Last year, I came across the work of fan-lator Mitsuda Konno, formerly known as Mitsuda Madoy, who's translating first-rate Japanese detective fiction with "cosmmiicnana" such as Kie Houjou's superb "The Ryuuzen Clan" series and Danro Kamosaki's insane "Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms" series – which have become personal favorites. I keep my fingers crossed Houjou's Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019), Katou no raihousha (Visitors to the Isolated Island, 2020) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022) get official releases one day. I consider them to be the classics of tomorrow and a glimpse of what the detective story could involve into over the course of this century. That's a story for another day.
Mikito Chinen's Garasu no tou no satsujin (The Glass Tower Murders, 2021) is described by Konno as "a mystery fan's mystery novel" that's "extremely tropey, and extremely self-aware about how tropey it is," which incidentally also makes it "good as an introduction to modern J-mystery" – dedicating "a lot of page time to explaining the appeal of its own genre." Ho-Ling Wong praised The Glass Tower Murders in his 2022 review for the meaningful way it used the genre's familiar tropes and concepts to create "a very entertaining puzzles that presented a surprising deep look at the genre" ("...basically a love letter to the shin honkaku subgenre"). Chinen's The Glass Tower Murders sounded like a trickier, more complicated and deeper shin honkaku version of Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936). Well, I'm game!
The glass tower of the title is the setting of the story and home to Kozushima Tarou, a retired professor of biotechnology, who invented TRIDENT that "completely altered the course of gene therapy." This invention also made him a very rich man and allowed him to built the tower. A towering, cone-shaped building erected on the slope of Mt. Chogatake with glass walls and a spiral staircase at the center linking together the floor and rooms. The point of this cone-shaped building is called the Display Room where the "Kozushima Collection" is kept. Kozushima is not only a biotech genius, but "a devotee of mystery fiction" and has accumulated a huge collection of detective memorabilia from across the world ("is this Columbo's coat?"). Fittingly, the normally reclusive Kozushima has invited a small group of people to the Glass Tower to make an important announcement.
First of all, there's Kozushima's doctor, Ichijou Yuma, who pulls double duty as a Dr. Watson narrating the story. Sakaizumi Taiki, a chef, who's always called upon to cook lavish meals for Kozushima's events. Aoi Tsukiyo, a self-proclaimed Great Detective, styles herself after Sherlock Holmes, but another guest, Kagami Tsuyoshi of the Nagano Prefectural Police, says she always turns down cases that look too difficult to solve. Kuruma Koushin is a celebrated mystery novelist who made his name during the early days of the shin honkaku movement and "particularly known for his skill at creating locked room mysteries." Yumeyomi Suishou, a TV psychic, is the star of the Psychic Detective Case Files. Sakyo Kousuke is the editor-in-chief of Super Mystery Monthly Magazine known for its "scattershot approach" by "placing proper honkaku stories of logic and reasoning next to unbelievable tales of the paranormal." Lastly, the loyal butler and maid.
So there you have a fairly basic and typical setup for a conventional shin honkaku mystery novel. Conventional to the point you almost get déjà vu, however, that's the point as the story slowly, and playfully, begins to take a different track with these classic, time-honored tropes. Yuma not only narrates the story, playing the witless Watson to Tsukiyo's Sherlock Holmes, but this Watson is also a murderer who has an urgent reason to slip his employer a poisoned pill loaded with tetrodotoxin – which is the poison in pufferfish. Yuma figured if he declared Kozushima's death the result of a heart attack, "it won't be considered a crime," but his plan is completely derailed when Kozushima cries out for help over the telephone. That gives Yuma precious little time to get out of the room and create a very basic locked room setup, which he hopes will do the trick. When the door is opened with the master key, Yuma discovers Kozushima left a clue before dying. The letter "Y" written on the floor ("it must be a dying message"). Tsukiyo, of course, rejects any notion Kozushima died from natural causes or committed suicide. She gets to play detective as an avalanche blocked the road and the police won't be able to get to them for another day or two.
So now Yuma has a potential scapegoat and more than ever determined to help Tsukiyo find the murderer by being her Watson. However, the murderer is not done yet with creating locked room murders and other impossible situations. The Glass Tower Murders is not about its locked room murders and tricks. It's a detective novel about detective fiction with a cast of genre-savvy mystery readers who discuss various authors, novels, styles and history of the genre – particularly the development of the shin honkaku mystery. Not to mention the plot-thread about an mysterious, unpublished manuscript Kozushima's claims to have discovered that "completely overturn the history of the genre." And, of course, occasionally winking at the fourth wall ("maybe we are characters in a honkaku mystery set in a creepy mansion and just don't realize it"). Don't mistake The Glass Tower Murders for lightweight fluff or an excuse for Mikito Chinen to fanboy all over his favorite mystery writers, novels and series. The Glass Tower Murders is an incredibly dense, layered detective novel pulling off something truly amazing.
The Glass Tower Murders basically gives you three different, deeply intertwined mystery novels for the price of one. Firstly, there's the Berkeley-style inverted mystery involving Yuma poisoning Kozushima. Secondly, the conventional, classically-styled shin honkaku mystery ticking every box needed for such a novel. And that includes two challenges to the reader! This conventional portion of the novel concludes with Tsukiyo's equally conventional solution to exactly such a mystery, but the story is not over yet. So the last part offers an alternative take turning everything that happened before upside down. And brilliantly so! I can't say much more without risking serious spoilers, except how it reminded me just how popular and influential Ellery Queen is in certain non-English speaking parts of the world. Something that's not always appreciated or even noticed in the West.
Mikito Chinen's The Glass Tower Murders stands as a truly exceptional, self-aware meta-mystery novel that demonstrated you can have your cake and eat it too. You have, on the one hand, a typical shin honkaku mystery with a eccentric mansion, locked room murders, a dying message, cracking codes and a closed circle of suspects – completely shut off from the outside world. The solutions to the various mysteries of this conventional shin honkaku novel aren't half bad. Like the locked room-tricks behind the second and third murders, which give you everything you hope to get from a series of impossible crimes in a bizarre mansion. At the same time, the story goes much deeper than merely references to Hercule Poirot or the “Bizarre House Mysteries” series by Yukito Ayatsuji. Only to escape its own confines to prepare the firework show that would end the story. Simply fantastic!
I'm just not sure I would recommend The Glass Tower Murders as an introduction to the shin honkaku mystery, or the genre in general, because the plot demands some level of familiarity with the detective story. Not just for knowing who's who, or who wrote what and when, but in following the plot along as it twists and turns towards its inevitable conclusion. Today, it's easier than ever to read up on the Japanese shin honkaku mystery novel. Enough to fully appreciate The Glass Tower Murders.
So, in closing, all that's left to say is Chinen really took the meta-mystery to another level of consciousness with The Glass Tower Murders. Highly recommended.
Chinen Mikito is insane. I don't know how he managed to churn out so many books while still practicing as an active physician. Not only did he wrote proper honkaku like this title, he also worked on the Ameku MD light novel series (basically House MD with a honkaku flair, iirc the anime series is available on Netflix with english subtitle). He also wrote a best-selling juvenile mystery series ("After-School Mystery Club"). Hope we see more of his work translated.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't mind more translations of Chinen Mikito's work. Whether it be another novel like The Glass Tower Murders or that mystery club series.
DeleteI would say the Ameku MD anime series is also worth a look. It is fairly short (12 episodes). The anime itself is relatively low budget, and some of the mysteries are not fair-play and the solutions can be a bit farfetched. Still, it does offer interesting and original solutions to impossible crime, with cases such as a drowning victim in a completely dry locked-room, a spontaneous human combustion case, and a man whose leg appeared to be bitten by dinosaurs.
DeleteWhat I remember most from this book (other than it having a really solid solution) is the scene where Yuma is propositioning Aoi to become her Watson, and they get into a discussion about how Great Detectives and Watsons refer to each other, referencing Sherlock Holmes and Kiyoshi Mitarai by name, putting me in a position where I had to translate a scene where characters discuss translation decisions in books that were originally in English, while also referencing books with official translations TO English that made different translation decisions.
ReplyDeleteThat was... fun.
Thanks for another excellent translation of a phenomenal mystery! I'm currently eyeing that Alice Arisugawa collection.
DeleteThe more you read about the strangest houses and piles of impossible crimes, the more you like English and American old classic mysteries. Many modern authors (not only Japonese, but present-day shin honkaku is the best example) know no measure in the chase of amount and complexity of the riddles. So they almost totally lose naturality considering even that mystery stories aren't natural themselves.
ReplyDeleteI hardly read mystery novels in search of realism.
DeleteI guess that first anon wasn't necessarily talking about realism, or a lack thereof, but a lack of restraint and perhaps subtlety coming at the expensive of plausibility. There's something to be said for a more measured approach like the classics. For example, Danro Kamosaki blasted through a dozen novels of plot in just three novels. So even I can see how a more measured approach and parsing out all these great ideas would make for even more great detective and locked room mystery novels. On the other hand, I'm also glad there are writers who push the boundaries of the detective story to their absolute limits or simply push pass it into hybrid territory. Not everyone has to take the same route.
DeleteThat's the point. These hybrids are often based on the global idea for which the riddle and the clues are deliberately engineered. If an author needs a strange house where (and nowhere else) the certain crime can be commited, he just builds and furnishes this house in the normal city right for this event. That's the oddity that classic masters don't let themselves, as a rule. Even Randall Garrett's fantasy mysteries are more natural - the riddles are created for the altenative world, not the world for riddles.
DeleteAs for Mikito Chinen. I read only 'Kamen Byoto'. It's more like a thriller about the intruder and a group of hostages in the hospital. The final twist is not so tricky, but the whole story is nice.
First anon
(maybe some day I'll register a blog of my own)
I guess my question really is "so what?". Within the confines of the story, it doesn't actually change anything which came first, the world or the trick -- within the narrative, it is still framed as the setting existing and the killer exploiting something he knows about the setting. This criticism feels more like looking beyond the text itself and simply commenting on the author's motivations despite how much or how little it's actually reflected in the story itself, which feels pointless.
DeleteAnd even if it were true, we all understand that this manner of mystery novel is a glorified long narrative puzzle we are playing, so I'm not sure trying to write the stories to pretend otherwise is a necessity. Just because older mystery writers didn't do that, that doesn't mean it's a sin for a writer to manufacture a setting for a mystery. The puzzle's "meta" has continued to evolve and there is only so far one can develop the genre without by necessity ending up inventing new settings just to facilitate new, unique ideas. As the genre ages, this level of construction is a necessity. But even then, the claim that classic authors avoid doing this is hugely debatable. There are many Carrs, Christies, Queens, and Brands where it is clear as diamond that aspects of the setting are contrived for the sake of the mystery. I'm not sure one can accuse, for example, Death of Jezebel of being particularly naturalistic.
You don't like the creative decision in this book. That's fine. But trying to legitimize that perspective as a fact, by making unverifiable claims about the thought processes of classic authors, or making comparisons to the writing techniques of the classics, isn't. Arguing that "Agatha Christie never did it, so it must be unacceptable" is fallacious in the extreme.