Dead Man's Cavern

"Ragnarok, the end of the Viking world with a terrible winter that covered the Earth in ice, when vile crimes were rampant and all humanity lost."

"Max Payne"

I wonder if at those detective fiction courses at university they actually have locked room murder lectures...

During a holiday, Narumi, the self-proclaimed great detective of the Sealed Door club, invites his fellow member Kakeru (who was recently made his debut as a mystery writer), to go on an adventure together. While Narumi hesitates to tell Kakeru exactly why, they are travelling to a small village deep in the mountains of Gifu called Kagerou Village. When they arrive, they notice a strange church-like building in the middle of the village. They chat a little with the local people there, when they hear a cry coming from the nearby cliff: one of the Jizou statues has toppled on top of her, trapping her legs. Narumi and Kakeru quickly help her, but she then tells them her friend Yasoshima Daisaku fell off the cliff down in the swamp below. There's a dangerous path along the cliff that climbs down to the swamp, so Narumi and Kakeru carefully make their way down to look for Daisaku, who fortunately is safe: he is a firefighter and has experience with this. A tremendous storm starts as they climb up the path however, and it's becoming too dangerous to walk up this way. Daisuku instructs Narumi and Kakeru to find shelter in a cave halfway up the cliff path, while he goes further up to secure a way for them. Narumi and Kakeru are just inside the cave when the ground shakes, causing a cave-in that blocks off the entrance. To their surprise, they find there were more people inside the cave, and as they talk with these people, they learn this cave runs beeneath Kagerou Village and that in recent years, it has actually been converted to a cave hotel: the "church" Narumi and Kakeru had seen above is a wedding venue, and an elevator there goes down to the main part of the cave, which is surrounded by several rooms. The hotel is a somewhat eccentric attempt to attract tourists to the region. They also learn that Daisaku is a local who is to be married soon to Tsugumi, who is one of the people in the cave, as she was being shown around.

The group makes their way back to the main "lobby cave" to take the elevator back up, but when the elevator doors open, they find the nearly deceased Nanako, a local high school student: she's been shot in the cage. When she's asked who did this to her, Nanako points her finger at... Kakeru before she dies. While Narumi can quickly prove it couldn't have been Kakeru who shot her considering they just arrived there, the local people are still a bit suspicious about these two outsiders. They learn the elevator doesn't work anymore and for some reason, there's also no answer when they try the intercom connecting to the wedding venue above, even though there should be people there, and Daisaku should also know they're there. While afraid the murderer might have attacked the people above too, the people below in the cave can only wait, so they stay in the hotel rooms for the night, with Narumi warning everyone to keep their doors locked in case the murderer is still down in the cave, but his warning is not enough to prevent another murder the next morning. When one guest doesn't respond to calls from outside, Narumi and Kakeru try to open the steel door, but are only able to bend it slightly to create a gap, but the gap is enough for them to see the inhabitant is lying dead on the floor. But she has also written something in blood on the floor that seems to point to Kakeru again! Who is the murderer in the cave, and can Kakeru prove this time he really isn't the murderer in Kirisha Takumi's Ragnarok Dou - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Kagerou Numa he ("The Cave of Ragnarok: The Sealed Door Goes to Kagerou Swamp", 2000)?

Ragnarok Dou is the third entry in Takumi Kirisha's Sealed Door series, about the colorful members of a college club specializing in opening sealed doors. Last year, I read the first book in this series, Doppelgänger-kyuu - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Ryuuhyoukan he ("The Doppelgänger Palace - The Sealed Door Club Goes to the Ryuuhou House", 1999), which was also Kirisha's debut work. You might wonder why I skipped the second book and went straight for the third book in the series. Well, like with Summer Apocalypse a few weeks ago, I didn't actually choose this book because it was a book in this series. I was looking for books with dying messages as the theme, so when I learned this book had a dying message lecture, it found a place in the to-be-read pile, despite it meaning I would be reading a series out of order. Again. As always.

So yeah, the theme of the book is dying messages and it might be surprising to learn Narumi, the self-proclaimed great detective, comes up with a dying message lecture fairly early on in the book. While he namedrops Doctor Fell, Nikaido Ranko, Mercator Ayu and Sorachi Masaya as eminent predecessors when it comes to presenting a lecture on a specific trope in mystery fiction (locked rooms, no footprints in the snow, motives for creating locked rooms and alibis, respectively), I do have to say I find Narumi's alibi lecture really original. While I have seen dying message lectures before (disclosure: I translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle), the one in this book is quite original in that because it is about a message: being there's a sender and receiver, this lecture actually consists of two seperate sections (chapters). In the first Narumi presents a categorization of the type of dying messages a victim may leave behind to denounce the murderer (writing, oral, etc.), so the medium of the message, while in the second part, the lecture goes in detail about why said message might be misinterpreted/not understood (so the signife of the message). But what I liked especially about this lecture, is that it is in fact not just a fourth wall-breaking moment, or just two chapters where Kirisha shows he has done his homework and to provide the reader with context to understand how his twist on the dying message in this book will work. While I can't give details because it spoils one of the cleverest elements of this book, Narumi actually has a fantastic reason to actually be holding a lecture about dying messages, and it's precisely because he does this, they're in the end able to solve the case. Narumi might be a self-proclaimed detective, but.... he's actually truly a very clever detective, who in every other series would have been the protagonist. Narumi's just not lucky here, as the club president Godou is just a little bit smarter than Narumi (though less active). At any rate, I have seldom seen a lecture in a mystery story used in such a clever way in-universe, and that alone makes this worth a read, I think.

As the proper cave entrance is blocked and the elevator broken, the people in the cave hotel find themselves in a closed circle situation, but an odd one, as at first, there's no reason to believe the murderer is still in the cave, and it in fact seems more likely the murderer is on the surface, having shot Nanako and then sending the elevator down. The pistol used to kill Nanako is believed to be the one that should have been enshrined in the shrine in the cave: it used to belong to a World War II pilot who crashed in the swamp. But if the murderer did go up, how come a second murder occured in one of the hotel rooms? The door was locked from the inside, and because it's a steel door with a very sturdy, submarine-esque turn-dial lock, Narumi and Kakeru can't even force the door open with a steel bar, only able to open a minor gap through which they could confirm the victim died. As the story progresses, more people are of course killed in the cave. Meanwhile, everyone is also worried about the people above, for Daisaku and other people should know people are trapped in the cave hotel (especially Daisaku, as his soon-to-be-wife Tsugumi is one of the people there!) and Daisaku's a firefighter who told Narumi and Kakeru he'd inform the rescue unit, but why is nobody coming to their rescue? This leads to a lot of speculation on Narumi's part, and it's here where the book kinda repeats some of the... I wouldn't call them faults per se, but it's definitely something that stood out when I read the first book.

For like the first book, this book does feature a large cast of characters like many closed circle murder mysteries... but the narrative is mainly focused on the recurring characters, in this case Narumi and Kakeru, and later other club members after everyone is rescued and they go over the case again to try and solve it. Most of the book revolves mainly around discussions between just the recurring cast as they go over theories and discuss what they could do next, and the side characters that only appear in this book barely get anything to say before they die. The worst example of this is Nanako, who appears as a dead person right away, and we hear some characters lament her death, but we don't actually hear about how they know Nanako, who she is, and why she was in the elevator or anything. She's just there, dead. Only much later you hear a throwaway line about how one character knew Nanako exactly. This happens with other parts of the story too, where you don't really understand what their role is and how character X knows character Y, because the story is focused on Narumi and Kakeru chatting among themselves, instead of with others. It does allow the story to focus on a lot of the detective plot, as Kakeru and Narumi obviously talk about the ongoing case, but some of the puzzle pieces remain vague because you don't hear the other characters speak up too often. And while I do think the members of the Sealed Door club are fun and their banter does mean we get intelligent, genre-savvy discussions regarding the mystery, like the first book, you do feel some of the other characters should have given more speaking lines to flesh out the mystery more.

As for the mystery itself.... it's really dense! You have multiple dying messages (in the broad sense of the meaning, so writing, gestures, in-actions etc.), a locked room murder, long deduction chains about how the murderer must have been moving both on the surface and in the cave, and while I do think sometimes feel a bit chaotic, ultimately, I think it worked out pretty well. The solution to the locked room isn't that interesting to be honest, and the closed circle situation is resolved in a rather easy manner, but the deductions regarding the dying messages and the reasoning chains that point to the murderer are more memorable, and they work really well in conjuction with the aforementioned dying message lecture. Parts of the backstory of the shrine in the cave, which ties directly to the motive, are interesting ideas, though it's debatable about how "fair" it was presented and at times, this backstory goes pretty weird ways: I wouldn't have found the revelations here in any way weird had this been for example a Nikaidou Reito novel, but this being my second book in the series, I hadn't quite expected Kirisha to tell us this kind of backstory. This is an element I think could have been worked out in more detail to feel both more shocking, but also less... coming out of nowhere. 

The book also provides some more insight into the history of the Sealed Door club and why club president Godou started the club, which likely will tie to the final, fourth book in the series, I assume. These books are easy and fun enough to read, so I will eventually get there, not sure whether I will read the second book first, or the last one though.

Ragnarok Dou - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Kagerou Numa he is a fun mystery novel that does some original things via its dying message lecture, and for that alone, I think this is worth a read. Like the first book, it's a story that focuses a lot on the recurring characters and often has a comedic tone to it, so like many character-focused mysteries, it's pretty easy to get into, and while because of that focus, I do feel the mystery isn't presented as strongly as it could be, overall, I do always end up enjoying these books. Solid entry, and I'll be sure to read the other two books in the series too.

Original Japanese title(s): 霧舎巧『ラグナロク洞 《あかずの扉》研究会影郎沼へ』

Telltale Touch

"Only in the leap from the lion's head will he prove his worth."
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

What is it with reviews on sex-focused media that also happen to be mystery fiction this month...  

Last week, I discussed the newest issue of Nemoto Shou's own mystery comic Sharaku Homura: Detective of the Uncanny. Nemoto is not only a creator of mystery fiction in manga form, but also studies it. He has been briefly discussing various mystery manga on his website, especially those that ended up not getting included in Fukui Kenta's (otherwise extremely comprehensive) Honkaku Mystery Manga Zemi ("Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar", 2018). Not all of these works are easily available now, of course, but as a fan of the mystery comic format myself, I of course try to read the ones I can find.

Today's topic was one highlighted by Nemoto which is still easily obtainable in digital form, and interestingly enough, it has actually seen an official English release in the past, though it is not available anymore: Marina Mystery File was created by Byakkomaru and was originally serialized between 1997-1999 in the magazine Young Teioh, though the magazine later folded and was transformed into Comic Maruman. The four volume series stars Marina, a 22-year old teacher at a high school, who is secretly dating one of her own students: Ishiyama Tooru. Their love is pure, she insists, so while the two do fool around a bit, they have not actually fully consummated their relationship yet, despite Tooru's attempts to convince Marina. The two are also both members of the Japan Mystery Club, a group of people interested in researching mysterious, supernatural events occuring in Japan, ranging from ghost stories and monster and UFO sightings. During their trips with the club however, Marina and Tooru have the knack of getting wrapped up in creepy and bloody murder cases that involve the supernatural phenomena they are investigating. Fortunately for them however, Tooru soon discovers Marina is a rather clever detective herself, but under one condition: she needs to be sexually aroused and pleased to get her little grey cells working at full speed.

Cue the sex scenes! I should probably mention right now that while Marina Mystery File is a mystery manga in the same tradition as Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Nemoto Shou's Sharaku Homura: Kaiki Tantei, featuring long series of murders that involve monsters or other seemingly supernatural beings/phenomena, it is also an adult manga, meaning it involves plenty of scenes where characters are having sex (rape at times) or fondling each other or themselves and more of that. The art style is rather mild and you can easily imagine Byakkomaru also doing "straight" comedy manga with this style, so the sex doesn't feel too realistic, but it is certainly something to keep in mind if you want to read this. I am not going to mention it in the write-ups on each story below, but just remember that basically every chapter (most stories are about five or six chapters long) will feature one or more scenes with sexual content, the last one generally being Marina being fondled/touching herself so she can get sexually stimulated enough to get that flash of inspiration that allows her to solve the case.

As mentioned before, the series feels very similar in build up to both Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Nemoto Shou's Sharaku Homura: Kaiki Tantei, though in general, the pure murder plots are not as intricately structured as those series. That said, considering Byakomaru is probably more an adult comic artist than a mystery writer, I do have to admit these comics are often reasonably amusing as mystery fiction, though a lot of the tricks seen here will feel familiar. Still, the stories actually follow good build-up and while not all the clues/hints Byakkomaru uses are as convincing as others, on the whole I'd say he actually gets the fundamentals of a proper mystery comic really good and the base stories are usually interesting too, so if Byakkomaru had studied the genre a little bit more while he was working on the series, this could actually have developed into a mystery manga more of us would remember, I think. The manga was released digitally over a decade ago in English by JManga, but that site is already defunct.

 

The opening story, The Kappa Murder Case, for example, has a great setup: the Japan Mystery Club is visiting a small village near a lake to investigate rumors of a hopping Kappa roaming around: the story goes that centuries ago, a kappa kidnapped a girl and raped her for three days and nights and now that kappa has returned. Which is bad news, as there's a girls' academy near the lake. The day after the club members arrive at the lake, they actually run into the kappa near the lake, and it is holding something gruesome: the head of a teacher of the nearby academy. And that was only the first death, as more people are murdered that seem to have a connection to the school. But why? While the first 'major' deduction of Marina that "proves" the kappa is in fact, not really a kappa is rather boring, there is acutally a pretty good visual clue that involves the identity of the kappa, one that makes very intuitive use of the comic format. Some of the surrounding drama is perhaps not clewed as well and feels rather forced, but this is actually not a bad story to begin with.

The Spirited Away Murder Case has Marina and Tooru visiting the Seikouin Girls' School, a Christian elementary school, which is Marina's old school. As they wander around, Marina learns one of Marina's sempai has become a teacher at the school too. But while they are chatting, children start vanishing from the school, prompting the teachers to call in the parents of the missing children. However, while they are searching the school grounds, one of the teachers is found naked and murdered in a room. Marina goes off to bring the husband to his wife, but when they return the room, they find it empty and clean of any blood traces. This puzzles Marina greatly, as she hadn't been gone for that long, but when they later return to the room again, they find two naked women dead in the room. Why are these women being killed, and where have the children gone off to? This one is immediately less interesting as a mystery. The mystery of the disappearing corpse is pretty easy to solve due to the way it is presented, and the trick itself is one you'll often see in these kinds of stories. The mystery of the disappearing children borders on the insane and doesn't belong in a puzzle plot mystery.

Just like the first volume, volume two and three each contain two full stories. The Ghost Mansion Murder Case has the Japan Mystery Club visiting a haunted mansion on a small island. They have only just arrived when they are welcomed by a poltergeist throwing cutlery around and soon afterwards, one of the members is found stabbed with a cross high up the wall. The boat that brought them to the island won't be back soon however, and soon more people are killed one by one, one of them even while they were inside a cabin that had been locked from the inside. This And Then There Were None-esque story gets the vibe perfectly down, though a lot of the happenings feel a bit familiar: the locked cabin murder for example uses a trick which is telegraphed a bit too obvious and there are famous mystery novels that feature the exact same trick (the iteration here can't even be called a variant). The hint pointing at the killer is... okay in theory, as I do have to admit Byakkomaru uses the comic format in a clever way to subtly show how two seemingly similar actions are not the same, which eventually point to the murderer, which would be fine if the murderer wasn't already looking extremely suspicious in this story even without the clue!

The Zashikiwarashi Murder Case is one of the more interesting stories in terms of execution. Marina and Tooru are visiting Kumono, a remote countryside village where Tooru used to live. They are visiting Sayuri, Tooru's childhood friend who suffers from a weak heart and isn't able to leave the village. Her parents are dead and her brother has run away from home, leaving her all alone. Her father however arranged that his fortune would go to the family member who will take care of Sayuri after his death: however, it is up to Sayuri to decide whether she'll go to her aunt or either of her two uncles, who are all very, very eager to get on her good side. These would-be guardians of Sayuri however are being killed one by one, but why and by whom? The who is a question that is easily answered to be honest, especially as the cast is so small in this story, but the story makes brilliant use of the comic format here to create a good suspenseful story. The foreshadowing here really show off that Byakkomaru does know the potential of the visual, comic format in mystery fiction, and he explains pretty well in this volume's afterword what he was going for in this story, and I think he pulled it off very competently! This is one story I would recommend especially if you're going to read this.

The Ghost Photograph Murder Case starts with the death of one of the Japan Mystery Club members. Apparently their death was already foreshadowed by a "ghost photograph": a while back, the club members visited an abandoned hospital which was supposed to be haunted, and one of the photographs taken of the member who died, featured a strange dark shadow covering half of their body. Marina herself hadn't gone on that trip then, but now the club is going once more to investigate this creepy photograph. While they are driving to the hospital, a landslide ends up covering the road behind them, trapping them in the hospital. They eventually go to sleep, all staying in the same large hall, but when they wake up, they find one of them has been strangled to death. But was it by a human, or a ghost...? A human of course. While the overall flow of the story, as in the scene-to-scene transitions, feel a bit unoriented, I do have to say I really like some of the psychological hints introduced in this story. The hint pointing at how the murderer managed to strangle one of the members without anyone noticing, even though everybody was sleeping in the same (spacious) hall and just a few meters away from each other, is actually really good in the context of this manga, and another psychological clue that points to the identity of the murderer, is actually a very clever idea with far deeper (cultural) roots than you'd guess at first sight.

The Snow Woman Murder Case has Marina being invited by her friend Naoko to a ski trip with some more acquaintances: they are staying at the holiday villa of Isaki Fusako at the ski resort. Three years ago, Fusako's son Seijirou got injured while skiing, but he was saved by the people at the piste: the people they have invited to stay at the villa now (+ Marina). They learn that there's a local ghost story of a Snow Woman, who can instantly freeze men and... she then breaks off their penises and runs off with it. That evening, Marina thinks she sees the Snow Woman outside, and the following morning they find... the corpse of Fusako outside, buried in the snow. Who is obviously not a man, so why was she killed? Heavy snowfall prevents them from getting help, and Fusako ends up being only the first of more murder victims in the villa, which seem to be committed by the Snow Woman, as the second murder is actually witnessed by several people, who then see the white Snow Woman jump out of the window as she flees into the snow outside while holding a dildo. This is an extremely daring mystery story, which uses a trick that is both brilliant... and not convincing. While there is good shock value when the trick is revealed, it also instantly raises so many practical questions about how it all works, it immediately makes you wonder if it could work. That said, it does make interesting use of the visual medium once again and I think it's still worth it, even if only for the hilarious image of a Snow Woman running around with a dildo.

The fourth and final volume features three stories which are bit shorter than the usual ones. The Kokkuri-san Murder Case centers around a group of girls in Marina's  class, who recently did a session of Kokkuri-san (table turning), which seems to have backfired on them, as the participants are dying one by one. The story seems more focused to tell a thrilling story than be a puzzle plot mystery, and while there's an interesting hint in theory that allows Marina to figure out something fishy's going on and who is the one that stinks, I feel Byakkomaru could probably have used the visual format a bit more to make the clue feel fairer: I think the idea is alright enough (even if limited, but that's also because of the shorter length of the story), but showing it more often would have made it feel more satisfying when the clue is pointed out to the reader.

Marina became acquainted with the police detective Eguchi Gorou in the previous story, and he has invited Marina to come along to the shooting of a film he will appear in to on orders of his superiors (to promote the police).  The Haunted School Murder Case takes place in an abandoned school, which stands on a cliff and is only accessible via a bridge and it is here where the film will be shot. And by now you of course already know the bridge will collapse and that people will be killed one by one. There is a locked room murder, but the trick is hopelessly outdated and boring. In comparison, the hint that points to the murderer is actually really clever, using Queenian logic to cross off suspects of the list. It is just a one stage deduction, but certainly one of the best mystery moments in this series.

The final story, The Black Magic Murder Case, is set at Marina's school, and starts with the discovery of a student being stabbed into the blackboard at school, surrounded by satanic symbols. It turns out some of the senior staff at the school are actually in some kind of crazy cult, but then these people are being killed one by one too. The main murder situation is very simple in set-up, and there's not really much of a mystery here in presentation: they find the victim dead in a room, but it was not like it was a locked room or anything. The misdirection falls a bit flat here, and the trick itself relies on what might be the one of the oldest/most cliched locked room tricks that exist: while Byakkomaru does introduce a twist, this twist feels impractical and not likely a trick that would succeed,

Marina Mystery File was oddly enough a series that left me slightly disappointed not because it didn't succeed as a mystery manga: I was disappointed because while my expectations were low, there are genuinely moments that surprised me mystery-wise, and you can tell Byakkomaru is familiar with the genre, so it somewhere I feel like it perhaps could have been much better as a mystery series. It didn't crash and burn, and comes close to being good. Very few of the sexy moments in this series are actually "needed" for the mystery plot, but when they do become relevant in terms of the mystery solving, it works pretty well, and you almost feel like if Byakkomaru had been given some more research time to work out the mystery plots more, this could have been a much better known mystery-cum-porn manga. Now it's just an interesting note in the annals of mystery manga.

Original Japanese title(s): 白虎丸『まりなミステリーファイル』

The Problem of Cell 13

“WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN.” 

"Feet of Clay"

To be honest, when I first heard about the story, I was hoping the book would be about a real Golem...

Mitsuki Usami is an academic researcher in natural history connected to a multi-disciplinary research facility in the United States. He has the tendency to get involved in odd crimes both real and fictional: while occasionally, he ends up solving cases via his work as a researcher, with his co-workers and even the police aware of his skill in problem solving, Usami also has the habit (?) of just finding himself in completely different world or realize his mind is now inhabiting the body of someone else. That doesn't seem to surprise him that much however, and wherever and whenever he faces an intellectual problem, he can't rest until he has managed to find a solution. In Tsukatou Hajime's 2005 short story collection Golem no Ori ("The Cage of the Golem"), Usami finds himself solving a murder in a world where the creations of M.C. Escher are real, a prisoner escaping a sealed prison in which he had been imprisoned for decades and the riddle of a man escaping a mysterious sun cult among others.

While the last three years or so, I have started reading Tsukatou's work fairly regularly, this is the first time I read anything in this specific series, though I had been wanting to read this for a long time. In a mook on locked room mysteries edited by Arisugawa Alice, a group of mystery authors was asked to vote for their favorite locked room mysteries, and the title story Golem no Ori was ranked in the top 20. When I learned about the short story however, the book was already out of print, but fortunately, Tsukatou's older works have been given a digital re-release the last two years, so I finally was able to have a look at the title story. 

The book however opens with Escher no Sekai ("The World of Escher"). During a break, Usami has a look at the art exhibition held at the research facility,  an event to invite people from the neighborhood to have a look inside the facility. The art exhibition shows the art of Harold Mueller, who was known as a successor to M.C. Escher, making all kinds of trick art pieces. His most famous work is a painting with a very unique backstory: the work was created after his wife and daughter were murdered, and according to Mueller, this painting shows who the murderer is. However, the painting contains multiple persons, depending on you look at the painting, including Harold's old housekeeper, himself and his art dealer. While contemplating about this painting, Usami dozes off and finds himself awakening in a world where the works of M.C. Escher are actually possible, like the waterfall where the water drops down and somehow ends up at the top of the waterfall again in an eternal loop. For the people in that world, the "impossibility" of these buildings seems natural, but they talk about a person who like Usami came from a different world with other rules, and that he eventually managed to return. Usami looks for the villager who might have talked with that man and know how he returned, but before Usami can find the villager, the villager is found dead. But who could've murdered him?

This is a weird story, with two very different parts that are only partially connected via M.C. Escher storywise. The murder in the world of M.C. Escher is obviously a fantasy-like story, but this story is more of an interesting idea, than one that is really worked out well. While I imagine it has to do with rights, the book is devoid of illustrations, so if you're not familiar with the M.C. Escher illustrations mentioned in this story, you have to imagine them based on the descriptions in the story, which probably doesn't really convey the essence of these works. Obviously, the fact that in this world, the M.C. Escher buildings can actually exist and function ends up connected to the murder, and while I think the essential idea is funny, it's also not really anything more than a funny notion, and the lack of visuals really hurt the story. The part regarding Mueller's painting is a bit more interesting, and is at least thematically cleverly connected to the M.C. Escher story (though story-wise, not at all), but the complete true meaning of the painting is impossible to guess simply based on the hints.

In the second story Schrödinger DOOR, Usami and his co-worker Hartman are called by the "colonel" (who runs the research facility) for an emergency at the research facility: the Moren twins, two researchers, are involved in a crazy situation which has already taken the life of one of the brothers. In a laboratory, one of the twins is found murdered, while the other has been put inside a special capsule nside a locked lab, but he doesn't react to anything. In a document signed by Karlie Moren, he confesses to being the PRA bomber, a serial bomber who had been active for several years. He states he has committed suicide, and that his brother Gerald is inside the lab. Last year, both brothers were suspects in a murder case commonly referred to as The Chinese Scissor Mystery, and Karlie now states that one of the brothers was indeed guilty and that he has now punished that murderer: if Karlie was the murderer, he's lying dead on the floor, and Gerald is knocked out, but alive in the locked lab, but if Gerald was the murderer, he's dead too. The authorities are challenged to put in a password, a keyphrase to show they understand what actually happened last year, to open the lab: if they're right, the door opens and they can check whether Gerald is alive, while otherwise, everything will be blown up with explosives. 

This is a a very chaotic story, with the story about the PRA bomber and the Moren brothers being in a Schrödinger's cat-inspired situation where you don't know whether Gerald is alive or not, and then "The Chinese Scissor Mystery" part set in the past, where both brothers were a suspect. To be honest, I didn't really like this story: "The Chinese Scissor Mystery" is an okay mystery story, but not remarkable mystery story on its own that relies a lot on Queenian deductions regarding certain used objects, like a set of scissors, and sets of footprints that seemingly make it impossible for either Karlie or Gerald to have murderered their neighbor, while they were having a masquerade at home, but like Tsukatou sometimes tend to do, the story is told in a way where you get fragments of information in in media res scenes, meaning you miss a lot of context which makes everything seem confusing at first, only to explain things a few pages later, only to do the exact same thing again the next scene, constantly jerking around with the pace. The Schrödinger's cat-inspired part also is interesting on its own, but misses real synergy with the Chinese scissor mystery part, and isn't really a "deduce it yourself" type of mystery, so this story just didn't work for me.

Mienai Otoko - Usami-shiki ("The Invisible Man, Usami-style") is a very short story where Usami is challenged to solve a mystery written by a co-worker. In the story, Helen, a career woman, is haunted by a voice of someone accusing of a murder she most definitely did commit to climb up the ladder. But while she keeps hearing the voice, she can never find out who is saying it, leading her to believe it is really a ghost. This is a very simple story, and the whole thing is very similar to a short story by a prolific American locked room mystery specialist whom I am sure Tsukatou has read, so it's hard to feel really enthusiastic about this one.

After three medicore stories, I was glad to learn Golem no Ori ("The Cage of the Golem") was indeed a lot more interesting, though again, I am not that big a fan of the double story structure of these stories. The plotline of a handyman falling off the roof of the research facility and calling for help, and his rescuers not being able to find him despite going to the exact spot the handyman says he is at, is not very interesting. However, at the same time, Usami has another of his weird experiences where his mind ends up in the body of a prison warden in 17h century England. "He" has been newly appointed to this prison, where there is one special inmate: a man only known as the Golem, a man so feared his name and records have been completely obscured and who has been kept for decades in a specially built cell from which there is no escape, as the door has been completely sealed, shuttered and barricaded. The door of this special cell has never been opened in the decades since the Golem has been kept: there's only a special small opening just large enough for a tray of food and water to slide through, and this opening is always kept shut from the outside until the food is brought. While he has been in the prison for decades, the arrival of the new warden seems to have changed something, as the Golem starts hinting at an imminent escape, which scares another inmate in the prison, who had a personal fued with the Golem. The warden can't believe the Golem can escape: the Golem is put in a room with thick stone walls, the door can't even be opened as it's completely barricaded and has been like that ever since the room was finished and you can barely get an arm outside the window. But on the night the Golem announced, the Golem does indeed appear to manage to escape his prison, and even kill the other inmate on his way out. How did the Golem manage to do this? This part of the story is probably the best of the whole book, and I do quite like this mystery, even if I have already seen a variation of the same solution before. It goes over the many seemingly possible situations there are for escaping a locked cell like in The Problem of Cell 13, but these possibilites are of course discarded. The solution however is clever as it plays with your expectations of why the Golem escaped his cell now, leading to a surprising way to escape the cell that seems so utterly impenetrable.

The final story bears the title Taiyouden no Isis (Golem no Ori Gendaiban) ("Isis of the Sun Temple - A Modern Cage of the Golem), the rescued handyman from the previous story tells Usami about a mysterious case at the headquarters of a sun-worshipping cult, where he worked once. A former follower of the cult had been detained inside a room at headquarters so he could "repent". This cell was made especially to punish the followers, so the windows were all frosted, allowing no direct sun inside the room. While the man was being held captive, the head of the cult, Ra, was worshipping the sun with his trusted assistants in the deepest parts of the headquarters. But the man somehow managed to not only escape his cell, which was being observed by a guard in the room outside, the man even managed to escape headquarters unseen! Even if the man managed to get out of his cell somehow, he'd only be able to go two ways from that point: one leading to the main entrance where plenty of other followers are, or one leading into the sun worshipping room where Ra and his assistants were, but none of them have any reason to have let the man go, so how did he escape both his cell and the sun cult's headquarters? The first part of this problem indeed offers an interesting twist on the idea of used in the original Golem no Ori, but in terms of feasibility, it seems very unlikely it would ever work: the story even says it was a gamble whether this would work, but simply addressing this problem doesn't mean it suddenly becomes more feasible, and while I like the idea on its own, it just seems like it needed something more to make the trick more... useable. The way the man escaped the building itself though is brilliant, and I really like the thematic implications of this trick. 

Overall though, I wasn't that big a fan of Golem no Ori as a short story collection. Most of the stories follow this two-plot structure, with one "outer shell" story and a narrative-within-a-narrative with Usami somehow being placed into this narrative-within-a-narrative (often with a fantasy twist), but I often felt the synergy between the two plotlines was not as strong as they could've been, and because of that, the stories just felt a bit chaotic, as if they were two stories mashed together for... reasons I simply don't get. The book also starts a bit weak, with the last two stories being the clear outliers and having the most memorable mystery plots, but even then, I don't think the "outer shell" stories really add that much to the plot, so it's difficult for me to feel truly positive about the book. I'd recommend reading the last two stories if you happen to have the opportunity, but don't expect anything as good in the earlier stories.

Original Japanese title(s):柄刀一『ゴーレムの檻』:「エッシャー世界」/「シュレディンガーDOOR」/「見えない人、宇佐見風」/「ゴーレムの檻」/「太陽殿のイシス（ゴーレムの檻 現代版）」

Bathtub Murder

Undinus sich winden

『黒死館殺人事件』

 

 Undinus sich winden

"The Black Death Mansion Murder Case"

The Tattoo Murder Case is probably one of the earliest Japanese mystery novels I ever read, so kinda funny how I only got around to reading its sequel now...

Matsushita Kenzou receives from his old schoolmate Urabe Kouichi, who hopes Matsushita and their mutual friend Kamizu Kyousuke, the famous detective, will come and save his family. When they were attending school together, Kouichi had shown signs of having vague precognitive powers, which is something which appears to run in his family: his great-uncle is in fact Urabe Shunzai: Shunzai had exhibited great precognitive powers at a younger age and presented himself as someone who was chosen by heaven. He became the head of his own "new religion", the Crimson Spirit, which started out as a minor cult in their home village in the rural plains of Musashino, but which rapidly attracted more followers, some of them even with great political influence. At one time, the Crimson Spirit had its headquarters in a splendid mansion in the capital and Shunzai would even be consulted during the war, but his predictions then missed the mark, and after the war, the cult shrunk as quickly as it had once grown: at the moment, it's basically just Shunzai and his next of kin, being his three granddaughters Sumiko, Retsuko and Tokiko, as well as Kouji. Because Matsushita knows Kouichi has been right about his feelings in the past, he travels to the village, though he isn't able to get hold of the travelling Kamizu. As he arrives in the village, Matsushita runs into a strange man who, when hears Matsushita is going to visit the Urabes, is told a prophecy: that night one of the girls will die floating in water. Matsushita has barely arrived at the house and told Kouji about this prophecy, when suddenly Tokiko ends up poisoned, though she fortunately survives the attempt on her life. It turns out the strange man is called Rokurou, who is a faraway relative of the Urabes and once a high-ranking member of the Crimson Spirit. He has however denounced Shunzai as being "real" and has started his own cult now. Matsushita is of course offered to a bed for the night, but that evening, as everyone takes turn to take a bath, a noise attracts everyone to the bathroom, where Sumiko is taking a bath. They find the door locked, so break it open, only to find Sumiko dead in the tub: she has been stabbed in the chest with a dagger. However, the window was locked from the inside, and there had been someone standing outside the bathroom to guard her. When later, a sheet of paper is found where Rokurou has written more of his prophecies, which indicate Shunzai and his three granddaughters will die in different manners. Are their deaths inevitable and fixed by heaven, or is it the act of a murderous human being? That is to be determined by Kamizu Kyousuke in Takagi Akimitsu's Jubaku no Ie ("The Spellbound House", 1949-1950).

Jubaku no Ie is the second novel featuring Takagi Akimitsu's fictional detective Kamizu Kyousuke, who debuted in Shisei Satsujin Jiken ("The Tattoo Murder Case"), which had ended serialization the previous year. While Takagi seemed quite enthusastic when he started serializing this story, it appears reception at the time wasn't that good: letters came from readers who bashed it, and eventually Takagi even gave up some of his payment for the story to set up a contest, with a money reward for the person who could guess who the murderer was. The book features two Challenges to the Readers by the way, one being a relatively conventional one, but then a chapter later, he adds in another where he basically says "You can't be serious, you still don't get it!??", which might be the time when they did the contest, I suppose? And oddly enough, Takagi really likes to spoil Van Dine (as in: actually stating the name of the murderer of The Greene Family Murders): he does so in the Challenge to the Reader, but he also spoiled Van Dine in Noumen Satsujin Jiken. Oh, and in the story itself, he basically spoils The Murder of Roger Ackryoyd while talking about something else. Forewarned is forearmed.

As the scond novel in the series, Jubaku no Ie is one of the better known entries in the series, and has actually also (relatively) recently been adapted for the stage. So I had been looking forward to reading this book. Atmosphere-wise, Jubaku no Ie is pretty good: the backstory of the Crimson Spirit cult and how Shunzai abused his authority to get women and money from first villagers, and then the whole country until his empire crumbled is interesting, and provides a great set-up where the whole Urabe clan is more-or-less hated by everyone who once was involved, like everyone in the village who donated money to Shunzai until they realized he must be a fraud. Meanwhile, the three granddaughters were brought up by their grandfather and at least Sumiko and Retsuko are still devoted believers of their grandfather, being one of the few practicing followers left. The prophecy left by Rokurou, who started his own rival cult and is clearly 'winning' in terms of gaining power, predicts the whole bloodline of Shunzai will fall, with each of the four remaining persons dying via one of the four elements of air, water, fire and earth. With Sumiko dying as the first one in a locked (bath)room, you'd think this might be a very cool mystery novel, as at the very least, the atmosphere is great and I see opinions online that, very understandably, compare it to the dark atmosphere found in Yokomizo Seishi's Kindaichi Kousuke novels.

As a mystery novel, and one with two Challenges to the Reader no less, Jubaku no Ie is probably not as impressive as Takagi probably had hoped it to be. When you add a Challenge to the Reader, you of course expect not a conventional matter "whodunnit", as in, the book shouldn't just expect the reader to instinctively guess who the murderer is, but there should be a proper trail of clues pointing specifically at one person, while also proving other people didn't do it. After the first murder on Sumiko, Kamizu arrives late at the scene (together with the police), but he is not able to prevent more murders from happening. Most of the subsequent murders seem able to have been committed by any person though, and while there is another locked room murder later in the story, it is resolved fairly quickly mid-way (and has a rather straighforward solution), the main problem is the first bathroom murder, which is also the one thing Takagi focuses on in his Challenge to the Reader, setting specific parameters about this murder to ensure to the reader he's playing a fair game here. The problem here is basically two-fold: one is that Takagi in an attempt to be clever, actually basically tells a falsehood in this Challenge to the Reader, rendering the whole Challenge moot and even more problematic... he skims over crucial parts of how he says the locked room murder in the bathroom occured. Like, going solely by what is said in the text, you still don't know how it happened, as Takagi basically skips over the part that actually explains how the murder had been committed without leaving any clues as to how the murderer entered. While there are interesting parts about this locked room murder, because it is set in a Japanese-style bathroom with its own characteristics, I feel the mystery of Jubaku no Ie falls apart, as the whole Challenge is based on the bathroom murder, but then it skims over parts of the solution (the parts that would actually be an obstacle in terms of execution). In fact, parts of this solution go straight against reasons the book itself raised earlier, but which for some reason are not addressed again when the actual solution faces the exact same obstacles.

Funny how this second Kamizu Kyousuke novel also revolves around a bathroom murder by the way...

But no, overall Jubaku no Ie didn't manage to leave a good impression on me on the whole. While it certainly earns high marks in terms of atmosphere, with the cult background and a creepy poem foretelling four murders, the main locked room murder skims over its own solution, despite it being the focal point of the book's Challenge to the Reader. I think what ultimately Takagi was going for with this locked room murder could be interesting, but the execution here is sloppy, and just doesn't work.

Original Japanese title(s): 高木彬光『呪縛の家』

The Faulty Stroke

"Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it."
"The Mystery of the Blue Train"

I am a fan of mystery fiction, by which I mean I am not solely into mystery literature. While I mostly discuss books here, you'll also see me talk about video games, stage plays, audio dramas, comics and more, as long as it features a mystery plot. And while I generally don't have too much interest in other genres, my attention is quickly drawn if I learn something completely unrelated to the mystery genre, does in fact involve stories that could be interpreted as mystery fiction. That is why I had no intention of watching Oppenheimer at first, until someone told me it could be watched as a proper mystery film, and to my surprise, he was completely right.

And that is why I have longed to watch the 1985 "pink" (= basically softcore porn) film Chikan Densha: Seiko no Oshiri ("Molester Train: Seiko's Tush") for some time now. Yes, you read that title right. I first heard about this film in a mook on locked room mysteries edited by Arisugawa, which featured an article about locked room murder mysteries in the visual format: several prominent Japanese authors were asked about their favorites, and Abiko Takemaru's recommendation was this film. Later I learned Yamaguchi Masaya also recommends it as a locked room mystery. Of course, that seems a bit strange, as Seiko no Oshiri was just an entry in an extremely long-running series of pink films about...well, molesters groping women in the train among others. There's some story to connect the scenes with sexual content, but you'd hardly expect one of these films to be hiding a locked room murder mystery classic, right? It turns out that because the series (which ran from the eighties until the 2010s) is so insanely long (there are apparently more than a hundred of them), the series covers a wide variety of different genres from comedy and suspense to political thrillers, though the scenes with nudity/sex are of course the main attraction. Though apparently, most films aren't even about molesting in the train, as they eventually move away from that setting and might only include one such scene... Anyway, the more I learned about Seiko no Oshiri, the more I became interested in it: the film is actually directed by Takita Youjirou, who directed many of these Chikan Densha films, but would become internationally renowned with his 2008 Okuribito/Departures film, which would become the very first Japanese film to win the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language film. So yes, this is a softcore porn film by an Oscar-winning director which also features a locked room mystery. The whole story about all of this sounded just unbelievable, so I had to see the film.

Chikan Densha: Seiko no Oshiri starts the year after the infamous Glico Morinaga case, in which "The Fiend With Twenty-One Faces"  (a nod to Edogawa Rampo's Fiend with Twenty Faces) extorted the confectioneries Glico and Morinaga. Now, a different industry is threatened: the rice industry.  Someone calling themselves "The Fiend with Twenty-One Faces" has announced they have poisoned the rice of the koshihikari variety sold at a rice store, and threatens to repeat this act. The culprit however is in fact a corrupt chairman of the Miyagi Agricultural Association, who wants to scare consumers into moving away from koshihikari so they'll consume the sasanishiki variety. However, he himself receives a call from "The Fiend with Twenty-One Faces", who threatens to expose the whole deal, unless he pays up a hundred million yen. The chairman hires his old acquaintance Morizou to do the drop-off: Morizou is a chindon-ya: someone who dressed in excessive loud clothes and makes music to advertise for shops, but he also spends a lot of time just molesting women in packed trains. Morizou's orders are to follow the blackmailer's instructions, which is to carry the money onto a certain train. On the way, he's instructed to throw the container out of the window of the train: the container falls off the bridge the train was on at the time, landing besides the river where a figure was standing ready to pick the money up. A chance video recording allows Morizou and the chairman to figure out who this man was, and they report his identity to the police.

Acting on this information, the police detective visit the suspect at his apartment, but as there's no answer at the door, they ask the building's caretaker to open the door for them with his spare key. Inside, however, they stumble upon the suspect lying dead on his bed. As the door was locked from the inside and the key was found inside a closed drawer of the desk, the police conclude it must have been suicide: even supposing the man was killed, how could the murderer have escaped with the door locked from the inside? While one window was only slightly open, the apartment is located many floors up, with no high buildings directly besides it, meaning a hypothetical murderer couldn't have gone anywhere from the window. However, while the case seems to end with the blackmailer having committed suicide, the money is nowhere to be found, and Morizou himself becomes the suspect, so he tries to figure out who has the money now.

Oh, and that's the story when you cut out all the softcore porn segments, and that would probably halven the length of this film easily. These scenes are always awkwardly long and really add nothing to the story (oh, we need to wait until we arrive at the drop-off point with the train? Let's casually sexually assault a woman then to pass the time!), but I guess for the long-time viewers of a series called Molester Train, these scenes are actually the main part and the mystery plot is the unnecessary filler. The overall tone of the film is very lighthearted, with acts like groping treated as something minor and something to laugh about and the non-sexual jokes are also... of a certain quality, so it might be a challenging view for some.

But to get to the locked room murder mystery (for yes, the suspect indeed didn't commit suicide, but was murdered and left in a locked room): this truly has no right to be in a softcore porn film. I wouldn't call it a classic by any means, but it is honestly way more complex than some pure locked room murder mystery novels are, and it is actually one that becomes more convincing on the screen, compared to if you had just read the trick behind this locked room. The visual qualities of the medium really do make the trick seem more convincing, even if it's a bit ridiculous. Of course, this film isn't really structured as a proper mystery story, so there are barely hints and you're not really intended to solve this yourself (the person solving the locked room murder basically *just* figures it out), but the actual mechanics behind how the murderer managed to leave the suspect in a locked apartment, with the only key (besides the caretaker's master key) being found inside a closed desk drawer, is pretty impressive. I can't even imagine how it was written down in the screenplay, and what everyone on the staff on this softcore film would have been thinking as they were shooting this, because it honestly should have been done in a pure mystery film, and not used as... binding material to connect the sexy scenes. The core, underlying idea of how this locked room murder was committed isn't anything special per se, but the execution is... insanely complex and not even a lot of actual mystery films/television shows will ever show anything as mind-boggling as this, and that indeed makes Seiko no Oshiri a strangely memorable mystery film.

But Chikan Densha: Seiko no Oshiri can't be called a good film by any means, so it's really up to you whether you should watch this film. The locked room mystery part is interesting because it really has no business being in a film like this, but the rest of the film is incredibly tedious to get through if you're only interested in the mystery part.

Original Japanese title(s): 『痴漢電車　聖子のお尻』

Write, She Murdered

「これですべてが変わる……この俺の運命……カカロットの運命……そして……キサマの運命も!!」 

『ドラゴンボールZ たったひとりの最終決戦〜フリーザに挑んだZ戦士 孫悟空の父〜』

"Now everything changes. (...) As well as your fate. This is where it ends!

"Dragon Ball Z:  A Final, Solitary Battle: The Father of Z-Warrior Son Goku, Who Challenged Freeza"

Now I think of it, I haven't reviewed that many collaborative works here. This one is a bit different of course, considering the two didn't really work together...

A pushy person in need of money manages to sell off some documents to a mystery writer, but it turns out these documents actually contains a rather interesting, and mysterious account of a murder and the writer decides to have the manuscript published. The documents consist of a series of long letters, be written by a Sobue Shinichi, a journalist, writing to a friend, who may be the person who ended selling the manuscript. Sobue tells about the horrendous murder on Anezaki Saeko, a beautiful widow who one day was found murdered on the second floor of the storehouse in the garden. However, not only was she found completely naked for some reason, the storehouse itself was found locked from the inside. Anezaki and Sobue were both members of a club headed by Kumauchi where they dabble in spiritualism. The testimony of a legless vagrant (who couldn't have come up the second floor himself) tells the police two people approached the house during the time of the murder, a gentleman and a woman in an old-fashioned kimono, but the police can't find out who these people are. At the club, Professor Kurokawa, the strongest believer in spiritualism, wants to hold a seance to look into the matter: he takes care of a blind girl with spiritual powers and who can act as a medium. During the seance however, the girl (while possessed) not only declares the murderer is among them, but also that the beautiful woman in front of her will also die, and there's only one person in the club who answers to this description...

Thus goes the story Akuryou ("Evil Spirits") by Edogawa Rampo, a story that was never finished. The story originally started serialization late 1933, long after it had been originally announced and hit by delays. Rampo even skipped serialization twice during this time, and ultimately, Akuryou was cancelled after only three installments, with Rampo citing "various reasons" led to him giving up, including the fact he had started writing the story before the plot had been properly developed yet. In 2024, Ashibe Taku finally gave Akuryou a proper conclusion: his Rampo Satsujin Jiken - Akuryou Futatabi ("The Rampo Murder Case - Return of Evil Spirits", 2024) is a collaborative work with the late Rampo, containing not only the original three installments of Akuryou, but also including an original ending by Ashibe, clewed together by him based on the three existing installments. And not only that, Ashibe even offers an explanation to why Rampo gave up on the project in the first place... 

Rampo Satsujin Jiken - Akuryou Futatabi  is in many ways a very special book. It basically tells two stories on two layers: it has the original unfinished Akuryou manuscript by Edogawa Rampo, which of course tells a story on two levels: the story of the detective writer who bought the manuscript, and the story within those letters (the Anezaki murder). Ashibe too finishes these two stories on both levels, and even adds an extra layer to the story that explains why Rampo ended up cancelling this serialization. The result is a story that jumps back and forth a few times, and which can be confusing at first, but things do come together in the end.

What caught my attention at once was the physical element of the book by the way. Publisher Kadokawa uses very different fonts to differentiate the various elements of the story, so you can instantly see whether you are reading the original serialized Akuryou pages, or the new original pages by Ashibe. The font used in the Akuryou parts do really look like the font used in older early Showa publications (and even look slightly smudged like you're really reading an old book), and it really helps sell the vibe of reading an old, genuine Rampo story.

Anyway, it is very hard to judge this book on its merits as a mystery story. Fact remains that Edogawa Rampo abandoned the story mid-way and left no notes as to indicate how the story was supposed to end, so all Ashibe could do was use whatever was already there: he had to play detective himself, find the clues Rampo left and find out the solution himself! Of course, Ashibe had more creative freedom than a real detective: it wasn't as if he had to build the solution solely on the elements featured in the first three installments, as he was able to freely add segments retroactively, but still, Ashibe of course tried to keep the "original" Akuryou intact as much as possible, and have his solution stick as close as possible to the original Rampo manuscript. That is what makes this a difficult story to judge, because Ashibe's hands were tied. 

Some parts of the mystery, like the locked room murder of Anezaki Saeko, were already quite fleshed out in the original script, and Ashibe is able to put forward a solution that seems well grounded in Rampo's work, but other parts of the original mystery must have been more troublesome to Ashibe, like the mystery of a curious drawing on a note found inside the locked room: attributing a meaning to that sketch in a way that ties it to the murder must have been an insanely strange challenge and while I do think Ashibe did a good job at providing an answer to it, the original idea of the drawing itself was never really that interesting to me as it always seemed to me the answer would feel a bit forced, or at least trivia-reliant, and Ashibe's answer doesn't stray far from that expectation. In a way, that's of course impressive: it definitely feels like Rampo...  I know from experience that some of Rampo's serialized longer works often feel like he didn't plan that much in advance, and often his set-ups for mysterious events were much better than the solutions he'd later provide. In a way, I feel Ashibe's conclusion to the story has elements of this too, but at the same time, I can't really blame him considering it was Rampo who set everything up, and Ashibe simply had to guess what the solution could be. And style-wise, I can't deny Ashibe managed to nail Rampo's work. He clearly studied Rampo's writing, so the additions don't feel out of place, and you could imagine this being the genuine ending to Akuryou. And in that sense, I do think Rampo Satsujin Jiken is an impressive work, more so than in the sense of it being a mystery story on its own.

Interestingly, it appears that even if this book were to win an award, the credits would likely go more towards Rampo than Ashibe. While the two authors share the credits on the cover, the bulk of the book consists of the original Akuryou manuscript, so that apparently has influence on who would be the main recipient of a hypothetical award, even if I do think the book's interesting exactly because of the transformation by a second author.

So Rampo Satsujin Jiken - Akuryou Futatabi is not per se a book I would recommend to a mystery fan, because as an standalone mystery novel, it is really mostly a 1930s Rampo serialized novel with all the haphazard planning and somewhat disappointing payoff to the set-up. However, with the surrounding context of Ashibe coming with an original conclusion based on the unfinished story, him emulating the style and offering an explanation why Akuryou was never finished, you get a story that is infinitely more interesting than Akuryou on its own. So recommended to Rampo fans, and people who want to see Ashibe live out his fanboy dream and finishing one of Rampo's work.

Original Japanese title(s): 江戸川乱歩、芦辺拓『『乱歩殺人事件―「悪霊」ふたたび』

Mine Your Own Business

"Moria. You fear to go into those mines. The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm. Shadow and flame."

"The Fellowship of the Ring"

It's not actually set in the city of Fukuoka, but it is set in the Chikuhou region within the prefecture and plenty of characters use the local dialect, so I count it as my "I try to read at least one story set in Fukuoka once a year" story for this year!

When Motoroi Hayata first arrived at the prestigious Kenkoku University in Manchukuo, he believed in its ideals of ethnic harmony and a greater East-Asian power sphere, but his time there left him disillusioned, as he soon realizes there was no harmony here: Japanese students and teachers were treated as being superior, while the people from other locations like the Korean peninsula were treated as second-rate, only there to serve the Japanese. This hypocrisy of the Japanese empire's goals became painfully clear to Hayata. After the war, he found a steady job in Osaka, but one day, he just gives up and decides to just quit his job and take the train south (because the north is cold). He has no destination in mind, but decides to get off the train at Ketsune in the Chikuhou region in Fukuoka, as the view reminds him of his time in Manchukuo. He's barely out on the station, when he is approached by a man who wants to recruit Hayata as a miner. Hayata is almost forced inside a truck ready to go, but is saved by a man pretending to know Hayata. His savior introduces himself as Aizato Minoru, who explains that during the war, he had been a recruiter for a mining company himself in the Korean peninsula: while ostensibly, they only recruited volunteers, he has to admit they basically forced people to come with them to work in the mines in Fukuoka, as coal was a necessary resource for the war. The memory of the young Korean Jeong Nam-seon in particular remains a troublesome one for Aizato: the two men had a special bond, as both reminded the other of their own older brothers. Despite Aizato's attempt to get him off, Nam-seon too was forced to sign up to work for the mining company and he ended up at the worst possible mine, where Koreans were basically treated as slaves as they mined for coal, and Nam-seon would eventually find his demise during an air raid. After the war, Aizato stopped his job as a recruiter and became a coal miner himself at the Nenne Mines at Mount Yako, as a way to make amends for his past. Which is why he also tried to save Hayata from being recruited, but Hayata feels he wants to make up for his past too, and he asks Aizato to help him get employed at Nenne Mines too.

At the Nenne Mines, Hayata soon learns life as a miner s is still very harsh, even if it's better than during the war. While the miners aren't treated as full slaves now, the long shifts in the darkness are far from light work, especially as all mining companies try to maximize profits and of course, safety often ends up the first victim, meaning the risk of cave-ins and other crises always remain very present. Hayata ends up living together with Aizato in the singles dormitory, and soon learns Aizato is kind of a loner within the community, which Hayata suspects might have to do with Aizato's past as a recruiter. Hayata is a bit more social, and through his talks with his co-workers, he learns about the superstitions miners have. He hears ghost stories about mysterious women appearing in the deepest of the mine tunnels who offer to help lonely miners, but it seldom ends well for them. Foxes are worshipped as the deities of Mount Yako, with the white fox being worshipped as a symbol of prosper and great harvest (coal output), while the black fox is feared as a symbol of bad harvest, and it is said that people who die in the mine tunnels, are turned into a black fox themselves. One morning, as they are working the early shift, one man cries out: a cave-in! Veterans soon recognize the characteristic sound of the ceiling sinking in, and everyone tries to find their way out, when another disaster strikes: gas! The miners barely make it out in time, with some of them being carried out because they already inhaled too much gas. When the supervisors check their lists, they however learn one man didn't make it out: Aizato Minoru. It turns out his mining buddy of today didn't wait for Aizato as he fled their tunnel, a deed many consider absolutely unforgivable as even if you don't like your co-workers really, miners never leave each other behind. Which is why the miners also become infuriated when the mining company seems very reluctant to send their rescue unit down the mines to save Aizato, citing the risk on more cave-ins and the gas, and they will only attempt it after doing a daily canary test (sending canaries down the mines to see if they survive the gas). While the miners try to convince the company to send their rescue unit sooner, Hayata is approached by the girl who works in the canteen, as children saw something odd at this time: a man wearing a black fox mask entered the room of Kido, a former miner of Korean descent who works as a handyman around the mining village. The black fox is feared by everyone here, so Hayata agrees to have a look in Kido's room, as Kido's living in the room next to Aizato and his. When he enters Kido's room however, he finds Kido's body hanging from a shimewana, a sacred rope usually found at shrines. At first, it looks like suicide, but where did the man with the black fox mask go? The children have actually kept an eye on the front door ever since the figure entered the room, and the windows in the back can't actually be opened due to the bad building quality of the dormitory, so the figure couldn't have escaped unseen! When then more people in the dormitory end up dead in a similar way, hanging from shimewana in locked rooms, people start to fear it's Aizato's spirit, turned into a black fox and looking for more people to join him in the depths of the mines, but Hayata isn't quite convinced as he decides to investigate these murders in Mitsuda Shinzou's 2016 novel Kokumen no Kitsune ("The Black-Faced Kitsune").

As a big fan of Mitsuda's Toujou Genya series, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed when I read Ikan, his first novel: whereas I feel the Genya series hit a great balance between horror and a genuine well-plotted detective, Ikan was clearly more horror. Of course, I know Mitsuda also writes conventional horror, but I am not really interested in that. However, in my search for stories that in spirit are closer to the Genya series, I soon found about Kokumen no Kitsune. When Mitsuda first started doing his research for this novel, it was actually with the intention of writing a Genya novel set around a coal mine, but as Mitsuda read more and more about it, he felt the theme didn't really fitted the Genya series, and he decided to make it its own standalone novel. Still, this book is far closer to the Genya series than Ikan was, though it is also definitely not just a Genya novel with different characters, and it certainly works best as its own thing.

For one of the greatests feats of this novel is definitely the depiction of the harsh, gritty life of miners in Japan both during and after World War II. The story takes a long time for the set-up of the murders, and the mystery doesn't really get started until halfway the novel, but the lead-up time is used excellently to introduce the reader to the horrifying life as a miner. This is a horror novel, but a lot of the horror is actually based on reality: we hear about Aizato's past where he was a miner recruiter during the war, and the stories we hear about how they basically kidnapped people to work in the mines as de-facto slaves is just terrifying. This is also put in an international context, as we learn how as the war continued and resources became scarce, the Japanese empire eventually decided to "recruit" Koreans from their colonies to work in the coal mines of nearby Kyushu. Promises of high pay and just a one or two year contract after which they were free to go, were of course quickly broken, and while the Japanese miners were treated slightly more favorably, it was clear that miners were just a replacable resource to the companies running the mines, with safety never winning from coal output in terms of priorities. While things improved after the war, you still have ruthless recruiters who try to force lonely people in signing contracts, and even now, safety is not a priority for many of the mining companies, like at the Nenne Mines, which doesn't even have its own rescue unit, but has to wait for one to be sent from the main company in case anything happens (and of course, by the time such a unit arrives, hours if not days will have passed).

And we're just talking about the "outside" working circumstances here, but crawling into pitch-dark tunnels with just a light on your helmet and having to choose between wearing clothes to protect your body from the stones or wearing nothing because it's insanely hot inside the tunnels, carrying buckets full of coals to carts which need to moved out too and of course the danger of cave-ins and gas are all things that don't really make the life of a miner fun. In the first half of the book we hear also a lot about the superstitions of miners, like them at least trying to appease the fox spirits of Mount Yako, or stories about ghosts appearing in the depths of the tunnels when people work alone or about people who die and are left in the tunnels become spirits who roam the surface to take others along. Great stuff here, that really set a spooky atmosphere.

In the second half, after the cave-in and Aizato being left behind in the gas-filled mines, the mystery really starts with the apparent suicide of Kido in his room. Children saw a man wearing a black fox mask enter the room, but didn't see him leave through the front door, even though they were watching it until Hayata arrived at the scene. The back window was not locked, but the whole building was built rather shoddily, and like with parts of Aizato/Hayato's room, the window's simply completely stuck in the frame. At first, Kido's death is treated as a suicide, even if using a shimewana to hang yourself is a bit weird, but the following day, another neighbor of Hayata's found dead in his own room, and this time it's a real locked room, with the door and windows all locked and bolted.  The days after, even more people in the dorm die under the same circumstances, which soon fuel rumors of Aizato's spirit having escaped the mines to kill these people, but Hayata is of course quite convinced a real person killed these men somehow and tries to investigate these deaths, but the managers of the mining company seem very intent on handling these deaths as suicides, as a murder investigation would of course put a halt on mining activities for some time.

I do have to say that as a locked room mystery, Kokumen no Kitsune isn't as intricately plotted as the bangers we see in the Genya series. I think the first one, with the figure seen to enter Kido's room but not leave, is the best in the sense it fits the unique setting of a small miner's community the best by far. Subsequent locked rooms were less interesting I think: whereas in the Genya novels Mitsuda presents insanely densily plotted mysteries with all kinds of clues eventually coming together to point at the solution and often show synergy between the multiple impossible situations, that is not really the case here. The solutions to the individual locked rooms come rather suddenly, with Hayata just realizing how they were done even though he didn't really investigate the crime scenes and there wasn't really a particular reason why he couldn't have realized it earlier (there was no specific impulse that made the deduction only possible later). Synergy between the various locked rooms is also nearly nihil, meaning that solving one case doesn't necessarily lead to an epiphany regarding a different one, which is something I really liked about the Genya plots. That said, setting the individual locked rooms aside, I did really like Kokumen no Kitsune on the whole, as the way the plot is set in motion and how characters behave and by extent, make this murder mystery possible, is firmly set in the realistic post-war world of miners as portrayed by Mitsuda, and the way he also ties it to miner's superstitions is really good. There's not much delving into folklore and the meaning behind customs/traditions like in the Genya stories here, so you get a lot of spooky stories without an "explanation" to them, but that really helps sell the setting of the mines, a place not even the people who work in the deepest parts of the mountains, truly comprehend.

So overall, I did enjoy Kokumen no Kitsune a lot. As for the mystery plot, it doesn't reach the highest heights of the Genya series at all, but it still managed to scratch that itch of mine for well-plotted horror-mystery with an emphasis on local folklore/ghost stories, and in this book, we also get a very fascinating look in the lives of coal miners in post-war Japan, and that part is absolutely the highlight. The mining community and their circumstances are also put to good use for the mystery plot, providing a unique location that you simply won't find in other stories. 

Original Japanese title(s): 三津田信三『黒面の狐』

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』