Author / Inhae

by Inhae

Book review: 『狐の鶏』by Jokichi Hikage 

Quick facts

Title: 『狐の鶏』（きつねのとり）
Author: Jokichi Hikage (日影丈吉)
Published by Kodansha
216 pages

Jokichi Hikage has written a lot of short stories and novels, including a detective series called ハイカラ右京, but only a couple of titles have been translated into English.

The short story 狐の鶏 won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1956. The book I am reviewing contain five short stories: 狐の鶏、ねずみ、犬の生活、王とのつきあい、東天紅.

Mystery Writers of Japan Award – PROJECT – I read this book as part of my project to read all the winners of the Mystery Writers of Japan Award (at least, the books that are available today). Follow my progress here!

Review

The first short story, the prize winner 狐の鶏, was certainly the most impactful to me, and the one that stands out from the collection. The story follows Shinji, the second son, who came back from the war only to take his elder brother’s place, who did not return. It took me a while to understand the characters’ relationship with each other because the story contains what is called levirate marriage (when a man, whose brother has died, is forced to marry his brother’s widow – and in the story, also to adopt his child). I was quite shocked to read this kind of arrangement practised in post-war Japan.

The story is a mystery and falls in the category of what we would call today a psychological thriller. I read it for the mystery, but it is the setting, the characters and the helplessness of Shinji’s situation that I found really interesting and gripping.

The second story is set during the war, in Taipei, and was also quite a heavy read with a very shocking and terrible end.

After reading these two stories, I felt like I needed a break from this book, and came back after reading lighter and more joyful things. However, the other short stories were less dark. 犬の生活 felt more like a classic police investigation, and 王とのつきあい was more a horror story. I really loved this one, it is suspenseful and delightedly horrific, with another impactful end.

I found the stories that are set in the countryside, 狐の鶏 and 東天紅 to be the most difficult to read in Japanese. I guess it comes from the vocabulary and the dialogues that are more challenging to me because of the dialect. The other ones were good for my level.

Overall, I was not expecting such a heavy read for a mystery book. My favourite stories are 狐の鶏 and 王とのつきあい, but I don’t thing that I will jump into another book by this author just yet.

by Inhae

February wrap-up

I read 7 books in February, and I don’t know if I have ever read that many books in a month before! I must say that two Japanese books, 狐の鶏 and 顔・白い闇 and the Korean book 초급 한국어 were all very short (around 200 pages). I also had already started 七つの会議 in January, and I read one book in my native language.

Mystery Writers of Japan Award – Project

Read all the available winners of the MWJ award for fiction (in chronological order).

1956:『狐の鶏』by Jokichi Hikage (日影丈吉)

This is a collection of short stories and the first one, 狐の鶏, won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for short fiction. I liked all the stories of the book, but 狐の鶏 is certainly the most impactful one (it was also the most difficult to read!).

Overall, most of the stories were a bit depressive. 狐の鶏 is set just after the war, and ねずみ, which has a terribly sad ending, follows a Japanese squad deployed in Taipei during the war.

Compared to the other award winners I have read so far, this book belongs to the most difficult in terms of language level. The stories set in the countryside like 狐の鶏 and 東天紅 were the most difficult.

1957: 顔・白い闇 by Seicho Matsumoto (松本清張)

Compared to 『狐の鶏』, this collection of short stories by Seicho Matsumoto was much lighter and entertaining. No wonder that Matsumoto is known for popularising detective fiction. All the stories of this collection are engrossing and easy to read.

Again, I found that the short story that won the prize, 顔, was the best one of the collection, but by a short margin. The stories are a good mix of suspense, psychological tension, and investigation with complex and tortured characters at the heart of the mysteries.

So far, the two authors of the project that I plan on reading more are Seishi Yokomizo and Seicho Matsumoto.

#22tlreadingchallenge

Read one book per month in your target language (I chose Korean). Check out the prompts here.

A book under 200 pages: 초급 한국어 by 문지혁

The more I think of this book, the more inclined I am to lower my rating. On the one hand, I think that it is a great book for language learners because it is easy to read, it is short, and it contains a lot of relatable and funny anecdotes about language learning.

On the other hand, there are numerous things that I disliked in it as well. I found it very self-centered, and I could not help but finding the author a little too full of himself, which was irritating. In the end, the story felt a bit desultory, like a juxtaposition of autobiographical essays, rather than a whole, coherent novel.

I am certainly being too picky, as this book receives excellent reviews overall. It’s worth giving it a try I think, especially if you are looking for an easy book to read in Korean.

20th Century reading challenge

Read a book set in each decade of the 20th Century in chronological order (publication date does not matter).

1910s (WWI): Le Feu, journal d’une escouade by Henri Barbusse | Im Westen nichts Neues by Erich Maria Remarque

For my challenge of February, I wanted to read a book that describes the life in the trenches during WWI and chose to read a French and a German book.

While they both describe similar things, the two books differ in structure. Im Westen nichts Neues is a well constructed novel, and it is centered on a protagonist, Paul, whereas Le Feu has more a journalistic flavour, the narrator describing what he sees and reporting discussions of his fellow soldiers, but without real plot in it.

I personally preferred Le Feu, which is my favourite read of the month, because I learnt so much through it. I liked to read about details such as how soldiers protected themselves from the cold, what they carried in their pockets, and more generally, I learnt a lot through descriptions about the constant struggle of life in the trenches, not because of the fightings, but because of the rain, the cold, and the continuous, crushing fatigue. Barbusse describes the war as an ”endless monotony of miseries”, and the whole novel shows it plainly in a very realistic manner.

But while the soldiers in Le Feu can sometimes dream of going back to their lives when war is over, Paul and his camarades cannot. They are 19 years old when their professor persuade them to enrol. War is their first experience in life, and the novel points out the effects it has on Paul’s generation who is ”lost like children and experienced like old people”.

Paul talks about the danger of putting his war experience into words, while the soldiers in Le Feu are afraid to eventually forget, because, as they say, if no one were to forget the horrors of war, surely, there would be no war anymore. And so, Remarque and Barbusse have put war into words, and their testimony seems today more important than ever.

Im Westen nichts Neues was very difficult to read for me, my German level is not that high and war-related words were quite a challenge. Being native French, I had no problem reading Le Feu, but I can see that it is a very difficult book in terms of language. The soldiers speak a language specific to the trenches, a mix of dialect and military jargon, and I imagine that the dialogues must be extremely challenging to read for French learners.

Other books

『七つの会議』by Jun Ikeido (池井戸潤)

This is the third book by Jun Ikeido that I read, and while I devoured the other two, it took me more than a month to read this one. It is very good, but I liked it less than 『アキラとあきら』and 『空飛ぶタイヤ』. I found that it lacks this sense of fighting for justice that I loved so much in the other two, and it was harder to identify with one character as we follow a different character per chapter. As a result, I found the story less engrossing, and it took me longer to read.

Compared to the other two books, this one felt easier in terms of language. It is certainly because there is nothing related to bank and loans in this novel, which is always the most difficult part to read for me in Jun Ikeido’s books.

『獣の奏者I 闘蛇編』by Nahoko Uehashi (上橋菜穂子)

This is the first book in the Beast Player series. I rarely read fantasy, but with the depressive stories of 『狐の鶏』and the two books on WWI that I read this month, I wanted to also have something different and comforting that I could switch to when needed.

The beginning of the book is extremely addictive, and even though I found that the book had some strange pace irregularities (some long, uneventful episodes, and some compact ones that introduce new characters, tons of information or decisive events), I loved reading it, and I will certainly continue the series, though I don’t know if I will jump into the next one right away.

The book is relatively easy to read (apart from one passage that described at length the history and political tensions between the two territories), and instead of making a character list, I just referred to the anime site whenever I needed to check a name. It was quite useful!

The illustration is my attempt at drawing a Royal Beast (王獣) 😅

by Inhae

Book review: 『不連続殺人事件』by Ango Sakaguchi

Introduction

Title: 『不連続殺人事件』（ふれんぞくさつじんじけん）
Author: Ango Sakaguchi (坂口安吾)
Published by Kadokawa
323 pages

First published in 1947, 『不連続殺人事件』is Ango Sakaguchi’s first detective novel. It won the Mystery Writers of Japan Awards in 1948.

The novel is available on Aozora.

There is a French translation by Estelle Figon: Meurtres sans série, published by Les Belles Lettres.

Mystery Writers of Japan Award – PROJECT – I read this book as part of my project to read all the winners of the Mystery Writers of Japan Award (at least, the books that are available today). Follow my progress here!

Review

Famous figures of the decadent literary circles of post-war Japan find themselves, as well as some uninvited guests, in the family house of the Utagawas. Many of these guests cannot stand each other and this chaotic reunion soon witnesses a series of strange and scary murders.

When the book was first serialised in 1947, the author challenged the readers to find the murderer before the publication of the last chapters. He offered a financial prize, and challenged by name several personalities of the time as well as the fictional police officers of his novel. And of course, any reader could participate.

The fact that one reader of the time was able to give a perfect answer to Sakaguchi’s challenge shows that we have all the elements we need to solve the mystery. Sakaguchi himself insists on that point several times: we, the reader, are given all the elements to solve the crimes. As such, this is a perfect whodunnit, which I think is quite rare. As Ango Sakaguchi said when he revealed the names of the winners, many detective novels are disappointing, and even though I would not go as far as saying that 99,99% of them fall into this category, 『不連続殺人事件』surely does not.

人間性を不当に不合理に歪めて、有りうべからざる行動を実在させそれを、合理的に解けと云ったって無理である。私は日本のみならず、全世界の探偵小説の九十九パーセント、否、九十九、九九パーセントぐらいが不合理なものだと思っている。

To find the solution, we are provided with everything that the police officers of the novel have access to. Unfortunately, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information we are given. This is what happened to me, and this is why I decided to read the novel in parallel with the French translation. The Japanese was quite difficult to begin with, but trying to sort every bit of information and lead my own investigation was almost impossible to do in Japanese: too many characters (all introduced at the same time!), too many murders, too many alibis to verify and too many clues.

屋敷の見取り図の画像

To give you an example of what I mean by too much information, this is the map that is provided by the author. Floor and building maps play an important role in detective novels, but I have always assumed that they were there to help the reader, not confuse them 🤔 When Ango Sakaguchi says that we have access to the same elements than the characters, he means it literally. This is the “real” map of the villa, not a simplified version made for the reader. (I have read a lot of detective novels, but I never saw a map with 56 indications!)

But… you have no choice but to investigate yourself, because no one else is doing it. There are police officers and even a character who is here as a detective, but they never investigate, or if they do, we don’t see them doing it. As such, this novel differs from classic detective novels where we follow the investigation of the fictional detective. The role of the police is clearly to give us, readers, all the elements we need. They appear after the murder to collect every character’s alibis but then, they just don’t do anything with this information. Even the other characters do not seem particularly interested in solving the crime, and our narrator does not do much either.

This is barely surprising, given that most of them are writers. As one character states in the novel, writers are similar to criminals, not to detectives (it follows that it is the reader who should assume the role of the detective):

文学者は、大概、大犯罪者ですよ(…)天才的な先生方は全然探偵の能力なしに、徹底的に、ただもう、大犯罪者の素質だけをお持ちなのですな.

And the characters of this novel are not easy people to be with. Some of them cannot stand each other and make it clear every time they have an occasion to do so. They are arrogant, proud, rude and even insulting when addressing certain characters, if not violent. They are constantly quarrelling, and to be honest, the dialogues and the relations between the characters were the most difficult things to understand in Japanese to me.

This is why I made a character map (pdf) for anyone who wants to read this book in Japanese. The story is very complex and if you don’t have a clear vision of people’s relationships to each other (attraction, resentment, general dislike), then the story and the dialogues become very difficult to understand.

I did not manage to find the solution, but I had fun trying to. I wish that Ango Sakaguchi had written more detective novels…

Finally, I should add that I found Estelle Figon’s translation to be truly excellent. The text is full of pep and a real delight to read!

by Inhae

Korean mini book reviews #1

This blog is mainly dedicated to learning and reading in Japanese, but I am also a Korean learner! My reading level in Korean is lower than my Japanese level, but I am trying to improve by practicing. I don’t want to write full book reviews of the Korean books I read, so I decided to group several books in one post.

아몬드 by 손원평
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book is about Yunjae, who has a brain condition that makes it impossible for him to feel emotions or to identify and understand other people’s emotions. This is a coming-of-age novel that is extremely well done.

To me, the most interesting point is that Yunjae is our narrator, we see the world through his eyes, but he cannot comment on or sympathise with other people’s feelings. And in this novel, the other characters are each in their own way a whirlpool of contradictory emotions. Yunjae’s mother is an incredibly interesting character, Gon, Yunjae’s friend, must be suffering more than we can really grasp, Gon’s father is lost in a turmoil of contradictory feelings. But again, we are only able to take a glimpse at the characters’ struggles through random observations by Yunjae, which makes the novel even more gripping.

I was not a big fan of the end to be honest, this is why I only gave it 4 stars. This book has been recommended by several members of BTS, and is a huge best-seller in Korea.

Level: This book was on the easy side, but there were some passages that can feel more challenging (especially towards the end). Given that this book has been translated into English, I think that it is great for Korean learners, as you can read it in parallel if needed.

English translation: Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn, translated by Joosun Lee, published by Harper Collins.

보건교사 안은영 by 정세랑
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Eunyeong An, the school nurse at M school, can see the lingering desires of people and dead people which show themselves as jellies. Some of them can have a bad influence on the school and the students. Together with Inpyo Hong, teacher of classical Chinese, she will protect the school from evil jellies.

This novel has been adapted into drama by Netflix, and I really recommend to watch the drama and read the book together. I find that the drama brings a lot to the atmosphere and actress Yumi Jung really gives life to Eunyeong.

In the novel, each chapter is devoted to a different case or a different character. I really love that the drama mixed different cases together and makes several things happen at the same time. For example, in the drama, the story of the child on the playground and the story of Eunyeong’s former classmate are intertwined with the story of the mite eater. I found this very good, as they all relate to Eunyeong’s helplessness when she realises that she cannot help everyone. In the book, these are three completely different stories in different chapters.

Overall, this book was both weird and fun, there is a lot of humour in the book that could not be transported in the drama. But to be honest, the story was way too fantastic to me, and I enjoyed the more realistic episodes more than the more fantastic ones. I would certainly have DNFed it, if it weren’t for the drama. Great book, just not for me.

As for the level, this book was really difficult to read for me, mainly because it is a work of fantasy with things that do not make much sense, and it is harder to fill the blanks. I find that realistic fiction is easier to read for language learners, because you can guess a lot of the things you don’t understand. Again, watching the Netflix drama really helps, so I recommend doing both!

네 번의 노크 by 케이시
⭐️⭐️⭐️

A murder has taken place on the third floor of a residential building, a floor that is dedicated to women. Six appartements, six doors, six women, all suspects in this case.

I found the setting of this mystery to be very exciting. The structure of the book is interesting too: it is mainly composed by the testimonies of each suspect to the police, and we get to read their statements.

At first, there were interesting leads, I was wondering who was lying, trying to look for clues in what each woman said. There were also indications that footsteps and time would play a part, and this raised my expectations for a good whodunnit. Unfortunately, I felt that all these clues did not really lead anywhere and the mystery kind of sorted itself naturally, and even the final twist did not manage to satisfy the avid reader of mysteries that I am.

This being said, this was still an enjoyable read and it was very good for a debut novel. I will certainly check out this author’s next mysteries!

Level: Overall, this novel is rather easy to read, but I would not recommend it if you are not already used to reading in Korean, because the book is a succession of long monologues. It is interesting for the story, but the structure of the book makes it also quite monotone to read. I also find that dialogues are easier to read for language learners, and they are quasi non-existant in this book. Moreover, one character (the one living at 301) is significantly more difficult to understand than the others.

An audiobook version is available on 윌라 (welaaa). I personally read the book and listened to the audiobook at the same time, and it helps a lot to the comprehension. If you can afford the subscription, Welaaa is a great way to have access to audiobooks and classes on various topics in Korean.

일의 기쁨과 슬픔 by 장류진 
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a collection of short stories, where we see people in all kinds of situations where they have to deal with colleagues, work, or unexpected events.

The characters we see in these stories all hold onto their set of values, which often lead them to misinterpret a situation or misjudge others. Some stories are funny, some sad, but they all feel very relatable and engaging. This was an entertaining read that also made me think a lot. It is one of my favourite books read in Korean so far, and I highly recommend it.

Level: All the stories are easy to read, I believe that among books for adults, this one belongs to the easiest you could find. The fact that these are short stories makes it also easier to read for language learners as you don’t have to commit to a 300 pages-long novel. The stories deal with everyday life and work situations.

One of the short stories has been adapted into a drama special by KBS. I believe you can watch it one the KBS site, but it might depend on your country.

by Inhae

January wrap up

The year started with an excellent reading month for me! I loved every book I read in January and I am doing well with my various challenges.

Mystery Writers of Japan Award – Project

Read all the available winners of the MWJ award for fiction (in chronological order).

1947:『本陣殺人事件』by Seishi Yokomizo (横溝正史)

『本陣殺人事件』is a classic locked-room mystery, and I had no difficulty reading it (apart from one scene or two that were more difficult). Overall, it did not feel different, in terms of Japanese level, than the Kogoro Akechi series by Edogawa Rampo.

Moreover, the book is very classic in its composition: the story, the setting, the characters and the mystery feel very familiar if you like locked-room mysteries. The narrator of the story is a writer of detective fiction who is influenced by authors like John Dickson Carr or Gaston Leroux, which I think, made this novel easier to read to me.

This book is the first mystery novel to have been rewarded with the Mystery Writers of Japan Award (even though the award had another name at the time), and it is also the first book I read from this long list. It was a great way to start this project, and I will certainly read more books by Yokomizo in the future.

This novel has been translated into English by Louise Heal Kawai under the title The Honjin Murders.

1948:『不連続殺人事件』by Ango Sakaguchi (坂口安吾) | Meurtres sans série translated by Estelle Figon

Contrary to Yokomizo’s novel where our narrator tried his best to give us a smooth reading and made sure that we follow all the clues, Ango Sakaguchi’s first and only detective novel leaves the readers on their own to decipher a huge amount of clues, alibis, and characters.

Most of the characters belong to the literary circles of post-war Japan, they are decadent, disillusioned and they cannot stand each other. They are rude, sarcastic, insulting, and utterly disagreeable. They also have complex relationships, mostly based on desire and resentment. In short: everything they said seemed strange to me, and the dialogues were particularly difficult to understand, which is the reason why I decided to read this book and its translation in parallel.

If I am not mistaken, 『不連続殺人事件』has never been translated into English. Thankfully, there is a French translation published in 2009, which allowed me to fully enjoy this complex but exciting murder puzzle.

#22tlreadingchallenge

Read one book per month in your target language (I chose Korean). Check out the prompts here.

A book I meant to read in 2021: 재능의 불시착 by 박소연

One funny thing with this book is that I kept seeing it in bookstores, but I was not interested in reading it because I thought it was SF, a genre that I don’t really like. Fortunately, I did end up looking at it more closely and realised it was exactly the kind of books I like: a realistic depiction of the different struggles people face at work, with their colleagues, with their families.

The level was perfect for me: overall relatively easy to read with some stories that I could read without looking up any words, but challenging too with other stories that had me re-read some paragraphs several times in order to understand them.

The author also wrote self-development books, but this is her only work of fiction. I am looking forward to more novels or collection of short stories!

20th Century reading challenge

Read a book set in each decade of the 20th Century in chronological order (publication date does not matter).

1900s (Boxer Rebellion): Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan, translated by Howard Goldblatt

This is my favourite read of the month, this book really blew my mind. The book is set during the Boxer Rebellion, but we don’t learn much about the Rebellion itself (but I did a lot of Wikipedia readings while reading the book!). Our characters each play their part in the tragedy, while the Qing Dynasty and the Imperial system are collapsing in the background.

Magistrate Qian Ding and his brother were the characters I found the most tragic and interesting. One holds on to the old system and traditional values, the other stands against them, but they both fight in a world that is falling apart. It is also through the character of Qian Ding that we get to feel the most the political changes of the time, so his parts were the most fascinating to me.

I think that the book can be a little difficult to understand for people who don’t have any knowledge of the period (that’s why Wikipedia was a good companion here!). I also think that this book should have a content warning, because it contains scenes or descriptions of executions that I found extremely hard to read.

Other books

Verbrechen by Ferdinand von Schirach

In 2022, I want to read in more languages, so I picked a German book. This is a collection of cases that the author worked on as a lawyer. I overall found all the stories very engrossing, and it is hard to believe that these are real cases.

There is an interesting reflection on what is guilt, and how the law should punish criminals. Given that the law judges people’s guilt rather than their actions, it is both a fairer system but also more difficult to implement.

This book was perfect for my level, overall easy to read, but I had to look up some words, especially those related to law and court.

Currently reading

『七つの会議』by Jun Ikeido 池井戸潤

I am very excited to have started a new Jun Ikeido. I started it when I was reading 『不連続殺人事件』, because this book was so complex and difficult that I wanted to read something easier and contemporary.

Funny thing is that I used to consider Jun Ikeido more difficult to read than the average detective novels I was mostly reading. This was mainly due to the many words and concepts related to bank loans and how to run a business in general. But compared to 『不連続殺人事件』, Jun Ikeido feels extremely easy to read! Sure, I need to look up words from time to time, but that is nothing compared to the struggles I felt while reading Ango Sakaguchi.

This shows that it is always beneficial to vary the level of books we read.

That’s it for January! I hope you all had a good reading/studying start in the year!

by Inhae

Book Review: 『本陣殺人事件』by Seishi Yokomizo

Introduction


Title: 『本陣殺人事件』(ほんじんさつじんじけん）
Author: Seishi Yokomizo (横溝正史)
Published by Kadokawa
204 pages

First published in 1946, this short novel won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948. It is the first novel in the Kosuke Kindaichi series, but strangely, it appears in the second volume of the Kindaichi series (金田一耕助ファイル２) as published by Kadokawa. The book also contains two other short stories/novellas that I haven’t read yet.

There have been two film adaptations, one in 1947 and one in 1975, as well as several drama adaptations.

Mystery Writers of Japan Award – PROJECT – I read this book as part of my project to read all the winners of the Mystery Writers of Japan Award (at least, the books that are available today). Follow my progress here!

Review

Our narrator, who is a writer of mystery novels, visits the place were a famous murder case took place in 1937. He decides to challenge himself with the task of giving a full written account of the events and the role that young private detective Kosuke Kindaichi played in it.

I am reading this novel after spending a year reading the Kogoro Akechi series by Edogawa Rampo, and some points felt very similar, which made me appreciate the novel immediately. First of all, Kosuke Kindaichi reminded me a lot of the young Kogoro Akechi from the first short stories (his hair and his crumpled clothes are certainly a nod to Akechi). I really loved the first Akechi, but liked less the gentleman he turned into in the late novels, so I became an immediate fan of Kindaichi. I also find that the narration felt somehow similar: the narrator often addresses the reader to make sure we remember certain things, which is something used both by Edogawa Rampo and Seishi Yokomizo.

The case that our narrator tells us about is a locked-room mystery, and it contains all the elements of a classic of the genre: a room completely locked with two dead bodies in it, a limited set of characters, a mysterious stranger and even a heavy snow to deepen the mystery of the footprints…

The solution is clever, but unfortunately, there are several elements that I found unconvincing.The motive seemed a bit weak to me, and the role of a certain character felt a little far-fetched. This being said, I enjoyed reading this novel very much. The way it is told and the way it unfolds make the novel addictive, and anyone who enjoys a good murder mystery will be happy with this one.

Contrary to how I felt with most of the Kogoro Akechi novels, I found that the characters were very interesting here, with each their own personality and particularities. However, given that the characters’ psychology plays a role in the story, I think that this aspect could have been more developed. For example, the personality of a certain character is key to understand the mystery, but everything is told afterwards and we don’t really get to see it for ourselves. The focus of the story is more on the clues and the locked-room mystery in itself, but as a result, the characters’ actions felt sometimes unconvincing because we don’t really know them.

What I liked the most in this novel is how it constantly refers to famous works and authors of crime fiction. One character is an avid reader of mysteries, our narrator often refers to John Dickson Carr or Gaston Leroux, Kindaichi is compared to Antony Gillingham from A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery, and so on. The case is also brought to us by a writer of fiction and he talks about the art of writing mystery fiction at the end, with a reference to Agatha Christie.

Actually, the fact that the story was told by a fictional writer of fiction was almost more interesting than the case itself. Our narrator tries his best to give us the best reading experience, pointing out important details or things we might overlook, providing us with a map of the room in question and a detailed description of everything (so that we get a fair chance to solve the mystery by ourselves), sourcing his information and even switching narration and giving us a first-hand account when necessary.

Overall, this was a pleasant mystery, it is short and reads easily, even though some descriptions were a bit hard to follow at my level (the description of the locked-room state and its resolution were the most challenging parts). I will be honest and say that I had to peek at one of the film adaptations to help me understand a scene 🤫

I will certainly go back to the Kosuke Kindaichi series at some point, but for now, I will continue my project and move on to the next award winner.

by Inhae

2022 reading project, reading challenge and reading journal

After completing my reading challenge of 2021, I feel like nothing can stop me, so here are several projects and challenges for 2022!

MWJ Awards project

The Mystery Writers of Japan Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of Japan, an association founded by Edogawa Rampo in 1947. The awards started in 1948 and honour the best works in three categories (though this changed over the years): long fiction, short fiction and critical work.

As a fan of crime fiction, I thought it would be fun to work my way through the list of award winners and read them all (as far as possible) in chronological order.

This is not a yearly reading challenge, but rather a reading project that will keep me company for a long time.

I made a Notion page especially for this project. Feel free to visit it if you want to join me in this adventure! I will update the page as I read, and you can also use the template if you want to participate too, or use it as an inspiration to create your own reading challenge. Here are the links:

If you are not interested in this particular challenge but want to use a similar layout to record your readings, you can copy the template, delete the contents of the database and create your own entries.

Here is a quick overview of how the page works: (I haven’t read any of these books yet! It’s just a simulation to show how the page works.)

On the page, you will find the list of all the prize winners in chronological order. The older publications are out of print, but for the most part, there is an electronic version available on sites like Bookwalker or Booklive. I started to research the availability of the first books. If I have found it on Bookwalker, I linked to it in the book’s page, otherwise, I marked them as ”unavailable”. I only did this for the first entries, so it’s still a work in progress.

When you start a book, just enter the starting date in ”started”. If a book has a started date but no finished date, it will automatically appear in the ”currently reading” section.

When you finish a book, just add a ”finished” date and a rating. Once a finished date is given, the book will disappear from the ”currently reading” section and appear on the ”read so far” list.

In each book’s page, you will find a DNF checkbox. If you check it, the book will disappear from the ”currently reading” section and stop haunting you forever.

The ”book review” is the place where I will link to my blog.

This is the list:

Here is the ”currently reading” section. It will display the cover of the book. Only the books with a started date and no finished date appear here:

This is the ”read so far” section. Once a book has a finished date, it moves here:

Finally, I have added a timeline and board view where the books are classified by rating.

Note: There might be mistakes in the list, of course. I know that the cover does not always correspond to the digital version, and I realised too late that the auto-correction was enabled on my ipad, so it might have messed up with the transcriptions of the authors’ name. I’ll correct any mistake in the template when I see them.

Reading journal

I will be using a physical reading journal in 2022 🥰 I won’t make monthly spreads or decorate each page, it will mostly be used for loose notes about the books I read (summaries, review drafts, vocabulary, etc.). I just used the first pages to list all my challenges, I will complete them as I go.

#2022tlreadingchallenge

I am participating in the 2022 Target Language Reading Challenge created by @studywithkat on Twitter. I want to read more in Korean, so I will be joining this challenge for Korean only. It will be one Korean book per month, and I will do my best to follow the prompts 🙂

I will write the name of the chosen book in the corresponding box each month.

Read in more languages

I also want to read in more languages, including English, German and Spanish. I feel confident reading in German, but I haven’t touched Spanish since school, so reading books in Spanish will be a fun challenge.

It’s not easy to see on the picture, but I have a separate space for Japanese, Korean, English and for translations. I grouped German, Spanish and French together, because I will probably read less in these languages.

20th Century reading challenge

And finally, I thought it could be fun to read my way through the 20th Century. I will try to read at least one book set in each decade. The book could be in any language and the story must be influenced by the social or political background of the chosen decade.

On the left page, I will select my favourite book for each month. On the right is my 20th Century reading challenge. I will write the book or books I read for each decade.

And that’s it!

I wish you all the best for 2022 ❤️

by Inhae

Book review:『走れ外科医』by Yujiro Nakayama

Introduction

Title:『走れ外科医』（はしれげかい）
Author: Yujiro Nakayama (中山祐次郎）
幻冬舎文庫
396 pages

This is the third novel in the series 泣くな研修医.

In the series, we follow young surgeon Ryuji Ameno as he takes care of his first patients and is overwhelmed by the amount of things to learn in 泣くな研修医, then we see him slowly but steadily gaining some experience in 逃げるな新外科医. In 走れ外科医, Ryuji has now gained confidence and becomes an inspiration for his younger colleague Rinko.

Review

I absolutely loved the first book of the series because I found the character of Ryuji extremely relatable, and the novel was an excellent way to peek into the medical system of Japan. I learned a lot about medical procedures and Ryuji’s struggles felt very real. The second book was less powerful, but it was still very interesting to read, and I liked the introduction of the new character Rinko. It might be inevitable that the third novel should lose a bit of what makes the series so engrossing. As Ryuji becomes more experienced, the series also departs from its recipe, and while things get better for our protagonist, the novel might also feel less exciting for the reader.

But to be honest, I would have been perfectly happy to follow Ryuji in his daily tasks, meet new patients and accompany them during their stay at the hospital. With a more mature and experienced Ryuji, things would have been less chaotic than they used to be (though I guess he could also have been confronted with difficult cases), but still, it would have been good enough.

However, the author decided to take another course and try different things to diversify what is happening in the novel. First, we have a weird change in focus. I believe that the whole series has been told from Ryuji’s point of view without exception, so it felt very strange when we suddenly follow the point of view of two other characters. I found that it did not bring much. The episode where we follow Rei Sato, a senior doctor who has been mentoring Ryuji since book one, was very strange. We almost never get to know her during the whole series and suddenly, we are asked to follow her while she makes a life turning decision.

I have never been a fan of episodes with Haruka, Ryuji’s girlfriend. I always found them to be the weaker parts of the novels, and I had the same feeling here too. Their relationship seems artificial, I cannot feel that Ryuji really cares for Haruka or even has feelings for her. The scenes seem here only to check the case ”scenes with girlfriend”, and they feel uninspiring to me. Similarly, the episode where Ryuji visit his mother with Haruka felt rushed and didn’t lead anywhere. It felt like a mandatory episode that the author wanted to be over with as quickly as possible, which feels strange given how deeply episodes with his family must have affected Ryuji.

The last 100 pages of the novel where we see Ryuji and two other characters climbing mount Fuji were extremely boring to read to me. It is very long for a single episode (1/4 of the novel!) and I did not find it interesting at all. Nothing much happens, it is just a description of the climbing with dialogues that don’t seem to go farther than ”are you alright?”, ”I’m alright” and ”thank you so much”. Other readers might enjoy reading this kind of scenes, but it is not for me at all.

This book belongs to a series of medical fiction and this is the reason why I bought it, so I felt a little bit betrayed by the series at the end of the third book. I would have loved to learn more medical things or treat different illnesses with Ryuji rather than climb Mont Fuji for 100 pages. Maybe the author did not want to overwhelm the reader with too many medical explanations, but at the same time, this is certainly what you are looking for if you buy this book.

I find that the author really did a great job at teaching the reader some basic medical vocabulary and procedures in the first two novels. As a result, we are now used to the medical words our protagonist will use, and we are also familiar with his daily routine at the hospital. So I think that the author should have trusted the reader to be able to understand more advanced medical procedures, and it would have been nice to be confronted with more complicated health challenges as Ryuji gains experience. But it looks like the author wanted to address a more general public by writing a story of nice people hanging out together.

To me, this novel felt like it was written for the drama adaptation. All the characters felt more stereotyped, they just appear to play the part assigned to their character. The fact that we focus on several characters and that more space is given to friendship and relationships in general compared to medical challenges made me also feel like I was actually watching a drama rather than reading a novel.

Overall, the sudden change of point of view and the Mont Fuji episode made this novel much weaker to me than the previous ones. This being said, I don’t regret reading it. All the books of the series are easy and agreeable to read, and I heartily recommend to try the first novel, even if you are not particularly into medical fiction. I also think that the series is particularly good for language learners, because it is easy to read with a lot of dialogues and a lot of recurring vocabulary, which makes learning new words really rewarding.

by Inhae

November wrap up

I didn’t know what to draw to illustrate November, so I just drew my cat 🤷‍♀️

Japanese books read this month

Aではない君と by Gaku Yakumaru (薬丸岳）

Based on the other books I read by this author, I was expecting a thriller with a little more action than Aではない君と contains. The novel is quite slow but stays engaging all along with an interesting topic: what happens when a minor is arrested in a murder case.

This is the fourth Yakumaru book I have read now, and Aではない君と contains topics that were already treated in other books: school bullying in ガーディアン, murder committed by minors in 天使のナイフ, and more generally, the protagonist is often a father who leads a normal life until something tears his life apart, and he has to fight for truth or justice (天使のナイフ, 約束).

I would say that Aではない君と was my least favourite of all four books. The pace is slow with a lot of repetitive scenes, and I could not feel any sympathy for our protagonist’s son, the character around which the whole novel revolves.

最後の証人 by Yuko Yuzuki (柚木裕子)

This book is the first in the Sadato Sakata series, and it was excellent! Sadato Sakata used to be a public prosecutor, but we learn that he resigned years ago to become a lawyer. In this novel, we follow Sakata as he takes a difficult case and finds himself fighting prosecutor Mao Shoji in court.

I was a bit disappointed at first because I was expecting the whole novel to be about court proceedings, but we also follow the narrative of what happened from the point of view of the characters involved. As a result, the court scenes where we hear witnesses talking about the case can sometimes feel unexciting as we think we know what happened already.

The end was surprising though, and the chapter recounting the last day of the trial was extremely engrossing.

Interestingly, the following 3 books of the series are all collections of short stories about the time when Sakata was a public prosecutor. I happen to have already read the second book of the series because I did not know that it was the second book when I bought it. There was nothing on the cover, the obi or even inside the book that told me “this is the second book in a series, you should start with that one”. I really hate when this happens as I prefer to read a series in order, even if it does not have much impact with this series.

妖怪博士｜暗黒星 by Edogawa Rampo (江戸川乱歩)

This is the 11th book in the Kogoro Akechi series that I am reading this year. There are 12 books in the collection I bought, and my reading challenge for 2021 is to read one book a month, so I am close to completing my challenge!

妖怪博士 belongs to the Boy Detectives Club series, and it was extremely good. I cannot say if it was my favourite because all the novels I read from this series are all equal in quality. If you love one, you will probably love them all. One thing with this series though, is that you really need to read them in order. 妖怪博士 in particular is much more enjoyable if you have read the first adventures of the Boy Detectives Club. It even contains some spoilers as to how the previous cases were solved.

暗黒星 belongs to the regular Kogoro Akechi series, and it was a pure delight. It belongs now to my favourite books of the series together with 魔術師 and 吸血鬼. There are two types of plot in the series. One is when a villain is introduced as the worst criminal of all time who is terrorising the city, and the story is then a Akechi vs Villain adventure. The other type is when some weird and inexplicable events happen to a family (usually living in a big house) and Akechi is called to investigate, the crime is then more intimate and personal. Sometimes, both lines are mixed, but I really do prefer the latter. This is the kind of story with have here in 暗黒星 and I did not want it to stop. I wish that the last two remaining novels (only one book, but it contains two novels) are in the same line.

Korean reading project

I’ve learned Korean before learning Japanese, but unfortunately, I have never been able to read comfortably in Korean. I did manage to finish several novels (maybe 4 or 5), but I never reached that cap that I had with Japanese, where reading progressively but steadily becomes easier. The lack of kanji (I should say ”hanja”) is really killing me, and I have given up trying to read whole novels in Korean. The fact that the book scene in Korea is not really focused on mystery fiction also did not motivate me to put in the extra effort.

But now, I have decided that things must change 😠 !! I will apply the same method I used for Japanese to read Korean books. I will report on the books I read in my monthly wrap ups and I’ll try to read one Korean book per month. I might also write short reviews for them, but I will certainly group 3 or 4 books in the same blog post.

아몬드 (Almond) by Won-pyung Sohn (손원평)

The book I read this month is 아몬드 by Won-pyung Sohn 손원평. It has been translated into English under the title Almond by Sandy Joosun Lee. Interestingly, this book was labelled as Young Adult fiction when it came out in Korea, but after reading it, I would say that it is more correct to just classify it as literary fiction.

Our protagonist and narrator, Yunjae, is born with a brain condition that makes it impossible for him to have emotions and to identify or understand other people’s emotions. Yunjae is our narrator, so we see the world through his eyes and interact with other characters through him as well, which is what makes this book so interesting.

As for the language level, 아몬드 is definitely on the easy side, though it is not the easiest book I have read in Korean (for example, I am reading 일의 기쁨과 슬픔 by 장류진, and I find it is easier). With the English translation available though, I think that it is a very good book for Korean learners.

by Inhae

Book review: 『少年探偵団｜黒蜥蜴』by Edogawa Rampo

Introduction

Title: 『少年探偵団｜黒蜥蜴』（しょうねんたんていだん｜くろとかげ）
Author: Edogawa Rampo (江戸川乱歩)
集英社文庫
443 pages

This is the tenth book in the Kogoro Akechi collection I am reading this year (published by Shueisha). It contains two novels: The Boy Detectives Club that belongs to the sub-series for children of the same name, and The Black Lizard, which is one of Edogawa Rampo’s most famous works.

Review

I loved the two novels of this book, and it was one of the most entertaining reads of the series.

黒蜥蜴

黒蜥蜴 or The Black Lizard might be Kogoro Akechi’s most famous adventure, but now that I have read it, I really don’t understand why. It is good yes, but it is also very similar to all the other books of the series, and there are other titles that I consider to be better.

The only thing that makes this novel stand out compared to the others is the identity of our criminal: a woman. This is the first time that Kogoro Akechi has to fight against a woman, and the Black Lizard is an interesting character. She sometimes uses the pronoun 僕 when referring to herself and collects beautiful objects: art, precious stones… and humans. In our story, she is after the beautiful Sanae.

この世の美しいものという美しいものを、すっかり集めてみたいのがあたしの念願なのよ。宝石や美術品や美しい人や……

And this is how she addresses Sanae: それに、あんたは、あんまり美し過ぎたのよ。僕は宝石もご執心だけど、宝石よりも、あんたのからだがほしくなった。

The Black Lizard is certainly one of the most intriguing adversaries of the series, but apart from that, the novel had nothing new or unique to justify its being more famous than the others.

I was curious to see what the back cover of the French translation was saying about the novel (translated by Rose-Marie Fayolle, published by Philippe Picquier), and the summary talks about kidnapping and disguise as if it were some unique feature of the story, but there is kidnapping and disguise in almost every single novel of the series. To me, this would hardly be a selling point, rather the opposite.

There is one scene in particular where I thought that there would be some clever explanation to something that seemed impossible. I was sure that I had overseen something and that I would be surprised by the solution, I even paused for a moment and tried to work out how the Black Lizard had done it. But no, in the end, it was the same good old trick that has been used again and again throughout the series.

Similarly, there is another trick that was very exciting and new when it appeared for the first time in the series, but it is used now for the third time. I could see it from miles away, just the mention of a single word and I know what was coming. I could not believe that Edogawa Rampo was really using this same trick for the third time!

Another thing that I find always a bit disappointing is that we never know how Kogoro Akechi arrived to his conclusions. He foresees everything, outmanoeuvres his opponent, is always one step ahead. But how did he know??

Overall, this novel was very entertaining, and I enjoyed reading it. I just did not find it better than the others and it is certainly not my favourite. The fact that it is so famous made me expect more, so I ended up being a little disappointed, but all in all, I would say that this novel belongs to the better ones of the series, though by far not the best.

少年探偵団

On the other hand, 少年探偵団 was truly excellent, and even though it is a book for children, I enjoyed it more than 黒蜥蜴. Again, most of the action, scenes, escapes and tricks have already been used, but somehow I don’t find it annoying at all in a children book. On the contrary, it feels strangely comforting and exciting because you can anticipate what will come next.

There are other things that make the Boy Detectives Club exciting. This is the third book I read from this series, but it is the first one where we see the club really in action with the introduction of several members and an important scene where we see the boys acting as a team. The 七つ道具 of the detective are also an addition proper to the Boy Detectives Club series that does not appear in the regular series. I really loved the scenes where the detective tools were used, it is ingenious and a great addition to the story.

The passage I liked the most in the novel is Akechi’s 四つのなぞ. When our young protagonist Kobayashi exposes the problem to Akechi (who, as often, just came back from abroad), Akechi challenges his young assistant by telling him to solve the 4 problems that would bring light to the whole mystery. This chapter was a real delight to read, even though it was easy to solve all four points for an adult.

I also like how the narrator participates in the tension by addressing the reader or commenting things like: ひょっとすると、まにあわないかもしれません。ああ、早く、早く。おまわりさんたち、早くかけつけてください。

Finally, in the Boy Detectives Club series, Akechi is some kind of super detective who always knows everything and solves the crime before it even happens. But somehow, this is not annoying at all in this series as we identify with Kobayashi and see Akechi as an ideal detective, or even some kind of deity: 小林君は、明智先生を、まるで全能の神さまかなんかのように思っているのです。この世の中に、先生にわからないことなんて、ありえないと信じているのです. It is more annoying when it happens in the regular series like mentionned above where Akechi seemed to know all the Black Lizard’s plans in advance.

Overall, 少年探偵団 has everything to make an excellent adventure/detective book for children, and I start loving the Boy Detectives Club series more than the Kogoro Akechi series.