Have You Got Everything You Want?

"The human and personal element can never be ignored."

"The ABC Murders"

You know, while I spent all full three days at the Kyoto University November Festival (campus festival), I mostly remember just sitting inside the Mystery Club's assigned classroom to sell our club anthology, instead of walking around.

Houtarou's plans for his three years at Kamiyama High School had been to get by, doing as little as possible, but his school life turned out quite differently after his older sister forced him to join the school's Classic Literature Club to save it from dying out. As all the older club members had now graduated, it was up to Houtarou and the other three first-years to continue the tradition of the club. After joining the club, Houtarou found himself involved with all kind of small adventures at school: at the wishes of the club president Eru, the four digged into the history of the club's magazine "Hyouka" and its link to the school festival, while they also helped out class 2-F with their short mystery movie they filmed for the school festival. In Kudryavka no Junban ("The Kudryavka Sequence", 2005), the school festival finally starts! The Kanya Festa is a three-day event where classes and school clubs can show off their activities. For the Classic Literature Club, that means selling the latest issue of their club anthology "Hyouka" at the festival, but there is a "small" problem: due to a mistake, they ordered not thirty copies at the printer's, but two-hundred. As a niche product of a virtually unknown club, two-hundred seems like an utterly impossible number, but as they need to earn back the costs, all members try to come with plans to sell more anthologies, from asking other clubs to help selling "Hyouka" to participating in the various competitions at Kanya Festa to raise the name value of the Classic Literature Club. As the festival continues however, a series of curious thefts occurs, where small objects are stolen from various clubs and at each 'crime scene', a message is left by the thief who calls themselves Juumonji.

Kudryavka no Junban (subtitle: Welcome To Kanya Festa!) is the third novel in Yonezawa Honobu's Classic Literature Club mystery novel series (also known as the Hyouka series, as the anime series is named after the first novel). The series falls within the everyday life mystery genre, that focuses on the solving of enigmatic events that might occur in the normal, daily life, as opposed to bloody murder. It's a sub-genre that naturally fits the high school setting of Classic Literature Club much better than let's say every day a bloody impossible murder after school, and when done well, the everyday life mystery genre can be very entertaining. One of my favorite examples of the genre is from another series by Yonezawa, where the whole mystery revolves around the "impossibility" of how someone could've poured two cups of hot cocoa despite some limitions in the kitchen. That said though, in the second novel of the Classic Literature Club, Yonezawa had the students work on a fictional murder (they had to deduce the ending of an unfinished mystery movie) and that was a really entertaining mystery novel too. But I have to admit that the everyday life mystery genre also often lets me down a bit. It is really hard to come up with a good, everyday life mystery that is both alluring, yet "normal" enough and holds for the solution.

The Classic Literature Club series had been building towards the Kanya Festa ever since the first novel, as all the events in the first two novels basically only occurred because people were preparing for the school's cultural festival. Whereas the first two novels in the series were exclusively narrated by Houtarou, Kudryavka no Junban has us jump between the four members of the Classic Literature Club during the three days of the school festival, as each of them are busy trying in their own way to sell all two-hundred anthologies. This gives the reader an interesting look in the school festival, with for example mood maker Satoshi having fun at the various events (in order to make a name for the Classic Literatue Club) or club president Eru working with the management and news clubs of the festival in the hopes of getting a better chance at selling their wares. Read as a novel about life at a high school, Kudryavka no Junban can be quite interesting, delving into themes like expectations, and due to the varied cast, it's unlikely to really bore.

Unless you're reading the book for a mystery. It takes quite a while for the mystery plot of the thefts to really get going and even then, the core plot is a bit lean on the meat. The idea of a thief stealing seemingly insignifiant objects from various clubs can be fun, but the "surprising" relation between the various thefts is revealed very soon in the story, and afterwards little happens until the conclusion. The mystery doesn't have enough charm to its enigma, and the solution, well, you are not really going to logically deduce that in advance, with proper clewing as the basis of your reasoning. Of course, the everyday life mystery is often built on 'interpretation'  and seldom with mathematical reasoning, but for example, the first novel (Hyouka) was much more engaging as a mystery story, as it dealt with multiple hypotheses built upon each other, with new hints devalidating older hypotheses, but these still remained the basis of further theories. The scope of Kudryavka no Junban is far smaller, with a solution to the thefts that begs the question: "Why in heavens go through all that trouble to accomplish that?". Especially after the brilliance of the second novel, I have to say I felt a bit disappointed by this novel, as it's simply too lite as a mystery novel in comparison.

So yeah, of the three Classic Literature Club novels I've read until now, Kudryavka no Junban was the least interesting as a mystery novel. I have to admit that as a juvenile novel, this might the most interesting of the novels until now, giving us four different narrators and a varied view on the school festival, but read as a mystery novel, it's simply not as intricately plotted as the previous two novels, which had all those false solutions and playing around with Houtarou as a fallible detective and other things like that. I'm not sure whether I'll continue with the series. The anime series Hyouka covers the events of the first four books (three novels and one short story collection), so I might just try out the short story collection too. Or I might not. It won't happen soon anyway.

Original Japanese title(s): 　米澤穂信　『クドリャフカの順番』

Captured In Her Eyes

"A foolishly foolish idea born from the foolish mind of a foolhardy foolish fool."

"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All"

This book reminded me I once went to a film screening of a Film Club during the university festival of Kyushu University. I think there were two short films, and you were supposed to hand in a questionnaire after the screening. I can't remember a thing about the films themselves though.

The four members of the Classic Literature Club of Kamiyama High School are still working for their project for the school festival when they are invited to see a short detective movie made by the people of class 2-F for the school festival. The story is about a group of students visiting an abandonded mine town, and the murder of one of them inside a locked room in a theater, but the film ends right after the body was discovered. The girl working on the script collapsed due to stress, making it unable for her to continue, but the problem is nobody knows what her plans were for the ending, making it an unfinished detective story. And while several of the clasmates have suggestions for solutions, it's hard to judge which one was the originally intended ending. Irisu Fuyumi of Class 2-F however, known throughout the school as the "Empress" because she's extremely good at getting the right people to work on the right things, wants the Classic Literature Club to act as observers and evaluate the suggested solutions so Class 2-F can finish their film. But it appears that perhaps the members of the club are better fit to find the real solution in Yonezawa Honobu's Gusha no End Roll ("End Credits of Fools", 2002).

Gusha no End Roll is the second book in Yonezawa's Classic Literature Club series (also known as the Hyouka series, as the anime series is named after the first novel). It also carries the English subtitle Why Didn't She Ask EBA, a reference to Christie's Why Didn't They Ask Evans? The series falls under the everyday life mystery genre, which keeps itself busy with solving enigmatic events that might occur in the normal, daily life, as opposed to bloody murder. So more mysteries like "Why is that man on my bus always along for the ride for only one stop?" or "Why did that woman remain in her seat even though this is the terminal station for this train?". Obviously, it's more realistic for freshmen high school students like our four members of the Classic Litereature Club to be paining their heads about these kinds of problems, rather that of violent death.

Which is why it's funny that Gusha no End Roll is indeed about murder! A fictional one, mind you, but still. The idea of having the students detect the murderer in an unfinished mystery film is actually quite brilliant, as it allows for Yonezawa to involve his characters with a type of crime he usually wouldn't be able to. The unfinished film is set in an abandoned theater, with one of the students killed inside one of the backstage chambers which was locked. The only key available was in the manager's office next to the entrance of the theater, but to get that key you'd need to pass the hall and the hallway unseen, which would've been impossible as all students were wandering through the theater). This unfinished film is treated as a text in a historical or bibliomystery: the Classic Literature Club members, but also the students of Class 2-F use the film/text as the base for their deductions, searching each frame for a clue as to what the intended solution was. But like in a historical/bibliomystery, the text is not the only source for our detectives, and that is what sets it apart from a conventional mystery, as there is a layer "outside" the film world. While the script writer is out, the club members also interview other people involved with the filming, like one of the prop builders, to learn more about the fictional world, and about the script writer and how this film project came to be in the first place, all in the hopes of figuring out what the solution is supposed to be.

And as this is the second book I read in this series, I'm now starting to see patterns, and I can say that Yonezawa loves his multiple solutions. Hyouka already had a double-layered solution, but this one has like four or five solutions. Several involved members of the filming crew, like the assistant-director, suggest their solution to the locked room conundrum to the Classic Literature Club, all firmly based on both the "text" and their knowledge of the project circumstances (for example, the props that were prepared). These hypotheses, while grounded, are all rejected one by one based on small oversights made, though each hypothesis does add some new revelation to be used for the next. It has a Berkeley-like effect, and it's something you don't often see done this well in the everyday life mystery genre, so I could appreciate that. The solutions are also different enough to keep the reader entertained (the fake solution marathon can feel tiring at times if done badly) and it also invites the reader to read the "film text" carefully, as a lot of hints are hidden there, while the multiple solutions also show how wildly different each viewer can interpret (the importance of) a scene.

Oh, and as a side-note, the final solution is a lot easier to guess if you know your Holmes! If you're not that well-read, you might not understand a certain hint, but I think the true solution to what happened fits wonderfully with the whole theme of the book, giving true meaning to all the false solutions that came before it.

What is also interesting is that Oreki Houtarou, the narrator and main detective of the series, is shown to be a fallible detective once again. While he does get it at the end, he's not likely to get there in one step, and often falls in the trap of the false solution himself before he finally gets it. It fits his personality perhaps (he's not really a pro-active detective), but the often mistaken detective trope is not one you often see with younger detective characters, at least not seriously (as opposed to what you see in series like Scooby Doo!, where it's most definitely a source of comedy). There is something like a larger story playing across the books in the series with Houtarou's older sister trying to push her brother to be a bit more active, and the books are also slowly working towards the school festival it seems, so we might see more of Houtarou's growth in subsequent books in the series.

Gusha no End Roll is thus a very enjoyable entry in the Classic Literature Club series, as it introduces murder in a convincing and amusing manner in a series that is supposed to be about minor mysteries you'd encounter in your daily life. The result is a book that takes on very large themes in mystery fiction like the locked room mystery, text-based mystery solving and multiple solutions, but dressed like a school comedy drama. Can't wait to read the rest of the series!

Original Japanese title(s): 米澤穂信　『愚者のエンドロール』

Candy

I cry...
To try to cry my pain away
Alone, nobody around
I say you pay for all the things you said 

"I Cry" (Nadia Gifford)

I am not that well-versed in Japanese classical literature actually. I know a bit of Classical Japanese, and I know a bit of the stories through references, but I have never read completely through tales like Genji Monogatari...

Oreki Houtarou's plans to spend the coming three years at high school in an energy-efficient manner (meaning: without any extra activities) are immediately shot down by his globe-trotting sister. She orders her brother to join her old school club at Kamiyama High School, because the Classic Literature Club is on the verge if extinction due to the fact the last members graduated last year, meaning that if there's no influx of new members this year, the club's effectively dead. Houtarou finds he's not the only one to join the club, as Chitanda Eru, heiress of one of the prominent families in town, also joins the club "for personal reasons", as well as two of Houtarou's childhood friends. After learning that Koutarou has a knack for solving small mysterious events that happen at school, like the mystery of the book that is borrowed, and returned on the same day every week by different people, Eru decides that he's the one who can help her. She confides in him that she joined the club because she needed to dig in the history of the Classic Literature Club, as she wants to learn more about her uncle who has disappeared, and her only clue is a fading memory that links her uncle to the school's Classic Literature Club and their club magazine, Hyouka, which is also the title of today's book. There's also an English subtitle, The Niece of Time, a reference to The Daughter of Time.

Hyouka was the 2001 debut novel of Yonezawa Honobu, published in the Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko line for light novels. It turned out to be a golden debut, as Hyouka was followed by several sequels to form the Classic Literature Club series, which was adapted as a succesful anime TV series in 2012, which was named after this first novel in the series. The anime series is fairly populair even outside Japan, and I think most people will know Hyouka better just as a school anime series, rather than as a detective series or the debut work of Yonezawa. I haven't seen the anime myself by the way, as I kept saying to myself I'd read the books first, but it took me quite some years to actually get to them (I have read other works by Yonezawa in the meantime though).

Now I think about it, Hyouka is quite similar to Yonezawa's Petite Bourgeoisie series, as both feature high school students, a protagonist who is somewhat reluctant to actually detect, a more active female counterpart and of course, everyday life mysteries. The mysteries solved here aren't bloody murders, but other, rather innocent happenings that happen in your normal life that might raise an eyebrow. The first few chapters for example throw the cited example of a rather boring book being borrowed every single week on the same day, but by different people, or one where Eru is locked inside the club room, even though there's only one key to the door, which was in the possession of Koutarou (who most definitely did not lock the door). While not a spectacular as a triple murder, I've come to appreciate this subgenre of detective fiction, especially when they're done like in Hyouka: the situations are somewhat mysterious, but normal enough that they raise questions, and they're properly hinted. Bonus points for the fact the situations fit perfectly with the school setting.

After the introducing chapters, Hyouka moves to the main storyline, which is about Eru's uncle and what transpired at the Classic Literature Club thirty-three years ago. Here the mode changes to that of something that resembles a mix between a historical and a bibliophilic mystery, as the club members search for old books and other materials to deduce what happened three decades ago. One has to admire how Yonezawa used precise wording in each of the documents to nudge the reader in the right direction, as well as the fact how each new document presented changes the working theory. So first a theory is made based on document 1, which is then altered because of the contents of document 2 leading to theory 2, etc. It's a great showcase of the cause-and-effect relation between clues and hypotheses, even if the deductions feel less 'tight' (or decisive) compared to the mysteries found in the earlier chapters because it's based on textual interpretation.

I first read this book as a short story collection, as early on each chapter had its own mystery, but it turned out it was a proper novel, and I liked in hindsight how good the clueing was throughout the book, with little comments or revelations made the earlier parts coming back for the end. This is what any good detective novel should do, of course, but because I first read it as a short story collection, I wasn't prepared for that much story integration across stories, and even after noticing it was not a story collection, I thought the clueing/foreshadowing was done really well.

Hyouka was thus a fairly entertaining book, even if a bit short. While the book does feature a finished storyline, it also feels like the start of a story, so I guess we'll learn more about Houtarou, the other characters and the school itself in subsequent entries. So while Hyouka on its own is a good, but light meal, I have the feeling the whole course will turn out to be quite satisfactory. And hey, I might even try the anime.

Original Japanese title(s): 米澤穂信 『氷菓』