Two Stations in Kashii

「ずいぶん寂しい所ね」

『点と線』

"What a lonely place!"

"Points and Lines"

I'll just start this post with admitting right away that I am not a big fan of Matsumoto Seichou. And that's actually not completely his fault. It is more because of how (mostly English) reviewers and scholars can't seem to stop raving about the realism in his novels and how Matsumoto manages to capture the social problems of postwar Japanese society, like class-struggles and the unfair justice system, perfectly within his stories. English reviews of Matsumoto's Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines") and Suna no Utsuwa ("The Sand Vessel", published as Inspector Imanishi Investigates) therefore often have the tendency to turn out almost the same, even though technically the stories are quite different. Historicizing when discussing fiction is something I do too, even though at times it seems a bit as an excuse to 'justify' reviewing genre fiction, but I have the feeling the (English) Matsumoto Seichou reviewers have a tendency to exeggarate this.

Matsumoto has written some interesting stories though. While Matsumoto's more orthodox detective stories sometimes suffer from being rather bland, several of his short stories like Kimyou na Hikoku ("The Strange Defendant") and Hansha ("Reflection") are pretty fun to read. But the one novel by him I really, really like is Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines").

Matsumoto Seichou debuted in 1957 the short story Kao, but the Matsumoto-boom in Japan started one year later, with his first novel Points and Lines (also available in English). The discovery of the dead bodies of Otaki, a waitress and Sayama, a senior offical in a ministry, on the beach of Kashiihama, Fukuoka is what sets the story in motion. The case is initially handled as a love suicide, but one of the local detectives suspects that it was actually murder, also because Sayama was wanted by the Metropolitan Police Department in relation with the investigation of bribery case at his ministry. This man's death is rather convenient for his superiors. A important suspect comes up during the investigation, but there is one problem: the suspect has an ironclad alibi. The suspect had to be in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyuushuu on the night of the murder, but that would have made it impossible for him to be in Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaidou the next morning. How did the man manage to teleport from one side of Japan to another?

And to admit another thing: one of the reasons I love this novel is because I lived in Kashiihama, Fukuoka for a year. I was only a minute away from the crime scene of Points and Lines. I have stood there at the beach dozens of time. Kashiihama was a wonderful place to live. So rereading the novel really brought up some great memories of this little neighbourhood in the eastern ward of Fukuoka. More than fifty years have past since Matsumoto first wrote this story and things might have changed a bit in those years (nowadays the road from the station to the beach of Kashiihama is not really lonely, for example), but Matsumoto's description of Kashii and Kashiihama is not as outdated as one would think and conveys the ambience of the quaint little block wonderfully. Matsumoto's writing might seem dry at times, but he actually has a wonderful knack for describing ordinary day scenery and customs expertly in just a few words. His short story Harikomi ("Stakeout") for example also features some great descriptions of Kyuushuu, the problem with it is just that it is not a mystery story at all. Matsumoto himself was from Kokura, so he must have have been familiar with Kashii. Interesting is that the two stations at Kashii (a JR station and the private Nishitetsu line), that play an important role in the story, are still in use today. Points and Lines actually made Kashii famous and even now there is a Seichou Sakura to commemorate Points and Lines planted at the Nishitetsu Kashii station.

But nostalgia is a dangerous thing, Tezuka Osamu's impressive series Phoenix taught me, so what about the story itself? Is Points and Lines worth reading if you have not lived in Kashii? As can be guessed from the summary, this is a story that revolves around the deconstruction of the main suspect's alibi and it is actually pretty ingenous. Matsumoto (the murderer) really did his best in coming up with a seemingly ironclad alibi with several safety nets for himself. It's a bit of a shame the English paperback version does not feature a map of the whole of Japan (it has a couple of maps of the Fukuoka area though), because for readers not familiar with Japan's topography, it might be hard to imagine how the distance between Kashii and Sapporo. It is really, really far away. Which makes the alibi trick all the more awesome. I actually want to write a bit more about the trick, but I guess that be nearing that ever-dangerous spoiler area, which is something I want to avoid.

And now for my third confession, I don't think I've ever read anything written by Freeman Crofts. But the focus on alibis and trains in Points and Lines is similar to many of Freeman Crofts' stories, I've been told. Trains play a big, big part within the world of Points and Lines and that's not strange. Trains have been a very large part of the Japanese culture ever since their introduction in the early Meiji period (post-1868) and was crucial for nation-building. Many people have heard about the bullet-trains developed in Japan. Trains are still an important means of transportation for longer domestic trips and there is even a whole culture around the so-called eki-ben, boxed meals sold at stations with local specialties. Heck, the whole subgenre of travel mysteries and train mysteries (mostly by Nishimura Kyoutarou, but I haven't reviewed any of his travel mysteries yet) in Japan is pretty much built upon the whole train culture, linking domestic tourism and the detailed railway schedules of trains that magically never seem to be late. I assume that countries like the United States don't have such a tradition in train mysteries. In the Netherlands, I guess most train mysteries are doomed to fail because the time in the railway schedule seldom seems to correspond with the actual times, you usually have to count in a five minute lag. Or maybe ten minutes.

Points and Lines also occasionally relies on what some people like to call 'typical Japanese customs / way of thinking', which are actually not really such unique indigenous customs as those people seem to make them out be. Matsumoto's stories do often seem to feature some cultural customs as crucial plot-points. In fact, one of the more important insight the detective in the story has, is pretty much copied from Matsumoto's own debut story Kao ("Face"), which also revolved around a certain way of thinking. Point and Lines however makes much better use of the same 'trick', almost like Matsumoto himself thought the trick in Kao could and should have been used for something better.

Like I admitted, I love Points and Lines partly because it is so strongly related to a place dear to me, but it is also a good alibi deconstruction mystery that is satisfying not only to those reviewers who praise Matsumoto for describing how a chair looks like in Japan in his novels, but also for people interested in a good old mystery that happens to be set in Japan.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張　『点と線』

Murder in the Mews

「最初は湯気のしずくに花火の色が映ったのかと、そのまま見すごしていたのですが、やがて、紅の飛沫は益々はげしく降りそそぎ、彼自身の額や頬にも、異様な暖かなしたたりを感じて、それを手にうつしてみれば、まがう方なき紅のしずく、人の血潮に相違ないのでした。そして、彼の目の前の湯の表に、フワフワと漂うものを、よく見れば、それは無慚に引き裂かれた人間の手首が、いつのまにかそこへ降っていたのです。北見小五郎は、その酔うな血腥い光景の中で、不思議に騒がぬ裸女達をいぶかりながら、彼も又そのまま動くでもなく、池の畔にじっと頭をもたせて、ぼんにゃりと、彼の胸の辺りに漂っている、生々しい手首の花を開いた真赤な切口に見入りました。か様にして、人見廣介の五体は、花火とともに、粉微塵にくだけ、かれの創造にしたパノラマ国の、各々の形式の隅々までも、血液と肉塊の雨となって、降り注いだのでありました」
『パノラマ島の奇譚』

"At first he just looked at it, thinking the drips of dew were reflecting the color of the fireworks. But the scarlet splashes rained down more and more; he himself felt the strangely warm drops on his head and cheek and when he put some on his hands, there was no doubt those scarlet drops were in fact human blood. And when he looked carefully at the thing floating lightly on the surface of the hot spring in front of him, it turned out to be the wrist of a man, cruelly ripped off; unnoticedly it had fallen down. Amidst that drunkenly blood spectacle, Kitami Kogorou wondered about the naked women who strangely enough didn't panick at all; and he too didn't move one bit, leaning his head on the footpath of the pond, dreamingly gazing at the scarlet fresh wound on the wrist floating near his chest. And thus Hiromi Kousuke's body had exploded into countless of pieces, and it was his flesh and blood that was raining down onto every corner of the Panorama Kingdom he himself had created."
The Strange Tale of Panorama Island

The summer means firework in Japan. And the biggest firework event in Fukuoka, is probably the firework in Oohori Park. Which was yesterday. Luckily, no people who blew themselves up together with the fireworks. Though I was certainly mentally prepared for it.

Somehow, I feel cheated because nobody yelled kagiya or tamaya. The kid behind me did scream tamago (egg) several times though, when the fireworks burst in circle-patterns. Close, but not really what I wanted to hear.

Oh, and also an annoyance when hanami-ing: people who only use half of the space of the giant sheets they lay out to reserve sitting place. Use space more efficiently!