I Am Misanthropos

孤独や弱気だとか押し寄せる夜に忘れ咲き

 『忘れ咲き』 (Garnet Crow)

On nights when loneliness and weakness advance on me, these feelings bloom again

"Wasurezaki" (Garnet Crow)

A True Story: most of the reviews posted between the first of April and... July were written in the two last days of March. I have written and squeezed in a few reviews in the schedule after my sudden writing binge back then, but most of the reviews had to wait a long time, or still have to wait for publication. Today's review in particular has had it rough: I have delayed this post at least three times! I have also rewritten this introduction at least four times!

Otsukotsu Sanshirou invites his fellow university professor Shiina Hajime for a short trip to Shinshuu, seeing the latter seems a bit on edge lately. They have a pleasant stay at a small inn run by Yumi and her uncle. But all the pleasantness might just be an illusion, because Shiina suspects the people of the inn are desperately trying to conceal the fact one more person is present at the inn. And there's more: Otsukotsu and Shiina also see a mysterious, yet beautiful young man standing near the inn, with frightening, deadly eyes. The one comfort Shiina has is that his old friend Kindaichi Kousuke, the famous private detective, also happens to be staying in the neighbourhood. And then one night, Otsukotsu and Shiina are awakened by Yumi's scream, who was attacked by the mysterious young man Otsukotsu and Shiina had seen; her uncle didn't survive the attack. She reveals a shocking truth about Shinjurou, the young man, who had been brought up by her twisted, revenge-filled uncle as a cruel murderer. Shinjurou however has escaped and gone wild, and thirsty for more blood in the TV adaptation of Yokomizo Seishi's Shinjurou.

Shinjurou is a four part serial in the TV series Yokomizo Seishi II, which was based on the Kindaichi Kousuke novels. It starred Furuya Ikkou as the shoddy detective, giving his own unique interpretation of the character: Ishizaka Kouji may have given the definitive version of Kindaichi Kousuke in the Ichikawa Kon directed movies, but Furuya Ikkou's Kindaichi was also highly enjoyable, and Furuya is also the actor who has played Kindaichi most often, and over the longest time of period (first with the two original Yokomizo Seishi series in 1977-78, and then irregularly in the Great Detective Kindaichi Kousuke series from 1983-2005).

 

As a story, Shinjurou is what you'd expect from a Yokomizo Seishi. It's a parade of familiar tropes, from creepy old women to murders commited in caves, from the decapitations to dark, twisted family secrets and relations, from the setting in a small village somewhere (though the story does move to Tokyo) to pretty much every woman appearing in the story being beautiful, there's little surprising here if you have read more Yokomizo Seishi. But the story-elements are strung together nicely and I actually quite enjoyed the show, even if I had a sense of deja vu.

The story does feel a bit different from other Kindaichi Kousuke stories, in the sense we're following the mad murderer Shinjurou, instead of doing a 'normal' murder investigation. In that sense, this story is a bit closer to Edogawa Rampo stories, which often featured highly 'visible' murderers who carried whole novels on their own through their heineous crimes, like the Black Lizard, the Blind Beast, the Golden Mask, the Human Panther, the Space Monster (another reason why I think Rampo's Shounen Tantei Dan should do a crossover with Scooby-Doo!).

The funny thing though, the original novel of Shinjurou does not actually feature Kindaichi Kousuke. Shinjurou was published originally in 1936-1937, ten years before Kindaichi Kousuke would make his first appearance in Honjin Satsujin Jiken. Instead, he novel starred the amateur detective Yuri Rintarou, whom I have previously met in the excellent Chouchou Satsujin Jiken: Yuri however has disappeared from the minds of most readers, as Yokomizo Seishi's later novels, starring Kindaichi Kousuke, were much more popular, and now poor Yuri's even written out of his own adventures!　(I am still waiting for that story where Kindaichi Kousuke is killed and the murderer is revealed to be the jealous and revenge-filled Yuri Rintarou. Both played by Ishizaka Kouji). A bit of the opposite of what's happening with Miss Marple lately, who is showing up in stories that really shouldn't be her business.

I am not sure how much the TV adaptation differs from the original, but I suspect it's fairly faithful, which means that the character of Yuri Rintarou already appeared in what I consider Kindaichi Kousuke-esque stories: why didn't Yuri turn out to be a national symbol of detective fiction instead of his little brother?

In short, an okay Yokomizo Seishi story, no matter who the detective is. It does feel a bit like a lot of other Yokomizo later works, but it's actually one of his earlier stories and not bad at all.

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史 (原)　　『横溝正史シリーズII：　真珠郎』

「どうですか、一度ここらで巻を閉じて、瞑想一番、犯人を指摘してごらんになっては。」

「それですよ。私は一度コントラバス・ケースの中へ入ってみたことがあるですが、きれいに立って入れたんです。探偵作家がどうしてあれを利用しないのか、－　やはり御存じじゃないでしょうね」
「「蝶々殺人事件」あとがき（「探偵小説　昭和２２年７月」）」

"Exactly that. I once went inside a contrabass case and I could fit right in. Why won't detective authors use that.... you wouldn't know, right?"
"Afterword to The Butterfly Murder Case (Detective Fiction, July 1947)"

It seems like I was one of the few, but I liked last year's Epic Mickey for the Wii. The theme of the Disney was surprisingly dark, as it told the story of Disney characters which have been forgotten by the public and even by Disney-mascotte Mickey Mouse himself. Most of them just tried to live out their lives, with some  characters cherishing the time they had with superstar Mickey, while other resented Mickey for just moving on without looking at Disney's past.

Anyway, so while I knew Yokomizo Seishi had written non-Kindaichi Kousuke detective novels, I thought they were either non-serial novels, or torimono chou, detective novels set in the Edo period like Okamoto's The Curious Casebook of Hanshichi. I was wrong. It seemed that before Kindaichi Kousuke's debut in 1946,  Yokomizo had been writing stories starring Yuri Rintarou, an ex-police officer-turned-detective.He was assisted by the narrator, a newspaper reporter called Mitsugi Shunsuke, who would use his connections to help the Yuri-sensei.

And I mentioned it already in my Honjin Satsujin Jiken review, but Yokomizo released two novels in 1946, right after the war. One was Honjin Satsujin Jiken, starring newcomer Kindaichi Kousuke, and the other was Chouchou Satsujin Jiken ("The Butterfly Murder Case") starring Yuri. Both novels are similar in the sense that they are orthodox Golden Age-styled detective novels, signifying a break with the dominant pre-war detective genre in Japan. Of the two, Kindaichi proved to be more popular though and nowadays Yuri Rintarou is not a particularly well-known fictional detective. You hardly see him mentioned in fiction or secondary literature.  I like to think he is living in his own little world now, plotting the death of his more famous, younger brother.

It's a shame though. Chouchou Satsujin Jiken offered me some elements I hadn't expected from Yokomizo, which were quite pleasant. But Yokomizo also didn't disappoint in coming up with a great case with its particulars. The story begins with Mitsugi visiting Yuri after the war, requesting  some documents. For Mitsugi has been asked to write a detective-story and Mitsugi feels that the so-called Butterfly Murder Case is the best case to write about. For who could forget that case?  The case were the dead body of "Madame Butterfly" herself, Hara Sakura, primadonna of the Hara Sakura troupe was found dead covered in roses, stuffed inside the case of a contrabass? Who could forget the mysterious note in her bag, seemingly a sheet of music? Why did she disappear the moment she arrived in Osaka for a performance? Did the members of the troupe that arrived the day after have something to do with it? What about the death of Fujimoto Shouji, a popular singer some time ago? Didn't he had some sheet music too when he died?

As I've read Kindaichi novels by Yokomizo before, I was much surprised how... open this book was. Whereas most of the Kindaichi novels are set in kinda desolate places, this book alternates between Tokyo (where a certain familiar police officer makes an appearence) and Osaka, Yuri and Mitsugi walk around hotels, appartments and trains. It's distinctly modern and lively compared to the Kindaichi novels. Also, the way the book is mostly written from the viewpoint of Mitsugi as the narrator (occasionally from the viewpoint of Sakura's manager Tsuchiya) makes the dialogue and writing-style of Yokomizo a bit livier. It was a nice change!

From a structual point of view, this is familiar terrain though. Like always, Yokomizo's plots involve many strange happenings piled on each other, with multiple parties working against/with each other that make his books so enjoyable to read. This time though, it's a bit busy though, with really a lot of happenings going on and a lot of traveling (note: in that time, going from Osaka and Tokyo took _a lot_ longer than the 3 hours Shinkansen nowadays). I lost my interest a bit in the middle, as there was no clear goal the story was aiming for, but it luckily picked up at the end. The solution to the problem is a good one, though you won't hear me raving about like I did about Honjin Satsujin Jiken. The main problem has a neat, well executed solution, that is a bit easy to see through though with the clues lying about. It is a solution though that is very fitting to the feel of this book and just won't have worked that well with the closed space Kindaichi usually encounters. The second problem/solution set was a bit more vague though and it's too bad it seems almost added in the story as an afterthought. Oh, and writers will always please me with a Challenge to the Reader! First time I saw this in a Yokomizo work and I hope I'll see it more often in his books. And as I totally write this as I'm going, the urban setting, the theater, the odd place of the dead body, the challenge, the more I think about it, the more Queen this book seems.

The introduction of Chouchou Satsujin Jiken was also quite interesting, seeing as Mitsugi says he was asked to write detective novels as a medium to promote logical reasoning to the Japanese people. Which is exactly what a lot of detective writers/magazine editors were aiming for already in the pre-war period in Japan. Detective novels as the sign of modern logical reasoning is of course an important topic in a lot of historical genre-studies, but this was the first time I saw it so explicitly referenced in a Japanese novel.

It seems this book wasn't nearly as popular among detective readers in Japan as Honjin Satsujin Jiken. According toYokomizo, Honjin appealed more to detective readers, while Chouchou was better received with "normal" readers who also liked detectives. I can see how the more suspenseful and glamorous story of Chouchou would appeal to a more wide audience. While I personally also prefer Honjin, I will say clearly that Chouchou is a fine book, it just had the bad luck of being released so close to Honjin. Yuri as a detective also misses the look Kindaichi has. Everyone knows Kindaichi just by looking at his silhouette. You can't do that with Yuri. Interestingly though, actor Ishizaka Kouji has played both Kindaichi Kousuke and Yuri Rintarou and is considered by many fans as the definite depiction of both detectives in the screen.

Still, I'm all for a pastiche where long-forgotten detectives plot the demise of their famous counterparts. Make it so.
  
Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史、『蝶々殺人事件』