The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Tagaki

First published in Japan in 1949; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on June 4, 2024

Locked room mysteries are an abundant staple of Japanese crime fiction. The Noh Mask Murder is a classic example. Akimitsu Takagi published the novel shortly after World War II. A protagonist alludes to Japan’s collective shame, but the story is about murder rather than war or politics.

Akimitsu Takagi is the novel’s initial narrator. In 1946, he tells his old friend Koichi Yanagi about his idea of writing a detective story based on his firsthand account of solving an actual crime, making the novel a detective memoir. Koichi is staying at the mansion of Taijiro Chizui, whose father was a professor and also Koichi’s mentor. Taijiro’s father died of a heart attack ten years earlier. Unfortunately for the Chizui family, he may have hidden a family fortune before he died.

By chance, Koichi encounters another old friend outside Taijiro’s mansion. The friend is now a public prosecutor. They see a demon in one of the mansion’s windows and meet with Taijiro to investigate. They discover that the demon is actually a fearsome Noh mask that, according to legend, was cursed by a Noh actor.

Akimitsu gets his chance to investigate a crime when Koichi gives his name to Taijiro. Taijiro phones Koichi and tells him he has learned who is behind the mask. Akimitsu agrees to meet him immediately. Unfortunately, an “invisible killer” takes Taijiro’s life before Akimitsu can meet with him.

Taijiro died inside a locked bedroom from an apparent heart attack. The Noh mask was found on the floor. The body has been sprinkled with jasmine-scented perfume. Someone had ordered the delivery of three coffins in advance of Taijiro’s death. Before long, three coffins fall short of the family’s needs.

Akimitsu cannot solve the crimes, but the public prosecutor eventually sends him a journal — a detective memoir — that unravels the mystery. The journal was written by Koichi. After he provides a lesson in Noh theater and reviews the literature of locked room mysteries, Koichi introduces members of the Chizui family, including a madwoman who plays the piano and a monstrous man named Rintaro who scorns humanity. Only Sawako seems normal, but at 28, never permitted to love or marry, she is expected to be the lady of the house, little more than a glorified maid. Sawako’s dreams about the mask put her in fear for Koichi’s life.

One of the armchair detectives favors Sawako as the prime suspect. The other believes Rintaro to be the culprit, yet suspects abound. Several clues are found in a poem in the madwoman’s diary. A note written in shorthand provides another. An STD provides a clue that adds the possibility of incest to a dark plot. A key clue is in the phrase (repeated by two ill-fated characters) “eighty-eight in eighty-two” followed by the word Portia.

Koichi works out the locked room mystery, deduces how each victim was made to die from a heart attack, and discovers the killer’s identity while a third of the story remains to be told. The novel ends with a letter from the prosecutor, written after Koichi finished his journal, that adds a twist to Koichi’s account of the murder. A postscript to the letter adds a final surprising revelation that completes the story. As is common in Japanese mysteries, the plot is intricate and no plot threads are left dangling.

Greed or revenge are the likely motives for the murders, depending upon the killer’s identity. Takagi offers philosophical discussions about the difference between revenge and justice, illustrated with examples from feudal Japan, including the 47 Ronin. Takagi leaves it to the reader to decide whether revenge might justify the killings (or some of them) that fill the pages of The Noh Mask Murder.

Crime fiction fans don’t need to be locked room mystery fans to appreciate The Noh Mask Murder. The locked room is almost a sideshow. The story is akin to the traditional mystery in which all the suspects are assembled in a room while the detective talks through the clues and reveals the killer’s identity. Takagi provides enough suspects to keep the reader guessing as Koichi works his way through the possibilities. It is the ending, however, that gives the mystery its classic nature by forcing the reader to rethink an apparently sound solution to the killer’s identity.

RECOMMENDED

Harlequin Butterfly by Toh EnJoe

First published in Japan in 2012; published in translation by Pushkin Press on March 5, 2024

Harlequin Butterfly seems more like a series of thought experiments than a novel. It might best be viewed as a meditation on language. Make of it what you will. Most of the Japanese fiction I’ve read has been accessible to my western sensibility, but Harlequin Butterfly is a bit of a puzzle. I don’t know if that’s because of a difference in culture or if my mind is simply too dull to appreciate Toh EnJoe’s story.

A. A. Abrams is a frequent flyer. In fact, flying is about all he does. When the plane is in the air, Abrams removes a small net made of silver thread that he uses to capture fresh ideas. In no other location are ideas as plentiful as those that come loose in the cabin of a jumbo jet. The net is later said to catch luck or opportunity, but in the beginning the net captures ideas that only exist mid-journey, ideas that are left behind as the body moves forward.

A passenger sitting next to Abrams (in coach, where all the best ideas are found) apparently narrates the first chapter. The narrator can’t read on a plane (or any other form of transportation), perhaps because her thoughts can’t keep up with the speed of the vehicle. Thoughts flitting out of heads moving at a high speed may explain why ideas are most easily captured on an airplane. Speaking to the passenger, Abrams conceives the idea of a book that can only be understood when the reader is flying. Abrams writes To Be Read Only on an Airplane, a book that oddly gains traction among readers who are traveling by sea on luxury liners.

Abrams reappears later in the novel, sometimes in a different gender, once at an earlier time. At some points Abrams is alive and at others is remembered in death. And then we learn that someone else (probably) wrote To Be Read Only on an Airplane — unless the alternate author is actually Abrams in a different guise.

In the second chapter, the focus shifts to Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, an author who has written books that are meant to be read only under specific circumstances, including (you guessed it) while traveling. Most have gone unpublished. They are written in multiple languages including a simplified version of Latin — invented by a mathematician — that nobody speaks. To Be Read Only Under a Cat achieved some success after reading it became the trendy thing to so.

In this chapter, it seems that Abrams is a fictional character who appears in To Be Read Only Under a Cat. Yet there seems to be an Abrams Institute that is tracking down and collecting (and maybe stealing) Tomoyuki’s work. Whether Abrams is real or imagined, whether Abrams or Tomoyuki writes the books (or each writes them independently), doesn’t seem to matter as Tomoyuki understands reality to be relative and fluid.

One of Tomoyuki’s works seems to be a meditation on writing. He explains that he writes because he likes the sound of certain words linked together, a sound “that makes me write things I wasn’t even thinking.” Harlequin Butterfly often comes across as a stream of strangely connected thoughts. Perhaps Toh Enjoe didn’t realize he was having those thoughts as he composed the novel.

Another chapter analogizes kitchens to dictionaries. Both are full of ingredients. When you don’t have the right ingredient, you can make do with another. Ingredients can be combined in various ways and some combinations are preferable to others. The sound of an ingredient (coriander) sparks memories of many things all at once: smells and colors and people and the “bustle of life.”

Language is also analogized to needlework, stitches creating something new, expanding like a conversation, “twisting and turning until the day is over.” Stitching with an old woman helps the narrator learn the woman’s language. Like needlepoint or any craft, writing is an act of creation that might be finished or unfinished, its form “constantly changing, cycling through the stages of transformation, setting new life in motion.” The narrator wonders whether a story written in one language might be incoherent but make perfect sense when translated into another.

These are interesting ideas. I’m not sure they add up to a coherent story but the ideas themselves call the notion of coherence into question. Each chapter of Harlequin Butterfly seems to have a different narrator, although it also seems that they are different forms of the same narrator. At some points, it seems that the story’s narrator is searching for Tomoyuki. At some points (sometimes the same points), it seems the narrator might be Tomoyuki. The final chapter suggests that the narrator is someone (more precisely, something) entirely unexpected.

I’m recommending Harlequin Butterly for its strangeness. Readers who expect stories to have straightforward narratives that are easily understood will want to steer clear of the novel. Readers who appreciate the power of language might be entertained by the EnJoe’s invitation to perceive that power in new ways. Readers with time on their hands might want to read it twice, as I suspect a second reading would contribute to the reader’s understanding or appreciation of the novel’s narrative structure.

RECOMMENDED

King in Limbo Omnibus vol. 1 by Ai Tanaka

Published by Kodansha Comics on January 16, 2024

This omnibus edition collects the first two issues of a six issue “thriller manga” series. To me, manga means comic book drawings of teens with really big eyes. I must be wrong, since every comic book that comes out of Japan is labeled manga even if the characters have beady eyes and are in their twenties. If marketing materials can be believed, The King of Limbo is hugely popular among Japanese manga fans, despite the absence of teens with big eyes. Since it was originally published in Japanese, readers will need to read the panels on each page from right to left. At least the book doesn’t require readers to read from back to front.

In 2086, Adam Garfield was on a mission for the US Navy when a bomb exploded, causing him to lose a leg. He’s been reassigned to work as a companion to a diver. The job involves diving into people’s minds as they sleep and removing chunks of their memories. Adam’s partner will be Rune, more famously known as the King, the diver who ended the sleeping disease pandemic. The King can speak to the infected as they sleep and isolate the infected memory so he can destroy it.

A new strain of the infection is spreading and only the King can defeat it. Except the King doesn’t want the job until some puzzling drama unfolds involving his wife and an eight-year-old girl.

During the dive, the King and Adam go to a place the King calls Limbo. Limbo holds the memories of the infected person. The people in Limbo are surreal. Some are violent. It seems strange that memories can attack Adam, but they do. Somehow the memories take Adam back into the war he was fighting when he lost his leg. I can’t make much sense of anything that happens in Limbo.

Back in the real world, Adam and the King speculate about the cause of the new pandemic. By the second issue, the King and Adam are playing detective. They stumble into theories about how the new virus might be spreading but they’re still working on why. Someone or something with nefarious intent seems to be controlling it. People who view COVID-19 as a conspiracy theory will probably love King in Limbo.

Even as a rational reader, I enjoyed the story so far. Adam and the King are working through personal issues that give their characters some weight and the tension between them adds to the drama.

Panels are drawn as if they come in and out of focus. I guess that’s sort of interesting.  The art is detailed in some panels and in others it seems more like an incomplete sketch. Maybe there’s a purpose to that. Rune has the shaggy hair that is characteristic of manga characters. Adam is more a caricature of an American soldier. The art doesn’t strike me as anything special but manga fans can feel free to correct me.

RECOMMENDED

The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino

Published in Japan in 2014; published in translation by ‎ Minotaur Books on December 12, 2023

In The Final Curtain, the play’s the thing. The play in question, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, was first performed in Japan in 1703. Saying that it holds the key to the mystery probably won’t spoil anything for American readers, although it might provide a clue to readers who are more familiar than I am with the history of Japanese theater. In any event, the mystery extends well beyond the play.

Keigo Higashino is the current master of Japanese mystery novels. His plots are intricate but credible. Embedded in the plot of The Final Curtain are troubled relationships between a father and daughter and between a mother and son. As is often the case, the affected children are too young to understand the difficult lives of their parents.

The novel begins with the story of Yuriko Tajima, a woman who finds a job in a small-town bar and stays there for years. She confides to the bar’s owner that she failed as a wife and mother. Perhaps she has found her niche as a waitress/hostess.

Yuriko befriends a customer named Shunichi Watabe. The nature of their relationship is a bit of a mystery to the bar’s owner. When Yuriko is found dead in her apartment, the authorities decide she had a heart attack. Her employer takes possession of her ashes. Watabe gives the bar owner the information she needs to track down Yuriko’s son, to whom the ashes rightly belong. Her son turns out to be Kyoichiro Kaga, the police detective who stars in a series of novels. The Final Curtain is the most recent, both in the original series and in translation.

Kaga isn’t much interested in the mother who walked out on him, but he is dutiful and so agrees to pick up the ashes. When he goes through his mother’s possessions, he finds a note that lists twelve Tokyo bridges, each written next to a month of the year. He doesn’t think much about it. Life moves on.

About ten years later, a woman’s body is found in a Tokyo apartment. Michiko Oshitani was strangled to death. Neither the cleaning company that employed her nor her parents know why she came to Tokyo. The apartment’s tenant, Matsuo Koshikawa, has gone missing.

Detective Shuhei Matsumiya is tasked with investigating the murder. He wonders if the murder is linked to the murder of a man who died by strangulation before his body was set on fire. The murders took place a few kilometers apart but within days of each other.

Michiko managed client relations for her employer. Matsumiya decides to interview all the businesses where Michiko had recent contacts before she traveled to Tokyo. At a retirement home, Matsumiya learns that Michiko believed she recognized an older resident as the mother of Hiromi Asai. The woman insisted that Michiko was wrong, but Hiromi lives in Tokyo, which might have given Michiko a reason to travel there.

Hiromi Asai seems to have had a tragic life. Her mother, Atsuko, felt deceived by the matchmaker who set her up with Tadao Asai. Atsuko remedied the bad marriage by walking away from her family while Hiromi was still in junior high school. As Matsumiya follows the trail of clues, he learns that Tadao jumped from a tall building, leaving Hiromi to be raised in an orphanage. Yet Hiromi Asai went on to become Hiromi Kadokura, an actress and a successful theater director in Tokyo.

When Matsumiya relates all of this to Kaga, who happens to be his cousin, he mentions a calendar on the wall of Koshikawa’s apartment. On each month, someone had written the same of a bridge. Kaga realizes the bridges and months match the note he found in his mother’s possessions.

From those roots, the mystery blossoms. It is a story of assumed identities, missing persons, and a dubious relationship between a teacher and student. Kaga is forced to confront and reconsider unpleasant memories of his childhood as he learns the truth about Michiko’s decision to leave her husband.

Kaga methodically assembles clues as he pieces together the relationship between the two strangulation victims and his mother’s possession of a list of bridges. As is customary in Japanese mysteries, the eventual solution to each puzzle makes sense. And unlike too many American crime novels, Higashino’s plot does not depend on an abundance of unlikely coincidences.

Kaga’s troubled childhood has been a collateral issue in earlier novels. This one brings the issue into focus while helping Kaga come to terms with it. Higashino always makes the drama of human existence important to the story without allowing it to overshadow the mystery. Crime novel fans who prefer the purity of a murder mystery to mindless action and shootouts might want to fill their shelves with Higashino’s novels.

RECOMMENDED

The Tatami Galaxy by Tomihiko Morimi

First published in Japan in 2008; published in translation by HarperVia on December 6, 2022

This thoroughly odd novel was apparently a hit in Japan, where it was adapted as an anime television miniseries (because Japan). I watched the trailer on YouTube and it’s, um, colorful? Anime rarely speaks to me, but different strokes.

The book was apparently followed by a “spiritual successor” and an actual sequel. The sequel also became an anime miniseries in Japan that has apparently been released in the US on Disney+ or Hulu. (I glean this information from Wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt.) The sequel (Tatami Time Machine) will be published in translation in 2023. I think I’ll give it a pass.

The novel is set in four parallel universes. It tells, at times, a somewhat interesting story. It is typical in a novel of this sort to illustrate how a life might be different if a person makes different choices. Tomihiko Morimi eschews the typical by imaging a character who makes similar mistakes and encounters similar misery in every life he lives. The story is, at times, so absurdist or surreal that it might have been inspired by Borges.

The unnamed narrator is a college student who, in each universe, is beginning his junior year, having accomplished nothing during his first two years. He is pretty much the same guy in each reality. He consistently lives in a four-and-a-half tatami room and he always has a porn collection. Ozu is always his friend and a man Ozu calls “Master” always lives above him. He always reads Jules Verne. Some passages, including his description of the regret he feels for wasting his first two years at the university, are repeated verbatim in each section.

The stories diverge in other details. In each universe, he flashes back to his first year in college, when he examined flyers for student clubs and, although they all seemed “pretty shady,” chose one he would later abandon. He makes a different choice in each universe. The first is a film club called Ablutions. In the second universe, he becomes a disciple of Master Higuchi (although for two years, the narrator is not sure what kind of disciple he was).  The third is the Mellow Softball Club. In the last universe, the narrator joins an underground organization, Lucky Cat Chinese Food, and more particularly, the Library Police, a suborganization that has taken on the life of an intelligent organization.

The narrator sees the clubs as opportunities to expand his nonexistent social contacts. The narrator has limited social skills, which might explain why he ends up making friends only with Ozu, a troublemaker who might or might not be a good companion. In the third universe, he practices conversation with Ozu’s love doll; in the fourth, a plot is afoot to kidnap the doll. In the first, the narrator calls himself the Obstructor of Romance because of his unsuccessful love life. A mysterious fellow “who dared call himself a god” is apparently trying to decide whether to play cupid with the narrator or his friend Ozu. The god is not clear that either of them are worthy of Akashi, a judgmental engineering student who (in some universes, at least) makes a “positive impression” on the narrator.

The god tells the narrator that he ties and unties the red threads of destiny each year. That’s quite a job, but the god seems to tie and untie them in nearly the same way in each universe. While the details vary, the narrator’s life always begins with hope and seems to end with a feeling of lost opportunities. In repeated universes, a fortune teller advises the narrator to seize chances. He finds it difficult to heed that advice. He knows he should ditch Ozu, who is something of an albatross, and pursue paths to happiness — perhaps Akashi — but the narrator is incapable of overcoming his social ineptness. Even moths are better at socializing than the narrator.

The last section creates a source of hope in a bleak story. The narrator finds himself in a labyrinth (hence the Borges comparison) consisting of endless four-and-a-half tatami rooms. The contents are not always identical (Ozu’s love doll appears from time to time) and some might come from one of the other realities, but the food supply (fish burgers and sponge cake) is always the same. The narrator makes infinite decisions during the 80 days he spends wandering through the rooms, creating the possibility of infinite fates, but his fate always seems to be another four-and-a-half tatami room. In the end, an escape changes the narrator’s life, but he won’t talk about that drivel because (as he observed in another reality), “There’s nothing so worthless to speak of as a love mature.”

I’m not sure what to make of The Tatami Galaxy. The novel alternates between being engaging and boring. The narrator is frustrating in his incapacity for change until he changes. The idea of living a life in alternate realities is a clever variation on the venerable time loop story, but the final journey through a labyrinth piles fantasy on top of fantasy and distracts from the story’s point, assuming Morimi had one. Maybe I need to watch the anime miniseries to make sense of it all, but lacking the motivation to do that, I’ll leave it to readers to form their own conclusions.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS