The Three Coffins

「うるさい、密室のないミステリなんて、クリームのコーヒーみたいなもんだ」

「 懐かしい密室」

"Shaddup, a mystery without a locked room, that's like coffee without cream."

"A Nostalgic Locked Room"

Kinda weird the cover doesn't actually feature coffins.

While most titles usually give you some idea about the contents of the book, few titles are as informative as Orihara Ichi's Nanatsu no Hitsugi - Misshitsu Satsujin ga Oosugiru ("The Seven Coffins  - Too Many Locked Room Murders", 1992). Just a glance at this title allows you to guess a lot about this short story collection. For example, it shouldn't come as a surprise that this book is about locked room murders, considering the subtitle. Or that there are seven stories collected here. And doesn't this title sound a bit familiar? So the reader can also make a safe (and correct) guess that this short story collection has a minor parody angle/is inspired by famous locked room murder mysteries and writers of the sub-genre, like of course John Dickson Carr. The seven stories in this collection all "star" Inspector Kurohoshi, a middle-aged police detective who was once in the career fast track, but he was transferred to rural Shirooka because he was too much a fan of detective novels and locked room mysteries: he always tried to make his own cases appear more complex than they actually were. Kurohoshi's only hopes of returning to the capital is by solving a big case here, but nothing ever happens here... or perhaps they do? In this collection, Inspector Kurohoshi is put on seven different locked room murders that occur in Shirooka, but perhaps it's about time someone told him that he's not the detective character in these stories...

In 1985 author Orihara Ichi reached the final round of the All Yomimono New Mystery Writers' Prize with his short story Osekkai na Misshitsu ("A Busy-body Locked Room"), but lost there. But he was offered a new chance later, and in 1988, he made his debut as a professional writer with the short story collection titled Itsutsu no Hitsugi ("The Five Coffins"), which included Osekkai na Misshitsu. In 1992, Nanatsu no Hitsugi - Misshitsu Satsujin ga Oosugiru was released as the revised version of this book, adding two stories (hence the title change). I hadn't read anything by Orihara before by the way, though I had known about this collection for like forever, as it's a pretty well-known book. As mentioned above, this collection has some parody-like qualities, as most of the stories in this collection are named after other stories and there are also plenty of references to famous locked room mysteries. The stories all have a light, comedic tone to them, also by always having everyone but Inspector Kurohoshi solve the case.

The book opens with Misshitsu no Ouja ("The King of The Locked Room"), which also has the alternate English title No Smoking in the Locked Room. The Japanese title is a pun on the Japanese translation of Knox' Solved by Inspection. Inspector Kurohoshi is put on the case of a dead amateur sumo wrestler in the local community gymnasium. The night before, the local shopping arcades had their annual festival, with a sumo tournament as its finale. For the last few years, the finalists have been the same two people: Tokitou Kenichi of the East Exit Shopping Arcade, and Satou Hiroshi of the West Exit Shopping Arcade. While Satou had been on a winning streak the last few years, Tokitou won this year and naturally, the victory was celebrated with his friends and a lot of liquor, while Satou had to lick his wounds. Tokitou and his gang eventually ended up drinking in the local community gymnasium after borrowing the key, and fearing the neighbors would complain or that Satou and his gang would cause trouble, they had locked themselves inside the gymnasium, covering the windows and taping the doors down. Kurohoshi and his subordinate Takeuchi are sent to the gymnasium when someone says he saw Satou and his gang trying to get inside, and that when that person returned later, he wasn't getting any replies from the people inside in the gymnasium, which made him worried. When they break inside, they find that everyone is dead drunk, save for Tokitou himself, as he's rather dead. The circumstances suggest that Tokitou had been wrestling with someone, who threw him on the floor to break his neck, but who else but Satou could even stand a chance against this amateur sumo wrestler? While the set-up with the taped doors is promising, the solution is a bit easy to guess: it's a bit weird that this possibility is ignored by the narrative at first, as the actual solution seems, to me, to be a lot easier to swallow and even easier to think of than some fancy locked room murder trick. I think something like this can work depending on how good the misdirection is, but I at least thought the solution was a lot more obvious than the narrative tried to paint it.

Dickson Carr wo Yonda Otokotachi ("The Men Who Read Dickson Carr") has the alternate title The Locked Room Without Key, but the Japanese title is of course a reference to William Brittain's The Man Who Read... series. Inspector Kurohoshi is asked to come to the house of the wealthy recluse Kazami Akira, who lives there with his grandson. Kazami Tomoko, Akira's niece and last living relative, has been studying in the United States for the last four years, but when she returned here, it appeared like the house hadn't been lived in for years. She could not find anyone inside, but her uncle's study was locked from the inside. When Kurohoshi has the door opened, he finds two skeletons in the room, as well as the key to the door, and several murder weapons like a rifle, a bat and knife lying around the floor. What happened here? This is a fun little story, with each of the four sections focusing on a different character, slowly revealing what exactly happened in this locked room. There are lot of little questions that float around when you first read about the locked room, like why the key of the door was inside the room, or why there are so many murder weapons there, and those elements really make this an entertaining read. The answer to why this turned into a locked room is pretty funny and while the story does rely a bit on coincidence/luck, I really enjoyed this one.

In Yakuza na Misshitsu ("A Yakuza Locked Room"), also known as The Locked Room Is Dead, Inspector Kurohoshi has to protect a yakuza gang leader in a gang war. Miwa used to be a high-ranking captain in the Yamada-Gumi, but when the previous head of the Yamada-Gumi died, he decided to start his own group, resulting in a gang war between the new Miwa-Kai and Yamada-Gumi. While the widow of Yamada is trying curses and other occult ways to kill Miwa, the men of the Yamada-Gumi have bought rockets from Hawaii to take out Miwa himself. Because the Yamada-Gumi has openly declared at what day and time Miwa will meet his maker, the Miwa-Kai prepares against the rocket attack by buying a cheap survival shelter container to protect their leader. While the shelter seems to withstand the tremendous rocket attack on the Miwa mansion, the police and the men of the Miwa-Kai are surprised to learn that Miwa still died even though he was safely inside the shelter. Was it widow Yamada's curse which finished the gang leader off inside his container? This is again a story where I think the actual solution is a lot more obvious than the story pretends it to be, so a lot of the time you're wondering why a certain point isn't raised. There's a lot of clever misdirection going regarding how the shelter was used though, so while I think the trick behind the locked room wasn't surprising, I think this is a well-plotted tale.

Natsukashii Misshitsu ("A Nostalgic Locked Room") is also called The Third Locked Room and is about the mystery author Tsujii Yasuo and his Misshitsu no Fugou Keibu, a parody on Tsutsui Yasukata and his Fugou Keiji series. The best-selling Tsujii disappeared three years ago from his cottage, saying he wanted to travel to recharge again. His disappearance was an utter mystery to his editors at the time, for Tsujii disappeared from the study in his cottage, while the three editors were waiting for him in the room outside his study. The men had been waiting for Tsujii to finish his manuscripts for them that day, but he managed to leave his study, even though the windows were locked from the inside and the only door was observed by the editors. Now three years later, the men are invited to the cottage again as Tsujii has announced his return. The editors arrive early, as Tsujii isn't in his study yet, but after some time, the men get suspicious again, and when they check the study once more, they find a decapitated Tsujii inside, even though the study door had been under their observation!  A very tricky story because it revolves around both an impossible disappearance in the past and the introduction of a body inside a locked room. It's definitely a well-plotted story, with a lot of steps to make the miracle reality. Perhaps even a bit too complex, as there's a lot going on here. There's even a Story-Within-A-Story narrative about a very similar locked room disappearance/murder in a serialized story by Tsujii (hence the alternate English title The Third Locked Room), so we're talking about a lot of content here. Plot-wise, an impressive story, though it does rely a lot on coincidence or hoping that people react in a certain way.

Wakihonjin Satsujin Jiken ("The Secondary Honjin Murder Case"), AKA The Perfect Locked Room is obviously inspired by Yokomizo Seishi's Honjin Satsujin Jiken, featuring a lot of familiar elements. We follow the retired teacher Okuyama Kyousuke writing about the horrible murder that occured in the manor of the Ipponyanagi family. The manor used to be a waki-honjin, a secondary inn reserved for travelling daimyo in the Edo period. While the Ipponyanagi's used to be an important family, the family grew impoverished, and now thirty-seven year old Hiroko (an old student of Okuyama) lives there alone with her sick mother and one old servant. Their financial situation is the reason why Miyaji Takeshi, a former servant of the Ipponyanagi's, returns to his old master. The uncouth middle-aged man made a fortune in the black market, got hold of some of the debts of the Ichiyanagis and now demands to marry the beautiful Hiroko unless they want to lose the house. Ipponyanagi Hiroko eventually agrees to marry Miyaji to protect her mother. They marry on a cold winter day, and in the evening, the couple retreats to the annex to spend their first night as a married couple. The following morning however, the servant finds Miyaji dead in the annex bedroom. For some reason, he had taped the door and windows of the bedroom shut, while heavy closets had been also been pushed in front of the bedroom door from the outside, effectively locking the door from both sides. Hiroko was nowhere to be found, but there were no footprints in the snow between the main building and the annex and for some reason, a bloody handprint of a man with four fingers was found outside the annex... People who have read Honjin Satsujin Jiken will definitely recognize a lot of the elements, but the solution to this problem is completely different. Like most of the stories in this collection, the mystery is mostly constructed because of the independent actions of various characters coming together in a rather 'fortunate' manner, creating an utterly impossible situation. The same holds here, with coincidence playing a big role in creating the mystery. I really like the reason why the victim had taped the door shut from the inside though and the set-up of that part of the mystery, but it's hard to ignore the fact that a lot of coincidences had to occur in a relatively short period of time to create this locked room mystery.

Futoumei na Misshitsu ("An Opaque Locked Room") has the alternate title Invisible Man and has a Chestertonian problem. The owner of a construction company suspected of corruption is found in his locked office in his house, and the suspect is a rival owner of a construction company who was lurking around the neighborhood around the time of the murder, but nobody saw him actually go in the house and commit the crime, even though a lot of the victim's employees were hanging around the house and the victim was actually a well-trained martial artist. A short story, with a surprisingly interesting variation on the concept of the invisible man as seen in Chesterton's Father Brown stories. The clewing of how this crime was committed was really cleverly done, though this story may be hard to solve if you're not very familiar with certain elements of Japanese culture.

I mentioned Osekkai na Misshitsu in my introduction of this book, but that story was retitled to Tengai Shoushitsu Jiken ("The Case of the Disappearance of the Face of the Earth") and also given the alternate English title The Locked Room In the Air. The Japanese title is based on the Japanese title for Clayton Rawson's short story Off the Face of the Earth and similarly deals with a disappearance of a person from a very small space, in this case, the disappearance of a murderer from a moving cabin of a ropeway. The Mt. Shirooka ropeway has been newly opened, but one day, a woman is found stabbed to death in one of the cabins arriving at the ground station. Soon after, witnesses appear who had been in the cabins moving up the ropeway while the victims' cabin was going down. They swear they saw the woman being assaulted by a man, but how did that man disappear from a suspended railway cabin that can only be opened from the outside in mere minutes? Man, I can easily imagine this as a Detective Conan episode for some reason. While the disappearance from the cabin is obviously an impossible situation, there's also a light focus on the times of when the cabin was spotted by the witnesses and the time it takes for the ropeway to move/characters to move around, which kinda reminds of a railway mystery, but overall, this is again a story that is cleverly constructured, but that does rely on various characters just happening to see or do something at a certain moment, all of that resulting in a seemingly impossible situation, rather than it actually being planned as such. I'm not against that per se, but most of the stories follow this pattern, which does make it a bit more obvious how hard Lady Luck must've been working in the background for this volume.

I might sound a tad negative about Nanatsu no Hitsugi - Misshitsu Satsujin ga Oosugiru, but I do think the seven stories collected in this volume are clever and well-plotted locked room murder mysteries on their own. Taken together however, some of the underlying mechanics with which Orihara constructs his mysteries become a bit obvious, even if the settings of the stories themselves are quite varied. Still, you can do a lot worse than this volume if you're looking for a good short story collection about locked room mysteries. A safe, and ultimately rewarding read if you want some impossibilities.

Original Japanese title(s): 折原一『七つの棺　密室殺人が多すぎる』：「密室の王者」 / 「ディクスン・カーを読んだ男たち」 / 「やくざな密室」/ 「懐かしい密室」 / 「脇本陣殺人事件」 / 「不透明な密室」 / 「天外消失事件」