Mathematical Goodbye (1996) by MORI Hiroshi

The BBB began serializing MORI Hiroshi's Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996), third novel in the S&M series, in the summer of 2024 with the complete edition being slated for release in late February, but technical issues with their distribution platform delayed its availability – a minor blessing in disguise. Technically, Mathematical Goodbye is a Christmas mystery. Yes, the middle of summer is still a little early, however, it's slightly more preferable than two months after the Christmas tree was unceremoniously shown the door.

That also helped making Mathematical Goodbye, translated by Ryusui Seiryoin, the most orthodox of Hiroshi's three S&M novels the BBB has published so far. According to the description, Mathematical Goodbye is the masterpiece that "cemented the popularity" of the S&M (Saikawa & Moe) series, "the most beloved master-disciple detective duo in Japanese mystery history." Let's explore!

Moe Nishinosono, a sophomore at N University, is invited by a classmate, Kazuki Katayama, to celebrate Christmas with his family at the home of his grandfather, Dr. Shozo Tennoji. The home of Dr. Tennoji, a genius mathematician, is Three Stars Mansion, originally an observatory, comprising of three domes with the planetarium serving as its central hall. It's the interior where the architectural peculiarities of Three Stars Mansion can be found. So, naturally, Sohei Saikawa, associate professor in the Department of Architecture, N University, is interested to come along to meet the famous mathematician and examine Three Stars Mansion in person. Moe, on the other hand, is interested in an unsolved mystery Kazuki told her about. When he was a child, Kazuki witnessed how his grandfather performed a magic trick that's better described as a minor domestic miracle.

Outside the mansion stands a gigantic, ten ton bronze statue of Orion big enough for the children to use the space between its legs as a soccer goal, but somehow, someway, Dr. Tennoji made the statue inexplicably disappear – before making it reappear the following morning. Dr. Tennoji promised "whoever solves this mystery will be the heir apparent to the Tennoji family." But nobody solved it. And the problem remained unsolved for the past twelve years.

So, after everyone arrived, Dr. Tennoji gathered them in the planetarium to greet them. Just not in person, because he's been living alone in the basement of the planetarium for the better part of decade. It's his voice booming from ceiling speakers who greets them. Dr. Tennoji begins the celebrations by giving them a few tough math puzzles, but Moe has a challenge/request for him, "can you make that bronze statue disappear, Doctor?" He reluctantly agrees and, when they go back outside, the statue has disappeared again ("there was nothing but concrete spread out before them"). Wait, there's more. The hermit mathematician has one more riddle for them, "what's the greatest trick in human history?" It's the seemingly disappearance of the statue giving the plot about half of its bulk with the other half coming from its reappearance.

When the Orion statue returns to its original place, it's accompanied by a body lying beneath it and second body found in the first victim's locked bedroom. This double murder, committed in close proximity of place-and time, represents something of a reverse, inside out locked room mystery with the first victim discovered outside the locked mansion with the key to the locked bedroom on their body. Saikawa and Moe have plenty to mull over without additional problems like Moe being shot at in the surrounding forest and discovering a skeleton.

 

 

As said before, Mathematical Goodbye is the most orthodox of the three S&M novels translated, so far. So it's obviously not as experimental as Subete ga F ni naru (The Perfect Insider, 1996) nor as densely-plotted, highly specialized locked room puzzle like Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996), but astonishingly solvable. I expected my crude, roughly imagined armchair solution for how the statue disappeared, and reappeared, would end up being dismissed as a ridiculous false-solution. It seemed too easy and at the same time too complicated, but that was more, or less, how it was done. So don't be discouraged when Saikawa philosophizes, "this might be a mathematical problem rather than a magic trick." Of course, the problem with vanishing-tricks involving large, hard-to-move or even immovable objects like houses, trains and statues is that there are hard limitations on what you can do – which is why there are so few of them. I wasn't too bothered about the trick, but a little annoyed nobody thought of (ROT13) fvzcyl gnxvat n fgebyy nebhaq gur cerzvfr gb frr vs vg unq orra zbirq nebhaq gur cynpr, because that's what I would have done if I found myself in such a situation (yay, I'm the world's greatest detective!).

The solution to the double murder is much more interesting and tricky, but not exactly a classically-styled locked room mystery. It's not so much about how the doors and windows were locked and closed, but why there were locked and closed. This is demonstrated when Moe gives, what appears to be, a perfectly reasonable (armchair) solution accounting for every aspect of the murders. Saikawa points out it only work if the murderer had a reason for the bedroom to be locked. Or why the murderer decided to suddenly improvise by using a vase as a weapon. So it's more along the lines of those double murders closely linked in time-and place I have come to associate with Christopher Bush's 1930s novels (e.g. The Case of the Tudor Queen, 1938) rather than a proper locked room mystery, but gave the plot some much needed weight. It's the real meat of the plot even if the who and especially the why are a trifle weak.

Mathematical Goodbye appears on the surface to be another, Yukito Ayatsuji-like "weird house" shin honkaku locked room mystery and, plot-wise, a fairly average one at that, but it's a little more than that. What really lifts up the up book, as a whole, is the theme of inversion running through every aspect of the story, from the setting and vanishing statue to the murders. Hiroshi takes the concept "not everything is as it appears" or "more than meets the eye" as used in the detective story and pulled it inside out and back together again, which created some pleasing plot patterns to ripple through the story. That made up for what it lacked in expected plot complexity/ingenuity. So, Mathematical Goodbye is perhaps not the strongest entry, plot-wise, in the S&M series, but by itself, it's a pretty solid piece of detective fiction trying to do something pleasingly different with tried and tested recipe from the first wave of shin honkaku mystery writers. If you're looking for something a little off-beat for your December reading, you can take this as an early recommendation.

A few odds and ends: Ryusui Seiryoin is improving as a translator as the translation of Mathematical Goodbye is much smoother compared to the clunky translation of The Perfect Insider, but wish the BBB would translate one of Seiryoin's own mystery novels like Kazumikku: sekimatsu tantei shinwa (Cosmic: End of Century Detective Myth, 1996). Who here wouldn't want to read an impossible crime with a figure called The Locked Room Lord threatening 1200 people would die in as many locked rooms. In the mean time, the BBB and Seiryoin are working on the translation of the fourth S&M novel, Shiteki shiteki Jack (Jack the Poetical Private, 1997), in which a serial killer is working the college circuit. Lastly, I don't know how it could be done or who should do it, but a crossover between Hiroshi's Saikawa and Moe and Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series needs to happen. They already feel like they could take place in the same universe and a crossover between the two has all the potential to be the perfect crossover. Yeah, not likely to happen, but it would be great.

Doctors in the Isolated Room (1996) by MORI Hiroshi

Last year, the BBB finished the e-serialization of MORI Hiroshi's celebrated debut work and first ever Mephisto Prize recipient, Subete ga F ni naru (Everything Turns to F: The Perfect Insider, 1996), translated by the second winner of the Mephisto Prize, Ryusui Seiryoin – published as a complete ebook in February, 2023. The Perfect Insider is credited with starting the second shin honkaku wave that moved away from the traditional, Seishi Yokomizo-like trappings of the first wave by placing the puzzle plots in specialized areas rather than bizarre mansions, isolated islands and remote villages. The Perfect Insider certainly represents a departure from the works of first wave writers like Takemaru Abiko, Alice Arisugawa and Yukito Ayatsuji. A locked room mystery set at an IT research institute run by computers where the hermit-like group of researchers communicate via email, chat or VR meetings. In 1996, The Perfect Insider must have read like a science-fiction mystery hybrid recalling Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun (1956/57).

I was a bit more measured in my praise. The Perfect Insider definitely is a fascinating, mostly
well put together and fresh treatment of the classically-styled detective story, but not the best Japanese mystery translated so far. A mystery novel high on ideas, but not executed with rigor we have come to expect and associate with those first wavers.

However, The Perfect Insider is only a first for both MORI Hiroshi and the second shin honkaku wave. So wanted to read more. Fortunately, the e-serialization of the second novel, Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996), was already in progress and the final chapters were released last March – together with the complete ebook edition. Doctors in the Isolated Room is more my kind of detective novel than The Perfect Insider.

Doctors in the Isolated Room is the second title released in the S&M series, but it was actually the first of three completed and unpublished novels with The Perfect Insider being intended as the fourth book in the series. Hiroshi's editor made the call to make it the first in the series, because it worked better as an introduction to the series with a plot that would leave an impression on the reader. And, well, he wasn't wrong. The Perfect Insider turned Hiroshi into a bestselling novelist and kickstarted the scientific period of the second shin honkaku wave, which seems to have inspired personal favorites like Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series and Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by "NisiOisiN." So, for me, that was one of the more interesting aspects of The Perfect Insider, but Doctors in the Isolated Room is exactly the type of detective story I was hoping to find last year in its predecessor.

Before diving into the story, I should note that the BBB edition concludes with a new interview in which Hiroshi calls Doctors in the Isolated Room "an embarrassing piece" and "one of the bitter experiences I don't really want to re-read myself." This can be dismissed as an author balking at his earlier work. It might not be as ambitious, or "transcending," as the celebrated The Perfect Insider, but as an intended "update" of Yukito Ayatsuji & co, it's a success story – which is impressive for a first try. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Doctors in the Isolated Room takes place a year after the events of The Perfect Insider and finds assistant professor Sohei Saikawa and his first-year student, Moe Nishinosono, embroiled in another "mysterious incident."

Two weeks previously, Hokuto Kita of the civil engineering department invited the two over to the Polar Environmental Research Center (PERC) for a tour of the low-temperature laboratory ("it's 20 degrees below zero here"). And to observe one of their experiments. What, exactly, they're doing is a long, technical story that needs not to be recounted here, except that it requires some patience to get from the first mention of the incident to the actual incident. However, if you can appreciate a well developed/specialized setting as much as a sound plot or engaging characters, the tour of the PERC building with its low-temperature laboratory is not going to disappoint you. Nor is the demonstration of the experiment, which is bound to plant certain ideas in your head. Afterwards, the instructors and graduate students of PERC have a little drinking party during which Kenjiro Niwa and Tamako Hattori, two grad students, go missing. A search ensued without results until they decide to unlock the preparation room and find Hattori's body. The body of Niwa is found moments later lying at the bottom of the stairs giving access to the loading room. Both stabbed in the back.

So begins, what the media would come to refer to as, "the PERC locked room murder case." Just like the premise, the locked crime scene is too detailed to describe and not as easy as simply every door and window being locked or watched. There several potential exits, ranging from doors, emergency exits and a defective shutter, which all appear to be blocked and prevented the murderer from escaping (unseen) from the locked portion of the PERC building. This is one of those large scale, architectural locked room murders that Herbert Resnicow specialized in a decade earlier. And no wonder. Hiroshi and Resnicow both had backgrounds in engineering. Doctors in the Isolated Room recalled Resnicow's The Dead Room (1987) where a deadly stabbing occurs in the anechoic chamber at a Hi-Fi company under impossible circumstances. Like the low-temperature laboratory, the anechoic chamber is a controlled environment used for specific experiments and opens the door to do something very different with the locked room puzzle. Resnicow conceived of a truly original, perhaps even unique, solution to the impossible stabbing in The Dead Room. However, while Resnicow concentrated solely on that one problem, Hiroshi turned the locked area of the PERC building into one giant puzzle box.

Firstly, the police search of the building uncovers another startling surprise adding another complication to an already tangled situation. Secondly, the PERC facilities sees several additional, seemingly impossible, incidents when Moe attacked and a fresh body is discovered in the loading room – bringing the noisy mass media to PERC ("Three Locked Rooms and Four Bodies"). Fascinatingly, it's not just the physical environment of PERC hosting a genuine mystery, but it's digital environment as well as Saikawa finds a ghost account hidden deep in PERC's UNIX system with Root privileges. Sure, it clearly dates the story, but it also adds some now historical charm to it. One of these days, we really should compile a list of these 1980s and '90s computer/internet detective stories (early internet access mysteries?). Anyway...

I didn't mention the majority of characters in Doctors in the Isolated Room, numbering well over twenty, because the majority of those characters came across as little more than numbers in a math problem. Saikawa is not an overly emotional person ("besides, I don't care much ... you know, about living things") whose initial surprise at the deaths near him turned into "a puzzlement, like a math problem" he was struggling to solve. So don't expect the usual routine of tackling a murder case or even a locked room mystery of this magnitude, which has both an advantage and a disadvantage. Well, depending on your personal preference and demands from a detective novel.

On the upside, the locked room aspect of the plot is given the space it needed. I feared the locked room-trick(s) would turn out to be either disappointingly simple or ingeniously messy and overly complicated. Neither was the case. The explanation of how the two grad students were killed is tricky, but clearly explained, easy to follow and visualize. Even better is the answer to that age-old question of the classically-styled detective story, "why did the criminal need to make it a locked room?" The other impossibilities are smaller, far less complicated parts in the overall plot, but all neatly dovetailed into the final explanation. So, plot-wise, Doctors in the Isolated Room is a small, technical marvel. However, if you demand engaging characters and some emotional depth to the plot/solution, Doctors in the Isolated Room is going to disappoint as it's consistently the weakest aspect of the plot. The clever locked room-trick also demands a pretty good and convincing reason to use it to kill two people, which tries to go for an emotional gut punch, but came across as very unconvincing in this academic, mostly clinical locked room mystery. So the motive behind the murders landed like a damp squib. I can forgive the lack of characterization, but the human element behind the murder falling flat is admittedly a smudge on an otherwise engrossing take on the impossible crime story.

Doctors in the Isolated Room is not a perfectly-rounded detective novel and perhaps too specialized/technical for some readers, but, purely as a densely-plotted locked room mystery with a research facility, it's an excellent and impressive first stab – better than The Perfect Insider. Hiroshi is a fresh new voice (for us, anyway) in the shin honkaku translation wave and look forward to the third entry in the S&W series. The BBB has already started the e-serialization of Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996), which should become available as a complete ebook sometime in February or March, 2025. Until then, I have Seishi Yokomizo's Akuma no temari uta (The Little Sparrow Murders, 1957/59), Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi hakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960) and Ayatsuji's Meirokan no satsujin (The Labyrinth House Murders, 1988), to carry me over.

The Perfect Insider (1996) by MORI Hiroshi

Back in 2020, I reviewed MORI Hiroshi's "Sekitō no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," 1999), a short story from the celebrated S&M series, tackled the short story collection Seven Stories (2016) last year – translated and published by the BBB. The Breakthrough Bandwagon Books is a collection of Japanese writers who created the BBB to give expression to "a serious desire to try their chances in the English world." Last February, the BBB published MORI Hiroshi's "legendary debut" that netted him the first-ever Mephisto Prize.

Over the years, even before trying some of MORI's short stories, I regularly got recommendations for the anime and live action adaptations of Subete ga F ni naru (Everything Turns to F: The Perfect Insider, 1996). A watershed work for the second wave of the shin honkaku school building on the works of Yukito Ayatsuji, Takemaru Abiko and Alice Arisugawa by couching the "still more-or-less classic puzzle plots" in highly specialized subjects. Additionally, The Perfect Insider is reputedly one of the best-known Japanese locked room mysteries of the '90s.

So enough to kindle my curiosity and knew The Perfect Insider is available to watch, but wanted to wait, and see, if it got swept up in the translation wave's momentum. Well, it turns out that patience really can be a virtue. The BBB began to serialize the translation in July, 2022, before publishing the complete translation as an ebook in February. Everyone who kept nagging on about The Perfect Insider, the following rambling review is for you. Enjoy the mess!

The BBB edition is translated by Ryusui Seiryoin and appears in English under just its Japanese subtitle, The Perfect Insider, beginning with freshman student Moe Nishinosono visiting the remote and isolated Magata Research Institute to meet a genius programmer suffering from multiple disorder personality, Shiki Magata – who's imprisoned by her own grisly past. When she was only a 14-year-old, Shiki Magata murdered both her parents with a knife and got acquitted, because "she was considered clearly insane." Although she always claimed that "the doll did it." Ever since the trial, Shiki has been living away from the public eye in total isolation at the high-tech research institute. Moe has her own reasons to want to talk with the genius programmer and convinces Sohei Saikawa, associate professor of architecture at N University, to setup camp for the next seminar trip near the institute.

Magata Research Institute is located on Himaka Island and appears to be a two-story building, "lack of windows made it impossible to determine the number of floors," situated on the top of a hill ("...the impression as if the research institute building itself were a giant spaceship..."). The institute is entirely run by a computer, "Deborah," who's sort of an AI, but the story takes place in 1996. So she's referred to as the institute's subsystem. The group of mostly nameless researchers dwelling in this fortress-like building are anti-social, hermit workaholics who work in their private rooms or at terminals placed all over the facility ("the familiar and commonplace concepts of actual location and distance are very vague in this place"). Everyone communicates via email, chat or VR meetings as (physical) telephones have become obsolete at the Magata Research Institute ("...about five years ago, we got rid of them all"). This is where Magata has been living for the past fifteen years, locked away in her private quarters and shunning any human contact with conversations conducted through microphones and displays.

So the setting makes it obvious The Perfect Insider is not going to be a typical, traditionally-styled shin honkaku novel like Ayatsuji's Suishakan no satsujin (The Mill House Murders, 1988) or Abiko's Shinsoban 8 no satsujin (The 8 Mansion Murders, 1989). This translation includes an interview to commemorate the completion of the English version and in it MORI tells Japanese readers, back in 1996, assumed The Perfect Insider to be science-fiction, because "the futuristic IT-related atmosphere was still rare back then" – assuring "that level of technology existed at that time." I'll take his word for it, however, I can understand why some readers perceived the book as science-fiction at the time. You have then seemingly futuristic technology like phones with touch screens, a subsystem (AI), robots and VR Carts running on a '90s operating system. And there are elements to the story somewhat reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's science-fiction mystery The Naked Sun (1956/57). That's kind of the story's greatest weakness. A lack of clarity. Is it a detective story with science-fiction components, science-fiction presented as a detective story or a cleverly disguised, full-blown hybrid mystery? During the first three, four chapters, I began to consider Shiki might be a highly advanced, human-like robot who went haywire and killed her "parents." It would have explained why she looked so young or was locked away in a technological research facility rather than a mental institution. And explained certain remarks ("couldn't they have stopped a fourteen-year-old girl while she killed two people with a knife?").

Normally, not knowing which direction the story and plot is going to take is a good thing, but here it really felt like a lack of clarity. I was not willing to entirely let go of the robot hypothesis, even when the detective story elements began to kick in.

After they arrive on the island, Moe Nishinosono returns to the institute with Sohei Saikawa when a system malfunction cuts them off digitally from the rest of the world as all outside calls were canceled and e-mails were sent back. A very different, novel approach to the isolation trope and a welcome change from the blizzards and collapsed bridges. So there's no way to contact the outside world, let alone the police, which becomes pertinent when Shiki's is murdered under somewhat impossible circumstances in a so-called triple locked room – a locked room inside a highly secure institute on a remote island. The way in which Shiki's murder is presented to the characters and reader is something you have read, or watch, for yourself, but, needless to say, the murderer took away some body parts. This is not the only impossible murder at the institute. Shortly after the discovery of Shiki's murder, the body of the director is found inside the cockpit of the helicopter on the rooftop, but the system showed nobody had opened the entrance to rooftop helipad. I think this is where The Perfect Insider begins to shine as a detective story, although not exactly like its shin honkaku predecessors.

I've droned on about this in the past, but it bears repeating that advancements in forensics, technology and science in general should never be an excuse to ditch traditionally-plotted detective fiction as something impossible to do in the modern age. Asimov demolished that lazy argument in The Caves of Steel (1954) with truly futuristic technology driving the classically-styled plot and Keigo Higashino's Yogisha x kenshin (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2005) is another great example for unmentionable reasons. What I really enjoyed about The Perfect Insider is how it tech background was used to expand and give a new dimension to the traditional aspects and even tropes of the plot. For example, the murderer removed several body parts and the high-tech surrounding opens the door to several new possibilities/motives to take a corpse apart or the boat-in-a-bottle suggestion with increasingly smaller robots dismantling each other. Or digitally isolating the island and the meaning of the cryptic message Shiki left behind on her computers, "everything turns to F." You can't do that in a non-tech locked room mystery. I also enjoyed the little discussions and musings on advancing technology and its impact with one perceptive observation how more communication ≠ more in-person communication. However, I don't believe the '80s and '90s vision of a VR future will ever happen. Simply not convenient to constantly have a hotbox strapped to your forehead like a facehugger in heat.

But does it all add in the end? Yes, sort of. On it's own terms. MORI admitted in the interview the plot required an unrealistic set of circumstances and characters to work nor that the tricks are necessary great. I don't think The Perfect Insider is one of the best Japanese locked room mysteries written since the early '80s, but thought the solution to the locked room to be perfectly accessible acceptable and even better was the answer to what really happened in that locked room all those lonely years. You just have no chance in hell of arriving at the same conclusion as it's either not fair enough or requires specialized knowledge. Such as the meaning of everything turns to F. Conceptually, The Perfect Insider is undoubtedly an ambitious novel high on ideas, but not always as rigorous in its execution as it should have been and, purely as a detective story, left me feeling a little conflicted. I should not have liked it as much as I did, but thoroughly enjoyed it despite its obvious shortcomings as a fair play mystery. Perhaps some of that has to do with recognizing the influence of The Perfect Insider on Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series and Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by "NisiOisiN," which are both personal favorites.

So not sure to whom to recommend The Perfect Insider as it goes without saying not everyone who follows this blog is going to like it, but, if you're not adverse to trying a piece of '90s experimental mystery fiction, you probably couldn't do better than The Perfect Insider. I'm certainly looking forward to the English publication of MORI's Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996), which already began circulation.

A warning to the reader: the BBB translation is a little rough around the edged, particularly during the first two chapters, but improves as the story progresses.

Seven Stories (2016) by MORI Hiroshi

Dr. MORI Hiroshi is a Japanese engineer and mystery writer whose debut novel, Subete ga F ni naru (The Perfect Insider, 1996), earned him the first ever Mephisto Prize, which the editors of Mephisto Magazine created in 1996 and irregularly awarded to creative, or experimental, unpublished genre fiction – slanted mostly towards detective fiction. For example, the prize was awarded in 2002 to Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by "NisiOisiN."

Some former winners united in 2012 under the banner The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books to get their novels and short stories translated and published in English. The BBB catalog has a wide variety, almost eclectic, collection of Japanese fiction and non-fiction, but, until now, had only read one of their translations, MORI Hiroshi's "Sekitō no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," 1999). An armchair detective story pondering an archaeo-historical mystery from ancient India with architectural features. Admittedly, a very minor detective story, but a fascinating one and earned his collection of short stories a place on my wishlist.

Dr. MORI's Seven Stories (2016) collects five standalone stories and two stories from his well-known S&M series, which were translated, compiled and edited by second winner of the Mephisto Prize, Ryusui Seiryoin – who won it the same year with Kazumikku: sekimatsu tantei shinwa (Cosmic: End of Century Detective Myth, 1996). By the way, that prize-winning novel sounds amazing with an enigmatic figure, The Locked Room Lord, warning "that 1200 people would be killed in 1200 locked rooms," but that one is, hopefully, for a future date. Just two comments before delving into these stories. I didn't include the original publication dates as usual with my short story reviews, because I found contradictory dates. However, the copyright page notes the originals were published in Japan between 1997 and 2001. Not every story in this collection is a detective story proper. Seven Stories provided me with more than enough reasons to tag the review with the "Hybrid Mysteries" label. 

Seven Stories opens with "Kotori no ongaeshi" ("The Girl Who Was the Little Bird") and is not, strictly speaking, a traditional mystery, but a character-driven crime story with a fairy tale-like quality. And it worked. Unlike some one, or two, of the other stories collected here. The story begins when Kiyofumi Shimaoka resigns from a university hospital position to take father's place as the head of Shimaoka Hospital in the wake of his tragic murder. Dr. Hideo Shimaoka was beaten to death the year before by the victim of a hit-and-run that had been brought to the hospital and the tale that follows stretches out over many years. A story telling of Kiyofumi's awkward marriage to his nurse, Ayako, who (sort of) witnessed the murder and how they bonded with the small bird the murderer left behind in the consultation room. And how that bird eventually flew away. Some time later, Kiyofumi takes on a student nurse, Miho Shirasaka, who tells him she's "the little bird who flew away from that birdcage." But he has to promise not to tell anyone ("keep the secret even from your wife, okay?") she's a bird or she'll "fly away through the window—again."

Ryusui Seiryoin wrote in his afterword, "Interpretive Article," he picked "The Girl Who Was the Little Bird" because he felt it to be "the most well-balanced work and possessed the potential to be accepted by the widest spectra of audiences" among Dr. MORI's works. I think I can see his reasoning. It has themes and plot-elements that turn up in nearly all the stories collected here. Such as an unresolved problem from the past, characters who mirror each other or blend together and toying with identities. What really impresses is how Dr. MORI succeeded in writing a fairly clued, but counter intuitive, low-key detective story as the murder is little more than a background detail in their lives and is rather about good deeds getting rewarded – even good things coming out of bad deeds. A great, if unusual and unorthodox, opening story and a standout of the collection. The kind of story that would have been right at home in Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series (c.f. "Three Birds" from vol. 18). 

"Katahō no piasu" ("A Pair of Hearts") is next and begins with Thoru introducing his girlfriend, Kaoru, to his twin brother, Satoru, who appear to be the mirror image of each other. Thoru is left-handed, has short hair and wears an earring on his left ear, while Satoru is right-handed with long hair and an earring in his right ear. A bewildered Kaoru becomes "obsessed with the mirror image of her boyfriend for reasons that she did not understand," which is a problem compounded when one of the brothers dies in a house fire. But who really died? This could have been an interesting take on the "whose body?" puzzle, but this character-driven tale is an affair of the heart and not the mind. So while not a bad story at all, it's unlikely to excite regular mystery readers who follow this blog. 

"Boku wa Akiko ni kari ga aru" ("I'm in Debt to Akiko") is the third story of the collection and praised to the heavens by the editor, "THE masterpiece of his masterpieces," but left me underwhelmed and slightly disappointed. Nor is it an easy story to describe and judge. A dream-like narrative by an anti-social loner, Kimito-kun, who meets a young woman, Akiko, in the university cafeteria. The questions is how she knows his name, why she picked him as a companion and why Kimito felt compelled to spent a few strange hours with Akiko. Not bad for a coming-of-age story covered in pixiedust, but it's not a detective story or even a slice-of-life mystery. It's not even the best story in the collection. 

"Kokū no mokutōsha" ("Silent Prayer in Empty") is one of only three short stories in Seven Stories that can be properly described as detective fiction. This one is perhaps best described as a quasi-inverted mystery. Midori Mizuki and her 7-year-old son, Yuta, have been living under a dark cloud ever since her husband, Tomonori Mizuki, disappeared following the robbery and murder of the chief priest of a Buddhist temple in town – whose fingerprints were discovered at the scene of the crime. Midori threw herself upon her work and, a few years later, was offered a better paying position in Shizuoka City. So she came to say goodbye to the new priest, but then the murder of the priest and disappearance of his supposed murderer came back up. This is, once again, a more philosophical, character-driven crime story, but very well done one with a fitting conclusion.

The editor originally intended not to include the next story, "Kappa" ("Kappa"), because "the ending of this work is bold enough to go beyond the genre as a mystery fiction" and that has everything to do with the titular yokai (monster) of Japanese folklore. "Kappa" was included on account of it being "one of the first four short stories he wrote" and "this fact has to be emphasized." So it has to be contrasted with the previous (except the second) short stories in the collection, but the story belongs in a collection or anthology of ghost stories or supernatural fiction in general. It reads like a cleaner, romanticized version of Edogawa Rampo's horror stories complete with that strange, twist ending. 

A note for the curious: a Kappa is a green, scaly-skinned humanoid living in bodies of water, like rivers, ponds and swamps, who attack or pull pranks on humans. This creature was used in an orthodox detective story in Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 69.

I've already reviewed the next short story, "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," but it bears repeating that it stands, plot-wise, as arguably the strongest and purest detective story collected here. Better even than the seventh and last work of Seven Stories. 

"Dochiraka ga majo" ("Which is the Witch?") is sadly one of only two short stories in the popular Professor Saikawa and his student Moe (S&M) series to have been translated into English and noted in my review of "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" the series was obviously modeled on Isaac Asimov's The Black Widowers series – as the short stories a regular gathering "officially named 'TM Connection' or 'The Banquet of the Black Windows.'" An unmistakable reference to Asimov's short story collection The Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984) and "Which is the Witch?" appears to have taken its cue from one of the stories in that collection, "The Redhead." This story needs some time to get going, but, during their latest gathering, two different puzzles emerge involving two stalkers, a creepy fortuneteller in a cafe and a girl who "transported herself from one place to another instantaneously" as if by magic. Sounds like an impossible situation, or an open-air locked room mystery, but it really isn't. However, the synergy between the various puzzles and plot-threads were nicely done and tied together. So not a bad story to round out the collection.

All in all, Seven Stories appears to be a mixed bag of tricks, as usually is the case with short story collections, but, to be fair to Dr. MORI and his work, the collection is perhaps best described as an acquired taste – certainly around these parts. So the collection, as a whole, should be read for its storytelling rather than the intricate, inspired plotting commonly associated with the Japanese shin honkaku mysteries. However, the stories were published separately and, if the collection as a whole does not appeal to you, the two S&M stories are still of interest to fans of the traditional detective story. I think Dr. MORI wrote something truly special with "The Girl Who Was the Little Bird," but can also see why it wouldn't be to everyone's taste. So, yes, not a particular helpful and rambling review, but Seven Stories is one of those books that will divide opinions depending on how of a purist you are. You really have to decide for yourself.

Just a heads up, I have something very British, very vintage and very obscure lined up for the next post. Fingers crossed it will be good!

Set in Stone: "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" (1999) by MORI Hiroshi

Hiroshi Mori is a Japanese engineer who reportedly started writing detective stories when he was an associate professor, at Nagoya University, to impress his mystery-reading daughter and his debut, Subete ga F ni naru (The Perfect Insider, 1996), netted the first-ever Mephisto Prize – a Sherlock Holmes statuette awarded to unpublished genre fiction. Some of its recipients formed a publishing group in 2012, The BBB: The Breakthrough Bandwagon, to make their work available in English.

One of the members of The BBB is the subject of today's review, Hiroshi Mori, who insists his name to be written "MORI Hiroshi," family name first and in uppercase, regardless of the language. So I will refer to him as MORI from here on out.

The BBB translated and published seven of MORI's detective stories, collected in the appropriately titled Seven Stories (2016), which comprises of five standalone stories and two from the "Professor Saikawa and his student Moe" (S&M) series. But you can also buy the stories separately. So I decided to sample MORI's writing with a short story combining the armchair detective story with an architectural conundrum from 7th century India!

"Sekitō no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," 1999) is one of two S&M stories currently available in English and MORI obviously wrote it as an homage to the Black Widower series by Isaac Asimov.

The premise of "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" is the monthly gathering of young detectives belonging to the First Investigation Division, of the Aichi Prefectural Police, at Moe Nishinosomo's residence to discuss their cases – which came to be called "The Banquet of the Black Windows." A reference to both the "huge black windows" in the living room of the apartment and Asimov's The Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984). However, the monthly gatherings were becoming repetitive and Professor Saikawa is asked to come to the next meeting with an interesting topic. What he brings is "a case that is not a usual case," which is "a mystery that is not a usual mystery."

Forty years ago, Moe's father, Dr. Nishinosomo, took part in large-scale surveys of Indian temples and focused his attention on "the so-called rock-cut cave temples." A type of monolithic architectural structures cut, carved and chiseled from "a single slab of rock" that left "completely independent, free-standing structures." A peculiarity of these ancient, rock-cut structures is that they were carved out of the rock top to bottom. During one of these surveys, Dr. Nishinosomo stumbled across an architectural anomaly.

Usually, these rock-cut structures are found in the deep mountains or sheer seashore cliffs, but a group of five stone pagodas, called Five Ratha, were found relatively close to a town and they were all made from a "giant, single rock" – all were connected to the same rock on the ground. So the location of these stone pagodas alone is enough to raise some eyebrows, but what's truly inexplicable is that the carpenters carved the finials, which is supposed to adorn the top of pagodas, some two meters away. As if they were "out of the ground like a plant."

These rock-cut structures were made top-to-bottom, meaning that the carpenters should have started with the finials, but why they were carved is a complete mystery.

A neat little historical puzzle with a simple, logical and, admittedly, a pretty mundane explanation, but the strength of the story is not in the answer. It's in the procession of incorrect answers, or false solutions, preceding it. Everyone in attendance gets to take a crack at the problem and their proposed solutions vary from the logical, or practical, to being drenched in the romanticized intrigues of history – which should delight fans of Anthony Berkeley and Ellery Queen alike.

So, all in all, I found "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" to be a fascinating blend of the armchair detective story and historical mystery, but it's a fairly minor detective story that will not satisfy everyone. Personally speaking, I wish there were more armchair detective stories pondering over these obscure, mysterious passages from history. You can definitely expect MORI to return to this blog sometime in the future.