Month / February 2021

by Inhae

Book review: 『一寸法師｜何者』 by Edogawa Rampo

Introduction

Title: 『一寸法師｜何者』
Author: Edogawa Rampo (江戸川乱歩)
Published by 集英社文庫
293 pages

Short review

If you like stories like Sherlock Holmes, you will certainly love the Akechi series. I found 何者 to be really excellent while 一寸法師 felt somehow unnecessarily complicated.

Long review

This is the second book in the Akechi series. The first book contained 5 short stories, while this one contains 2 longer ones. There are some of the things I found particularly interesting in the two novellas.

Kogoro Akechi: a renown detective

The two novellas in this book are the 6th and 7th stories in the Kogoro Akechi series, and we see Akechi evolving over time. At first, he was just a young man interested in crime, and he is now a renowned private detective.

In 一寸法師 we learn that Akechi has returned from Shanghai 6 months ago and hasn’t had a lot of clients since then. He is now a famous detective, and we can assume that he does not have financial difficulties. There is a sharp contrast with D坂の殺人事件 were Akechi was quite poor and did not even have furniture in his room (the narrator was asked to sit on a book because there was no cushion). He now lives in a bigger place with furniture and is so renowned that he even gets commissions from a general major. We also know that he has a lot of connections, including friends among the police, and he even has people who work for him.

Another thing that shows how much Akechi is settled as a renowned detective is the mention of books about Akechi’s adventures. In 何者, two books are mentioned: the first one is 明智小五郎探偵談, and the second one is 明智小五郎物語.

I also noted in my review of the first book that Akechi is not interested in doing justice or deliver the culprit to the police. He just wants to know if his deductions are right, and whether the culprit is punished or not does not matter much to him. This is something that I found interesting and I was curious to see how it would evolve. This characteristic is also present in both stories of the second book.

Detective novel for fans of the genre

One thing that I really love in this series is that Edogawa Rampo often hints at other detective novels, or plays with the genre. For example, when Akechi reveals the culprit in the final scene of 一寸法師, he does it according to the genre of detective novels: he explains every step of his thought process before revealing the name of the culprit. One character even says: どちも、君の話は小説的でいけない。なるべく簡単に。In 何者, one character says that the case looks like a detective novel (まるで探偵小説みたいだね) and one of the characters is described as acting like Sherlock Holmes (宏一君はシャーロック・ホームズみたいに).

And speaking about Sherlock Holmes, Kogoro Akechi says something very similar to the famous quote “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”, using the formulation “if…., どんなに不自然に見えようとも, then…” (I can’t quote the complete sentence to avoid spoilers).

The characters appearing in the stories are often avid readers of detective stories who love to play the detective themselves and enjoy discussing about crime.

More about the stories

As for the stories themselves, I found 一寸法師 a little bit too complicated maybe. The core story is very good, but I think that it would have been better if it had remained simpler instead of involving annex characters and action scenes. It is also a little spooky with several scenes that belong more to the horror genre rather than the detective one.

Another thing that I did not like is the distinction between the good people (the young, beautiful and rich) and the bad ones (embodied here by the 一寸法師, a man who lost his two legs). These stories were written in the 20s, so it is not surprising to find depictions that we would find insulting and disrespectful nowadays. What I find disturbing is not just the role given to a disabled person in the story (mainly here to serve the spooky atmosphere and be an evil figure), it is that characters are defined by their birth and wealth rather than their actions. Crime can be forgiven for people coming from rich families with a good status or a bright future, while the “bad” ones can pay for them.

I found the end of 一寸法師 quite shocking, and my admiration of Kogoro Akechi has taken a serious hit. At the same time, it also makes the character even more interesting, and I am looking forward to reading the other books of the series.

As for 何者, it was simply excellent. It was so engrossing that I read it in one session, which is quite rare when it comes to reading in Japanese.

Different types of narration

Interestingly, we seem to meet our first-person narrator again in 何者. Among the 7 stories that I have read so far, 4 where told by a third-person narrator and three, including 何者, were told by a first-person narrator. This narrator remains unnamed, but it is clear that we are talking about the same character in the first two stories where he appears: he is a friend of Akechi, and assumes the supportive role of a Dr Watson.

In 何者 however, it is not clear whether the first-person narrator is the same than the other two stories.

While the stories are not homogenic in terms of narrative pattern, one thing remains constant: the narrator often addresses the reader directly. The narrator is either making sure that we remember important passages 読者は記憶されるであろう… or flattering our own deductive skills 読者もすでに想像されたであろうように…

Conclusion

Overall, I did not find the second book as exciting as the first one, but still love the series very much. Akechi’s loose concept of justice and redemption is somewhat disturbing, and I am curious to see how this will evolve in the next books.

The next book on the list is also the first novel: 「蜘蛛男」.

by Inhae

Book review: 『祈りの幕が下りる時』 by Keigo Higashino

Introduction

Title: 『祈りの幕が下りる時』 (いのりのまくがおりるとき)
Author: Keigo HIGASHINO (東野圭吾)
Published by 講談社文庫
443 pages

This is the tenth book in the Kaga series (加賀恭一郎シリーズ). As far as I know, this is the last one on the series for now, though a spin-off was released in 2019: 『希望の糸』. The main character is Kaga’s cousin who also appears in three books of the main series.

Short review

As always when it comes to the Kaga series, this book is excellent. The case is great, the investigation engrossing and the characters have more depth than in most crime fiction. The story is also very important for Kaga himself, and while it is not necessary, reading the previous books first might be better to fully appreciate it.

Long Review

To me, this book was simply perfect. The police investigation was suspenseful, the characters were easy to identify with, and the story was complex but very powerful.

As often with the Kaga series, this book is not only about murder and finding the culprit. It is about understanding people and why they act like they do, how they found themselves involved in a murder case. I like that there is no good or bad people, but that what determines the characters’ actions is more complex and often anchored in their past.

In this story, we also learn a lot about Kaga’s mother, who had been mentioned previously but about whom we knew very little. With 『悪意』 that reveals why Kaga left the educational field to enter the police and 『赤い指』 that is about Kaga’s father, 『祈りの幕が下りる時』 is one of the books that contain the most elements relative to Kaga and his family. While the story can be read independently, it does add to the reading experience to have read previous titles before this one. I personally recommend to at least read the books following 『赤い指』 in order: 『赤い指』, 『新参者』, 『麒麟の翼』, 『祈りの幕が下りる時』.

Elements about Kaga’s mother are so well integrated in the case that the pace of the investigation never suffers from passages that dig into the past. It makes for an engrossing read from beginning to end, but if you are a fan of Kaga as a character and want to know more about his past and his family, this is book is simply a delight.

I really hope that there will be more books in the series. At the same time, this one does wrap up the series very well, so it also makes for a perfect last book.

by Inhae

Book review: 『殺人犯はそこにいる』 by Kiyoshi Shimizu

Introduction

Title: 『殺人犯はそこにいる』 (さつじんはんはそこにいる) – 隠蔽された北関東連続幼女誘拐殺人事件
Author: Kiyoshi SHIMIZU (清水潔)
Published by 新潮文庫
509 pages

This book is about the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case (北関東連続幼女誘拐殺人事件), a serial kidnapping and murder of very young girls between 1976 and 1996. A man named Toshikazu Sugaya (菅家 利和) was arrested in 1991 and convicted for the murder of one of the victims.

Journalist Kiyoshi Shimizu started investigating the Sugaya case in 2007. He helped to prove Sugaya’s innocence, who has been released in 2009. In this book, Kiyoshi Shimizu tells about his four-year long battle to prove a man’s innocence and find the real culprit.

Short Review

This book is a fascinating and horrifying read about a wrongful conviction and the incredible work made by journalist Shimizu to uncover the truth and bring the public’s attention to the case. The book is quite long however, and I found that the narrative flow that made the first half so engrossing tended to lose its strength in the second half, making for a more strenuous read. Still, a great book that I highly recommend if you are interested in this topic.

Long Review

For the most part, I really loved this book and found that it was an excellent work of investigative journalism. Our author is neither a policeman, nor a lawyer, yet he investigated one of the murders, the Ashikaga murder (足利事件), much more thoroughly than the officials of the time ever did. The result is an engrossing true crime report of one of Japan’s most infamous examples of wrongful conviction.

The whole story is both horrifying and frustrating. Even though Sugaya has been released eventually, he still spent 17 years in prison. When evidence of justice miscarriage came to light, little has been done to settle things right, and the investigation was never reopened, leaving the families of victims in considerable despair.

This book, however, is mainly focused on the Ashikaga murder, and does not talk much about the four other kidnappings. This seems obvious if you know the details of the case and the role that the author has played in it, but I knew nothing at all when I started reading this book. This is why I was a little surprised by the content of the book in regard to the subtitle: 隠蔽された北関東連続幼女誘拐殺人事件. In fact, I think that the subtitle is here to underline the importance of treating the five cases as a serial kidnapping and murder case rather than to reflect the content of the book.

So for the most part, the book focuses on one case, and most of the investigative work was to prove Sugaya’s innocence. This was to me the best part of the book. The first half was really engrossing, it read like a work of fiction. The author tells us how he uncovered, one by one, all the intentional imprecisions, mistakes and concealment of facts that were made during the police investigation of the case. Reading about what the officials of the time said and did was truly enraging, and it is hard to believe that all of this really happened.

When it came to finding the real murderer and the aftermath of Sugaya’s release, I found that the book tended to lose the narrative flow that made its first half so addictive. Maybe it is just me, but I found it harder to follow the narration or to place the events in their chronological order. It sometimes felt like the author was jumping from one thing to another. I also found that the author had a tendency to quote a lot rather than paraphrasing or explaining what people had said, which I found sometimes annoying, especially for official reports.

A great part of the process to prove Sugaya’s innocence was DNA testing. While the results and the conclusions were horrifying to read, I also found that the explanations concerning how the testing works were too difficult for me to understand in Japanese. These made for a strenuous read at some points.

Towards the end of the book, a whole chapter is devoted to a totally different case: Michitoshi Kuma (久間 三千年) who has been arrested in 1994 in the Iizuka case (飯塚事件), sentenced to death in 1999 and executed in 2008. The investigation contains obviously false testimony and tampered DNA evidence. I had read about this case before in 『誰も知らない死刑の舞台裏』, but Kiyoshi Shimizu explains things in much more detail and the parallels he makes with the Ashikaga case are interesting.

Overall, I loved this book and it is a must read if you are interested in wrongful convictions and miscarriage of justice in general. However, for a book of that length, I also found that some important parts were missing. The book is mainly about the author’s own investigation and participation in the coverage of the case. I sometimes found that it lacked a more global view on the case. For example, I wish that the author had talked more about the work made by Sugaya’s lawyers and supporters. Similarly, the parts about identifying the real culprit felt strangely light and short (and as far as I am concerned, unconvincing) compared to the rest of the book.

Even though I found overall that the second half of the book does not have the strength of the first half, this book is still a fascinating read that I highly recommend it if you are interested in wrongful convictions.

by Inhae

Book review: 『恋する寄生虫』 by Sugaru Miaki

Introduction

Title: 『恋する寄生虫』 (こいするきせいちゅう)
Author: Sugaru MIAKI (三秋縋)
Published by メディアワークス文庫
309 pages

This novel has been adapted into manga by ホタテユウキ which is published by Kadokawa (角川コミックス・エース) and is divided into 3 volumes. A film adaptation is scheduled for 2021.

Quick rating: 😄 then 🤨
Sugaru Miaki really knows how to write gripping stories of love and hopelessness. If the book would have been just that, it would have been perfect to me, but it introduces medical/supernatural elements that I found overly complex and unconvincing.

Review

This is only the second book I read by Sugaru Miaki, but I can already say that he has a very distinctive style and tone. I really love the atmosphere of his novels, even though I find them a little too depressing for a relaxing read.

In the postface of 『いたいのいたいの、とんでゆけ』, Miaki said that he likes writing about 落とし穴の中で幸せそうにしている物語, and I think that this applies to this novel as well.

I loved the first half of the novel. Our two protagonists have each their problems that prevent them from having even the most basic form of social life. The description of how they meet, get along with each other and try to overcome their difficulties was really good, and I could have read hundreds of pages of it. I really love how Miaki describes this kind of relationship, and even though this is not my usual read, I enjoyed the first half of the book very much.

However, I did not like the mechanism behind the story. If it were simply the story of two loners who try to help each other, I would have loved the novel until the end. But there is much more to it, with some supernatural elements, and unfortunately, it didn’t work for me. These elements include medical conditions and parasites, and while it gives an interesting and unique flavour to the love story, I also found that it was unnecessarily complex and unconvincing.

In the end, I think that I loved Miaki’s other novel, 『いたいのいたいの、とんでゆけ』, because it contains topics like murder and vengeance, so while it was a love story, the novel also lined up with my personal taste in fiction. On the contrary, I am not a fan of SF or magical realism, so 『恋する寄生虫』 was much less engrossing to me.

To sum up, I think that 『恋する寄生虫』 is a great book, and it was simply not for me. I would have loved it if it was simpler and more realistic, because I do enjoy Miaki’s writing very much. All the parts on the parasites thing and how it affects our protagonists left me perplexed and I started losing interest for the story at some point.

by Inhae

Book review: 『密室の鍵貸します』by Tokuya Higashigawa

Introduction

Title: 『密室の鍵貸します』 (みっしつのかぎかします)
Author Tokuya HIGASHIGAWA (東川篤哉)
Published by 光文社文庫
310 pages

This book is Tokuya Higashigawa’s debut novel and the first book in the series 烏賊川市 (Ikagawa), featuring detective Ukai.

Quick rating: 😄
I had a lot of fun reading this book. It manages to maintain a light and humorous tone throughout, while still delivering an engrossing case and a challenging locked room mystery.

Review

『密室の鍵貸します』 is a great howdunnit. If you like locked room murder mysteries, I highly recommend it if you are a fan of the genre as Tokuya Higashigawa explores the locked room possibilities with humour and inventiveness.

And the mystery is a challenging one for the reader as well as for our protagonist Ryuhei and the detective of the series: Morio Ukai.

I was also satisfied with the solution, which is not always the case when authors build complicated murder scenarios. The novel was engrossing all along, with a good pace and enough room for the reader to make their own theories, even though I remained clueless throughout the novel.

The book also contains a lot of humour, and plays with the reader’s expectations. For example, the conventional role of the private detective vs police officer is not what you would expect here. I found it extremely refreshing and I am so thankful to the author for introducing novelty in the genre and break the stereotype of the genius detective.

I have read several light/humorous detective books in Japanese, and this one is by far the best. I will continue the series for sure!

by Inhae

January wrap up

January was all about detective series! First of all, I started the Kogoro Akechi series as part of my reading challenge for 2021. I also continued two of my favourite series: the Ikagawa series and the Galileo series.

Kogoro Akechi Book I: 『D坂の殺人事件｜幽霊｜黒手組｜心理試験｜屋根裏の散歩者』 by Edogawa Rampo

We follow the adventures of private detective Kogoro Akechi in 5 short stories that take place in the early 20s. First a connoisseur of crime, Akechi soon becomes a “detective amateur” and finally, a “famous detective”.

As a fan of classic detective novel, this book has been a fantastic read for me. I have already posted my book review, so I will mainly talk about the language level of the book and the things that I found difficult.

I had never Edogawa Rampo in Japanese before, so I didn’t know what to expect, but I thought that the book would be more difficult than contemporary detective novels. It was surprisingly easy to read. I am not saying that it is an easy book to read in Japanese, but if you are used to reading contemporary mystery novels, the language level of this one does not differ much.

This being said, some passages were a little difficult, especially long sentences. This one, for example, was not the easiest:

邸やしきのまわりに高いコンクリート塀を繞めぐらしたのも、その塀の上にガラスの破片を植えつけたのも、門長屋を殆どただの様な屋賃で巡査の一家に貸したのも、屈竟くっきょうな二人の書生を置いたのも、夜分は勿論、昼間でも、止むを得ない用事の外はなるべく外出しないことにしていたのも、若し外出する場合には必ず書生を伴う様にしていたのも、それもこれも皆ただ一人の辻堂が怖いからであった。(幽霊)

This is the kind of sentence that I need to read twice, because the meaning of the whole sentence becomes clear in the last proposition: it describes all the measures taken by our character to protect himself from his enemy. At first read, I found it quite difficult, but when I re-read it, I realised that I could understand it without trouble.

This is interesting because it shows that vocabulary is not always the problem when you don’t understand something. When I did not know what we were talking about, I could not make sense of the sentence. But once I read the last portion and understood what it was all about – and re-read the whole sentence -, it all became clear and easy.

Apart from that, the most difficult parts of the whole book were descriptions of rooms:

部屋は一間切りの六畳で、奥の方は、右一間は幅の狭い縁側をへだてて、二坪許りの庭と便所があり、庭の向うは板塀になっている。――夏のことで、開けぱなしだから、すっかり、見通しなのだ、――左半間は開き戸で、その奥に二畳敷程の板の間があり裏口に接して狭い流し場が見え、そこの腰高障子は閉っている。向って右側は、四枚の襖が閉っていて、中は二階への階段と物入場になっているらしい。ごくありふれた安長屋の間取だ。(D坂の殺人事件)

I tried to draw a plan of this room, but I am still not sure I got it right. This is the kind of description that you don’t really need to bother with, as long as you understand that we are talking about a ごくありふれた安長屋の間取. But I do want to understand everything in Kogoro Akechi, so I did spend a lot of time studying this passage and looking up picture of 長屋 online to see what a typical one would look like.

In the same short story, there is also a passage about the wood panels on the shoji:

私はふと店と奥の間との境に閉めてある障子の格子戸がピッシャリ閉るのを見つけた。――その障子は、専門家の方では無窓むそうと称するもので、普通、紙をはるべき中央の部分が、こまかい縦の二重の格子になっていて、それが開閉出来るのだ――ハテ変なこともあるものだ。(D坂の殺人事件)

The description is clear enough, but looking at pictures online also helped me understand how the wood panels work and how the whole thing looks like. (I copy-pasted these extracts from Aozora where むそう is written 無窓. In my book however, it was written 無双.)

Finally, here is another description that includes knowledge of traditional Japanese architecture:

彼の部屋には、――それは二階にあったのですが――安っぽい床とこの間まの傍に、一間の押入がついていて、その内部は、鴨居かもいと敷居との丁度中程に、押入れ一杯の巌丈がんじょうな棚があって、上下二段に分れているのです。(屋根裏の散歩者)

This description is funny, because if you ask me to imagine a closet in a Japanese room, this is exactly how I would picture it, but somehow this description seems very precise.

I also needed to get used to some unexpected words. For example “corpse” was always 死骸 (しがい) instead of 遺体 (いたい), a suspect was a 嫌疑者 (けんぎしゃ) instead of a 容疑者 (ようぎしゃ).

The excerpts I quoted are the ones that I found difficult, but overall, the book was not a difficult read. I also hope that the time I spent looking up words and getting familiar with this kind of descriptions will be useful for the rest of the series, given that I plan on reading 11 more books.

All the stories are available for free on Aozora, if you are interested in reading them!

Ikagawa city series Book II: 『密室に向かって撃て！』by Tokuya Higashigawa

We meet our protagonist Ryuhei again, from the first book of the series, and private detective Ukai. They find themselves in the middle of an unconventional “locked-room” (so to speak) mystery… Many characters from book I reappear in this story, and humour is more present than ever.

In terms of Japanese level, I must say that I found this second book slightly more difficult than the first one, but it might be just me…

There are a lot of comical effects in this book, and it is always rewarding to understand humour in a foreign language, though I would not be surprised if I had missed puns or funny references.

Personally, there are passages that I found very funny, but others that I found more annoying than anything, and I wished that the story would focus more on the case rather than going from one comical scene to the other.

Galileo series book V: 『聖女の救済』 by Keigo Higashino

When Yoshitaka Mashiba is found dead at home, detective Kusanagi and his assistant Kaoru Utsumi each follow their lead, but in this murder case, knowing how the crime was executed can lead to the murderer… as usual, professor Yukawa will add his expertise to the investigation.

I found this book quite easy to read (the easiest of the three already mentioned here) and very engrossing. Starting this year, I am keeping track of my readings, so I know that I read it over a period of 7 days, and that it took me 7 days to read, meaning that I read it every single day. This means that I have read an average of 60 pages a day. To me, this is the definition of a page-turner, especially in Japanese where I don’t usually read more than 40/50 pages a day.

『インプット大全』 by Shion Kabasawa

Following the best-seller 『アウトプット大全』, the “Input” volume focuses on how to make the most of what we read, listen to, watch etc. From filtering information to using output to boost our memory, this book gives great tips to actually make good use of all the information we have access to.

This book is so agreeable to read and has such a great layout. Almost each chapter is two pages long, with illustrations to sum up the main idea of each chapter. It makes it so easy to read and flip through if you need to find some information later.

I do think that this book is great for language learners. You will find a lot of recurring vocabulary related to productivity, so looking up words is rewarding as you will certainly encounter these words later in the book. The short chapters are perfect for a study session and again, the illustrations greatly help with comprehension. Key sentences are highlighted in blue, and each chapter is devoted to a precise topic, clearly defined by its title. Finally, reading this book is a good way to boost your motivation to study, take notes and learn things, and a lot of tips that are given for general self-improvement can be more specifically applied to language learning.

That’s it for January! I have decided to re-focus more on detective novels and mysteries in 2021, and I had a great reading start in the year 🙂