Timetable Affair

「レールの上を走れる電車は走らない電車よりもいい電車」

『クビキリサイクル』 

"A train which runs on rails is still better than a train which doesn't run at all."

"The Kubikiri Cycle"

This is a very odd (e-book) cover: it has the text you usually find on the back of a book, on the front!

Disclosure: I translated Ayukawa's short story collection The Red Locked Room. Advertisement: if you haven't bought the book yet, please do!

As a Japanese puppet state located in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, Manchukuo had a very international population, which of course brought its own set of troubles when it came to fighting crime. Inspector Onitsura is one of the many Japanese police detectives who has been posted in the city of Dalian and one day, he is put on the case of the murder on the Russian Ivan Petrov. The man lived all on his own in a secluded place, but was known to be quite wealthy. He had no family of his own, but his deceased siblings all had children, and he has taken good care of his three cousins Anton, Nicolai and Alexander. But as of late, things didn't go smooth between the three cousins and their uncle, as Ivan was a far too-proud Russian and wouldn't allow for his cousins to marry non-pure Russians. This obviously gave all three of them a good reason for killing the old man. At first, Onitsura may think it's an easy job, but to his great surprise he finds that all three cousins have perfect alibis for the time of the murder: Anton was travelling across the country by train and was seen several times by various witnesses, Nicolai went to collect research materials at a local farmer and Alexander had been on a date with his fiancée the whole day. One of them must be lying, but who? That is the question that drives the plot of Ayukawa Tetsuya's debut novel Petrov Jiken ("The Petrov Affair" 1950).

If you have read the introduction by Ashibe Taku in Ayukawa's The Red Locked Room, you might remember there's quite a tale behind the debut of Ayukawa, a person who would become one of the most important figures in the history of puzzle plot mysteries in Japan. Ayukawa had been brought up in Manchukuo, as his father worked for the Manchurian railways. He had written his first novel (Petrov Jiken) there, but his family had to flee Manchukuo when World War II intensified, and he lost the manuscript during that chaos. And even after re-writing the story and winning a competition with it after the war, luck still wasn't on Ayukawa's side, as financial problems at the publisher again proved to be an obstacle. But after all of that, Petrov Jiken finally did get published, and it's very much a story like you'd expect from Ayukawa.

For when you think of Inspector Onitsura, you think of mystery stories revolving around perfect alibis that need to be cracked, and that's also true in Onitsura's first appearance. All three of Onitsura's suspects have perfect alibis that depend on very different elements, so not only does he need to figure out which of them could've been faked, he also has to dig deeper to see whether the fact a person faked an alibi also means they killed old Petrov. The story's setting is definitely what makes Petrov Jiken an interesting read: not surprisingly, this is the very first novel I've ever read that is set in Manchukuo, and the region around Dalian makes for a captivating locale. The fact that Ayukawa grew here is definitely noticable, and the city truly comes alive within the pages of this book. Dalian has a very international population, and one of the earliest scenes that stands out involves local policemen not being being able to speak all of the many languages used around here: some may speak Japanese, but no Russian or Chinese, and the customs and 'common sense' of the various people living here is also of importance to the mystery plot: some of the minor mysteries Onitsura manages to solve depend on unspoken, yet important cultural differences which create interesting and even ingenious problems. None of this is necessary knowledge to solve the big questions, so as a reader, I just thought it was educational and amusing to see such ideas pass by. There's some cultural stereotyping here, but on the whole Ayukawa portrays an interesting international cast in an international setting that is now nothing but a memory of the past, as Manchukuo doesn't exist anymore of course (the cities themselves of course still exist).

One of the witnesses's alibis depends on his trip by train, and of course: everyone associates Ayukawa with trains nowadays. In this case, the most interesting note to mention is that Ayukawa apparently made use of actual railway schedules of that time while planning out this character's trip across Manchukuo. I like mystery stories that incorporate real railway schedules, like Matsumoto's Ten to Sen. The little maps of the railways and Dalian itself in the book also help you in making you imagine how the setting must've looked like. Oh, and in case you thought I spoiled something substantial by mentioning fake alibis and trains here: not only is it Ayukawa's MO, let's say everyone has something to hide here and there's definitely more here than just 'haha, his alibi was fake because he took another train.' It's certainly not only the character on the train who has a perfect alibi that is not really perfect.

Though that brings me to the point of the length of the plot. As a novel, Petrov Jiken is definitely not long at all. But it does feel very slow, too slow even. Perhaps it's the very methodological structure that reminds of Crofts (Ayukawa was obviously inspired by Crofts), where you have a chapter about the investigation of X's alibi followed by a chapter about the investigation of Y's alibi followed a chapter about the investigation of Z's alibi, and then again with chapters about Onitsura trying to break each alibi in subsequent chapters. But I also have the idea that some ideas seen in this novel would've worked better as a short story. Perhaps it's because I'm more used to seeing Ayukawa as a short story writer (though I have read a few of his railway novels), but especially the core idea of this novel would've perhaps make even more of an impression if it had been standalone and with a more focused plot. In Petrov Jiken, it appears Ayukawa had an interesting core idea for a perfect alibi, but then tried to be even cleverer than his own idea: the final solution ultimately falls a bit flat because Ayukawa's attempt at outsmarting the core idea doesn't really work and doesn't feel satisfying after all we've read until then. Perhaps this is because it was Ayukawa's first novel and he wanted to outsmart everyone, even himself, but I think the novel would've been more satisfying if he had more confidence in the core trick he came up with and gone 100% with that.

Petrov Jiken is everything you'd expect from an Inspector Onitsura story by Ayukawa, featuring unbreakable alibis and a very original setting, but you can also tell it's his debut novel, as some of the concepts shown here are that of a person who is perhaps too eager to be cleverer than everyone, including himself, resulting in an ending that isn't nearly as satisfying as some of the other ideas he has shown in the book earlier. Obviously, I read this book after translating The Red Locked Room, but I have also read a lot more Ayukawa stories/novels besides the ones I translated, and I think that's perhaps for the best. Petrov Jiken is not a bad mystery by any means, but it's not as keenly thought out or focused as some of Ayukawa's other output. Interesting read if you're already into Ayukawa and want to see how he started!

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也『ペトロフ事件』

番外編：The Red Locked Room Released

Some readers may have been disappointed when Locked Room International didn't release a full-length Japanese mystery last year. Abiko's hilarious locked room mystery The 8 Mansion Murders was released in 2018 and while Abiko's short story A Smart Dummy in the Tent was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 2019, most people had probably expected something more from Locked Room International after the annual releases of The Decagon House Murders (2015), The Moai Island Puzzle (2016) and The Ginza Ghost (2017). But I'm happy to say we can offer you something now in these times.

For the short story collection The Red Locked Room was released today, with a selection of seven stories with locked room murders, perfect alibis and other impossibilities by none other than the illustrious Tetsuya Ayukawa. I was once again very fortunate to be involved with this project as the translator. Ayukawa (1919-2002) was one of most respected driving forces of puzzle plot mysteries in post-war Japan. His creative output was excellent, with meticulously written plots that often involved perfect alibis that had to be cracked, but he was also a master of other impossible mysteries like the locked room murder. While he has not been translated in English before, you may know his name from the award named after him: the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award is awarded annually by the publisher Tokyo Sogensha, which gives newcomers an opportunity to debut as a professional authors. Ayukawa was very keen on finding and nurturing new and old mystery talent, as he himself had a rather rough start as a mystery writer. Keikichi Osaka was for example a mostly forgotten author, but Ayukawa was one of the people who brought his stories back on the stage and for all we know, The Ginza Ghost would never have been released without Ayukawa. Many shin honkaku authors made their debut because of Ayukawa's editiorial efforts. Two of them are Taku Ashibe and Alice Arisugawa, the duo responsible for the initial selection of the stories included in Locked Room International's The Red Locked Room.

Unfortunately enough, Ayukawa himself did not see an English translation of his own works during his own life-time. One of his short stories was actually considered for Ellery Queen's anthology Japanese Golden Dozen: first that story didn't made it because it was considered perhaps too complex, and when it was finally included in the second volume of Japanese Golden Dozen, that second volume never got an actual English release!

The Red Locked Room includes seven stories, four starring the foppish great detective Ryūzō Hoshikage, three starring the ever-diligent Inspector Onitsura. The Hoshikage stories are about locked room murders and other impossibilities: a murder in a locked autopsy room, a killer clown disappearing from a tunnel and more. The Red Locked Room, The Blue Locked Room and The White Room form a colorful trio, and especially The Red Locked Room is regarded very highly among fans of the genre. The Clown in the Tunnel is a personal favorite with its brilliantly plotted impossible vanishing, and I don't even like clowns! We also have Inspector Onitsura, who is always facing suspects who appear to have a perfect alibi even though Onitsura's certain he's on the right trail. Both Whose Body? and Death in Early Spring keep you guessing what really happened as Onitsura investigates each possible trail, while The Five Clocks is a genuine masterpiece about a man with a perfect alibi vouched for by no less than five different clocks! The book also features an introduction by Taku Ashibe, who has been a tremendous help in making this project possible in the first place. His preface gives you insight in how important Ayukawa was for the genre both as writer as well as an editor.

My own reviews of the stories included are a bit scattered, as The Red Locked Room features an original selection: you can find the Hoshikage stories here and here, and the Onisura stories here (never reviewed Whose Body? I realize now). Publishers Weekly's early review is also available now, which gave the book a starred rating and says "The seven whodunits in this outstanding collection reveal Ayukawa (1919–2002) to have been one of Japan’s most accomplished writers of classic fair-play mysteries" and "Ayukawa’s ingenuity will make golden age fans hope his novels will also be translated." On The Threshold of Chaos also has reviews of the Japanese version of the Hoshikage stories here and here.

Anyway, I think that people who have enjoyed the previous Japanese release by Locked Room International will have a lot of fun with these stories too. The fantastical impossibilities of the Hoshikage stories and the slightly more realistic approach of the Inspector Onitsura stories cover a wide range and on a completely personal note, I am really thrilled to see Tetsuya Ayukawa finally getting an international audience! And that's it for today's service announcement. Enjoy The Red Locked Room!

Misty Time

Time after time 君と出逢った奇跡

緩やかな風吹く街で

そっと手を繋ぎ歩いた坂道

今も忘れない約束

「Time After Time　～花舞う街で～」（倉木麻衣）

Time after time / The miracle of meeting you

In the city where the wind blows gently

That hill road where we walked as we softly held each other's hands

And the promise I even now still remember

"Time After Time ~ In The City of Dancing Flowers~" (Kuraki Mai)

While I have to admit I don't always wear a wristwatch anymore like I used to (i.e. I don't bother when I go out for groceries), I still often take the thing with me, even if I have a phone with me. I wonder when Conan will trade his tranquillizer gun wristwatch in for a tranquillizer gun smartphone...

As readers of the blog have already noticed, I've become quite a fan of Ayukawa Tetsuya. He was a post-war writer who specialized in impossible crimes of both the 'old-fashioned' locked room murder kind, but also of the uncrackable alibi kind, where an ingenious murderer uses train time tables and other tricks to concoct a perfect alibi for themselves. Ayukawa also wrote really great 'Guess the Criminal' puzzle plot short stories, where the reader is challenged to prove through logic who the murderer is and he was also a very influential editor at publisher Tokyo Sogen, with writers like Ashibe Taku and Arisugawa Alice basically making their debuts under his guide. Itsutsu no Tokei ("The Five Clocks", 1999) is the first volume of two in the series Ayukawa Tetsuya Short Story Masterpieces and as the name suggests, the bulky volume collects some of his best short works. The collection features two of Ayukawa's most infamous creations: Chief Inspector Onitsura and the brilliant amateur detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou, with a slight emphasis on Onitsura stories.

In the past, I reviewed the two Great Detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou Complete Collection volumes, and several stories featured in Itsutsu no Tokei are also available in there. So for my thoughts on the stories Shiroi Misshitsu ("The White Locked Room"), Doukeshi no Ori ("The Clown's Cage"), Barasou Satsujin Jiken ("The Villa Rose Murder Case") and Akuma wa Koko ni ("The Devil Is Here"), I'd like to point you to those older reviews. I'll only be reviewing the stories I hadn't read yet in this post (which by default are all Inspector Onitsura stories).

The book opens with the title story: Itsutsu no Tokei ("The Five Clocks" 1957). Inspector Onitsura is asked by the fiancée of the main suspect to take a new look at a murder investigation. Money appears to be the motive behind the murder, and the suspect definitely needed that for his upcoming wedding, but his bride-to-be is sure he's innocent. Onitsura's problem is that the only other suspect has a perfect alibi. The other suspect was accompanied by a witness almost all night, who can swear to almost every single minute (with other witnesses backing the blanks up). The way this suspect managed to create his perfect alibi is brilliant: at one hand, it is actually just a series of otherwise simple ideas, but it's the way it's all combined that makes this story so ingenious. Definitely a great alibi deconstruction story.

Soushun ni Shisu ("Death In Early Spring", 1958) was a case that Onitsura had a lot of trouble with, the prologue says. The investigation on a murder that happened at a construction site at night had quickly led to a suspect (a rival contender for the hand of a certain lady), but this suspect has an alibi for the time the crime must have happened, as witnesses at the victim's workplace, the train time schedule and a letter written on that train show when the victim arrived in town. The solution to Onitsura's problem is one that neatly makes sense out of all the chaos. It's perfectly hinted at, and while not very difficult to solve, I think this is a good example of doing a well-constructed mystery that doesn't aim at completely baffling the reader, but instead offers the reader a good chance at solving it themselves without making it overly simple. And that in itself is an art many writers seem to forget.

Ai ni Kuchinan ("Withering in Love") starts with a theft of a wooden crate from a shipping company in Osaka, but the ensuing chase ends in the water. As the people of the shipping company try to save the crate, they open it, and find the dead body of a woman packed inside. The victim was an employee in the shipping company back in Tokyo, but nobody has any idea how she got inside the crate. Was she packed inside by the sender of the crate (a luxury furniture maker), the Tokyo branch of the shipping company, the driver of the truck, or someone else? What is even more confusing is that while the sender had shipped off two crates that day, one smaller to Osaka and a larger one to Shizuoka, but for some reason, the body was discovered from the larger crate, but in Osaka. The solution depends on a fact that may or may not have been common knowledge back when this story was written (1958), but it certainly isn't now, so to me, it really came out of nowhere. It's of course a problem that occasionally occurs: mystery writers usually make use of conventions of every day life to create a mystery plot, but time will eventualy change these conventions, making such stories difficult to graps for other times. Mind you, this story is not incomprehensible today, as I myself went 'Aah, I see, I get that', but the main gimmick certainly needs explanation and is not considered 'basic knowledge of society'. The idea behind this trick though is one I really like, it's just that the execution is a bit outdated for a reader almost 60 years later.

The murder on an affluent writer is what drives the plot in Ninomiya Shinjuu (1958), with the police focusing on literary colleagues of the victim. One of the suspects has a rather peculiar alibi: he tried to commit suicide with a woman on the night of the murder, first by throwing themselves in front of a train and later by taking sleep medicine. The alibi is dependent on where they tried to commit suicide and when, but the solution is rather weak: the police first proves one part of the alibi to be false because the murderer did something inexplicably stupid (there was no way that part of the alibi was going to hold!) and then they show you all kinds of train time tables that come out of nowhere and talk about characteristics of the night trains to show how the trick was pulled off. I think that if this story had been extended to a full novel, with more room to properly introduce the necessary clues to the solution, this story would've been much more enjoyable.

Fukanzen Hanzai ("Imperfect Crime", 1960) is an inverted story, about a publisher plotting the death of his business partner, who has discovered that he cooked the books of their company. He comes up with a plan to make it seem like his partner had fallen of the train elsewhere, while in fact he'd kill him in town. The conclusion is predictable, once a certain character trait is shown in the story, and the behavior the murderer shows at the end is actually rather unbelievable, as it's clear from the start that that behavior could be the only thing that could prove he had anything to do with the crime, so why do that!? Funny is that Chief Inspector Onitsura isn't the detective in this story: a rather unexpected character solves the crime, showing that everyone can be a great detective if they learn to observe, not only watch.

This volume ends with Kyuukou Izumo ("The Izumo Express"), where Onitsura has to solve a murder on a blackmailer. The main suspect is a farmer whose fiancée is now in a mental institution because of blackmailing. The man claims he had only just arrived in Osaka by the Izumo Express just minutes before the murder happened, so there was no way he could've made it out of the station and picked a cab to go the crime scene, especially not as it was his first time in town. Passengers riding in the same coach of the Izumo Express that day however don't remember seeing him. Is the man lying, or is something else going on? The main trick is probably not very difficult to guess once a certain word is dropped, and on the whole, I'd say this is a decent, but not particularly outstanding story. There is a hint of an impossibility here (the suspect claiming to have been present in a coach while the other people in the coach deny it), but the solution is rather obvious and if you really think about it, it's clear that any close investigation by the police would've soon brought the truth to light.

Itsutsu no Tokei is on the whole a great short story collection by Ayukawa featuring a great selection of impossible crimes. Locked room murders are probably usually the most popular variant of the impossible crime, but Ayukawa shows with his Inspector Onitsura stories that alibi deconstruction stories can be just as fun. People with interest in trains in particular will have a blast with these stories. I'm based in the Netherlands, where we have rather dense network of railways, similar to Japan, so I do like train mysteries, but I wonder whether it's something less attractive for readers based in countries lik the United States, where trains are less part of daily life? Anyway, what makes the Inspector Onitsura also interesting is that he is by no means the quintessential brilliant police detective. Sometimes, he'll be fooled by a murderer's tricks for weeks on, and in some stories, it isn't even Onitsura who solves the crime!

So, yes, Itsutsu no Tokei s definitely recommended material for people interested in Ayukawa Tetsuya, and Japanese mystery short stories in general. The Ayukawa Tetsuya Short Story Masterpieces offers some of Ayukawa's best work (complete with commentary for each story by Edogawa Rampo by the way), and with both Inspector Onitsura and Hoshikage Ryuuzou present, there is also diversity in this volume. I'd say this volume is better balanced than the Great Detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou Complete Collection series (which obviously only focuses on one character), so at the moment, I even think this is the best book for people who have never read Ayukawa before.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也　『五つの時計』：　「五つの時計」 / 「白い密室」 / 「早春に死す」 / 「愛に朽ちなん」 / 「道化師の檻」 / 「薔薇荘殺人事件」 / 「二ノ宮心中」 / 「悪魔はここに」 / 「不完全犯罪」 / 「急行出雲」

Black Wind

涙を隠した昨日に

遠い思い出 と今なら言える　

風のラララ

「風のラララ」（倉木麻衣）

And the past days where I hid my tears

Now I can say they are a distant memory

It's the wind's lalala...

"The Wind's Lalala" (Kuraki Mai)

Ayukawa Tetsuya was a highly influential writer of puzzle plot mysteries in post-war Japan. He was especially a prolific writer of stories featuring impossible crimes of a very specific kind. Whereas most people would instantly think of locked room murders, Ayukawa instead focused on the alibi deconstruction story: stories where the culprit has an unbreakable alibi, making it impossible for them to have committed the murder, even though it seems quite clear it was them. In the past, I have reviewed books like Kuroi Hakuchou and Tsumiki no Tou for example, which I really enjoyed. Ayukawa was also an important editor by the way connected to the publisher Tokyo Sogensha by the way, and writers like Arisugawa Alice and Ashibe Taku made their debuts thanks to awards connected to Ayukawa.

Warui Kaze ("An Ill Wind", 2007) is a short story collection by Ayukawa Tetsuya featuring stories originally published in the period between 1951 and 1975. The stories all feature Ayukawa's most famous detective character: Chief Inspector Onitsura of the Metropotan Police Department. Interesting is that even though Inspector Onitsura is the series character, he is seldom at the centre of the story. Warui Kaze for example features a couple of inverted stories (which obviously have the murderer in the center), where the inspector is only mentioned by title, never by name. But even the stories that do follow the police seldom show us the man: you're more likely to see several of his subordinates doing their job diligently, with Onitsura leading the investigation from his desk. He sometimes doesn't even appear for the finale for the story, leaving thaｔ job to his subordinates too. There have been some TV productions based on the Inspector Onitsura series, but I wonder whether he's as absent there too.

Etude in Blue (1956) starts with a scene where the director of a small company and his mistress comment on how their situation resembles the thriller movie they just saw. In the film, the director of a small company and his mistresss plotted together to kill the wife. And that's exactly what they are going to do too. The plan is to provide the director with a perfect alibi during the time of the murder, by making it appear his current girlfriend and intended victim (his secretary) was in a completely different place during the murder. The plan goes without a hitch, the conspirators think, but the police is eerily quick to catch on... As an inverted story, this is a decent, but not particularly memorable story. Like in Columbo, there is of course a major mistake left unnoticed by the murderer, which sets the inspector on their trail (a theme which is true for basically all stories in this collection). In this case, the mistake itself is a good one, and it's normal the inspector would continue his investigation from there, but there's still quite a jump between that point, and him finding out all the others details of the crime. Because this is an inverted story, we obviously don't get to see the police checking up on all the details of the case (as we already saw that from the murderer's point of view) and Onitsura explaining everything again would be repeating, but I guess a more logical structure to how Onitsura's explanation would've been better, as now he starts pointing out the things the murderer did to create his alibi, but then ends up with pointing out that mistake, which on its own does not connect to the rest of Onitsura's story.

Warui Kaze ("An Ill Wind"), Itai Kaze ("A Painful Wind") and Satsui no Esa ("Bait for Murderous Intent") are three very short inverted stories. Warui Kaze, which lends its title to the collection, is about a dentist, who happens to be visited by the man who drive his daughter to suicide. Murder ensues. The dentist comes up with a plan to create a fake alibi, but the scheme basically breaks through sheer bad luck, and it's not even possible for the reader to have foreseen that. In Itai Kaze, a husband discovers his Russian wife has been cheating him with a younger man, and the husband plots to kill the man, and make it seem his wife did it. While it is a short story and basically hinges on one single mistake, the plotting of the fatal mistake in question is actually quite smartly done, and I enjoyed this story. Satsui no Esai has a young man with a bright future plotting to kill his lover. He originally had not planned to kill her, but prospects of a marriage with a wealthy heir soon turned his feelings of love into murderous intent. The plan is to make it seem like she committed suicide on her own, but he makes one little mistake that turns everything upside down. And that's it, actually. It's really a small mistake that upsets his scheme, but rather than being impressed by how ingeneous it was, I was more thinking along the lines of "Yeah, of course he's going to forget that, it's really a small thing that very few people would think of". With stories like these, you want the police to point out a mistake that seems so stupid in hindsight, not one that seems genuinely unnoticable.

In Yoru no Houmonsha ("A Nightly Visitor"), a private detective is asked by a woman to prove the innocence of her deceased husband. A former lover who had been basically stalking him had been murdered on the night her husband died in a traffic accident. Police investigation showed that he had indeed been in the neigborhood of the crime scene, and as the other suspect has a perfect alibi and dead men tell no tales, they decide the deceased man was the murderer. The basic idea behind the alibi trick is fairly simple, and is actually seen in several of the other stories in this collection, though I did like one important part of the alibi trick, concerning a delivery from a Chinese restaurant. The way the police figure out this part of the alibi is suspect is fairly mundane, but also realistic and I could really clearly imagine how the scene'd go. 

MF Keikaku ("The MF Plan") is the plan one side of a manzai comedy duo gave to his scheme to kill his partner. Even though his partner is the reason they're not doing very well as a comedy duo, his partner refuses to break up with him, and even threatens to reveal hidden skeletons to the police if pushed. The plan is to make it appear his partner was already dead in his apartment while he himself still out of town. The fatal mistake in this inverted story is on one hand very simple: you're likely to come across it one of those solve-it-yourself mystery quiz books for children. On the other hand, the way it's hidden in the narrative is smart.

Madara no Inu ("The Speckled Dog") is by far the longest story in the collection, taking up about a quarter of the pages on its own. A female office worker receives a box of bonbons at her work. Figuring it might be from one of the many admirers she has, she puts on in her mouth, and finds out the hard way that the bonbons are filled with cyan. Police investigation initially focuses on her acquaintances and admirers, but then the police discovers that she might not have been the intended victim. While this story is a lot longer than the rest, it does feel a bit artificially long. The first half for example could be shortened greatly without any harm done to the narrative. The murderer's plan also involves an utterly complex scheme to get hold of a perfect alibi with too many elements. I think this plot would've worked either better as a full-length novel, with each of the elements having more time to get developed, or a less complex, short story.

The last two stories in the collection focus on a younger Inspector Onitsura, during his period with the Harbin police. In Nire no Kisou no Satsujin ("Murder in the Elmwood Mansion"), Elizaveta, a Russian aristocrat, calls Onitsura for help, as she found a dead body in the abandonded Elmwood Mansion near the Russian Cemetary. Elizaveta was supposed to meet with the victim, a blackmailer, for business about her deceased sister, but she found the blackmailer murdered. Later, they find out that Elizaveta's father has committed suicide that night, and that his pistol was also the weapon that killed the blackmailer. The problem however is that considering the time schedule, Elizaveta's father couldn't have retrieved his pistol from the store, murdered the blackmailer, and then gone on home to commit suicide. The solution to this problem is surprisingly simple, yet elegant. It's also the first story in this collection to emphasize the impossibility of things, even if by nature, alibi tricks are always stories about impossible situations. Oh, and on a side note, it's hard figuring out the original Russian names from the Japanese text!

Akuma ga Warau ("The Devil Laughs") is the final story in the collection and also set in Harbin. On New Year's night, a policeman is guided by a gunshot and a ghastly laugh to a street, where he discovers a dancer lying on the ground. She mutters the name of her assailant, and dies on the spot. The name of the assailant was a familiar one to the police, but when questioned, it appears he had a perfect alibi for the time of the murder: He was a block away, just stepping inside the bus, and there was a trustworthy witness present (trustworthy in the sense that the witness would have more reason to lie to get the man in trouble). The solution has Carrian qualities to it, I think, and quite well thought-off. It's not a classic, but certainly a more than decent impossible crime.

Warui Kaze, as a collection, is a bit skewed towards very short, one-idea stories that sometimes feel a bit like hit-or-miss. Well, there are not genuinely misses here, but they don't really fill the stomach either. I remember I felt the same about The Columbo Collection, the Columbo short story collection by William L. Link. There you definitely felt the difference between the one-short stories which point out one fatal mistake and then end, and the longer Columbo TV episodes, where Columbo slowly pulls on the thread, revealing more and more of the scheme. Warui Kaze basically has the same, as the conclusions to a lot of the stories feel to abrupt, even if the contents of the stories is interesting. I did enjoy the stories overall though, but I'd not recommend this as an introduction to the Onitsura character (also because he does not appear that very often).

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也　『わるい風』: 「青いエチュード」 / 「わるい風」 / 「夜の訪問者」 / 「いたい風」 / 「殺意の餌」 / 「MF計画] / 「まだらの犬」 / 「楡の木荘の殺人」 / 「悪魔が笑う」

Rhythm and Police

「レールの上を走れる電車は走らない電車よりもいい電車」

『クビキリサイクル』

"A train running on rails is better than a train not running at all"

"Kubikiri Cycle"

It's been like two or three months since I last wrote a review for the blog, but because of the posting schedule, you (dear reader) shouldn't have noticed that. Heck, it will take almost half a year before this post is actually published!

Ayukawa Tetsuya's Tsumiki no Tou ("A Tower of Blocks", 1966) starts with the death of a salesman in music records in a cafe. Given that a mysterious woman had lured the man to the cafe and had left him with a poisonous extra in his drink, it's not strange the police is very eager to hear what she has to say about the whole deal. The police initially have trouble locating the woman though, and when they do figure out who she is, they find out that this Tsuruko, who is a mistress of several men, has gone to Fukuoka for a few days of leisure. The police suspect Tsuruko might've run away, but then even more shocking news follows: her dead body was found next to the rails near Hiroshima, apparently thrown out of the train from her way back from Fukuoka to Shin-Osaka station (for a further connection back to Tokyo). Was she just robbed and murdered on the train? Or is her death somehow connected to the death of the salesman?

Ayukawa Tetsuya was a well-beloved mystery writer who specialized in 1) whodunnit stories and 2) alibi deconstructing stories. And like the other Ayukawa novels I've reviewed in the past, Tsumiki no Tou is an alibi deconstructing story starring Inspector Onitsura... set between Tokyo and Fukuoka. The latter is not a coincidence, nor representative of Ayukawa's work though, mind you. At least, I don't think so. Fukuoka (and the island of Kyuushuu) is often used as a setting in Ayukawa's work, probably because he spent some time there during World War II. But the more important reason is that I actually set out to find mystery novels set in Fukuoka, so my selection of Ayukawa stories is very skewed towards Fukuoka.

That said though, Tsumiki no Tou does resemble the other novels I reviewed a lot. They were all alibi deconstruction stories set between Tokyo and Fukuoka, and the tricks were all based on the actual time schedules for the trains at the time. The books all feature those time schedules, so readers could really figure out the alibi trick themselves, or even use them! Matsumoto Seichou's Ten to Sen famously also featured a trick that could be done in real-life, though I think that was only possible for a short while (because of changing schedules). I think I already posed the question in a previous Ayukawa review, but I wonder how common it is to do alibi stories based on real time schedules?

Tsumiki no Tou is a pretty short novel, but the story has excellent pacing and the solution behind the main problem (how could the main suspect have commited the murder despite having a perfect alibi) is really neat. Ayukawa knew how to do the alibi deconstruction story, and Tsumiki no Tou is an excellent example. After presenting you with a seemingly good alibi, the story keeps feeding you possibilities that undermine that alibi, only to show that alibi is really rock solid. After a while you too start to think the deal is impossible, and it's then that Ayukawa shows the ingenious trick that lies behind the murder. It's this idea of offense and defence that marks a good alibi deconstruction story in my opinion, and Ayukawa obviously knows that. It also helps that the trick in Tsumiki no Tou is not overly complex, like in Kuroi Trunk. Tsumiki no Tou is definitely solvable, and quite satisfying.

I was less impressed by the way the story developed at times though. Too much of the development depended on coincidences of the witnesses. By which I mean, once every while the police would hit a stop, and then a witness would remember something crucial, or talk about something that would turn out to be important. This device can be used once or twice in a novel, but after four or five times, it feels rather forced. It's like a reverse Columbo-situation: just about the time the police is giving up, the witness stops them from leaving with a "One more thing...". It's even more jarring, because the detectives in Ayukawa's novels are actually all quite competent.

I was also charmed by the original motive. Obviously, I'm not going to write in detail about that here, but I don't think I've seen this kind of motive often, and it was also hinted at really well throughout the novel. Motive is not especially important in an alibi deconstruction story, but here it was a very nice bonus.

There's really nothing much I can say about Tsumiki no Tou. If you're looking for a good, solid alibi deconstruction story (that isn't too long), you have your winner here. I find it even more accessible than the previously reviewed Kuroi Trunk and Kuroi Hakuchou, so I'd even recommend this book over those if you haven't read any Ayukawa yet.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也　『積木の塔』

Nostalgia Station

オレンジ色した極楽特急に乗り込んで　彼に会いに行くよ

すごいスピードで駅をとばし

あの小さな部屋へ

心がここにない私にね　何言ってもムダだよ 

「恋の極楽特急」 (小島麻由美）

I jump in the orange Heaven's Express of love to go see him

I fly across stations with tremendous speed

to that little room

It's no use talking to me, my mind isn't here anymore

"Heaven's Express to Love" (Kojima Mayumi)

Each time I read an alibi deconstruction story, I chuckle, thinking how horribly impossible it would be to pull one off perfectly with the Dutch railways.

Nishinohata Gousuke, owner of the Touwa Spinning Company, may have won the battle against the labor union and their strike, but he lost something more important: his life. The body of the much-hated C.E.O. was found on the tracks of a train and after blood was discovered on top of a train carriage, the police managed to figure out that the man was shot and thrown off a bridge, on top of a riding train. The case starts easy enough, but the police soon finds out that Nishinohata had more to fear than just the labor union: the Shaman, a shady new religion, was also after his head. But even though there are a lot of suspects and an abundance of significant clues, perfect alibis and dead ends forces the investigation into a wall. That is, until Inspector Onitsura is set on the case in Ayukawa Tetsuya's Kuroi Hakuchou ("Black Swan", 1960).

This year is rather heavy on alibi deconstruction stories, it seems: there was that little Crofts boom I had early in the year, and Matsumoto Seichou's Jikan no Shuuzoku a couple of months ago. Ayukawa Tetsuya was also famous for his alibi deconstruction stories (as well as impossible crimes and guess-the-criminal stories... I guess he did everything). Three years ago, I reviewed Kuroi Trunk ("The Black Trunk"), which was also an Inspector Onitsura case and a great, but perhaps too complex an alibi cracking story involving the movements of a black trunk containing a dead body across Japan. In Kuroi Hakuchou, the movements of a dead body by train once again forms the focus of the investigation, but the atmosphere is completely different from Kuroi Trunk. The investigation itself does bring Onitsura to Kyoto and Fukuoka (Kashii!), and I am starting to suspect that famous Japanese alibi deconstruction stories have a rule about featuring both Tokyo and Fukuoka (Ten to Sen, Jikan no Shuuzoku and Kuroi Trunk).

And the change is sometimes good, sometimes not as good. For example, Kuroi Trunk was way too focused on just the movements of the titular trunk, and it resulted in an investigation where the police would try to determine the exact location of the trunk down to the minute, across a space of Tokyo-Fukuoka (for those who don't know: it's a very large distance in time and space). It was at times too specific, too detailed and too focused. Kuroi Hakuchou on the other hand features a much more varied investigation, with lots of clues in different directions and even a much more dynamic way of presentation: in the course of the book, no less than three parties contribute to the hunt for the murderer, with series detective Onitsura only making his late first appearance in the second half of the story. The flow of the story thus does more to attract the reader: oh, this clue leads to a dead end? Let's go in this direction then? Oh, this gave us a new suspect, let's go in that direction for a bit, etc. On the other hand, especially in the first half of the novel I had the feeling the story wasn't moving forward at all, only sideways, which I thought a bit tiring and boring. The jumping between investigating parties was also part of that; especially as I had to wait half the book for Onitsura to appear.

I remember that in most of the Crofts I read, Inspector French also arrived late on the scene, but the story set-up was also quite different from Kuroi Hakuchou. Most of them were inverted mystery stories, so it was all lead-up to the murder and painting the scene. In Kuroi Hakuchou however, the murder happens very early in the book and it starts almost right-away with an investigation; it's just that Onitsura isn't called for until in the second half.

Which reminds me, I knew this was an alibi deconstructing story when I bought it (that was all I knew about it), but I loved how Ayukawa Tetsuya still presented Kuroi Hakuchou as a full-fledged whodunnit story. A lot of alibi-cracking stories give you an obvious murderer and focus completely on deconstructing his/her alibi, but in this story, you'd vagely guess that there was an alibi trick pulled off somewhere by someone, but the when and who were equal parts of the mystery besides the how. I'll be honest and say I was first looking at the wrong suspect, as he was the first to have a perfect alibi in the story, and well, considering all I knew about the book was that it was an alibi deconstruction story, it was natural for me to suspect him, right? Of course, this was completely my mistake, but I love it when mystery stories try to present themselves as one type of mystery story, when they are in fact another (i.e. making one trick appear to be another). There are some great ones there (which I can't name by title because it would spoil the fun), but playing with expectations at a meta-level is something I always appreciate.

Oh, by the way, I kinda liked how just like in Kuroi Trunk, this book is based on the actual train time tables at the time and that the time tables are also included in the book. Maybe it was just Matsumoto Seichou and Ayukawa Tetsuya, but it's interesting to note that the tricks in their stories were actually based on the actual time tables and could all actually be pulled off back when they wrote the stories (the one in Matsumoto's Ten to Sen in particular is very famous, but that one became impossible I think quite soon after publication). Not sure actually whether I've seen that with Western writers, now I think about it.

At the very end of the story, a minor hint is revealed to Onitsura (and the reader), which I actually quite love, but it's almost impossible to pull off good in the form of a novel. Really a shame, because the hint itself is good and deliciously hard to spot, but fair, but it just doesn't really work here. It almost feels like Ayukawa just used the hint because he liked it, rather than that it really added to the story, but it is the one element in the book that really made me wish there was an adaptation of this book for screen/big screen/radio/whatever.

I quite enjoyed Kuroi Hakuchou as a very competently written alibi-deconstructing whodunni. I do think I like Kuroi Trunk more, but I think that for most readers, Kuroi Hakuchou is probably the better one because it is much more varied and simply more enjoyable to read as a story.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也 『黒い白鳥』

Destination Unknown

果てしない地平線の向こうまで

無くしかけ答え探しに行こう

大きな詩を　カバンにつけこんで

約束の場所めざして　let's keep on running

「アコギな二人旅だぜ！」　(景山ひろのぶ、遠藤正明)

Let's go look for the answer you started to lose

Across the neverending horizon

Stuff a big song in your suitcase

And head for the promised place, let's keep on running

"A Duo's Acoustic Guitar Trip!" (Kageyama Hironobu, Masaaki Endou)

I really shouldn't be writing this review, considering I have a paper due tomorrow which I haven't even started with yet...

I had been wanting to read more Ayukawa Tetsuya ever since Akai Misshitsu - Meitantei Hoshikage Ryuuzou Zenshuu 1, so I picked up his Kuroi Trunk ("The Black Trunk"), the novel that could be considered Ayukawa's debut novel. I say considered, because Ayukawa, whose real name is Nakagawa Tooru, had initially won a contest with his Petrov Case in 1950, but due to problems with the publisher the book wasn't properly released then. It wasn't until 1956 that his first original novel, Kuroi Trunk, was published by Kodansha, under his new nom-de-plume Ayakawa Tetsuya. The story starts at Tokyo's Shiodome station, where a very suspicious smell from a black trunk sent there to be picked up, prompts the station attendant to call the police and open the suitcase. And lo, they indeed find a dead body stuffed inside the trunk. Tracing where the trunk was sent from, the police stumble upon the name of one Chikamatsu Chizuo, who sent the trunk to Tokyo under his own name from Fukuoka's Fudajima station. The hunt for Chikamatsu starts, which results in the discovery of his dead body, as he seemingly commited suicide. Seemingly, as inspector Onitsura, who used to be a classmate of Chikamatsu, suspects there is something more sinister going on with the problem of the black trunk.

Kuroi Trunk is seen as one of the best novels of 'alibi-breaking' Ayukawa and considered one of the classics of Japanese detective fiction in general. It's highly Crofts-inspired (especially The Cask) (and a bit of Yokomizo), as Ayukawa himself admits, which might also explain why it is certainly not one of the most pleasant books to read in terms of readability. But it is definitely a recommended read, because Ayukawa weaves a highly complex web of alibi tricks and deductions surrounding the origins and whereabouts of the titular black trunk.

As an alibi deconstruction story, the story settles on its main suspects about half-way through the story, but the complexities start there. Not only does the main suspect seem to have an unbreakable alibi, there is also another, fundamental problem governing the developments in this novel, that of who put the dead body in the black trunk and more importantly how. This forms both the novel strong and weak points. At one hand, we have a really well-constructed maze of actions, time-tables and other considerations, with a story that never feels boring. Every section of the story seems to have its own function, to complement something to the final solution.

On the other hand, Kuroi Trunk is definitely too complex for its own good at times. The story is hard to solve if you don't take notes regarding the time-tables: the murder and subsequent sending of the trunk to Tokyo takes place over a period of several days and Ayukawa sometimes discusses character movements in units of minutes. There are a lot of minutes in several days. Including the time-tables for the trains is a welcome point (and Ayukawa based his story on actual train time-tables at the time), but they are definitely also kinda scary. In my pocket version, the commentary includes a time-table that reconstructs the actual events surrounding the murder and just looking at it makes my head hurt. Note that I am saying this even after reading the novel.

I had seen this eye for minutely constructed alibi-breaking stories already in Doukeshi no Ori, which I loved, but it worked better there because it was a short story. The scale of the story is totally different and with Kuroi Trunk, it feels just... too hard. I don't think I will ever make this comment again on this blog, but Kuroi Trunk feels much more like a puzzle, than a novel (note that I am someone who likes early Queen, his short short stories and overall someone who looks more at puzzle plotting and placements of hints, than at actual characterization).

Kuroi Trunk is a classic post-war alibi-breaking mystery featuring trains and set in both Fukuoka (the northern part of the Kyushu island) and Tokyo, which is strangely something you can say also about Matsumoto Seichou's Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines"). They were released around the same time and feature similar ideas (though the execution and focal point is definitely different). As someone who lived in Fukuoka, I always love seeing Fukuoka and the usage of the local dialect in novels, which is featured in both these novels, though I am wondering why I see so much of Kyushu in Ayukawa Tetsuya's writings: unlike Matsumoto Seichou, he doesn't even originate from there. To bring back the point of Kuroi Trunk being a puzzle: Ten to Sen may feel alike, but it is definitely a novel and a fine one at it too.

I do like Kuroi Trunk though, but I doubt I would recommend it to people as their first Ayukawa, as it is a bit too complex for its own good at times. If you like alibi deconstructing stories though, it's definitely a recommended read.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也　『黒いトランク』