The Vanishing Victim Mystery

In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee.

"Luke" 24:5-6 (New International Version)

 

Okay, it's only after writing this post I realized there's actually a boulder on the cover of this book...

An Egyptian interpreter who is part of a travelling merchant troupe arrives in Jerusalem, where they keep hearing rumors about a certain Jesus of Nazareth, who has been gaining support of the population. The interpreter becomes interested in this Jesus, who is apparently slowly travelling towards Jerusalem too. He decides to visit an old friend to see what he can tell him about Jesus, but it turns out many people have different opinions about the man. Some consider him a messiah or even think he should overthrow the Roman rulers, others a fraud and confidence trickster or lament their children, who have become followers of Jesus. The Egyptian records all of his interviews in his diary, but sadly enough, he and his troupe are leaving Jerusalem just the day before Jesus is about to arrive here. The Eygptian doesn't return to the city until half a year later, and the first thing he does is ask about what happened to Jesus after he left, and he is shocked to learn that not only was Jesus captured and put on the crucifix to die... there are also rumors Jesus had resurrected. The Egyptian once again starts asking questions and learns the circumstances behind Jesus' arrest, how he was crucified and how his body not only disappeared from the locked location where his body was being kept, there are multiple witnesses who state they did see Jesus after his supposed death. But has there really been a miracle, or could this also have been done by a human? That is the mystery in Komori Kentarou's Jesus Christ no Misshitsu ("The Locked Room of Jesus Christ", 1997).

I discussed a Komori novel early this year, so why not have one in December too, especially one that has a tie to Christmas? Like Nnwenre no Serdab ("The Sealed Chamber of Nnwenre", 1996), Jesus Christ no Misshitsu has an Egyptian theme as the book mostly revolves around a two-part account of an Egyptian who was in Jerusalem before Jesus arrived there, and who investigated the resurrection of Jesus several months later: this account is book-ended by the tale of the person who stumbled upon the papyrus rolls. As a mystery, the resurrection of Jesus is of course easily reimagined as a locked room mystery: if the tomb where Jesus' body was being kept in was sealed and guarded, how did he escape? Some years ago, I reviewed Kujira Touichirou's Yamataikoku wa Doko Desuka? ("Where is Yamatai-koku?" 1998), which contained the short story Kiseki wa Dono You ni Nasareta no ka? ("How Was The Miracle Accomplished?") where the characters refer to the bible and reinterpret the sources to give a rational explanation to the Biblical resurrection of Jesus. That series is set in contemporary times, with (amateur) scholars using quotes from real-life sources to offer new insights/theories regarding history. In that respect, Komori's book is quite different, as it is portrayed as the story of someone who was there at the time.

The first third/half of the book is set before Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, but the Egyptian interpreter has already heard many rumors about him, so he sets out to interview people from various circles in society to see what they think of Jesus. We get to see a lot of very short portraits of Jesus, with some people thinking very highly of him, while others see Jesus as nothing but a nuisance. Komori quotes a lot from the various bible books, refering to certain episodes that help shape all the different images people have of Jesus. Personally, I found this part a bit boring, as while this may work for say two or three times, I felt Komori was just overdoing it by the time we're reading like the fifteenth different opinion on Jesus. What's more, all of this doesn't have a direct connection to the later mystery: it's just presenting the different views people have of Jesus, and I guess this part is important for people who aren't that familiar with the bible, but even then, I couldn't help but feel like this was just padding (and the book itself is actually already quite short).

In the second half, the Egyptian interpreter returns to Jerusalem only to learn about Jesus' supposed resurrection and about how he disappeared from the tomb. The mystery here is two-fold: there are witnesses who say they saw Jesus after his death, so it appears he did ressurect, but how? And how did he escape the place where his body was being kept after being crucified? While the set-up is interesting (and one many, many people on this world will be familiar with), I have to say there are few times I was so disappointed. For even though Komori referenced the bible extensively in the first part of the boook, the setting for this mystery as painted by Komori is quite dissimilar to what you'd usually associate with the episode of the empty tomb. In this book, Jesus' body wasn't even actually kept in a tomb, but a cave that was sometimes used as a toilet (and now used as a temporary morgue) and there wasn't even a boulder in front of the cave to seal it, but just a door that could be locked! At this point, it felt like there were so many elements that strayed from what I would assume to be the mystery of the empty tomb from the bible, I have to admit I lost my investment in the story. The way the interpreter arrives at his solution to how Jesus could have resurrected, and also how Jesus' body could've disappeared from the tomb even though it was kept locked and there was only one key in possession of someone who would not have any reason to help Jesus and his disciples, actually has clever parts to it, and you can see Komori really did do proper research regarding the bible, the (theological) culture and time period, but so much of it is not part of the commonly known story of the empty tomb, and at that point, it might as well have been not about Jesus Christ. And again, the book is very short, so I feel like a short story, set in this period but not based on the bible, could have worked even better.

So I can't say I really enjoyed Jesus Christ no Misshitsu very much. Mystery-wise, it didn't really make use of the fact it was based on a well-known episode from the bible, introducing all kinds of original elements in order to make the mystery work. While Komori obviously did do his homework before writing this book, it seems like creating a properly clewed locked room mystery based on the New Testament was a bit too tricky, forcing him to add in more elements to flesh the setting out, but by doing so, it feels he strays too far from the basic setting.

Original Japanese title(s): 小森健太郎『神の子（イエス・キリスト）の密室』

Where's My Mummy?

"Everything lost is meant to be found."

"Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life"

To be honest, I wasn't really that enthusiastic about writing last week's post, but as it was about Egypt too, I thought it'd show a nice contrast with this week's book.

Nnwenre no Serdab ("The Sealed Chamber of Nnwenre", 1996) is the third novel written by Komori Kentarou, and deals with an international excavation project in Egypt, in a newly uncovered part of the Valley of Kings with many intact ruins. Because of the scale of the project, several countries are involved with the excavation, with the part handled by Japan being coordinated by Takaoka University and Professor Ashizawa, the leading Japanese authority. Shingou Toshiyuki is a writer for a magazine sent to Egypt to do a reportage on the excavation and on the plane from Cairo to Luxor, he recognizes a familiar face: Miyaji Reika was a college classmate, but now she's working at Jouhou University as an assistant. Jouhou University is a smaller university assisting Takaoka University's excavation project, though Reika's boss Professor Urushibara has a personal rivalry with Professor Ashizawa and keeps complaining anything they'll learn and uncover, will just be attributed to Ashizawa. Due to Jouhou University's small size, their expedition is also sponsored by a publisher: their star mangaka Azusa Miki is going to write a manga with ancient Egypt as its theme, so they were willing to fund Jouhou University's expedition if Azusa Miki could come along. It turns out Azusa Miki is in fact Mikiko, Shingou's college girlfriend, who took their break-up really hard. Mikiko is also joined by her young sister, personal assistant and editor. 

The focal point of the international project is a recently uncovered list of pharaohs, which adds two new unknown pharaohs at the end of the 17th dynasty. Due to politics, short periods of reigns and human error, pharaohs were occassionally omitted or forgotten in later lists, so the discovery of the existence of new pharaohs is of course stunning. Each international team is assigned a location to dig. As the Japanese expedition is led by Takaoka University, they of course get assigned the largest and most promising part of the Japanese allocated spot, while Jouhou University's spot is rather modest. However, when they move an obelisk, they discover the entrance into the tomb of Nekhwenre, the last pharaoh of the seventeenth dynasty on the recently uncovered list, and thus a completely unknown pharaoh. The entrance of the tomb seems completely intact, meaning no grave robbers have been here yet in the many millennia that have passed. However, because Professor Ashizawa is in Luxor, they are not allowed to enter the tomb just yet, to the frustration of Professor Urushibara. That day however, Mikiko's young sister goes missing, and they find her shoe in the tomb entrance. It appears that while playing hide-and-seek, she had gone inside the tomb. The observer of the Egyptian government allows a small group, including Reika, Shingou, and other members of their party, to enter the tomb to look for girl, while the observer himself too joins the search. Inside they come across a completely untouched tomb, which excites the archeologists, but there's no sign of the girl. In the deepest part of the tomb, they find a sarcophagus with a mummy inside it... and a sword stuck through the torso. The mummy is actually a natural mummy, and not a mummy that had actually undergone any treatment, meaning the victim here was stabbed and left to die here in the sarcophagus, and he became a natural mummy. They find scrolls of papyrus, which Professor Urushibara translates: it turns out that pharaoh Nekhwenre was fearing a plot by an enemy, and had originally only pretended to be dead, hiding inside the tomb which was already in construction during his lifetime. But while he writes nobody is inside the tomb, he still greatly fears for his life, and eventually, even states he's about to be killed and he's only allowed to write this one final scroll of papyrus before his death. But how did the killer get inside the sealed tomb, even though Nekhwenre says nobody was there? Meanwhile, the group spreads out in the tomb in search for the girl, but they get killed in strange manners one by one...

If you're wondering why the title says "Nnwenre" and I'm talking about pharaoh "Nekhwenre", that's not a mistake. I was really confused throughout the book too. It gets explained eventually!

I first learned about this book via last year's Misshitsu Mystery Guide, which offered an extensive overview of the development of the locked room mystery by discussing fifty titles in total: 30 Japanese stories and 20 foreign ones. In that book, author Iiki discussed the variety of the locked room mystery, by also including sections that spoiled the books selected and explaining how they add to the diversity within the locked room mystery, and as I found a lot of the picks in the book interesting, I decided to read Nnwenre no Serdab too, as it was one of the few Japanese picks I hadn't read yet.

It's in that context I found Nnwenre no Serdab an interesting read, though it's by no means an even experience, and of the (few) Komori books I have read, I'd say it's also the most uneven. It starts out interesting enough, with the arrival of the Jouhou University party (and Shingou) at Luxor, as they prepare for their part of the excavation, and Shingou also meeting with Mikiko again, who clearly never really got over her break-up with Shingou in university. We get introduced to these relationships before Mikiko's sister goes missing and they try to enter the tomb (with a not so very funny running joke of Shingou constantly bribing the observer of the Egyptian government to allow him to take pictures of the tomb). Once they stumble upon the sarcophagus, the party starts to split up in search of the missing girl, when one by one, they get killed off, even though there shouldn't be anyone besides them in the tomb, the same way pharaoh Nekhwenre wrote he feared for his life and that he was about to die, even the tomb was supposed to be his safe place.

The big gripe I have with the book is that the modern-day killings are not interesting at all. Yes, they all get picked off one by one in the tomb (which is surprisingly large for an underground complex built millennia ago, especially if you compare it to the sizes of hallways etc in the pyramids), but the murders aren't really interesting. While the book tries to pass them off as interesting mysteries and also tries to give them an air of impossibility, it becomes clear rather soon why they are getting killed one by one, and it's hard to imagine how the survivors wouldn''t have noticed who was behind this after the first death, let alone have them all fall for what is basically the same idea over and over again. The human relationships portrayed in the first half of the book are also barely relevant for the modern day killings, making these deaths feel very empty and void of meaning. 

Fortunately, Misshitsu Mystery Guide didn't include Nnwenre no Serdab based on those modern-day deaths. The murder it focuses on, is of course the historical murder: they found the mummy of pharaoh Nekhwenre with a sword in his chest, meaning he was clearly murdered, but Nekhwenre had been faking his own death, and been hiding in his own tomb for the purpose of fooling his enemies. The papyrus scrolls they translated tell them that Nekhwenre was certain nobody was there in the tomb, yet he feared for his life, and in his final one, he even declares he's only allowed to write a last message before he's about to die. Yet when the party enters the tomb, they find clear signs they are the first people to ever enter the tomb after it was sealed. Considering Nekhwenre's own testimony, they just can't figure out how he could've ended up dead, if he had been alone in the tomb and nobody ever broke the seals on the tomb. The solution to this millennia-old locked room mystery is both very simple and clever, but it's really a trick you can only pull off once in your career, and even then, not everybody will be able to pull it off convincingly. I think it works really well here, with some clever foreshadowing, and it's the kind of trick behind a locked room mystery I honestly have seldom seen before, maybe because it is honestly so simple. I have read many locked room mysteries, but I myself at least hadn't come across one before relying on same principle, and I can see why Iiki decided to add it to his overview of the sub-genre, because this book does show off a kind of trick seldom seen. Again, it's very specific variation that is difficult to see implemented elsewhere without feeling like a knockoff, but it's integrated very well with this book's plot, with a very clever set-up that makes the simple solution feel fair, and not cheap.

Oh, and while this was the first book by Komori published by Kodansha, he snuck in a few small references to his previous two books (from a different publisher), with Azusa Miki also working on a manga adaptation of Lowell Jou no Misshitsu, written by Takasawa Noriko (who also appears in Comiket Satsujin Jiken).

Nnwenre no Serdab is certainly not an overall masterpiece of the locked room mystery, and a lot of the book feels almost redundant because how simple and meaningless the modern-day murders are, but the historical murder is certainly interesting, hinging on something on a principle/concept that is not very often used in mystery fiction. It is at the core very simple, but the idea is used really well in this book, with a great set-up to spring the solution on the reader. Not really a book that should go straight to the top of your priority list, but definitely one to keep in mind and try if you're in the mood for something short and interesting.

Original Japanese title(s): 小森健太郎『ネヌウェンラーの密室』 

The Case of the Creative Crime

「月に代わっておしおきよ」

『美少女戦士セーラームーン」

 "In the name of the moon, I'll punish you!"
"Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon"

I have only been to an anime/manga fan convention once in my life actually, and that was mostly as a panelist/sitting at a booth. Though I guess sitting at the booth at the November Festival of Kyoto University selling the Kyoto University Mystery Club annual magazine was a similar experience, even if that wasn't an anime convention...

Just before Professor Tsukihime passed away after a suspicious accident, he confided to his daughter Rin that he and his people at the Tsukihime Science Laboratory had been working on a suit called the Amplifier, which powers up the wearer. Professor Tsukihime had been working on four sets of suits in order to battle the evil Shadow Empire and their leader Schatten, but he has one final hope: Rin was actually one of the four girls who were selected to wear the suit, being completely compatible with its specifications. Vowing to avenge her father's death and to carry on his mission, Rin manages to find the three other girls who were selected to don Amplifiers, and helped by their allies at the Tsukihime Science Laboratory and Colonel Fester, an American army man and friend of Professor Tsukihime, the Powered Quartet has been succesful in fighting off attacks by the mysterious Shadow Empire. But one evening, while everyone is relaxing, the alarms go off at the Tsukihime Science Laboratory. Rin immediately transforms in her powered form, but learns that the "intruder" was only a dummy. She quickly goes Saki's room, which is right next to her's, to check up on Saki, but is shocked to find Saki, in powered form, lying on the floor with a dagger in her back. But the intruder was a fake, so who could've killed Saki? Rin is even convinced she never heard anyone come up the stairs until she found Saki, and the only people on this floor were Saki, their friend Colonel Fester and Rin herself. Is there a traitor within the Tsukihime Science Laboratory....?

That is the big cliffhanger of volume 6 of Lunatic Dream, a succesful sci-fi bishojo sentai mystery novel series by Takasawa Noriko, of which an anime adaptation has recently started airing. Takasawa was originally a mystery novelist, and Lunatic Dream certainly has mystery-elements too, as shown by the shocking cliffhanger, and that's also the reason why the members of the dojin circle A Large Teashop have been a fan of the series too. In an earlier dojinshi (fanzine/self-published book) published by the group, they challenged each other to predict what would happen in the coming volumes of Lunatic Dream, and some of them got really close, so it is decided that for the upcoming summer Comiket, the world's greatest anime/manga/game convention, they'll do a similar book. The upcoming volume 7 will be the final volume of Lunatic Dream, so their new book Wish Upon The Moon will feature stories by each of the members of A Large Teashop where they'll try to predict how Saki's murder in the Tsukihime Science Laboratory will be solved and also how Lunatic Dream will end. On the hot summer day that is August 17, the members of A Large Teashop make their way to Harumi, where Comiket is held. As sellers, the members all arrive early at the convention site, preparing their booth, but also to swing by the special booth of the printer, as they had Wish Upon The Moon delivered straight to Comiket. But when they unpack the box and check the books, they find the final few pages of the book have been swapped with one new page, which says "Everyone who worked on this book shall be killed.", signed by "The Shadow". Every printed copy of their book has this page, but they have no idea how this page got there, as they checked each and every page to see if there were no swapped or missing pages, before handing it in at the printer's weeks ago. They obviouly can't sell Wish Upon The Moon as it is now, so they are forced to rely on stock of older books. Because some of the members also have their own personal booths, the group scatters once the regular visitors are admitted inside, with enormous crowds (often in cosplay!) flowing inside the various convention buildings. But after a few hours, a dead body is found inside one of the bathroom stalls, and the victim turns out to be one of the members of A Large Teashop. News of this hasn't really spread yet, when another member at her own personal booth is poisoned and drops dead and this isn't the end of it... Who is killing the members of A Large Teashop during Comiket, and how are their deaths related to their predictions about Saki's murder in Wish Upon The Moon? The answer lies in Komori Kentarou's Comiket Satsujin Jiken, or as the cover also says: The Comicket Murder Case (1994). And yes, the cover says Comicket, probably because an official English spelling hadn't been decided yet at the time.

Comiket Satsujin Jiken is the debut work of Komori Kentarou, though it might not have been in a different imeline. Over ten years ago, I read Komori's Lowell-jou no Misshitsu ("The Locked Room in the Castle Lowell"), also a book with a comic book background, and in the afterword of Comiket Satsujin Jiken, it is mentioned that Lowell-jou no Misshitsu actually made it to the final selection round of the Edogawa Rampo Prize (which is a prize which involves the publication of an unpublished book). So Lowell-jou no Misshitsu had almost been Komori's debut work and was in fact published after Comiket Satsujin Jiken as his second book. Anyway, in our timeline, his debut work is Comiket Satsujin Jiken, and in a way, it does feel like one. For this book is absolutely packed with ideas, and you can tell Komori just wanted to do everyhing he wanted to do in this book, and as a complete package, the book has a lot of interesting elements to it.

I have to say that I didn't know much about the book before I got started on it: it was just the idea of a murder mystery occuring at Comiket that really atttracted me. I have never been to Comiket, but anyone who has been interested in anime/manga/games for some time will at some time have heard about the world's largest fan convention. In particular, Comiket is a fan-driven convention with a focus on fan-created content, mostly dojinshi, or self-published fanzines and comics (usually based on existing IPs) or for example self-published video games. It's of course also well known for all the cosplay going on. I haven't much experience with anime conventions myself, having only done a panel once and hanging around while waiting for my panel, so never really been there as a "regular visitor", but still, the idea of a murder mystery at a fan convention just sounded a lot of fun, as booths, cosplay, the crowd and all of that provided a lot of potential.

So imagine my surprise when Komori didn't only use that, but added a whole story-within-a-story. Two of them, actually. First Komori come up with the fictional novel and anime series Lunatic Dream, a bishojo sentai series in the vein of Sailor Moon, which of course provides us with the in-universe murder of Saki in the Tsukihime Science Laboratory, which seems impossible at first sight, or at least inexplicable (only Rin, Saki and Colonel Fester were upstairs, but suppose Fester was the murderer... why would he do that under those circumstances?). In Wish Upon The Moon, the seven members of A Large Tea Shop all wrote something short where they try to explain the murder of Saki. The result is a kind of The Poisoned Chocolates Case-type of fanzine. We get to read all of the contributions of the seven members, and they all tackle the problem differently. Some really see it as a mystery story to be solved and try to build a very tight theory based on the clues in a formal essay, others are less interested in the mystery and more in the characters, leading to "normal" fan fiction that serve as character studies that focus on motive. The highlight is perhaps the solution that is completely written as a parody of Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, complete with all the pedantic talk! Because the initial situation of Saki's death is only explained very briefly and you as the reader don't know much about Lunatic Dream, it's not really the intention of the author for the reader to guess all these possible solutions to Saki's murder (a lot of information about the series you'll only first hear mentioned when applied to a theory), but it's fun to see how these different members all try to come up with something different to the problem, and also utilize completely different writing styles and angles. None of the solutions to Saki's semi-locked room murder are really impressive or memorable on their own, but it's fun seeing the members of A Large Teashop having fun with the idea, and it's really catchy. What is also fun is that Wish Upon The Moon is really ncluded within Comiket Satsujin Jiken. The main narrative of Comiket Satsujin Jiken is actually printed on the pages in double columns, while the chapters of Wish Upon The Moon are printed like normal, clearly seperating the Wish Upon The Moon part from the rest of the book, and Wish Upon the Moon also includes fan art of Lunatic Dream and other typical fanzine parts. The book of Comiket Satsujin Jiken also has a different Lunatic Dream cover beneath the slipcover, and it's things like this that make Comiket Satsujin Jiken fun to read as a physical book, playing with the covers and the typesetting and all of that!

And then there's the main story of Comiket Satsujin Jiken too! Komori makes great use of the unique setting that is Comiket that arrive at an interesting problem: several members are killed in the span of a few hours and as all the victims are members of A Large Teashop, it is of course suspected the murderer is one of the remaining members, but there is one problem: how could the murderer have commited these murders during Comiket? While basically none of the remaining members have full alibis for every single second, as they'd sometimes wander away from their booth, go buy some dojinshi themselves at other stands or of course just go out to buy something to drink or eat or to use the toilet, none of them were gone for very long, and fact is: you need a loooooooot of time to move around at the convention site once it's open for visitors. In particular, one victim had her own stand on the floor above, but due to the gigantic crowd on the spiral staircase going up, and with rows of customers circling around the stand floor, it would have taken almost 50 minutes for anyone to make their way from the A Large Teashop stand up and back down, and of course, somebody would've noticed if someone had been gone for nearly an hour. This idea of an alibi due to the crowd of Comiket is nicely found, as are other ideas as some members proving their alibi by showing they had been making an illustration in a sketchbook for a customer, again a very typical con thing. Komori wrote this book after his own visits to Comiket (nowadays of course held at Tokyo Big Sight, but this was back when it was held at Harumi a few times), and the place really becomes alive as Komori describes everything at Comiket, from the people manning the booths and preparing for opening, to the visitors doing cosplay and taking pictures to Comiket staff members trying to keep things safe for everyone. A lot of the mystery-related ideas like the alibis and all depend on the unique convention setting, so that's a lot of fun. Not all of the ideas are particularly remarkable (some parts could've been clewed a little bit more I think, like how the trick surrounding the first murder), but Komori manages to tie these ideas to specifically the Comiket setting really well and it's by doing this several times in a row, you do feel that as a whole, the book works as a mystery novel. Other ideas behind how the murderer managed to swap the final pages of Wish Upon the Moon with the threat page or things like the motive work in the context of the book I think, and while not particularly memorable, all of these ideas do really tie in well with the setting. The fact the book actually features photographs of Comiket (from back then) also helps set the mood.

There's also a lot of "general" Comiket talk, as the members of A Large Teashop explain what Comiket is to the police inspector, so you could read this without any prior knowledge of Comiket, though I suspect most people reading this book, or even this review, will at least have heard of Comiket. Funny is the talk about the presence of mystery fiction at Comiket by the way. The book is written early 90s, but there are mentions of things like being able to find dojinshi of Shimada Souji's work, which I think isn't an invention by Komori for this book, but really what was found at Comiket back then, and he very probably means Mitarai X Ishioka smut. Oh, and one final interesting to note: when Comiket Satsujin Jiken was reprinted as a paperback pocket, it was accompanied by a seperate new release: Lunatic Dream was a manga, drawn by the artist who did the cover art of the paperback pocket and written by Komori Kentarou and it was basically the in-universe series Lunatic Dream, now told as a seperate, full story. I haven't read it, but it's supposed to be reasonably fun. There are stories that some book shops back then didn't place this book near the mystery novels though, even though only mystery fans would've known what Lunatic Dream is.

Anyway, Comiket Satsujin Jiken is a book that's absolutely stuffed: a story-within-a-story, multiple solutions to a locked room murder, a full Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken parody, essays, fan art, a series of semi-impossible murders happening at the biggest fan convention in the world, observations on fan culture in the late eighties/early nineties. You can tell Komori absolutely loved working on the book, and that's not just the story of the book, but all the way down to physical traits of the book like double covers and making use of the lay-out to highlight the fanzine within this book. Taking the tricks on their own, a lot of them are quite simple, and some characters do have very little screentime (though you do get to learn them via their contributions to Wish Upon the Moon), but it's Komori's sheer enthusisasm for everything that goes in in this book and the unique setting that really won me over. Definitely worth a read if the idea of a murder case happening at a fan convention appeals to you.

Original Japanese title(s): 小森健太郎『コミケ殺人事件』

Missing a Body?

「どすこい」

『ストリートファイターII』

"Dosukoi"
"Street Fighter II"

I don't know much about sumo, but I remember one time in Fukuoka when there was going to be one of those big annual sumo events there and it became noticably crowdier...

Sometimes you can tell what must've been a driving force in writing a certain work. For example, when a locked room murder trick is so ridiculous and over-the-top, you just know the idea must've come first to the author, and they decided to write it down as a story to have it published. Or an author developed an interest in a certain topic, like a specific period in history, or a certain profession, and decides to write a mystery novel set in that time or setting. Komori Kentarou's Oozumo Satsujin Jiken ("The Grand Sumo Murders") is a 2008 short story collection with interconnected stories, and I can almost imagine how Komori would have been chuckling to himself while writing this novel, as it's basically a parody of the mystery novel, and of sumo wrestling. It makes fun of both mystery fiction and sumo from start to finish, and while I'm sure he likes both topics, he also sure likes to tease the two themes very much and the result is a book that is a bit hard to recommend to "serious" mystery fans, because none of this is really meant to be serious and some of the stories and murder tricks employed here are beyond nonsensical, but it's a short, and often funny read. The opening story introduces us to Mark Hideaway, an American young man who one day appears in Tokyo hoping to enroll in a Japanese university to learn about Japanese culture. But because he doesn't actually know much Japanese, he ends up enrolling into the Chiyoraku sumo wrestling stable by accident (thinking it's a university). While eventually, the misunderstanding is cleared, Mark remains at the small, but famous stable with a long history, because he is actually built for the sport and because he's late for the actual university enrollment period anyway, so he might as well earn some money while waiting for the next period. Satoko, the teenage daughter of the master of the stable, is the only one in the stable who can speak "some" English, so she's appointed as his interpreter for the time being, but Mark's arrival at the Chiyoraku stable is the start of bloody period in the history of sumo wrestling, with sumo wrestlers exploding in the ring, wrestlers being decapitated and cut up in pieces and even an insane serial murder case with over a dozen of sumo wrestlers killed.

While the base idea of an American joining a sumo wrestling stable and him ending up solving cases with a teenager as his sidekick could easily have been used for a "serious" book, it is obvious Oozumo Satsujin Jiken is written as a parody, starting with Mark's very loose Japanese and English leading to him joining the Chiyoraku stable, and then absolutely ridiculous murders occuring from that point on. The first story for example literally has two sumo wrestlers who have an important match explode on live television, one of them belonging to the Chiyoraku stable. The solution is very straightforward and thus it doesn't really make an impact as a mystery story on its own, but the idea of people just suddenly exploding in a sumo ring is just so outrageous, I'm sure at least the set-up of this story will be remembered by many. And I think that is the case for most of the six stories in this book: as mystery stories they are very simple and the solutions often feel very absurd, but the most of them have somewhat memorable set-ups. There's a lot of information on sumo wrestling and the workings of a sumo stable to be learned between the lines which can be interesting, but this book is definitely a parody first, so it should not ever be taken too seriously.

Because these stories just tend to be so short and also not really meant to be super original mystery stories, but more about making fun of the weird premise and just coming up with more and more ways to kill sumo wrestlers, I won't write in length about all the stories included in this collection, as a lot of them feel the same, but to highlight a few: the second story revolves around the discovery of a decapitated wrestler in the bath room of the Chiyoraku stable, with the wrestler who was keeping the fire going for the bath being pointed at as the obvious suspect, as the crime would've been impossible for the others. The solution is one you probably have seen in some form or another elsewhere, though I guess that of all the stories in this book, at least the motive was kinda understandable... Which is less the case with the third story, which is when Mark is starting to get a good series of wins going as Makunotora, but not because of his own doing. For some reason, the wrestlers he's going to fight in the ring all get killed, giving him an automatic win and allowing him to rise in the rankings. Which of course makes him a suspect. The story is absolutely nuts, with Mark's reaction about his scheduled opponents getting killed off in different manners just "Oh, so I am the winner?" and a motive that comes out of nowhere, but I guess it's that crazy set-up that makes this one memorable. There are also stories inspired by Shimada's debut novel The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, involving an "Azoth" of sumo wrestler parts and another inspired by Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but these are all more about the shocking and weird story set-ups and of course many dead wrestlers, rather than about really presenting original mystery takes.

The fourth story, The Locked Room Forbidden for Women is the story that actually first made me aware of this novel. In 2018, there was a real-world incident when a mayor making a speech on the sumo ring suddenly collapsed, and one of the people rushing to administer first aid to the man was a female doctor. The sumo judge however sent the doctor and other people wanting to help away, as women are considered "ritually unclean" to enter the "female" sumo ring, which understandably caused quite a commotion. It was during this commotion I happened to spot people referencing The Locked Room Forbidden for Women from this book. Satoko and a younger wrestler in her father's stable are visiting a newly built stadium with a sumo ring for 'reconnaissance' and run into the female governor debating with other women about the outdated, discriminatory stance regarding women in sumo, not even being allowed to stand in the ring. Later, a sumo judge is found murdered in the middle of the sumo ring in the stadium, which... is somehow a locked room murder, because the three female suspects aren't allowed to enter the ring according to the beliefs, meaning none of them "could" have entered this locked space. The idea of a psychological locked room (as in, it's physically possible to enter/leave but there are psychological/moral/societal limitations) is one that really appeals to me, and knowing they actually send female doctors away from the ring trying to save a man's life in real-life does make it an interesting problem. While the motive is strangely serious compared to most of the other stories, it's still a story that is more memorable based on its set-up rather than the actual solution.

On the whole though, I think Oozumo Satsujin Jiken is a book that is hard to recommend. If you're in the mood, it can be a funny parody of sumo wrestling using a mystery novel's structure, but the comedy is incredibly over the top and often involves... well, sumo wrestlers die left and right, so it's definitely not the book to pick up if you're looking for a logical puzzle-type of story. The stories all have memorable set-ups, but the solutions are never really truly surprising as they often end up variations of ideas you are likely to have seen elsewhere, or just going for a very straightforward explanation and while the book does portray an interesting world of sumo wrestlers and their stables, the parody style kinda undermines it too. So if you're in the mood for a really ridiculous, grotesque parody of the mystery novel and sumo wrestlers, this is the one you want to read and I have to admit, I read it between two "more serious" books so it worked perfectly as a change of breath for me, but I think that if you're not in the mood for this, you're really not going to like this.

Original Japanese title(s): 小森健太郎『大相撲殺人事件』

The Adventure of the Comic Book Crusader

"Now, like shonen manga there's only one story that really works for shojo manga"

"ONLY ONE?"

 "That's right"

 "The heroine screams 'I'm late, I'm late,' while running out of her house (because she's clumsy)!! There are no alternatives to this beginning!! Another important detail: she has to be chewing on a piece of toast!!"

"Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga"

Totally grabbing this chance to talk about Thermae Romae. Because this review is related to manga. And Thermae Romae is a manga. About the Roman and Japanese bathing cultures. Which sounds strange. And it is! But it is hilarious! The story follows the Roman bathhouse architect Lucius, who is a bit of a slump. One day, he gets transported to modern-day Japan, where he learns about the Japanese bathing culture (sentou, onsen etc.) and brings back those ideas back to ancient Rome. And now it's a live-action movie too! It's a hilarious movie (also because Abe Hiroshi stars as Lucius) and definitely worth a view. And you even get a bonus-manga with both Lucius and Abe Hiroshi if you go the theaters now. In Japan.

But now back to the review. Which like I said is related to manga. Komori Kentarou's Lowell-jou no Misshitsu ("The Locked Room in the Castle Lowell") starts with the duo of Hori and Megu lost in the woods. They end up in a mysterious house, where an old man sends them into a shoujo manga. Yes, you read that correctly. The two are transported into the world of the comic series The Locked Room in the Castle Lowell, with Meg (Megu) starring as a poor village girl who gets chosen as the new bride of the prince of Castle Lawell (she gets dumped though) and Holy (Hori) being the second prince of Castle Lowell. And then a lot of things happen which you would expect in a shoujo fantasy comic, with magical beings, fights to the death, fights for love, wars between tribes and finally, a locked room murder (ok, the latter is not a staple of the shoujo manga. It should be though). It is up to the King of the Stars, the current head of the Detective Department in the castle, to solve the murder on the replacement bride-to-be in the tower room which was locked and under constant surveillance. And how are Megu and Hori supposed to get back to the real world?

Komori was awarded the Rampo Prize for this novel at the very, very young age of 16. Which is quite an accomplishment. And I admit, the novel is fairly well written, though certainly not without its faults. For example, Komori spends a lot of time creating a background story for the castle and everything that is really interesting, but of absolutely no importance to the locked room murder. Heck, it is not even of importance to most of the story. It therefore feels like a waste of time for this particular novel and as the murder doesn't even happen until the last third of the book, I kinda wonder whether this was really necessary. I would have loved to have seen either those story elements incorporated more strongly with the main mystery, or have seen Komori worked out his background story into a different story.

The locked room murder of this novel is sorta famous if you move in the right circles and is certainly highly original, but definitely unfair if you are expecting a normal mystery. In my mind though, Komori set it up a bit too obvious and I already suspected what was going to happen even before the murder actually happened (hey, if you have to read more than 200 pages to get the murder, you have time to think), but I can totally imagine why someone would overlook this solution. I thought it was an interesting locked room murder, but I definitely this would have worked out much better as a short story (or even as a real comic), rather than a novel.

And as I was writing this, I thought: but who would expect a normal mystery of a story that starts with two people getting sucked into a comic book?  Maybe this is just a fair mystery. Hmm.

And apparently it is obligitory to insert a locked room lecture in a debut novel. Was it really needed here? No. Did it pull me out of the 'manga'-fantasy-world with its references to Carr and Rampo? Yes. I once thought that locked room lectures were super-special-awesome, but everybody has one nowadays (even if the story does not really ask for one) and very few actually add something new to the discussion. It feels like a chore to read them lately, to be honest.

The comic book-angle is pretty hilarious at the beginning of the story, with Meg for example being surpised how much handsomer Hori has become as the comic character Holy, or how everybody's eyes cover one third of their faces. And like I said, the background setting and all are precisely what I expect from a fantasy shoujo manga, though I have to admit that I actually haven't ever read one. Except for Banana Fish. Which is kinda different. But I totally imagine Red River to be something like The Locked Room in the Castle Lowell (Note: I probably have no idea what I'm talking about).

Hmm, I couldn't write as much about this book as I had expected. Though now I think about it, it's not that strange though. Two-third of this novel is just a shoujo manga (but in prose), so not of particular interest here, while the actual murder is interesting and original, but I can't write too much about it without spoiling the surprise. Aaargh.

And I have ABSOLUTELY no idea how the cover is related to the contents. Is that a heart? And... what... Uggh.

Original Japanese title(s): 小森健太郎 『ローウェル城の密室』