The Summer of the Ubume (1994) by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

Natsuhiko Kyogoku is a graphic designer, yokai researcher and mystery writer whose debut, Ubume no natsu (The Summer of the Ubume, 1994), is credited together with MORI Hiroshi's Subete ga F ni naru (Everything Turns to F: The Perfect Insider, 1996) with the starting the second shin honkaku wave – couching its traditionally-styled plots in specialized backgrounds or subject matters. The Perfect Insider takes place at what, in 1996, must have appeared as a futuristic IT research institute and The Summer of the Ubume draws on Kyogoku's research of Japanese folklore.

The Summer of the Ubume is the first in a series of nine novels and a handful of short story collections, known as the Kyogokudo series, which combine the detective story with Japanese folklore, myths and urban legends. Ho-Ling Wong called it "a wordy mystery with deep conversations on a wide variety of topics and a somewhat strange locked room mystery" that's "actually available in English." Sort of.

In 2009, Vertical published an English-language edition translated by Alexander O. Smith. A name you might recognize from the Keigo Higashino translations. Speaking of Higashino, the translation of The Summer of the Ubume was published before Higashino's Yogisha X no kenshin (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2005) became an international bestseller in 2011 and Ho-Ling's 2015 translation of Yukito Ayatsuji's Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) for LRI started the translation wave – largely went unnoticed by mystery fans. But through no fault of our own. The Summer of the Ubume was not really presented as a shin honkaku locked room mystery, but something closer to the horror genre or supernatural fiction with a rational and skeptical bend. It didn't help that translation silently went out-of-print around the time Japanese detective fiction started to get momentum. Since then, Vertigo ceased to be and was consolidated into Kodansha USA.

So that pretty much put a brake on a possible second printing or a translation of the second, award-winning novel, Moryo no hako (Box of Goblins, 1995), ended there for the time being. And used copies have become insultingly pricey. Like you're buying rare coins or something. But, every now and then, you get a lucky break. Let's finally take a look at this overlooked translation of a second wave shin hokaku mystery reputedly even more unusual than Hiroshi's The Perfect Insider.

First of all, the Kyogokudo books form a series of historical mysteries set in post-World War II Tokyo, Japan. The Summer of the Ubume takes place during its titular month of 1952 and marks the first appearance of the proprietor of a used bookstore, Akihiko Chuzenji, but everyone has to the habit to call him by the name of his bookstore, Kyogokudo. A ferocious reader and bookseller who moonlights as a priest and faith healer specialized in curing possessions and exorcising evil spirits "modified to fit the beliefs of the particular sect to which each customer belonged." You see, Kyogokudo is not a believer who looks out on a world filled with ghosts, monsters and other creatures from Japan's folklore, but acknowledges their existence as social and cultural constructs – which can have very real effects on the people who believe in them or have fallen under their spell. So the bookseller and part time exorcist is prone to hold "arcane lectures" that eat into the page-count of the book. Case in point: the opening chapter that runs for roughly one-hundred pages.

The Summer of the Ubume is narrated by Kyogokudo's long-time friend and freelance journalist, Tatsumi Sekiguchi, who traveled to the bookstore to ask his friend a very unusual question. Is it possible for a woman to be pregnant for twenty months? This question gets bogged down in the first lecture covering everything from ghosts, quantum mechanics and the perception of reality to folklore and the ubume ("...if they die in childbirth, their regrets come back to walk the earth..."). So it takes a while before the problem becomes evident, but it comes down to this: Sekiguchi has gotten wind of a rumor that a woman by the name of Kyoko Kuonji has been pregnant for twenty months with the salient detail that her husband, Makio Kuonji, vanished from a locked and watched room at the Kuonji Clinic in Zoshigaya. A clinic the family has run for generations. Kyogokudo tells Sekiguchi to get into contact with Reijiro Enokizu, "a member of a rare breed, a genuine professional detective," to investigate the case. However, it takes them a while to get to the clinic, because the introduction Enokizu takes some time.

Reijiro Enokizu is a childhood friend of the two and one of two reasons why this review has the "hybrid mysteries" tag. Enokizu is someone who can see other people's memories ("...Enokizu doesn't read people's memories, he sees them"), which makes him a very unusual sort of private eye ("I don't do investigations. I do conclusions"). So kind of like a short cut detective that has gotten him trouble in the past, but a handy gift when tackling a case in which someone "vanished from a sealed room like a puff of smoke" and a woman pregnant for twenty months. Somewhere halfway through the story, they finally arrive at the clinic that would have been a fantastic setting for a more traditional shin honkaku mystery. A writer like Seimaru Amagi could have done something with the largely abandoned building that went from a fully staffed hospital to only doing obstetrics and gynecology as the war depleted their staff and American air raids destroying part of the clinic ("wow, they really did a number on this place, didn't they?"). Enokizu quickly bows out of the case and tells Sekiguchi to call on their friend, Detective Shutaro Kiba of the Tokyo Police. Yes, it takes a while for them to return to the clinic, but the parts with Kiba are actually fun. And feel like the story was starting to get back on track. I was wrong.

All the slow, meandering developments and lectures eventually culminate with Kyogokudo going to the clinic to gather everyone around Kyoko Kuonji's sickbed for the expected denouement – dressed up and presented as an exorcism. Only for Natsuhiko Kyogoku to take a page from Edogawa Rampo's playbook of grotesque body horror, which admittedly is used quite effectively to deliver a scene as unexpected as it's unsettling. Regrettably, this memorable scene didn't signal the end of the story as Kyogokudo's lengthy explanation gobbles up the final quarter of this wordy, rambling and overlong book. I love detective stories soaked in the bizarre or arcane, but a writer has to eventually deliver something on those ideas. Particularly if you keep dragging and delaying things. That was unfortunately not the case here.

Going by what has been translated up until now, The Summer of the Ubume stands as a poor specimen of the Japanese detective story. Even if you want to be generous and only compare it to other hybrid mysteries.

First of all, the vanishing from the locked room is an important part to the overall plot and what, exactly, makes a good locked room-trick is still being debated today, but what Kyogoku pulled here is simply infuriating. A suggestion that was mocked a century ago (ROT13: n punenpgre sebz T.X. Purfgregba'f “Gur Zvenpyr bs Zbba Perfprag” fhttrfgf gung gur zheqrere tbg va, naq bhg, bs n pybfryl jngpurq ebbz ol gvcgbrvat npebff cflpubybtvpny oyvaq fcbgf bs gur bofreiref gb juvpu nabgure erfcbaqf, “nppbeqvat gb lbh, n jubyr cebprffvba bs Vevfuzra pneelvat oyhaqreohffrf znl unir jnyxrq guebhtu guvf ebbz juvyr jr jrer gnyxvat, fb ybat nf gurl gbbx pner gb gernq ba gur oyvaq fcbgf va bhe zvaqf.” Kyogoku thought that was a good idea to explain the disappearance from a locked room (ROT13: ur arire qvfnccrnerq sebz gur ybpxrq ebbz. N cflpubybtvpny oybpx ceriragrq crbcyr, vapyhqvat gur aneengbe, sebz frrvat gur obql naq gura jrag n fgrc shegure ol univat gur obql ghea vagb n jnk-zhzzl haqre irel fcrpvny, uvtuyl hayvxryl pvephzfgnaprf. And, no, Kyogokudo saying "I'm no statistician, but I'd say you're looking at chances close to zero" doesn't make it any better. I should note here Ho-Ling pointed out in his review that while not being a fan of the locked room-trick, it does work in conjunction with the themes of the story like a thematic device. Fair enough. But still rubbish. Nothing else about the plot, motives, missing babies and morbid psychology, justified its length either. So if you're looking for one of those ingeniously-plotted, delightfully subversive shin honkaku locked room mysteries, The Summer of the Ubume is going to disappoint and severely test your patience.

The Summer of the Ubume has one, very small redeeming quality. Historically, it's a fascinating read. I mentioned last year how the translation wave has largely ignored the Japanese mystery novels from the 1990s and especially that second wave of shin honkaku authors. Hiroshi's The Perfect Insider was very enlightening in that regard and The Summer of the Ubume is very similar as they both show their influence on writers like Motohiro Katou and "NisiOisiN." Even more interesting, The Summer of the Ubume might have even influenced H.M. Faust's Gospel of V (2023). It might just be one of those coincidences, but, having read both unintentionally back-to-back, I can't help but see some trace similarities. For example, the two unusual private detectives or the solution to the vanishing skeleton from the locked collection room. It's like a solution Faust came up while reading the book and decided to use it for his own locked room mystery. Rightfully so, if that's what happened! Read that one instead.

So, yeah, to cut a long story short, The Summer of the Ubume simply didn't do it for me. A historical, not unimportant curiosity, but a curiosity nonetheless. The reader has been warned! Next up, back to the Golden Age!