

Awasaka Tsumao (1933-2009) was one of the best known Japanese mystery writers in his lifetime. He was also a gifted stage magician, and he used his knowledge of both stage magic, and the art of misdirection to create fantastic mystery stories, like the Father Brown-esque impossible gems in the A Aiichirou series, or stories that were about all about magicians like 11 Mai no Trump. Midare Karakuri might not be about stage magic, but the work (his second novel) is considered to be one of Awasaka's best novels. It also carries the English title Dancing Gimmicks.

In my review of 11 Mai no Trump, I praised how the story incorporated stage illusions in the mystery plot: Awasaka was obviously very knowledgeable on the topic, but he made it accessible to the reader, and mixed the theme in a meaningful matter with the core detective plot. Midare Karakuri too focuses completely on one single topic: karakuri toys, or toys with "gimmicks" or "gadgets". The mysterious deaths of the members of the Mawari family, and the history behind their toy firm, is richly decorated with a lot of talk about toys, especially toys with some kind of mechanism inside of them. Mechanized toys have a long history in Japan: the Edo period for example was a flourishing time for karakuri puppets, highly sophisticated automatons which could serve tea or play an instrument. "Modern" toys for children are actually simply an evolution of those toys which were once meant for adults. Several characters hold fairly detailed "lectures" on the topic of pre-modern karakuri puppets, which can be very interesting and educating, but I can't deny that these segments also feel like huge info-dumps, which take you out of the story. Lecturing was also present in 11 Mai no Trump up to a point, but it never felt so outright back-to-school like in Midare Karakuri. The story also features other forms of "gimmick entertainment", like a gigantic garden maze inspired by Hampton Court Maze, and muses a bit on the topic of mazes and labyrinths too.

The mystery plot starts off very slow and especially the first half felt very directionless. Some deaths do occur in that first half, but they are not considered murder per se in the narrative, so most of the story up to that point is about Maiko and Toshio just poking around, talking a lot about toys. The characters are interesting, and I think Maiko as an overweight ex-policewoman running a shady detective agency was a great character (I even think this is the first time I've seen a strong female main character in Awasaka's stories). But still, the story takes a long time to arrive at the point of an actual investigation into a murder, and into a more pro-active stance towards detecting. In a way, Midare Karakuri reads more like a light detective series, with a male/female duo as the protagonists (and a minor, and somewhat melodramatic romance subplot between Toshio and one of the suspects) for most of the book. Preferences differ, but compared to the grand box of magic tricks that was 11 Mai no Trump, Midare Karakuri feels a bit "light" and less impressive on the whole. The comedic tone is strangely enough not as pronounced as in Awasaka's other works. There's still some comedic chattering going on at times between Maiko and Toshio, but it never reaches full total chaos like in 11 Mai no Trump or the slapstick-esque situations of the A Aiichirou series.

Most of the individual deaths in Midare Karakuri aren't that impressive on their own, but they do string together into a fairly entertaining mystery tale. I think the murderer is rather easy to guess, especially as pretty much everyone is dead near the end of the story, but the whole set-up works great with the theme of the book. There's a minor, simple dying message around halfway in the story, but I think one late murder is very impressive as an impossible poisoning trick: all the capsules in the victim's bottle of medicine had been swapped for poisonous ones, which means the pills could only've been swapped on the day the victim took the pills, but they couldn't have been swapped then, as he was on his guard the whole day because of the other deaths. The solution is ingeniously simple and brilliant, and this part is probably the best part of the mystery plot. It's truly a trick that a magician would think of, I think.

So I'd rank Midare Karakuri, as Awasaka's second novel, not as high as his first novel, but it's still a good, entertaining mystery novel. It can feel a bit slow early on, with a few longwinded lectures on karakuri puppets and a somewhat meandering plot, but the overall mystery plot is solid, even if a bit simple, and the impossible poisoning deserving a special mention as an ingenous piece of misdirection.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『乱れからくり』

The Vanishing Magician

月夜の悪戯の魔法　君は月影に囚われ

新月　闇に潜むように　君の輪郭が見えない

「月夜の悪戯の魔法」（Breakerz）

 

Mischievous magic on this moonlit night / You are captive of the moon's shadow

You can't be seen / As if you're hiding in the darkness of a new moon

"Mischievous magic on this moonlit night" (Breakerz)

Stage magic and the mystery genre have a lot in common of course. Both revolve around fooling the onlooker. It's all about misdirection, about making people think something has happened (something impossible at times even), even though the truth is something completely different. The key difference between the two is of course how it ends: stage magic is all about keeping up the illusion, while a mystery story cannot be complete without revealing how the illusion was created. But as there are close ties between the two, it's no surprise that there are many mystery stories that are about stage magic, from murders committed during a show to stories with impossible murders where every suspect is a magician.

Awasaka Tsumao (1933-2009) is usually mentioned on this blog because he was a very brilliant author of short stories featuring impossible situations and other baffling crimes. His A Aiichirou series for example feature some of Japan's best short stories, and one read of them is enough to understand why Awasaka was also sometimes refered to as the "Japanese Chesterton", as their wonderfully imaginative, yet ultimately simple set-ups remind very much of Father Brown's adventures. But Awasaka was also known as a stage illusionist, and his love for stage magic can also be seen in his mystery work. His Magician Detective Soga Kajou series for example featured, as the title suggest, a magician who also detected, and many of the stories revolved around magic tricks.

It should therefore not be a surprise when I tell you that Awasaka's very first novel published, 11 Mai no Trump ("The Eleven Cards", 1976), featured magicians extensively. It's been exactly twenty years since the Majiki Community Center opened, and three local clubs are to perform in the venue to celebrate the Center's role in the community. The program opens with a magic show by the Majiki Club, followed by a children's ballet performance and finally a puppet theater show. Little goes exactly as planned with the magic show of the Majiki Club. This was to be expected perhaps, as stage experience was something very few of the amateur magicians in the club had, but still, dying pigeons and children ruining tricks were obviously not something any of the magicians had expected. But even with everything going on both onstage and backstage (they also have to do all the spotlights/music/etcetera themselves), the Majiki Club manages to get to the end of the show mainly unscathed. Or did they? The fact that one of their female members, Shimako, didn't appear for the finale performance of the whole club was odd, but they figured something very urgent had come up.  It was the police however, accompanied by another of the Majiki Club members who usually works as a police doctor, who brought the bad news: Shimako had been murdered during the magic show in her own apartment room. And the strange thing is: her body was surrounded by several broken objects, including a broken phone, a dead bird, a perfume bottle... Everybody in the club is shocked, as they realized all these 'broken' objects, including Shimako herself, were the main props in The Eleven Cards, a short story collection written by the head of the Majiki Club, about eleven unique magic tricks invented by the club members.

Let me start with this: this is an incredible first novel. True, Awasaka had already debuted as a mystery writer one year earlier with his short story DL2 Gouki Jiken, but a short story is obviously not the same as a full-length novel, and yet Awasaka manages to present something unbelievably polished. Is it a perfect novel? Well, to be honest, I thought sometimes the narrative could be a bit too talkative, especially on some of the more technical, or historical aspects of stage magic. But with 'too talkative' I mean like two or three pages longer than I had hoped, rather than being a bore to read. On the whole, this is a very complete novel, that already rouses your interests with the table of contents.

For 11 Mai no Trump is divided in three distinct acts, of which the second is the most interesting. But we start with the first of course, which details the happenings both on and backstage during the Majiki Club's performance at the Community Center. This is a mostly comedic piece, where we see how each of the performing members prepares for their act and how things go in front of the audience. The tricks seldom go as planned however, and there is a lot of chaos backstage too, so it kinda reads like Mitani Kouki story, with all the comedy going on. As we read on, we learn more about the members of the club, but we also get a lot of insight in the world of stage magic, as the tricks performed are all discussed in detail, and it's here where Awasaka shows his knowledge of stage magic, as he manages to both pose the illusion, and explain the tricks behind them, in a captivating way. People who like stage magic should really enjoy this part, as Awasaka is great at conveying interesting information while also advancing the story. This part ends with the death of Shimako and the realization her death is somehow connected to the novel The Eleven Cards.

The second part of the book is The Eleven Cards, which is presented as a story-within-a-story. The premise of The Eleven Cards is that magicians often come up with new illusions and tricks, that are sadly enough very hard to perform, as they rely on very specific situations, making them unusable for a proper show. The members of the Majiki Club all had a trick like that up their sleeve, so the president of the Majiki Club decided to write a novel introducing those eleven acts, starring the members of the club. What follows are basically eleven very short mystery stories, where one magician performs an utterly baffling illusion, while the other members try to figure out how the trick was done. From a telegram that tells the future to a bird which can see through paper and a telephone which can guess what card a person chooses: the magic tricks shown off in these short stories are all very inventive, and the solutions to them are great. Each of these tricks could've easily supported a longer short story with ease, and they really show off what an imaginative magician Awasaka must've been. In fact, I think that, if they had been in possession of the ideas presented in The Eleven Cards, most people would've just used those to write a short story collection and called it a day, rather than using those ideas just as a story-within-a-story device. The eleven stories are all written as experienced by the writer himself (the president of the club), and we learn more about the interactions and relations between the Majiki Club members as we read this story-within-a-story.

The final part of 11 Mai no Trump has the members of the Majiki Club attending a stage magic conference some time after Shimako's death and the events there eventually lead to the discovery of who killed Shimako. It is here where Awasaka's novel really shines, as he reveals how carefully constructed his tale was. Clueing (or clewing) is an art, and Awasaka shows in his debut novel that he is Master Clewer already. The way he has sprinkled clues here and there across the novel, from the magic show at the Community Center to the eleven short stories in The Eleven Cards is brilliant, something only the best of the best could've done. The moment everything comes together is an eye-opener: innocent-looking lines and events suddenly take on a completely different form. The conclusion of this novel is basically split into a whodunnit and a howdunnit/alibi deconstruction story, and it's especially the whodunnit part that is memorable. The howdunnit too is very impressive though, as it makes very good use of the stage magic background, but without feeling 'unfair' to the reader. As you read the conclusion, you realize that Awasaka has been very attentive to the reader, always explaining in detail how all the stage magic works, and his insights in the topic as presented throughout the book are more than enough for the reader to figure out how the murder was committed.

What really surprises me is that this book is all about stage magic and the amateur performers of stage magic, but it never feels too alienating for someone who knows very little about it. It does not feel like a book for lovers of stage magic per se. Awasaka is clearly not just writing for his own people: he wants to show people why he loves stage magic and because of that, 11 Mai no Trump, remains open to all readers from the very first page to the last, never indulging too much in inside comedy or overly detailed descriptions of knowledge only experts could appreciate.

The three-act set-up, with a story-within-a-story device, is something I had not expected from Awasaka actually. I never saw him much as a bibliomystery writer, but playing with the conventions of books is of course exactly what bibliomystery writers like Ashibe Taku do. The idea of naming the story-within-a-story after the actual title of the book is an alluring one, and the three acts do all feel quite different from each other. Awasaka might have perhaps decided on this structure because he was more familiar with writing short stories, but he definitely made good use of it, and when you reach the end, you do feel like you read one complete story, rather than loose parts thrown together.

And as I read this book, I felt I could now draw lines and connect several loose points in my own Detective World thanks to 11 Mai no Trump. Because I am quite sure that things like Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target and the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney series were heavily inspired by 11 Mai no Trump (Ace Attorney creator Takumi is a self-professed fan of Awasaka so no surprises there, I guess).

So yeah, 11 Mai no Trump, great stuff here. It's an ode to (amateur) stage magic, but also an ingeniously plotted mystery novel (with a short-story-collection-within-the-story) that manages to impress throughout. As a showcase of how to properly clue a mystery novel, 11 Mai no Trump is mus-read material, and the fact that this was Awasawa's first novel makes that even more amazing. Certainly one to remember.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『11枚のとらんぷ』

Cloudy Memory

上空舞うもの達とOver Drive

 どこまでも青い世界にいたい

「Over Drive」（Garnet Crow)

Together with those that dance in the sky high in Over Drive

I want to be in a world that is blue everywhere

"Over Drive" (Garnet Crow)

You know, I’ve been wanting to read this book for years, ever since I finished the main series, but for some reason it never found its way to my shopping cart until now.

A Aiichirou series
A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Annoyance)
A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou" AKA A Is For Accident)
A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Abandon")  

Spin-off
A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou ("The Alarm Of A Tomoichirou" AKA A Is For Alarm")

Samurai are often seen as a warrior class in popular media, but the Tokugawa Shogunate ushered in an era of (relative) peace in the country when it took control of Japan and secluded the islands from the outside world early seventeenth century. So what do warriors do when there’s peace and there’s no need for battle? Samurai basically became public servants, and were granted all kinds of comfortable government jobs with easy income. And there were a lot of rather curious jobs made up for these samurai. But no matter the task, the same basic rule applied to all jobs: the closer the job got you to the shogun (physically), the better the job. One of the more senseless jobs is the Cloud Watch, which consists of watching the clouds all day and making predictions about the weather (it doesn’t even matter if they seldom come true). However, only a very small number know that the small team of the Cloud Watch, led by the head A Tomoichirou, is in fact secret task force under the direct control of the Shogun. Whenever there is a mission too delicate for the police to handle, it’s up to A Tomoichirou and his subordinates to earn their salary in Awasawa Tsumao’s A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou (“The Alarm of A Tomochirou”, 1997).

Long ago, I reviewed Awasaka Tsumao’s three A Aiichirou books, which was a wonderful short story collection, with several tales that rank among the best of Japan’s impossible crime short stories. The titular A Aiichirou was a travelling freelance photographer, who had a knack for inadvertently getting involved with all kinds of mysterious incidents. But his unique way at looking at events always allowed him to make sense out of chaos. A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou is a spin-off, starring Aiichirou’s ancestor in the restless final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate (mid-nineteenth century), who is revealed to also be a person who is good at solving mysteries. There are some other nods to the original series: Tomoichirou’s subordinates of the Cloud Watch are for example all ancestors of certain persons Aiichirou meets in the main series, but you certainly don’t need any prior knowledge to start with A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou, as the references are kept at a minimum.

In fact, A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou is also very different in tone compared to main A Aiichirou series. The main series was obviously based on G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, with curious incidents (not always criminal) which are solved by unique, intuitive insight by the detective character, often by comparing, and finding parallels in two ostensibly completely different situations. There was barely an ongoing story (maybe two stories out of twenty-four that delve a bit deeper in Aiichirou’s past), and no main cast, with Aiichirou’s travels bringing him to new locales and new people all the time. The seven stories collected in A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou however do feature a recurring main cast with the people of the Cloud Watch, even if the titular A Tomochirou’s not always at the focus of the story. Passage of time is also an important factor in these stories: about one year passes between each story (we are told the Cloud Watch does perform other missions in the meantime), and the changing political background (the final days of Tokugawa Shogunate as the pressure of both national and international forces builds) is something you definitely need to keep in mind as you read these stories. Of pre-modern Japanese history, the Tokugawa/Edo period, especially its final days (Bakumatsu), is the one I am most familiar with, but knowledge of the political background as well as about how the Shogunate is organized is definitely something that will make reading this book a lot easier for you, as it likes to throw historical terms at you.

I started with this book expecting “A Aiichirou in the Bakumatsu period”, but the adventures ancestor Tomoichirou has are actually very different from the ones Aiichirou has. Like I mentioned above, Aiichirou’s stories include some of the best Japanese impossible crime short stories, and like the Father Brown stories, they have a distinct comedic tone that accompany almost fable/fairy-tale like settings and situations.  The stories in A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou however place less a focus on the mystery element, and are written more like regular historical novels (jidai shousetsu) and toriminochou (pre-modern detective stories featuring Edo police forces, like The Curious Casebook of Hanshichi). These stories are more like the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, with an emphasis on the dynamics of a tale, sometimes sprinkled with a bit of action (sometimes with swords) and political intrigue. The stories can also be a bit more graphic than the Aiichirou stories.

Kumomiban Haimei (“Appointment of the Cloud Watch”) details how several men proved their tremendous courage and/or wit during the Great Ansei Earthquake of 1855, saving the shogun from more than one disaster. For their services rendered, the men were all appointed to the Cloud Watch under leadership of A Tomoichirou to serve as the shogun’s personal covert task force. As a ‘How The Team Got Together” type of story, it’s okay, though as a mystery story it feels lacking. Historical knowledge about a rather specific detail is needed to truly appreciate what Awasaka tried to do here. It appears that in the original serialized version, this story actually featured some illustrations that helped visualize what was going on. I do think it’s a neat idea actually, but it doesn’t really work in modern times, as the knowledge needed for this trick to really shine isn’t common sense to modern man. Had this story been written in 1855, when common sense entailed a different set of knowledge, yes, it would’ve been a much better story then, but now it falls a bit flat because it hinges on a small note in the history books.

A Tomoichirou and Moko Mouzou, a master of the ninja arts, are on an undercover mission in Fudaraku Oujou (“Departure for Potalaka”) to investigate rumors of a daimyou killing more than thirty of his people in his castle in a rage. During their investigation, the two learn of a strange ceremony which has been becoming popular in the region. A recently arrived monk apparently has the power to send people directly to Potalaka, residence of Kannon, the Boddhisattva of Mercy. People don’t have to spend a lifetime building karma, but can be sent to paradise immediately, leaving only a peaceful corpse behind. Tomoichirou and Mouzou suspect murder of course, but it appears the ‘victim’ is always left alive in a closed-off hollow, with their relatives and the monk keeping vigil all night. Yet the victim is always ‘gone’ the following morning, leaving nothing but a peaceful expression on their face. This story is basically an impossible crime story, and while the solution to how people are sent do paradise is nothing shocking, I have to say the way the clues are structured, and how everything in the end ties up together is brilliant. I think this is the best story of the collection, as it manages to combine the ‘gritty realism’ of the historical crime story with the plotting of a mystery novel splendidly.

Clocks were popular novelty items in the Tokugawa Period and led to very unique Japanese clocks, but the Earthquake Clock in Jishindokei (“The Earthquake Clock”) went beyond normal clocks. This gift to the shogun was not only able to tell the time, but also to predict earthquakes, with ‘features’ like human hair and skin to measure delicate changes in temperature and a big base to prevent the clock from tumbling over during a quake. Juutarou of the Cloud Watch however was not occupied with this new toy of the shogun, as he was busy investigating the double suicide of a prostitute he frequented. He suspects something is wrong, but he couldn’t have expected his adventure would have anything to do with the shogun’s clock. Or could he? The reader sure could, as the two parts are initially so disconnected, anyone could guess they’d come together one way or another. This is a story more focused on the adventure rather than the mystery, though it features a Sherlock Holmes-esque deduction at the start of the story which gets inverted twice in an interesting way. What I don’t like is that the main idea of this story is basically recycled for Bara Inrou (“The Disconnecting Seal Case”) a story later in this volume about the Shogun’s request for a photograph of himself and some lectures on Rangaku (Dutch studies) and the science behind photography, but which ends in the exact same way as Jishindokei.

The Cloud Watch is tasked with locating the shogun’s long-lost son in Onnagata no Mune (“The Chest Of The Female Role Actor”). When the shogun was young, he once had a relation with one of the women in the Inner Palace (the inner section of the palace housing all the women of the Shogun), and he only learned after the woman had left the Inner Palace that she had in fact been pregnant. It’s been many years since then, but as his health is failing and forces around him gather to seize power, he decides it’s time to locate his one heir. This is a mediocre story at best: the search for the lost heir is rather boring, and it’s only pure coincidence that leads the Cloud Watch to the heir in the end. Some deception is going on that sorta reminds of Father Brown, but the execution is so minimal, it is hardly worth mentioning.

Satsuma no Nisou (“The Nuns of Satsuma”) is the darkest story of the collection, as it revolves around the serial killings of young girls. The Cloud Watch is ordered to investigate the disappearance of the younger sister of one of the women in the Inner Palace, and they find out she was killed the day she disappeared; her stomach cut open and organs removed. Some days later, another girls is washed up from the river. The connections between the two cases: young girls being cut open, and witnesses seeing nuns hanging around the girls just before they’re gone. While this story develops mostly as a grim serial murder story, with the Cloud Watch fighting against time to stop the murderers from taking more victims, the whydunnit plot is actually very clever: the ‘missing link’ that explains why this is all happening is hidden ingeniously, and the way these events eventually connect to an important event in Japanese history was both surprising and satisfying. One of the better stories in the collection.

The final story, Oooku no Sharekoube (“The Skull Of The Inner Palace”), is set in the Inner Palace. Normally, the Shogun is the only male allowed in these women’s quarters, but Tomoichirou and Juutarou, dressed as women, manage to sneak inside as they are tasked to investigate rumors of a ghostly appearance in the Inner Palace, as unrest inside the Inner Palace seldom is a good sign for events outside the Inner Palace. The truth behind the ghost is… okay, I guess. There is some good hinting going on, even if a bit little, but I thought the story dragged a little, and after hearing about the Inner Palace in previous stories, I thought the depiction of it in this story was a bit… underwhelming. Compare to the scary battlefield that was the harem in Yamada Fuutarou’s Youi Kinpeibai.

A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou is on the whole an okay story collection, though one certainly shouldn’t expect it to be very much like Aiichirou’s adventures. This is first of all a historical detective story, which also happens to feature to a degree an element of the more puzzle-oriented plot from the main series. The first half is definitely stronger than the second half on the whole though. People who liked The Curious Casebook of Hanshichi should definitely enjoy this book.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『亜智一郎の恐慌』: 「雲見番拝命」 / 「補陀楽往生」 / 「地震時計」 / 「女方の胸」 / 「ばら印籠」 / 「薩摩の尼僧」 / 「大奥の曝頭」

His Alias Is

"One shall stand, one shall fall"

"Transformers: The Movie"

And that's another series wrapped up! I just realized that I've read very few mystery series completely, but that's also because I read many contemporary writers. Who knows when those series will stop?

A Aiichirou series
A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Annoyance)
A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou" AKA A Is For Accident)
A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Abandon")

A few weeks ago, I reviewed the last volume in Awasaka Tsumao's wonderful three volume A Aiichirou series. And today, I review the second volume of the series because who cares about chronological order? A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou") collects eight short stories starring A Aiichirou, a handsome, but somewhat clumsy photographer who specializes in wildlife photographs. A often accompanies academic expeditions as the resident photographer, but he has a knack for getting into trouble, or just noticing little things that lead into bigger problems. But beneath his stuttering and cowardly demeanor, hides a frightfully keen mind that can solve the most baffling of mysteries.

As I've remarked in the reviews of the other volumes, the A Aichirou series is heavily inspired by the Father Brown series and the 24 stories can roughly be divided in two categories: the impossible crime stories, and what I like to call the what the hell sories. The first speaks for itself, but what I mean with the second term is a story where it's not immediately clear there is a mystery,  or even in the case it's clear there is some kind of mystery, it's very unclear what it means. In the case of the A Aiichirou stories, these mysteries are usually solved by an uncanny intuition.

The opening story, Wara no Neko ("The Straw Cat"), features a somewhat clearly defined mystery, though the significance and the implications of that mystery sure stay vague until Aiichirou explains all. At an exhibition of the late Kayuya Toukyo, a painter in the Realist school, A Aiichirou discovers that many of his pictures contain strange 'mistakes'. A girl with six fingers, a door in the background that can't possible be used. The story unfolds as a missing link story and the truth hidden behind these mistakes is quite surprising, a bit too surprising maybe. While I admit the story does feature some hints that point to the solution, so much of it depends on 'interpretation' and 'intuition', I find it hard to say it's completely fair. The same holds for Nejirareta Boushi ("The Crooked Hat"), where Aiichirou and an associate try to locate the owner of a top hat: tracing the hat's shop and the store written on a receipt hidden inside the hat results in strange, conflicting stories and once again the missing link between these events is what leads to the truth. Which is so farfetched and impossible to deduce, that this was definitely the weakest story of the volume. Followed by Arasou Yon Kyotou ("The Competing Big Four"), in which the granddaughter of a recently retired politician is suspicious of her grandfather's recent activities. He has been spending a lot of time with some of his old friends, and she found newspaper cuttings, coins and other strange objects in the room they usually stay. The granddaughter wants to know what they are doing there and while the story features some great red herrings and a fairly amusing solution, the jump between the missing link and the solution seems a bit too big and I'd prefer some more hints to exclude other solutions a bit more convincingly.

A personal favorite was Suzuko no Yosooi ("Dressing like Suzuko"). Kamo Suzuko, affectionately called Rinko, was a slightly under-the-radar idol singer, whose popularity soared after her tragic demise in an airplane crash. One year later, her agency holds a Rinko look-a-like contest, with the winner earning the role of Rinko in a film. Aiichirou happens to be in the theater where the contest is held, but he discovers that between all the auditions, something is going on. This is a great whatthehell story, as there really is no visible mystery at all, until A Aiichirou suddenly pulls your attention to the many, but very small points that bothered him. As you go "Now you mention that...", you suddenly realize that there really was something hidden in the story and the solution is quite memorable, especially the circumstances that led to it all.

Igai na Igai ("The Unexpected Corpse") is a relatively straightforward mystery in comparison to the previous stories: a murdered corpse is found on a mountain where Aiichirou and a researcher have been taking photographs of rare fish. The strange thing about the body: not only was it set on fire, it was also boiled. The story links to a local nursery rhyme, giving the whole story a Yokomizo Seishi-vibe. A story that does pretty much everything good. The hinting in particular is fantastic and it's amazing how much is crammed in the limited page count.

And like all A Aiichirou volumes, A Aiichirou no Tentou also features some neat impossible crime stories. Sugake no Soushitsu ("The Disappearance of the House of Suga") features the classic trope of disappearing buildings. Because of a landslide, A Aiichirou and two fellow travelers decide to walk the way to the next town instead of waiting for the rails to be cleared of debris. The trio get lost in the mountains though, but manage to find shelter in the house of the last of the Sugas, of whom legends say their family house has disappeared multiple times in the past. Before the trio go to bed, they see there is a house in the distance from their window, but when they wake up the next day, they discover it has disappeared completely! I had never seen this solution to the problem of the disappearing building before and I quite like it as it actually makes absolutely sense and seems quite plausible. Saburuchou Rojou ("On the Roads of Saburouchou") too is great: a taxi driver wants to pick up his last ride when his prospective client cries out for a good reason: there's a dead body in the backseat! And as if that wasn't strange enough, the taxi driver swears that the body is that of the customer he had just dropped off somewhere else! A solidly written story and the trick reveals the magician within Awasaka Tsumao: he was actually an amateur magician and even wrote another series about a magician-detective. The final story, Byounin ni Hamono ("A Sharp Instrument for the Ill"), also deserves special mention. A patient on the garden-roof of a hospital accidently walks into another patient and falls down. But by the time A Aiichirou, the nurse and other patients have run to the poor man, he has been stabbed in his stomach. Yet everyone swears the victim and his tumbling partner weren't holding knives, nor that any knives were lying on the ground. A very satisfying impossible crime story, also because of the hints Awasaka has spread across the text.

In fact, I noticed I had not once written more extensively about the type of hints Awasaka Tsumao used in previous reviews, so to talk a little about it now: The A Aiichirou stories seldom feature material evidence or hints, but instead feature thematic hints. Awasaka often mirrors certain aspects of the crime / mystery in other segments of the story, that function as hints to the final solution. He usually manages to distort the mirror image enough so it's not immediately clear it's actually the same as the circumstances of the mystery, but it does suit the intuitive mode of detection many of his stories have: if you happen to 'feel' correctly that mirror image A is in fact the same as the main mystery, it's usually fairly simple to deduce the correct solution. It's similar to Miss Marple's and Father Brown's comparisons, and they work brilliantly for these stories. It also helps that the A Aiichirou stories are written in a fairly comical way. Like Higashigawa Tokuya, Awasaka Tsumao hides these mirror images and hints within comical situations that don't appear to be related to the mystery at first sight, only to turn out to be of crucial importance.

A Aiichirou no Tentou is, like all in the series, a great mystery short story collection.. If I had to rank the three collections, I would say that the first is the best, then A Aiichirou no Tentou and then the last, but it is not like one volume is much better or worse than another. I'd say that especially those who like the Father Brown series should take a look at the A Aiichirou series. There is a spin-off volume featuring A Aiichirou's forefather by the way, so I might read that book too one day.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『亜愛一郎の転倒』: 「藁の猫」 / 「砂蛾家の消失」 / 「珠洲子の装い」 / 「意外な遺骸」 / 「ねじられた帽子」 / 「争う四巨頭」 / 「三郎町路上」 / 「病人に刃物」

The Quick One

あぁ、あぁ、ひゅるる陽は墜ちて

まだ愛があるみたいじゃない

 「As the Dew」 (Garnet Crow)

Aa, aa, cries the wind and the sun sets

But it seems there is still some love left between us

"As the Dew" (Garnet Crow)

And as I read another mystery series out of order, I wonder how many people actually try to read novels in order? For example in storyline chronology, or in order of publication? I usually just read whatever I managed to get my hands on, and if I got the luxary of choice, whatever seems more interesting, with little regard for order...

A Aiichirou series
A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Annoyance)
A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou" AKA A Is For Accident)
A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Abandon")

I was very enthusiastic about Awasaka Tsumao's A Aiichirou no Roubai one year ago, a short story collection with a touch of Father Brown. It had some fantastic impossible crimes and still remains one of my favorite short story collections ever. The complete A Aiichirou series consists of three collections (and one spin-off volume), and you'd think I would read the second volume after the first, but that would make too much sense. So today, A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou", AKA A For Abandon), which collects the final adventures of A Aiichirou, a handsome, but somewhat clumsy photographer. When faced with murders or other baffling situations, Aiichirou occasionally seems to be muttering complete nonsense, but that nonsense always turns out to be the one and only, plain, sober truth amongst the chaos brought forth by crime.

I praised the first volume for its impossible crime stories, but the A Aiichirou series has more than just that. The same holds for this final volume. The collection for example opens with Akashima Sajou ("On the Sands of Akashima"), which takes place on an island owned by a sect-like organization. Nudity makes one free of the worries of modern society, the organization proclaims, so everyone has to be nude on this island. Of course, nudity itself isn't a crime, so the mystery only starts when a gangster suddenly arrives on the island to kidnap one of the guests. An observation by A Aiichirou however poses a completely different look at the happenings on the island. Iibachiyama Sanpuku ("On Mount Iibachi") similarly has A Aiichirou show that a tragic car crash on a mountain was not just a simple accident. Both stories have situations that may be criminal / out of the ordinary (kidnap / crash) at isolated places (on an island / in the mountains), but aren't what they seem. Both these stories are constructed very neatly, with the necessary information available and never too farfetched (I thought the first A Aiichirou story, The Flight DL2 Incident, was less convincing, even though it follows the same basic idea).

Haita no Omoide ("Memories of Toothache") and Aka no Sanka ("A Song In Praise of Red") are the (initially) non-criminal variants of the pattern above. Haita no Omoide is almost hilarious, as it follows three men, one of which A Aiichirou, going up and down the dental department of a hospital. The descriptions are funny and keep the reader interested even though there's no crime happening, but a shocking truth is revealed at the end of the dentist's trip. Maybe not as convincing as the two stories mentioned above, but I enjoyed this story enormously. Aka no Sanka is very similar, where a interview with the parents of a succesful artist is at first sight very normal, but A discovers a hidden truth about the artist. Not as interesting as Haita no Omoide, I thought.

A while back, I noticed a discussion on Twitter about how to define a certain type of story. The whodunnit, howdunnit and whydunnit seem obvious terms, but how to describe a mystery story where only at the end, it is revealed it was a mystery story (i.e. the stories mentioned above). My thoughtful contribution to the discussion was whatthehell by the way. They can be fun, but the core story must have its own interesting points, because there is no mystery (at first sight) to keep the reader hooked and the story must make sense in hindsight, which might not be easy.

But A Aiichirou no Toubou isn't just whatthehell stories, there are also some impossible crimes. Kyuutai no Rakuen ("A Spherical Paradise") is a relatively well-known story about a rich, but slightly jumpy man: he is busy constructing the ultimate shelter, consisting of a small metal sphere, placed inside a fire/earthquake/flood/rapture-proof cave which will keep him safe. The sphere has already been made and on the construction site, even though the cave hasn't been finished yet, but one day the man climbed inside the sphere and locked himself inside. After a while or so, his family members and the construction crew become worried because there can't be much air left inside, and decide to cut the sphere open together with the police, only to find the man has been murdered. Great situation, though I have seen the trick performed in other stories already, which kinda takes away the impact of the story. Well done for a short story though.

Kaji Sakaya ("A Liquor Shop Owner and Fire") follows a man who had always dreamed of becoming a firefighter, and Aiichirou, who would rather stay away from a fire. The two however end up helping at a fire. The murdered body of the woman who lived in the house is discovered and Aiichirou
 and his companion's suspicion fall upon the man they saw inside the house moments after the fire broke out. There is just one problem: the two are also quite sure they didn't see the man come out of the house, and no one else, not even a dead body, was discovered in the house. A rather classic solution, but storytelling makes this one of the better stories in the volume.

Soutou no Tako ("A Two-Headed Octopus") is unlike the previous two a fairly straightforward mystery. A diver is shot just as he prepared to go under water from a boat, and the smoking gun is found on the ground of the base camp on shore.The story has some interesting elements like a search for a Nessie-esque mythical beast in a lake, but the main trick is rather easy to guess, and I kinda feel like the trick wasn't possible to pull off anyway. In that sense, sorta an impossible crime. 

The final story of the volume, and the final story of the series is titled A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou") puts the cameraman in the center of the story. A mysterious person has been following A Aiichirou since the first stories, and A's pursuer has finally caught up on him. A Aiichirou and a travelling companion check into a small inn on a snowy day. The two enter their rooms, located in an annex building out in the garden. A's pursuer however knows Aiichirou is inside and closes in on the target... only to found out Aiichirou and his travel companion have escaped from the annex building. But even more baffling is the fact the duo managed to accomplish their flight without leaving footprints in the snow surrounding the building! A Aiichirou no Toubou is a very amusing ending, which puts A Aiichirou in the shoes of the 'criminal' for a change and it is a pretty decent impossible escape story too. What's more, it forms an actual ending to the series, as some minor threads of plot that had been shattered over a variety of stories finally come together and the mystery surrounding the strange A Aiichirou is unveiled.

Overall a good short story collection with a nice variety of mystery. Not as impressive as the first volume in the series, but definitely worth a read. In general, the A Aiichirou series does really belong among the best of Japanese detective fiction in short form. Oh, and don't worry, a review of the second volume will also appear. Some day.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『亜愛一郎の逃亡』: 「赤島砂上」 / 「球体の楽園」 / 「歯痛の思い出」 / 「双頭の蛸」 / 「飯鉢山山腹」 / 「赤の賛歌」 / 「火事酒屋」 / 「亜愛一郎の逃亡」