A Journey for Truth

"The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic."

"The Blue Cross"

It's actually amazing how many one-shot adaptations they make of mystery novels in Japan. It's almost like every other weekend there's a two-hour special based on a best-selling novel. You hardly see that outside of Japan, I think, where they usually try to go for a film adaptation. There's the occassional Christie TV special or mini-series adaptation, but that's at best once in a couple of years.

The discovery of a cut-off right arm at Ookawa Park, Tokyo, is the start of a horrible serial murder case. A commuter ticket found together with the arm identifies the victim as Furukawa Mariko, a young, female bank employee who went missing some time ago. But a TV station gets a call by someone using a voice scambler, telling them that the arm discovered in the park is not that of Mariko, but that he'll leave Mariko's arm elsewhere for them to find. The murderer keeps on killing more and more women, plunging the city in fear and he even dares to call the family of the victims to make fun of them. The police investigation have little results, which of course also stirs up social unrest, which is fuled more by the relentless coverage of the case by the media. Freelance writer Maehata Shigeko and teenager Tsukuda Shinichi, who discovered the first arm, start to investigate the case too for a series of articles on the murders, but Shigeko finds it harder and harder to proceed as she sees up close how the family of the victims have to cope with the horrible fate of their loved ones. But Shigeko, the media, the family of the victims and of course the police keep looking for the sadistic killer in the 2016 TV drama Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - Mohouhan ("Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - The Copy Cat Crime").

Miyabe Miyuki is one of the best-known female writers in Japan, specializing in genres like crime and fantasy. I myself haven't read that many of her works (Kasha and R.P.G., off the top of my head), but she's also one of the Japanese writers who is actually fairly well represented in English language translations. Mohouhan ("The Copy Cat Crime") is one of her best-known books, and also one of her longest (or actually, I think it is her longest story). The original seralization, which started in 1995, took about four years, and the currently available pocket paperback version consists of no less than five sizeable volumes. An English translation of the book is available on e-book (also split up in multiple volumes), with the title Puppet Master.

Mohouhan had been adapted for the silver screen in 2002, but Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - Mohouhan was the first time it had been adapted for TV. The drama consists of two, two-hour parts, and was broadcast on September 21-22, 2016. The 2002 film apparently has quite some changes compared to the plot of the original novel, assumably partly because of the runtime, but the 2016 TV drama version has been praised as a very faithful adaptation of the book. Four hours to adapt one book is actually a lot, but considering the size of the original work, I guess this was the best way to do it.

Mohouhan is not a puzzle plot mystery, but a pure crime thriller. In the first part of the drama, the narrative mainly jumps between Shigeko's POV, that of the police investigation, and the POV of the grandfather of Mariko. It is in this part where we see the true horrors of the crime, as the people left behind try to make sense of everything that has happened. Shigeko, as a freelance writer. tries to get close to the families of the victims in the hopes of getting a scoop, but writing about a mysterious serial murderer gets a lot more personal when you actually see the family of the victims break under all the pressure. The narrative jumps cleverly among all the involved parties, showing the crimes from multiple angles. The investigation in this first part of the drama features very little progress though, focusing more on the impact of the crimes. The big reveals and shocks are only revealed in the last thirty minutes or so. The second part of the drama in turn shows the denouement of the story from the POV of both Shigeko and.... the murderer. The murderer cleverly makes use of the media to conjure up a fake story about the murders, which the media, and the people in the country, love to believe. By putting different parties involved with the crimes (family of victims, freelance writer Shigeko, etc.) against each other, the mastermind manages to cause more chaos in the perception of the crimes. But for what cause?

The story is very much rooted in the foundations of shakai-ha (social school of crime fiction). The narrative of Mohouhan shows the interaction between all the parties involved with a horrible serial murder: the (family of the) victim, the murderer, the police, the media writing about the case and the general public. The story especially gives a harsh, but realistic look at the power of the media (in Japan). Do they side with the victims? With the police? Can the media write a narrative where someone else is the victim? Can the narrative in the media actually create new guilty parties? Questions like these are of course nowadays more relevant than ever, with internet and SNS giving everyone a stage to present and spread a narrative to the general public. The TV drama was set in the present day, even though the book was written twenty years ago, but the use of SNS and internet throughout the drama really didn't hurt the story, but only enhanced the role of the media. Another mystery story I discussed here where media played a role is Shirayuki Hime Satsujin Jiken, and to a lesser extent, I guess Detective Conan: Dimensional Sniper also had elements of that.

I didn't really like the murderer in this story though. It's a rare thing for me to be talking about motives on this blog (motives are usually not that big an issue in puzzle plot mysteries), but I had some trouble following the train of thought of the murderer. Like the title of the English publication suggests, there's a puppet master, a sadistic, manipulating psychopath, walking around and that can be fun: fiction like Death Note and Aku no Kyouten work because of that, but I can't help but think that the murderer of Mohouhan did a lot that would eventually always lead to their own destruction. And sometimes that is the plan, but it doesn't seem likely in this case. It appears a more hands-off approach to managing would've been better for this murderer.

Overall though, Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - Mohouhan was an enjoyable crime thriller yarn. It's quite long, four hours for just one story, but I never felt like it was dragging or boring.The narrative keeps a good sense of pacing throughout and the characters are interesting enough to make you want to see where they'll end up.

Original Japanese title(s): 宮部みゆき（原）　『 宮部みゆきサスペンス　模倣犯』

The Woman of Mystery

握った手の温もりが　唯一な確かなもの

全てを知ってしまうとこれ以上進めない気がする

『Mysterious』 (Naifu)

The only real thing is the warmth when I hold your hand

If I'd know everything about you I have the feeling we couldn't go on

"Mysterious" (Naifu)

To keep things internationally attractive, a South Korean movie today! (And it's not even the first time on this blog!)

Hwa-Cha ("Fire Chariot", official English title Helpless) is a 2012 movie from South Korea, based on Miyabe Miyuki's Kasha ("Fire Chariot", released in English as All She Was Worth), a book I reviewed some months ago. The story is set in 2009, Seoul. A few days before their wedding, veterinarian Jang Mun-Ho and his fiancee Kang Seon-Yong take a short rest at a motorway rest stop on their way to Mun-Ho's parents. When Mun-Ho returns with two cups of coffee, he finds his fiancee gone from the car. He can't reach Seon-Yong on the phone and only finds one of her hairpins in a restroom. When he visits her apartment, he finds it completely ransacked. Finally, Mun-Ho discovers that Seon-Yong's credit history was tainted by bankruptcy and she was told that over the phone right before her disappearance. Mun-Ho's asks his cousin, Kim Jong-Guen (an ex-cop), to help him find her, but their investigation leads to only more questions, when they discover that the name Kang Seon-Yong doesn't belong to the woman Mun-Ho was going to marry. Who is the woman and why was she using someone else's name?

I was told about the existence of this movie by a friend around the time it was first released, and it piqued my interest, as I was a bit surprised they'd make a movie based on Kasha in South Korea: I knew the original novel was well known in Japan, but to have it picked up as a movie in another country? (Then again, there are those rumours they're going to do Norizuki Rintarou's Yoriko no Tame ni in South Korea too...). But the title stuck in my mind, and it was the sole reason I bought a copy of Miyabe Miyuki's famous book. And now I finally saw the movie. The circle is complete.

The story may be set in a different time and space, and everyone has different names, but Helpless is mostly a faithful adaptation. Which means that it is still a compelling search for a woman of mystery (though with a little bit less social commentary in Helpless). The movie runs for about two hours and manages to fill that time in a meaningful, captivating way. Cinematically, I thought Helpless was a solid performance too. There are one or two scenes where the actor playing Jang Mun-Ho gets a bit close to hamming up the role, but he manages to keep it in check. Just. For more about the story, I refer to the review of the original novel as it's really mostly the same. Okay, there are some other changes like Jun being a banker in the original novel, while his counterpart Mun-Ho a vetenarian, but that aside, there are only two major changes. And they kinda hurt the story.

First of all, in the original novel the fiance Jun kinda drops out of the story relatively early on. The rest of the investigation is carried out by the detective Honma. This resulted in a more objective view on the investigation, as Honma had no personal interest in the woman who had disappeared. In Helpless, Mun-Ho keeps working together with Jong-Guen, adding a lot of personal human drama as he wants to find out who his fiancee was. This isn't bad per se, but it does link with the second change.

Which is that the woman formerly known as Kang Seon-Yong is visually present throughout the whole movie. One of the characteristics of the original novel was that we never got a direct glimpse of Sekine Shouko: we'd learn about her through people who had known here, through some lines written on a resume or some other document, but always indirectly. There's not one direct quote from her in the fairly large volume. In Helpless however, we see the woman known as Kang Seon-Yong constantly, from the beginning when we first see her disappear, to flashbacks by Mun-Ho and even occasional shots of her in real time. It kinda takes away from the "phantom lady" idea of the original novel, where it's never clear if she really exists until the very end. I get that as this is a visual medium, it's kinda hard to make a movie where the single most important person in the narrative never appears on screen, but I can't help but feel a bit disappointed by this change.

The ending is also quite different, which is because of the above mentioned changes: the original novel was about the search for a phantom, an unknown woman by Honma, Helpless is about Mun-Ho's search for his lost fiancee Seon-Yong, a much more personal search. The movie therefore goes more deeply into the relation between the two characters, something not present at all in the original novel and it offers an ending that involves these two persons. I prefer the way it was done in the original, but I can imagine that as a more human, personal story, Helpless is more satisfying.

Overall, Helpless is a decent movie to watch. It's kinda cool to see that Miyabe Miyuki's story can be set somewhere else in a different time, and still be as compelling. I feel that some of the changes kinda mess with the better parts of the original novel, but I'll admit that these changes make sense considering this is a movie, and it does give Helpless its own take on the story.

Original Korean title(s): "화차" based on  『火車』 by 宮部みゆき

Phantom Lady

Cherchez la femme

I should have finished this book and the review last week already, but then Meiji Dantoudai and Tanteibu he no Chousenjou popped up...

Miyabe Miyuki is one of the most famous Japanese writers of fiction, with works ranging from fantasy to mystery. I haven't read much of her (actually, I think I've only read R.P.G. (released in English as Shadow Family), but her most famous work is probably Kasha ("Fire Chariot"; released in English as All She Was Worth).  Honma Shunsuke, a police detective on leave because of an incident, is asked by his deceased wife's nephew, Kazuya, to find his fiancée. He was all set to marry Sekine Shouko, but she disappeared without any trace when he discovered her credit history was tainted with bankruptcy. Honma starts his investigation for the missing fiance by finding out more about Shouko's bankruptcy in the past, but is surprised to learn that the name Sekine Shouko belongs to someone else than Kazuya's fiancée. Who is the woman who has disappeared and where is the real Sekine Shouko?

Kasha is an exceptionally well-received novel. It is the highest ranking novel (fifth) in the new Tozai Mystery Best 100 (2012), that was published after the release of the original list (1985). It has been made into a TV drama twice. There is even a South-Korean movie released just last year. It's also been available in English for a long time now, and the novel is overall considered (both in the home country as outside) a fine example of the shakai-ha style of mystery: mystery novels providing social commentary.

For Honma's search for the disappeared lady touches upon aspects of Japanese society many people probably don't know about. The bubble economy. The 'normal' credit economy as well as the underworld credit world. The workings of the family register. Urbanization and anonymity in Tokyo and other large urban areas. Kasha offers explanations and criticism, usually written in a very readable format (save for an absolutely horrible explanation / lecture course on the credit economy) and if you're interested in these social problems, Kasha offers a great read, coupled with an interesting story. One might also find it interesting to read this in conjunction with that other shakai-ha classic, Matsumoto Seichou's Suna no Utsuwa ("The Sand Vessel", available in English as  Inspector Imanishi Investigates"), as it offers social commentary on similar topics. The first part is also very similiar, with a search across Japan based on a single hint.

But there is a reason I don't discuss a lot of shakai-ha mystery novels here. Social commentary an sich is not that bad, but I am just more of a fan of the more fantastic and exciting, I gues. Reviews also have a tendency to... become like what I just did above; commentating on Japanese society and maybe rave about well the novel forms a mirror of modern society and how it manages to expose the cruel truth of the credit economy as well as the many flaws that exist in the Japanese family register system. Like I said in my review of Matsumoto Seichou's Ten to Sen, I admit social conciousness plays a role in the story, and it is well done, but I don't read mystery novels just for that.

As a mystery novel, Kasha can feel a bit slow, even though there's always something going on. Honma's investigation moves at a slow, but steady pace, and Miyabe always manages to lure you into reading the next chapter, because you know something interesting will pop up. It's quite amazing how she does that for practically the whole story, considering it's a fairly long novel. Yet the investigation never feels dragging. As a mystery, Kasha might lack the atmosphere of a classic style murder mystery (heck, it's a missing person's investigation),  but as a mystery novel where you slowly learn more about a missing person, a novel where you piece together the background of the fiancée, where you build up a character study of "Sekine Shouko", Kasha is a good read. It will keep you And heck, I'll be the first to admit that the last half even has some good surprises in terms of a... semi-impossible situation. I won't comment more on it as it involves developments in the latter part of the story, but I was definitely pleasantly surprised with it.

Kasha is definitely not the sort of mystery I usually read, and I might attach less importance to the social commentary it offers than other people, but the mystery of "Sekine Shouko" is definitely an interesting one. It excels in characterization, and while I wouldn't name it one of the best mystery novels of all time, the captivating story will offer you a pleasant read.

And to end with some trivia: did you know that Miyabe Miyuki and Ayatsuji Yukito celebrate their birthday on the same day (December 23)?

Original Japanese title(s): 宮部みゆき　『火車』