Murder, Smoke, and Shadows

「著者の投げる手袋は『人形はなぜ殺される？』」

『人形はなぜ殺される』 

"So the author throws down his glove down before you, asking 'Why were the dolls killed?'"

"Why Were The Dolls Killed" 

Already something that happened last week, but because I kinda forgot to preorder the Animal Crossing 3DS LL pack, I visited a lot of shops last week on the release day to see if some shops still had them. I now have to wait until half December, but at least I managed to order it now. But setting that aside, why would you run across a store to the game corner to buy the new Animal Crossing / the Animal Crossing 3DS LL pack if you already have a preorder reservation slip for that day? It is not like they will sell the copy with your name on it to someone else. And it wasn't like those customers were all in a hurry, as evidenced by them hanging around the game corner for quite some time, telephoning people to say they secured the goods. Anyway, that was the biggest mystery I encountered last week.

Takagi Akimitsu's Ningyou wa Naze Korosareru ("Why Were The Dolls Killed?") is widely considered one of the best Japanese detective novels. I think that Nikaidou Reito considers it one of the best detective novels ever, while recently Ayatsuji Yukito also tweeted his own Takagi top 5, with this novel at one. Anyway, I knew that sooner or later I had to read this book. (Considering it has been like two or three years since I first heard of the novel, it means it became quite a bit later, but anyway...) During a performance organized by an amateur magician's club, the head of a human doll that was to be used for a guillotine trick is stolen. The puppet's doll is later discovered, being switched with the real head of a woman who has decapitated on a guillotine block herself! Kamizu Kyousuke and Matsushita Kenzou team up again to solve the problem of the 'killed' doll. And the actually killed woman.

The plot develops even further after the initial murder, but I have to say: I had problems getting through the book. Takagi writes... not boring exactly, but definitely dry. Compared with contemporaries like Edogawa Rampo and Yokomizo Seishi, Takagi's writings are a bit hard to get through smoothly. I already felt it with Noumen Satsujin Jiken, so I guess that this is just his style. It's a bit of a waste though, because he could have done so much more with the theme of the puppets and the whole magician club thingy (then again, Takagi also kinda dropped the ball on the creepy atmosphere in Shisei Satsujin Jiken).

But to get back to the actual story: it's good! Very good indeed. I think that Ningyou wa Naze Korosareru best point lies in its construction: a whole variety of tricks is used in this novel, but the usage of them makes sense in the context of the story. Takagi weaves all kinds of tricks together in one coherent structure and whereas in many novels a succession of different kind of tricks (i.e. alibi trick, locked room trick) might feel like indeed nothing more than a succession of tricks, the tricks used in Ningyou wa Naze Korosareru add up to something more than just the total sum of its components. I quite liked Crofts' Mystery on Southampton Water, which also featured a wide variety of detective tropes in its plot, but the way it is done in Ningyou wa Naze Korosareru feels more satisfying.

And the title of the book is in fact a Challenge to the Reader itself! There is a proper one in the story too, but it all boils down to the question: why were the dolls killed?

I haven't read that much Takagi (in fact, the number of books I've read by him probably equals the number of his books translated in English), but at least his orthodox detective fiction seems to form a nice little set wit Yokomizo Seishi. Yokomizo's best works are set in postwar Japan, but in little, rural villages where the customs of pre-war Japan still live on. The detective (outsider) has to work in small isolated communities, with power struggles exist between young/old, poor/rich, main families/branch families etc (see reviews of Honjin Satsujin Jiken and Akuryoutou for more on that). Takagi's novels are also set in postwar Japan, but in much more urban environments and the stories revolve around the middle/upper class of society. Some of them may become socially and economically somewhat weaker because of the abolation of the nobility structure in Japanese law, but they, together with the 'new' postwar rich, are still a very influential class with 'expensive' hobbies like mask collecting or tattoo studies. They show a very different kind of postwar Japan than Yokomizo and it is not strange to see that Takagi also moves towards more shakaiha-esque (social school) novels during his career.

Anyway, I definitely understand why Ningyou wa Naze Korosareru is considered a classic.To me, its merits lies in its construction and not the storytelling, but it is certainly worth a read. Even if you have to fight through the dry text.

Original Japanese title(s):  高木彬光 『人形はなぜ殺される』

『心理の密室』

"You people have allowed yourselves to be chased into a psychological locked room. You're stuck in that metaphorical room, making no progress at all, and you haven't been able to set foot outside it since the case began"

The Tattoo Murder Case

Yes, I am still doing my English translations of Japanese detective novels reviews series. At this rate though, it will not take long before I have gone through that pile too though.

Takagi Akimitsu's The Tattoo Murder Case (Original title: Shisei Satsujin Jiken) was published in 1947, a few years after the war. A time when Japan was still occupied by the US army and the economy still had not recovered completely from the shock. Matsushita Kenzou is one of those young students who survived the horrible war and tries his best at returning to a normal life. One day, he comes across an old school friend of his, Mogami Hisashi, at a tattoo contest. Kenzou also meets Kinue at the contest, daughter of the famous tattoo artist Horiyasu and the lover of Hisashi's brother. Kinue is also the owner of a beautiful Orochimaru tattoo on her back, something so impressive that Hisashi's uncle, a well known tattoo maniac who has the nickname Dr. Tattoo, even offered to buy her skin if she happens to die. For preservation.

Kenzou and Kinue start an affair, but their love is still young when one day Kenzou discovers a dead Kinue in her bathroom. Or to be more exact: he finds her arms and legs in a locked bathroom, but no sign of her torso. It seems like somebody murdered here and took off with her tattoo. This seems to be connected with the curse of Horiyasu's three children. Among tattoo artists there are certain taboos: for example you are not supposed to tattoo a complete snake covering someone, or else the snake might suffocate its bearer. Yet Horiyasu seemed to have cursed his own children by giving them tattoos of Jiraiya (Kinue's brother), Orochimaru (Kinue) and Tsunade (Kinue's sister), who are bound to fight each other. And what else but a curse can explain the locked room? The police tries everything, but are helpless in their investigation. That is, until Kenzou comes across his old friend Kamizu Kousuke, a gifted young man who was once called the Boy Genius.

Takagi debuted in 1947 with this novel and it is still considered a classic as it is one of the earliest and best Japanese locked room mysteries. The Tattoo Murder Case was released only a year after Yokomizo Seishi's Honjin Satsujin Jiken and in fact forms an interesting pair with it. While both novels were written after the war, Honjin Satsujin Jiken is actually set in a rural area just a bit before the war, while The Tattoo Murder Case is set in Tokyo a bit after the war. The differences in these settings are pretty big, with themes like the small village under control of an illustrious family, class status and face playing an important role in Honjin, while the distinct metropolitan setting, the effects of the war and the anonymity within urban spaces turn out to be an important theme in Tattoo. These two novels thus form opposite images.

Yet their main attraction point, the locked rooms, are very similar. Not in execution, but in their importance. The locked rooms in both Honjin Satsujin Jiken and The Tattoo Murder Case are set in Japanese-style houses, something pre-war critics thought to be unsuitable for locked room mysteries. Japanese-style houses were open, with connected spaces and made with easily removable and replacable materials. In Rampo's Yaneura no Sanposha ("The Walker in the Attic") for example, a man succeeds in spying on his neighbours in a lodge house by climbing up to a connecting loft. Japanese-style houses just did not seem suitable to portray an imprenable locked room situation.Yokomizo and Takagi were the first authors to challenge the problem succesfully. Honjin has the splendid situation of a double murder in an annex where the murderer seemed to have disappeared into thin air, while Tattoo has a locked room murder in a bathroom, one of the few rooms in a house that has its own lock and cannot be accessed from other rooms through a loft or cellar because of the tiles. These two novels showed the possibilities of a Japanese orthodox locked room mystery and paved the way for future writers in the genre.

The locked room mystery, which is good, is certainly not the only mystery in the novel and The Tattoo Murder Case is a actually a surprisingly well-polished debut novel. There is also a sea of information about the tattoo culture in Japan discussed in this novel that is really interesting, but it is also in fact of importance for solving the mystery. There is a distinct difference in how the topic of the 'curse' of Jiraiya, Orochimaru and Tsunadehime is handled by Takagi here and how Yokomizo would have handled though. Yokomizo is a master in creating creepy atmospheres linked with curses, legends and other supernatural beings and his novels are often very close to horror-stories. In The Tattoo Murder Case, Takagi plays a lot with the idea of tattoo curses, but it never becomes really creepy in the story. It is all too pragmatic, down to earth in this story. If you play with the idea of a curse in your detective story, you should present the 'supernatural explanation' (the curse) as a plausible explanation for the events. Usually by making the case look unexplainable unless you accept the supernatural explanation. For example by creating such horrifying settings that a curse seems a plausible cause. That never happens in The Tattoo Murder Case. The same holds for Takagi second novel, Noumen Satsujin Jiken, that's about a curse of a Hannya mask, but it never turns really creepy and the 'supernatural explanation' is never seen by the reader as an acceptable explanation of the events.

The translation of the English version is good, as far as I could judge as I do not actually own the original Japanese text, but the little things did bother me. Like how Tsunadehime was translated as Tsunedahime. And how sometimes the short cultural explanations incorporated into the body of the text felt very unnatural. It is of course a translator's (and editor's) choice how to work out cultural specific customs (expansion of the text to exlain it, footnotes, no explanation, deletion etc.), but here it felt too obtrusive at times. And strangely enough a thing like itadakimasu was left in Japanese without any explanation. As far as I know, that is not considered common knowledge Japanese. The English translation also precedes a Japanese revised edition. I am actually not sure what was revised and who revised the novel though, because I think Takagi was already dead then.

Anyway, this is a classic that anyone should have read and it is actually available in English too!

Original Japanese title(s): 高木彬光　『刺青殺人事件』

『呪いの仮面は冷たく笑う』

「人生は仮面舞踏会みたいなもんだ。男も女もみんな仮面をかぶっ​て生きている」

『仮面舞踏会』

"Life is like a masked ball. All men and women live their lives wearing masks"

"Masked Ball"

Maybe I should think about actually coming up with original post titles; finding appropiate titles/quotes for everything is getting more difficult everytime...

Today a writer whose work is actually available in English. Takagi Akimitsu's Shisei Satsujin Jiken ("The Tattoo Murder Case") is one of the best locked room mysteries in Japanese detective fiction history and one that everyone should have read. This was Takagi's debut work in 1948 and he followed with many other novels and I think a total of three of his novels have been translated in English.

Noumen Satsujin Jiken ("The Nou Mask Murder Case") is Takagi's second novel, published one year after Shisei Satsujin Jiken. The novels starts with strange things are happening in the Chizui mansion. One night, a person was seen walking around the mansion wearing the cursed Hannya mask (from Noh theater), an item in the possession of the Chizui family for many, many years. Young scientist Yanagi has been residing in the Chizui mansion ever since he came back from the war and he is asked by the head of the Chizui family to find someone to investigate the case. Yanagi's friend, Takagi Akimitsu, a detective fiction critic / aspiring writer (who may or may not be the same person as the writer of this novel) happens to be staying in the neighbourhood on a holiday and is thus asked to investigate this case, but tragedy strikes pretty much immediately after Takagi is hired: the head of the Chizui mansion is found dead, in his study which was locked from the inside. And besides his dead body lies the cursed Hannya mask. Was it just a normal heart attack, or was he the victim of something more sinister? And who was the person who called the undertaker and asked for three coffins...?

A locked room mystery, written by Takagi Akimitsu. A novel that won the Japanese Detective Writers Assocation Price? Expectations were high. Naturally.And the novel starts out pretty good too; the curse of the Hannya mask, the strange members of the Chizui family, the locked room mystery, it reminded me of Takagi's previous novel. And that's never a bad thing.

But the end was... quite horrible. Plot devices were taken from other, famous Western novels (though the locked room itself is an original trick, as far as I know, but not as awesome as that of Shisei Satsujin Jiken) and Takagi actually spoils the ending of two or three books in this story. Yes, Takagi, I understand you're a fan of Van Dine, but I do not feel any urge to pick The Bisshop Murder Case any time soon now. Neither Christie's The Murder on Roger Ackroyd, if I hadn't read it already. References to other detective novels are great, but never ever should you touch upon the main plot twists in the novel (at least not in a way that spoils it to people who haven't read them yet).

Takagi Akimitsu and Yokomizo Seishi's orthodox detectives pretty debuted around the same time and both writers made use of references to Japanese culture, so in my mind a connection is made rather quickly. So I was hoping that Takagi's Shisei Satsujin Jiken / Noumen Satsujin Jiken would be as strong a duo as Yokomizo's Honjin Satsujin Jiken / Chouchou Satsujin Jiken, but Noumen Satsujin Jiken is obviously the weak link here. Actually, these two couples have quite some parallels, but I'd be entering spoiler-heavy areas then.

This book is probably historically important, as it is part of the post-war orthodox boom in Japanese detective fiction, but as a novel on its own, it's pretty weak, spoiling too much and borrowing a bit too much of other novels. The locked room itself is original, as far as I know, but not nearly as impressive as in Takagi's previous book, and almost disappointing.
  
Original Japanese title(s): 高木彬光　『能面殺人事件』