『殺人リハーサル』

「人間に想像する力がある限りラジオドラマには無限の可能性がある僕はそう思う。僕は好きだな。ラジオドラマ。」
『ラジオ時間』

"Radio dramas can go as far as mankind's imagination, that's what I think. I love it, you know. Radio dramas."
"Welcome Back Mr. McDonald"

While I wrote earlier that I watched the drama Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko: Saishuushou ("Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko: The Final Chapter"), I have to admit I have never, ever watched a whole episode of it. I fell asleep halfway through every single time. While the stories aren't that bad, early classes meant I was already dead by the time the drama finally began. And to be honest, you don't watch Asami Mitsuhiko for its story, you watch it for great location shots of every part of Japan.

Which is a big thing of detective drama in Japan. Especially the lighter mystery dramas (based on works by writers like Nishimura Kyoutarou and Yamamura Misa) are not as much about the story, but just excuses for location shots. Heck, sometimes the story even moves to South-Korea. Which is in fact quite close to Fukuoka. JLCC students who are from Busan could theorically go back home every day with the ferry.

But the king of travel detectives has to be the Asami Mitsuhiko series by Uchida Yasuo. Protagonist Mitsuhiko is a freelance writer on food and history and he travels to a new place in every book. And of course, Always Murder. So I tried the first book in the series, Gotoba Densetsu Satsujin Jiken ("The Go-toba Legend Murder Case"), which was an OK book, making no real faults, but also not containing elements to make it a classic. Weird though, was how Gotoba Densetsu Satsujin Jiken initially starts as a police procedural, until halfway the book the author suddenly seems to have a change of heart and changes a minor character from several chapters earlier into the great detective. That and the legend of Go-toba was surprisingly not very relevant to the case. You'd expect otherwise from a book named The Go-toba Legend Murder Case. But in any case an entertaining book.

And then there were the new podcasts/radio dramas of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. As I haven't read Q.B.I.: Queen's Bureau of Investigation yet, I was looking forward to these modern radio-drama versions of Ellery Queen's The Myna Birds and A Lump of Sugar. Especially the first one, as I was wondering whether something else besides Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney could pull of bird-as-a-vital-witness succesfully (Cross-examining a PARROT while still maintaining your dignity is hard to pull off!).
However, The Myna Birds certainly didn't succeed. The biggest problem is that the radio dramas are way too short, leaving no time for any development. The original war-time radio plays usually are around 30 minutes, leaving enough time to flesh out everything. Even with the bad sound quality and overacting, they're great to listen to even in this age. Heck, you could even just do with reading the scripts. These two radio plays by EQMM were just too short with too little substance.
\But they had nice music. Which is something. 　

Original Japanese title(s): 内田康夫　『後鳥羽殺人事件』

『死亡の館、赤い壁 (空城の計)』

「怪盗は鮮やかな手口で獲物を華麗に盗み出す芸術家だが、探偵はその跡を見て難癖を付ける批評家に過ぎない」
『名探偵コナン』

"Phantom thieves are artists who magnificently steal their trophies with the most brilliant tricks, but a detective is nothing more than a critic who looks at the results and tries to find faults."
"Detective Conan"

One of the first things that surprised me when I first visited the local Yamada Denki was that they sold books. And then the second surprise was that they were selling an immense Arsène Lupin boxset (placed next to an (Edogawa Rampo's) Shounen Tantei Dan boxset), which I still want to buy every time I walk past it. Then I realize I already own most of the books in a language I can read a lot easier.

So instead, I bought Nikaidou Reito's Meitantei no Shouzou ("Portrait of Great Detectives"), which featured pastiches on Maurice LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin, Ayukawa Tetsuya's Inspector Onitsura and John Dickson Carr's H.M. Merrivale (whom I'll admit I always confuse with Carr's Fell. In my head, they're the same). Prior books by Nikaidou I read where good, so expectations were high. If only I could remember when and where I bought this book. It was just sitting on my shelf here, but heck if I can remember where it came from.

But setting the mystery of the appearing books aside, expectations were fulfilled. 'Cept for one story (of which I can't determine whether it was a pastiche or not), they were all enjoyable. While I shamefully admit I actually like Ellery Queen's A Study in Terror, I usually don't read detective pastiches (parodies, I love though). Occasionally coming across titles like Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula explains why. But Meitantei no Shouzou was great, so I was quite happy. Especially the Arsène Lupin pastiche, Lupin no Jizen ("The Charity of Lupin") couldn't be more Lupin even if LeBlanc himself had written it. Sekishisou no Satsujin ("The Murder of Smallpox Manor") with its disappearing people and a cursed manor was an enjoyable Merrivale pastiche, which Nikaidou clearly enjoyed writing, seeing all the references to other Merrivale adventures.

One story in this collection wasn't a mystery or a pastiche though, but very relevant. Kaasuke no Seiki no Taiketsu ("Kaasuke's Match of the Century") is the ultimate homage to bibliophilic mystery readers. A "restaurant" that serves no food, but instead detective novels, ranging from the newest books to vintage books in original print? A Yomu-lier (Read-i-lier (Sommelier)) who will suggest the best books to read? A duel which is decided by determining the title and vintage of a book just by a single sip passage of the book? While it still appeared strange to me to bring your date to such a restaurant, the rest of the story was plain awesome. They should make manga about bibliophiles.　

Original Japanese title(s): 二階堂黎人 『名探偵の肖像』/「ルパンの慈善」/「風邪の証言」/「ネクロポリスの男」/「素人カースケの世紀の対決」/「赤死荘の殺人」

"I am terrified of moving pictures. They are the dreams of an opium addict."

「こりゃすごいよ、最高だね。くっくっくっく・・・・・カーの密室トリックにも似たような馬鹿馬鹿しいのがあったと思うが、これはあれ以上だね」
『探偵映画』

"This is great, fantastic! Ha ha ha... I think there's something like that among Carr's locked room tricks, but this is even more stupid."
"Detective Movie"

Vacation means I finally have time to read the books I keep buying. Which are mostly detectives. Lately, "Juggling between reports of life and writing about (Japanese) detective fiction while studying in Fukuoka, Japan" has not been the best description. So going to try to make up for that and first up is Tantei Eiga ("Detective Movie") by Abiko Takemaru. Never read any of his works and could tell you nothing about him. But for some sinister reason I had his name written on a list of writers I want to read. I just can't remember where I first came across this name. Most of the names I wrote down are new Golden Age writers, so I was at least expecting him to be that. However, I don't think Tantei Eiga is one of his better known works, I just bought this book, because it was the cheapest with a slightly interesting title.

The plot of the book is very interesting though. A star director is making detective movie, a hard-to-market movie in this age (in the long-lost past of 1990). But he has one trick up his sleeve: nobody except for him knows the solution to the story. Which of course sparks interest everywhere. Releasing scripts on a need-to-know base, filming progresses fast till they finally can start filming the last part of the movie. And then the director disappears.

Panic ensues. And hilarity. Because the movie is to be released quite soon, the crew decide to deduce the solution to the movie themselves. And then a two-layered story begins, where the book alternates between the search for the missing director and deduction sessions on the movie ending, and the events of the detective movie itself.

The book was quite entertaining, with especially the deduction sessions a highlight. Almost surreal (but hilarious) is the scene where every actor is trying to propose a solution in which they themselves are the killer, because in a detective movie, the killer is the most important role. The quest for the missing director is boring though and the final solution works only to an extent. It's really a trick that works in a) movie and b) real-life, but it just feels somewhat underwelming in book-form. This book would actually work great as a movie, now I think about it. Add in loads of movie trivia and it's a fun book for those who enjoy movies and detectives. And Detective Movies.

Not too sure about Abiko though. While certainly not bad, my first impression is kinda lukewarm, whereas my first encounters with writers like Norizuki Rintarou and Shimada Souji where superspecialawesome. Though I am interested in the scenario Abiko penned for the game 428 ~ Fuusa sareta Shibuya de, which at this point is incredible. I hate Abiko's name though. It's a Japanese name I've never seen before and I keep typing Akibo (every single time for this post), because it sounds (just slightly) less awkward.　 

Original Japanese title(s): 我孫子武丸　『探偵映画』

『時の過ぎゆくままに。。。』

「あんたが自分を信じなくても俺はあんたを信じるよ」
『金田一少年の事件簿：剣持警部の殺人』

"Even if you don't believe yourself, I believe in you."
"The Case Files of Young Kindaichi: Chief Inspector Kenmochi's Murder"

Writing on detectivey-stuff is not going really well lately, mostly because I hardly read here. It at least is not a problem of not having enough material, because shelving problems are slowly appearing. I had started writing about how Japanese detectives are often like mini travel guides, as if they are not set in Tokyo or Osaka, they are often set at touristic spots all across Japan. Which was mainly inspired by a Wednesday TV drama I am watching, Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko: Saishuushou ("Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko: The Final Chapter") , which is about a journalist traveling all across Japan writing about touristic attractions, solving crimes and basically is an excuse to have every story set in another part of Japan. But then I realized this traveling aspect is also to be found very easily in Western (English) detectives, with the Orient Express and the Nile or just all across England, so it was not that interesting (though apparently the Asami Mitsuhiko series is quite popular here because it's so much like a travel guide with stuff on local legends).

But I digress. I don't do much reading except for homework now. Of course, I am actually required to read Edogawa Rampo stuff, as I have to hand in a book report next month for my research paper here, but even books with titles as The Era of Rampo: Ero Guro Nonsense can't help this reading-slump. Heck, even reading manga is not going as fast as it should.

Games are progressing quite good though. But while I enjoy detectives and games, they seldom work really good together. Case in point: the recently released Nintendo DS game Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo: Akuma no Satsujin Koukai ("The Case Files of Young Kindaichi: The Devil's Killer Voyage"). As releases in the Kindaichi Shounen series are not frequent anyway, I was kinda looking forward to this game, but as soon as I started up this game, I knew it would disappoint me, having played another game by the same developer. Please, developers at Tomcat, senseless clicking on every part of the map in the hopes the story progresses is not fun. Nor is diffusing bombs. Especially your bombs. Didn't you learn with Galileo DS?!

It's a problem I see often in detective games, where developers don't seem to be able to streamline the story. Either the story goes too fast, not allowing the player a chance to think or do anything at all, or the developers don't streamline the story at all and you are left clicking on everything, hoping you find the trigger for the next story event. A detective novel usually flows from one event to another, whether it being new information or the analyzing of information, but somehow, developers never seem able to really translate this to a working game system. And then you have the problem of developers wanting to make a detective game more like a game, so they insert bomb diffusing segments in the game. Which. Suck. Just because I am playing on a DS doesn't mean that you have to insert bad touchscreen gameplay.

Luckily, I had two new Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo volumes to wash away the memories of that game. They may only release two volumes of the manga a year, but it's always something to look forward too. And Pokémon HeartGold has found a great home in my Nintendo DS. After so many years enslaving poor critters is still addicting. And Butterfree, after so many years, you still are my favorite. Till I find a fishing rod to get me a Staryu. To get me a Starmie. 

Original Japanese title(s): 『金田一少年の事件簿　悪魔の殺人航海』

『一人二役』

「現世（うつしよ）は夢、夜の夢こそ真実（まこと）」、乱歩
"Reality is a dream, your dream at night is reality", Rampo

While I like Edogawa Rampo's stories, I really need a lot of time to read his stories. I haven't really read many pre-war stories so I don't know whether this is a general thing or not, but the usage of kanji in Edogawa's work is very aggrevating at times, with of course many pre-war kanji and strange ways to write words from a modern point of view.

So while I actually wanted to translate The Murder Case of D-Hill, the first Japanese locked room mystery, I've put that plan on hold for the time being and instead did the simpler, short One Person, Two Identities. Which is an OK (non-detective) short story of Edogawa, but what is more interesting is how the theme of one person, two identities plays a big part in Edogawa's stories. People taking on other identities, people taking on other people's identities, blurring lines between reality and dream, no knowing anymore what is the original, it's a theme I enjoy very much in Edogawa's work. Silver actually makes an interesting point in Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowings and Japanese Crime Literature when he mentions how Edogawa's work can be read as stories that were both emulating the Western model, as well as atempts to try to move away from them, as Edogawa might have been afraid to forever remain nothing but 'an impersonator', never to be an original himself. But of course, who is to tell what original is in this world, what seperates the daydream of reality and when Morpheus' world ends ?

「私は飛んだ失敗をやったのだ。私は愛してはならぬ人を愛したのだ。」

「名探偵。皆さん名探偵といえば誰を想像しますか？…シャーロック・ホームズ、エルキュール・ポアロ。エラリー・クイー ン…。日本にも様々な探偵がいます。日本の名探偵に共通する特徴なんだかご存じですか？実はみんな名字は洒落 てんですけど名前がどうも田舎臭いんですね。例えば…、明智…小五郎。金田一…耕助。そして、古畑……任三郎…」
『古畑任三郎：　ゲームの達人』

"Great detectives. If we're talking about great detectives, who do you think of? ... Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen... There are all kinds of great detectives in Japan too. Would you know the common feature between the Japanese great detectives? While they all have stylish family names, their given names somehow sound... provencial. For example, Akechi... Kogorou. Kindaichi... Kousuke. And Furuhata... Ninzaburou..."
"Furuhata Ninzaburou: The Game Master"

Paris The Netherlands in the fall. The last months of the year and the end of the millenium. This city holds many memories for me. Of cafes, of music, of love, and of death. Ok, scrap that Broken Sword reference. Anyway, the last days in the Netherlands and Murphy kindly decided to pay me a visit by cursing my computer with fairly mild to very drastic problems, which is kinda scary. Other hurdles that had to be dealt with was finishing a review for the Dutch magazine AniWay (on Japanese popculture) (I am always doing reviews last minute). While I thoroughly enjoy writing reviews on manga, games et cetera and have written some years now, I find writing in Japan to be extremely difficult. Writing for a magazine has been quite fun though, as I could promote underrated and unknown series to the general public. Including detective manga. And somewhere I am kinda proud I actually got pictures of kids being crucified for rain published in the magazine.

So I wrote my final review on Maruo Suehiro's Panoramatou Kidan ("The Strange Tale of Panorama Island") and a habit of more recent years has been to do way more background research than required for such a review. With a draft review on Tezuka's MW, I even had referenced the big (BIG) book from the International Relations of Japan course, because it was quite relevant from a historical viewpoint, but in the end, you only have only just so many words you can put on one single page. So that was scrapped. And probably information overkill for the average reader anyway.

Panoramatou Kidan is based on the novelette by Edogawa Rampo and tells the story of a writer who fantasizes about an utopia. His utopia. He impersonates a recently deceased wealthy man, pretends to have come back to life and uses the money of the family to build his dream, the titular Panorama Island (and commits murder along the way). While it was not very well received at first, the story gained popularity in years and is now one of the better known stories by Edogawa, having also been the main source for the movie Horrors of Malformed Men and also filmed as one episode in the popular Akechi Kogorou tv-series ("The Beautiful Lady from Heaven and Hell").

Having read the original story and the manga, I am sorta surprised I like it as much as I do. It's not as creepy as The Blind Beast or the Human Chair, nor as interesting for a detective reader as The Psychological Test or Beast in the Shadows. But the story just works. It somehow manages to convey the dreamy aspect of Edogawa's writings perfectly and with just enough a bit of crazy crime, just enough a bit of gaudiness (I am truly wondering whether Edogawa was one of the first to think of a underwater tunnel like you see often in aquaria nowadays), just enough a bit of horror, resulting in a fine novellete. I am also pleased to say the manga is excellent, as the crazy visuals of Maruo Suehiro add a lot to the experience.

As an early work of Edogawa, it's also interesting to see that the detective who appears at the end is interestingly not his series detective Akechi Kogorou, but a very similar named Kitami Kogorou with a similar occupation, a scholar (the early Akechi was a scholar, later a famous detective). It seems to serve no purpose at all to have a different (but the same) detective in the story (even considering how the story ends). And it is even stranger considering Edogawa had been using Akechi Kogorou as a series detective for several stories now, so why use a character who was clearly an expy of Akechi?

Having read the original story, I also wanted to include background information regarding modernism in Japan (which is important in Edogawa's work) in my review of the manga through a reading of Silverberg's Erotic Grotesque Nonsense (which is an interesting book on its own) and rereading other books like Silver's Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowings and Japanese Crime Literature (which has a very interesting section on Edogawa Rampo). Of course, then I noticed I would have needed more pages to incorporate all that information, so I decided to scrap most of it. I should've known.

I might not get as much exposure writing stuff here, but I can write as much or little as I want on anything, which naturally has its good points. Of course, it means getting less pictures of kids being crucified for rain published in magazines available all across the Netherlands. Which is a pity. Maybe I should try to pitch a Left Hand of God, Right Hand of the Devil review one of these days (these are literally just the first few pages of the manga, it gets a lot messier).

(Ugh, I want to bring the books mentioned earlier (and more, like Kawana's Murder Most Modern) to Japan, but they're so heavy~)

"Ah, one more thing, sir."

「え～、ご無沙汰しております。皆さん、お元気でしたか？私は元気です。え～、さて誰にでも少年時代がありました。勿論、私にもありました。そして誰にでも多感な時期、影響を受けた人物がいるものです。勿論、私にも。今のこの私があるのも、その人との出会いがあったればこそです。今でも目をつぶると瞼の裏に、その人の顔が浮かんできます。…つぶってみましょう。」
『古畑中学生』

"Erm, it's been a long while. How have you been? I've been fine. Erm, everyone was young at a time. Of course, so was I. And everyone in that sensitive period, had someone who influenced them. Of course, so had I. The person who I am now, was all because I met that person. Even now, when I close my eyes, the face of that person is visible behind my eyelids.... Let's try closing our eyes."
"Middle School Student Furuhata"

Lately, I have been watching some old episodes of that classic detective show Columbo again. Ever since I was a kid I have loved this show and while occasionally some of the more recent movies are shown on Dutch television, the original series has not been broadcast here for years now. But even now as I watch the series, I feel it has lost nothing of its charm. Heck, in the 40 years since its debut few series were made that were so entertaining in my opinion.

And this is despite the fact that pretty much every episode is the same: you see the murderer-of-the-week (celebrity actors like Leonard Nemoy Dr. Spock) commit his/her murder, usually in a clever way to avert suspicion. Then scruffy-looking lieutenant Columbo arrives and the rest of the episode, consists mostly of cat-and-mouse scenes between just the lieutenant and the killer, with Columbo asking trivial question after question and telling stories about his wife and simply looking a lot more stupid than he actually is. The point of every episode is figuring out how Columbo is going to prove the murderer is guilty.

The show is just two people talking. About a murder you have seen already. Dialogue about something you know everything about for an hour. But it works. Every. Single. Time. The great plots, the great acting, it's all top-notch and every episode is as exciting as the previous one, despite being basically the same. Columbo pulls off the use of a formula brilliantly.

I actually don't like the name howcatchem (c.f. whodunnit), nor inverted detective (techically it's inverted, but from a chronological view, the inverted detective runs completely straight, so the term feels strange to me). But it's been a style in detective fiction since at least Freeman's The Singing Bone (1912). Interestingly, Edogawa Rampo had written one himself too (The Psychological Test (1925), included in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination) and in his 1934 essay The Four Types of Detective Stories, he had identified the inverted detective (the toujo tantei shousetsu: "chronological reversed detective" which feels even more wrong than inverted detective) as his fourth type, but as he had only 3 examples (including his own story), he wasn't sure whether he should include it as a proper detective story type. Time proved Edogawa right though.

A more recent Japanese example would be the Gyakuten Saiban (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) game series, as in many cases you usually know who did it, you just have to prove it in court. As an attorney using the foolproof Columbo way of pouncing on every contradiction, how insignificant it may seem, you eventually manage to solve the case.

But if you're talking about the inverted Japanese detective, one name should come up immediately: Furuhata Ninzaburou (yes, I shamelessly stole the logo design for this blog). It's pretty much a clone show of Columbo, with lieutenant Furuhata being the one asking many many seemingly trivial questions to the murderer-of-the-week with his polite way of talking. And like Columbo, Furuhata Ninzaburou managed to make every episode worthwile. Running for more than 10 years in Japan, it has been one of the most popular shows there, featuring many high profile celebrities (like Ichiro, SMAP, Sanma and Matsushima Nanako) as murderers. Also amusing are the seemingly non-sequitur introductions of every episode (that in the end turn out to tie up with the theme of the episode neatly), which I occasionally use as introducing quotes myself. But what makes Furuhata Ninzaburou really interesting, is the formal challenge to the watcher in every episode. Inspired by the 1975 Ellery Queen show, Furuhata actually breaks the fourth wall near the end of the episode and asks the viewer whether they can prove the murderer did it, as he certainly can. It's one of those shows I am proud to own on DVD.

Ah, one more thing, sir, the proper way of finishing this post would be a Columbo-ian "one more thing, sir...", of course, but as I can't think of something worth mentioning, this will do. え～、古畑任三郎でした。