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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE EARLY FICTION OF MATSUMOTO SEICHO: DETECTIVE FICTION AS SOCIAL CRITIQUE

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of the The Ohio State University

Michael S. Tangeman, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 2002

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Dr. William J. Tyler, Adviser Dr. Richard Torrance JcMl Dr. Mark Bender / Adviser department of East/Asian Languages and Literatures

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3059338

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

In a prolific four-decade career that spanned from 1951 to 1992, Matsumoto

Seicho (1909-1992), a writer known for his detective fiction, produced over 600 novels,

short stories and essays that chronicle the struggles of the Japanese working- and middle

class. This study focuses on the first decade of his career as the critical period during

which he develops his political agenda, his narrative technique and important motifs that

figure prominently in not only the period fiction of his earliest works, but also the

realistic mysteries that were highly influential in the development of Japanese detective

fiction.

Seicho’s detective fiction breaks from its prewar predecessors by emphasizing

realistic character motivation and plot devices, or torikkii. It becomes a platform for him

to express his anti-establishment political ideas that are critical of the bureaucracy, the

military, large corporations and research universities. In short. Seicho attacks the

exploitation of the '‘little guy,'” especially by institutional bureaucracies. One of his most

common narrative techniques to accomplish this objective is the creation of a "model

‘salary-man’ detective” who embodies middle-class values such as humility, intelligence

and persistence. Among the motifs that regularly appear in Seicho’s work are domestic

and international travel, interest in local culture, and a fascination with Japanese literature

and history.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This dissertation consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to

the study and a brief biography on Seicho. Chapter 2 analyzes three of his most

important early works, "Saigo satsu" (“Saigo currency." 1951). “Aru Kokura nikki den"

(“A legend of The Kokura diaries" 1952) and “Harikomi" (“Stakeout," 1955). Chapter UJ

treats Seichd’s landmark detective novel Ten to sen (Points and lines. 1957). Chapter 4

discusses another famous detective novel, Suna no utuswa ( Vessel o f sand. 1960).

although it is less successful as a mystery than Ten to sen.. Chapter 5 contextualizes the

first decade of his career by comparing three representative non-fiction essays and a

mystery from 1960-1992 with Seicho's fiction from 1951-1960. In the three essays -

“Ishida kenji no kaishi" (“The strange death of prosecutor Ishida." 1964), “Manshu bo

judai jiken" (“A major incident in Manchuria." 1965) and "Kobayashi Takiji no shi"

("The death of Kobayashi Takiji." 1966) - exemplify Seicho's combination of historical

fact and techniques of detective fiction narration to create reportage. The mystery

novella - "Giwaku" (“Suspicion." 1982) demonstrates the consistency of Seicho*s

approach to detective fiction.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For Jill

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my adviser William Tyler for his careful readings of numerous

drafts and his valuable suggestions. His seminars on Japanese Modernism introduced me

to a wonderful range of authors and works.

Many thanks go to Richard Torrance for suggesting Seicho's work as a potential

dissertation topic, and for conducting multiple seminars on Japanese detective fiction.

His thoughtful analyses of popular genres will continue to influence my scholarship.

Without Mark Bender’s cooperation, this project would have come to naught.

You have my gratitude.

Finally, I want to remember the friendship and guidance of Stephen Filler and Lee

Cohen. Their emotional support during a difficult time helped me finish.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. VITA

May 10, 1969...... Bom - Columbus, Ohio

1991 ...... B.A. East Asian Studies, Denison University

1991 - 1993...... English Teacher OSET Program: Saitama. Japan

1994 - 1995...... Interpreter, Ikeda Interior Systems Sidney, Ohio

1995 - 2001 ...... Graduate Teaching Assistant The Ohio State University

2001 - Present ...... Instructor, Japanese Denison University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: East Asian Languages and Literatures

Specialization: Modem Japanese Literature

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOTE ON STYLE

All Japanese names are presented in the Japanese order (surname followed by

given name.

I have followed the citation format outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style (14th

Edition). Book titles appear in italics. Periodical titles appear in plain text. Notes appear

after the final chapter and before the bibliography.

In the notes, Matsumoto Seicho zenshu is abbreviated MSZ. The 1971 edition is

used in this study.

vii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

A bstract...... ii

D edication ...... iv

Acknowledgments ...... v

V ita ...... vi

Note on Style ...... vii

Chapters:

1. Introduction and Biography ...... I

2. Seicho’s Early Short Fiction...... 23

3. Ten to s e n ...... 61

4. Suna no ntsuwa ...... 112

5. Seicho After 1960: Fiction and Essays ...... 172

N otes...... 209

Bibliography...... 213

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHY

Matsumoto Seicho (1909-1992) remains one of Japan’s best-selling authors. His

popular fiction in a variety of genres - mysteries, historical fiction and period fiction -

achieved remarkable sales figures throughout much of his forty-year writing career. In

1960, he paid more income tax - roughly ¥70.000 per day - than any other Japanese

writer.1 By May 1969 his books had sold over 10 million copies in fewer than twenty

years.2 His continuing popularity in the 1970s and 1980s was evident in the results of an

annual national poll conducted by Mainichi shinbun. Respondents to the poll voted

Seicho their favorite author every year from 1976 to 1986, except for 1979.

In addition to its popular appeal, his detective fiction is regarded as so important

to the history of popular literature in Japan that critics have divided the mystery genre

into “pre-Seicho” and “post-Seicho” periods. Seicho’s work marks an important divide

in the development of the Japanese detective novel: the shift away from contrived plot

twists, physical gimmicks and preponderance of coincidence omnipresent in prewar

detective fiction toward a more realistic mystery.3 Because he believed the prewar

mystery novel lacked realistic motives and characters, Seicho wrote detective stories

featuring plots driven by the plausible motivations of believable characters. Although

realistic characters, motivations and plot devices - torikku (tricks) - were Seicho’s

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. objective, and they regularly play an important role in much of his detective fiction,

certain works feature less-believable gimmicks. Nevertheless, Seicho strove for realism

in his detective fiction, particularly the creation of realistic character motivations. In the

words of one critic, Seicho’s fiction marks a move away from “whodunit" to “why-done-

it,” from plot complexity to character complexity.

Because of the importance of the concept of realism in this study of Seicho's

literature, "realism,” and its variants and synonyms, warrants clarification. Literary

realism in Europe - and in Japan, for that matter - originated as a movement away from

the idealized representation of stock characters through long-established plots that

authors often adapted directly from a canon of approved myths, plays and poetry.4 The

shift toward realism, led by Balzac and Stendahl,

took random individuals from daily life in their dependence upon current historical circumstances and made them the subjects of serious, problematic, and even tragic representation, they [realists] broke with the classical rule of distinct levels of style, for according to this rule, everyday practical reality could find a place in literature only within the frame of a low or intermediate kind of style, that is to say, as either grotesquely comic or pleasant, light, colorful, and elegant entertainment.'

In other words, idealistic representation i.e.. depiction of characters or events based on a

set of principles, gave way to representation based on observable characteristics. The

shift toward characters based on what Auerbach calls “random individuals from daily

life” led to the literary representation of a wider variety of people from a greater range of

classes and professions. Authors also depicted the pedestrian surroundings of these

“random individuals.” Foregrounding these characters before what Erich Auerbach calls

“current historical circumstances” necessitated the use of locations that corresponded

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with those in which a reader could reasonably expect to find the character. Finally,

endowing the character with emotions and personality traits based on characteristics

perceived in similar, real individuals established the particularities of the character, or

those aspects of a personality that differentiate one person or character from another.

Essential to Auerbach’s theory of mimetics is the egalitarian function of realism.

By including characters representing a wider variety of individuals recognizable in

society, literary realism permits the author to treat characters from a broader social

spectrum. Similarly, Bakhtin argues in his dialogic approach that language is a "social

phenomenon.”6 He insists that the "signs of language” relate to referents in the world.

'‘Dialogic relationships are absolutely impossible without logical relationships oriented

toward a referential object, but they are not reducible to them, and they have their own

specific character.”7 At the same time, he maintains that there is an inherent plurality in

the meanings that language can communicate. Changes in inflection and context, for

example, can affect the interpretation of a word, creating multiple meanings. Bakhtin

saw this plurality of meaning as a function of the heterogeneity represented by various

social classes.8

Recognizing the capacity of realistic literature to address the continuum of

society, Seicho applied principles of literary realism to mystery fiction and became the

first creator of what came to be called in Japan the shakai suiri shosetsu. or social

detective novel. “Social” refers here to not just any relationship between people, but to

those relationships that are skewed by one party’s exploitation of an imbalance of power.

While the imbalance may exist as a result of class differences, it may also arise from an

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. inequality between individuals in personal relationships. One can understand how such a

realistic approach to literature became a means of criticizing institutions or individuals

that the author deemed corrupt. The classes for which Seicho felt the greatest affinity

were the working- and middle-classes. These groups are loosely defined in this study as

blue- and white-collar workers, as well as middle management.

The origin of Seicho’s literary success, which coincided with the rise of the

Japanese middle class, especially in the postwar years, is reflected in the middle-class

values that pervade his literature. Regardless of the genre, his works regularly feature

characters who embody honesty, workman-like patience, dogged determination and

appreciation of simple pleasures.9 Even before Seicho began writing the mysteries for

which he is best known, his period fiction (jidai shosetsu) featured characters who

espouse similar characteristics. His early period fiction often centers around characters

drawn from the working class.

Nowhere is the tendency to pay tribute to the middle class more apparent than in

his detective fiction. Seicho found mysteries an effective vehicle for his criticism of the

corruption present in institutions, with government and big business being his most

frequent targets. By regularly casting the self-serving bureaucrat or industrialist as the

murderer, and the middle management, middle-class detective as the avatar of social

responsibility, he seeks to champion the cause of the worker. While the middle manager

might seem to occupy an important place in the company hierarchy, he earns Seicho's

sympathy because of his liminal role in the organization. Neither blue-collar nor elite,

the middle manager is caught between classes. Blue-collar workers are likely to distrust

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. him because he is “management." and top executives tend to regard him as little better

than the blue-collar laborer. Concerned with addressing problems of social injustice in

the real world, Seicho uses the socially realistic detective novel to attack existing

institutions, or thinly veiled simulacra, to expose inequities inherent in postwar Japanese

society.

Because Seicho attempted to create detective fiction more realistic than its

predecessors in the genre, his mysteries often read like chronicles that detail the lives and

families of salaried workers or factory laborers between 1950 and 1970. This technique

of foregrounding the narrative in a readily identifiable present with particulars that clearly

mark the plot as occurring contemporaneous to the lives of his audience made his initial

works extremely popular. That some of his mysteries now lack appeal half a century

after their creation is evidence of the rate at which postwar Japan has changed, and that

rapidity may have diluted the vividness of the texts. To the reader reading these works

some fifty years removed from the literary climate in which Seicho's early works first

appeared, his inclusion of superfluous details - train schedules and routes, names of local

geographical features, thorough descriptions of railcar interiors - is not likely to resonate

with the immediacy it had with readers of half a century ago. Although at times his work

may seem to be dated or unremarkable now, it is important to remember that such was

not the case in Seicho’s heyday.

This study analyzes Seichd’s period fiction and groundbreaking detective works

from his first decade as a writer (1951-1960). The rationale for limiting the project in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this manner is twofold. The most important concerns the significance of his first decade

to the rest of his career. It is in this first decade that Seicho establishes his narrative

technique and the motifs that reappear throughout the remaining three decades. Even in

his earliest non-detective fiction, the elements of the detective genre, which would

ultimately win him such wide acclaim, are evident. Secondarily, by paring down the

massive body of Seicho's work I hope to identify a manageable body of material, while

nonetheless presenting an accurate explication of his works as a whole.

Although there is a wealth of scholarship on Seicho in Japanese, almost nothing is

available in English. Japanese scholarship on Seicho considers all three genres in which

Seicho wrote: mysteries, period fiction and historical essays. In addition to the books,

articles and the occasional special issue on Seicho in Japanese journals of literary studies,

there is a scholarly journal devoted to his works. Matsumoto Seicho kenkyu . which has

been published annually since 1996 by Suna shobo. Aided by the work of scholars

Nakajima Kawataro and Ozaki Hotsuki who contributed numerous learned articles on the

development of Japanese popular literature, the current scholarship praises Seicho's

productivity as herculean, and his work as important to the development of Japanese

realistic detective fiction. Japanese scholars who write on Seicho are consistent in

emphasizing his tendency toward realism and the leftist social critique of his literature.

Nakajima Kawataro finds Seicho's literature important enough to write of Japanese

detective fiction as “pre- and post-Seicho.” a reference to Seicho's break from the

conventions of the prewar mystery and the influence his innovations had on later writers.

Most scholars point to the realistic or social aspects of Seicho's work. Among them.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fujii Hidetada has written a well-researched series of essays for Matsumoto Seicho

kenkyii, in which he reads Seicho's work from 1955-1965 as evocative "snapshots" of life

in Japan at that time. Fujii foregrounds the backdrops to Seicho's works, providing

detailed data about Japanese popular entertainment, small businesses, and interpersonal

relationships that figure in Seicho’s novels. He uses statistics on movie theater

attendance, product sales, and divorce rates to demonstrate the accuracy of Seicho's

depictions. On the whole, Japanese scholarship on Seicho is rigorous and innovative, but

not heavily theoretical.

Some write about Seicho from a less scholarly, more personal perspective. Atoda

Takashi, an author of mysteries and science fiction, takes a self-congratulatory tack in

appraising Seicho’s works. He argues that writing a detective novel, especially for

Seichd, is an intellectual pursuit or puzzle due to the attention required in planning the

murder, creating characters’ alibis, guiding the detective through the detection process,

etc. This analysis is not only self-promoting but also not terribly original. Similarly.

Fukuoka Takashi indulges in a somewhat self- aggrandizing exercise in his memoir o f his

years as Seicho’s stenographer. He provides an insider's account of working closely with

the famous writer, but the tone of his book is highly deferential. As such, there is little

that aids literary analysis of Seicho’s work, but some passages are helpful in shedding

light on Seicho’s approach to the writing process.

English-language scholarship on Seicho has been limited to translations of two

novels and a dozen short stories, a brief passage in a reference book on detective fiction,

as well as one lengthy scholarly article. The most extensive treatment of Seicho to date

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in English is Stephen W. Kohl’s essay in The Dictionary o f Literary Biography (1997).

Kohl draws on Japanese sources to provide a brief biography, and a balanced account of

representative works of fiction. Mark Silver has written an entry for Seicho in The

Oxford companion to crime and mystery writing (1999) that runs to no more than a short

paragraph.

This study consists of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction to the events

o f Seicho's life, particularly his early years before the beginning o f his career as a writer.

The poverty of his childhood in a poor, working-class family and the continued financial

hardships in adulthood before his debut at age 41 are important to understanding his

affinity for Japanese workers. Chapter Two focuses on three of Seicho's earliest stories.

"Saigo satsu’* ("Saigo Currency.” 1950), "Aru Kokura nikki den" ("A Legend of the

Kokura Diaries." \952) and “Harikomi" ("Stakeout,” 1955). These works of short fiction

were selected for the important moments that they mark in the development of Seicho’s

career. As period fiction and prize-winning examples of Seicho's earliest works. "Saigo

satsu” and "Aru Kokura nikki den” are representative of his early, non-detective fiction.

Even in these early, non-detective works, elements of the detective genre - investigation,

an interest in regional cultures and travel - are already present. “Harikomi” marks what

many critics regard as Seicho’s first work of detective fiction.

Chapter Three turns to an analysis of Seicho’s most important, and undoubtedly

best known, orthodox mystery novel (honkaku tantei shosetsu). Ten to sen (Points and

Lines , 1957). It is followed in Chapter Four by a close reading of a second important

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mystery novel,Suna no utsuwa ( Vessel of Sand, 1960). This novel has remained popular,

but it is perhaps most notable for what it reveals as a flawed example of the mystery

genre at which Seicho usually proves so adroit.

Chapter Five provides a context for his first decade as an author by analyzing

representative works from the last three decades of his career. In addition to the detective

story, Seicho produced a number of powerful non-fiction historical essays after 1960.

This chapter contains an examination of three such essays, as well as a mystery from the

1980s.

As already stated, this study delineates the relationship between Seicho's early,

non-detective fiction and his more mature detective fiction. This relationship is

identifiable by the recurrence of motifs throughout Seicho’s prolific output of over 700

works of short fiction, novels and essays. The economic and social struggle between

classes, discrimination, the daily routine of blue- and white-collar workers, and the

liberating, or educational, benefits of travel are all threads that unify his works. Each of

these motifs is rooted in Seicho's personal background, thereby making an appreciation

of his life essential to a fuller understanding of his literature.

Matsumoto Seicho (bom Kiyoharu) was bom on December 21. 1909 in the

northern Kyushu town of Kokura. He was the only surviving child of Matsumoto

Minetaro and his wife Tani. Two daughters were also bom to Seicho’s parents, but they

died in infancy.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Seicho’s parents possessed very different personalities. Whereas his mother was

illiterate, his father was well educated for a man of the time. As a youth Minetaro had

worked as a clerk for the town hall in Yato Village in Tottori Prefecture after graduating

from elementary school. While working at the town hall he taught himself kanbun.

literary Chinese. In 1894. Minetaro left the Matsumoto household in an attempt to escape

the family’s poverty. He moved to Hiroshima where he found work as a live-in clerk at

the home of the police commissioner. Minetaro later told his son he intended to study

law and sit for the bar exam. However, the police commissioner was eventually

transferred to a new post, and Minetaro was forced to find another job. As a result, he

lost the opportunity to pursue his dream o f studying law. While working in Hiroshima,

he married the daughter of a farming family, Okada Tani. who was working in a local

spinning mill. In 1910, the couple moved with their newborn son to Shimonoseki. near

Dan-no-ura, a location made famous in the Heilce monogatari (The Tale of the Heike) as

the site of the defeat of the ruling Taira family in 1185. It has been speculated that

Minetaro moved his family there to take advantage of the booming economy bolstered by

the effect of the Russo-Japanese War on local coal mines.10 In Shimonseki. Minetaro and

Tani eked out a living operating a mochi (sweetened rice cake) shop near the local

highway. In addition, Minetaro attempted to earn money by operating food stalls, selling

fish and serving as a jidanya (out-of-court arbitrator). The family remained poor,

nevertheless. Seicho states in his autobiography that poverty exacerbated the already

strained relationship between his parents. Where Minetaro was happy-go-lucky, Tani

was nagging. Where Minetaro enjoyed reading the newspaper regularly and discussing it

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with neighbors, Tani was illiterate.

Understanding the relationship between Seicho and his father is important to an

understanding of the author's work. Seicho was much closer to his father. His father's

interest in history, local government and journalism was to have a strong influence on his

intellectual pursuits not only in Seicho's youth but throughout his life. Seicho recalls

with pride that his hard-working father was respected by others in their neighborhood.

Still, his memories of his father are not altogether pleasant. He recalls a time when his

parents quarreled so fiercely that his father did not come home for weeks, choosing to

stay with a mistress. On another occasion, his mother strapped the toddler Seicho on her

back as she scoured local bars looking for her husband. Seicho does not romanticize or

excuse his father's conduct in retelling these incidents. In fact, he recounts his

embarrassment at seeing his father waiting for him outside the gates of his school after

one of Minetaro’s long absences from home.

Seicho's formal schooling extended through middle school. In 1924. at the age of

15. he graduated Amaya Middle School, but his family could not afford to send him to

college preparatory courses. He had always been a talented artist, placing first in his

class in art every year. That year he found work at the Kokura branch of the Kawakita

Electric Appliance Company. He hoped to earn enough money to enroll in college

preparatory courses in order to enter Waseda University, where he planned to study to

become a journalist. However, his salary of eleven yen per month at Kawakita Electric

did not permit him to save enough to enroll in preparatory courses, nor did his family

possess the means to send him. This was a time of great disappointment and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. embarrassment for him. Seicho watched his dream of becoming a newspaper reporter

fade. He recalls that he hid out of embarrassment whenever he encountered former

classmates on the street who had been able to continue their education. He ducked into

alleyways when former classmates approached him in their new school caps. He

continued to work at Kawakita until the company failed in 1927. His affinity for drawing

helped him find work in 1928 as a lithographer’s apprentice at the Takasaki Printing

Company in Kokura. The work amounted to little more than cleaning and polishing

lithograph plates, however.

Seicho’s interest in literature stems from his days as an apprentice at Kawakita.

He often read contemporary novels to pass the time while on errands for the company.

He read a great deal of Kikuchi Kan and Akutagawa Ryunosuke.11 He was not a fan of

“I-novels” ( shishdsetsu) that were in vogue in the 1920s. and he disliked novels that

employed the conventions of the genre. By 1927, he had joined an informal literary

circle. Some of the circle members were employed at a local iron works. Although,

according to Seicho, the group was not primarily concerned with advancing the

proletarian struggle through the production of literature, certain of the works created by

its members were decidedly leftist. He recalls that one story was entitled ’’Chosen de

kiga ga okori, jinmin ga tsuchi de tsukutta manju o taberu hanashi" (”A tale of people

who ate dumplings made of dirt during the famine in Korea’’). In the middle of June

1929, the police took Seicho to the Kokura police station for questioning concerning his

involvement with the literary group. A member of the circle had been found in

possession of proletarian publications such asBungei Sensen (Literary frontline) and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Senki (Battle flag). Seicho was held for twenty days, although the police found he had no

connections with the proletarian political movement beyond involvement in the literary

group. Upon his release Seicho returned home to find that his father had burned all of his

literary magazines and books for fear of further reprisals from the police.

Seicho worked as a printer at Takasaki Printing until the death of the owner of the

company in 1936. In the confusion that ensued after the owner's death, business lagged

and Seicho found himself with little work to do. Taking advantage of the decreased

demands on his time at work, he began to work as a freelance illustrator, designer and

producer o f posters and advertisements. In November 1936 he married Uchida Naoko.

the daughter of a farmer, Uchida Kenjiro, from Saga Prefecture.

In 1937 Seicho began to work for the Kyushu branch of Asahi Shinbun as a

freelance illustrator. Because of his lack of formal education. Asahi assigned him the

rank of yatoi'nin , the bottommost rung in the internal hierarchy a t yatoi 'nin ("non

permanent employees”),jun-shain (“associate employees") andsham ("company

employees”). Not only were pay scales different among the three ranks, there was a

stigma attached to being a yatoi 'nin. Yatoi ’nin were paid one day later than other

employees, and often they were not invited to company celebrations. Seicho struggled in

this system to gain both personal and professional recognition. In 1942 he finally

achieved the status of shain as an illustrator. His duties included designing and creating

posters and advertisements for the paper. At the time he was supporting a wife, two sons

and a daughter.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. From June 1943 until the end of the war in 1945, he was called to military service.

He served as a corpsman (eiseihei). and his unit was sent to Korea. He believed he had

been assigned to a unit designated for service abroad by someone who worked in the city

office and who wished to punish him, although there are no details about the nature of the

supposed vendetta. Just as he struggled for recognition at the newspaper. Seicho felt

similarly constrained by the hierarchy of military life. Stationed at Seiyu. near Pusan, he

found an unforeseen outlet for his creativity in the waning days of the war. One of his

duties grew out of the hunger of his fellow troops. The soldiers were so desperate they

took to eating whatever grasses and weeds they were able to find. Seicho was ordered to

create a series of over 20 color drawings of native plants differentiating the edible from

the poisonous. He threw himself into the project. His first volume (unpublished) was so

successful he was ordered to make more. Japan surrendered before he could finish the

project, however. Despite the rigors of war and the restrictions of military hierarchy, he

was able to find a productive means of self-expression.

Upon repatriation after military service in 1945. Seicho admits to briefly toying

with the idea of disappearing and going somewhere other than home. He knew his

parents, wife and three children awaited his return and would again depend on him for

support. He considered abandoning his family and moving elsewhere .o live out his life.

Nevertheless, he returned to his family. He moved his parents, wife and three children

into a farm house where they occupied a six-mat room separated from another family in

the adjoining room by only a sliding screen. Allowed to return to his job at Asahi

shinhun , Seicho soon found that the damage done by wartime bombing raids, and the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. weakened post-war economy, had left little newsprint for newspapers to use. The

situation provided him with more idle time. The birth of a fourth child, a second son. in

the summer of 1946 increased the number of family members to eight, further impressing

upon him the need for a steady income. He struck upon the idea of buying brooms

wholesale and reselling them. He sold brooms in his spare time when not at work at

Asahi. Having achieved some moderate success with sales in the Kyushu area, he

expanded his territory to Hiroshima and Osaka. His travels allowed him to visit these

cities for the first time, seeing temples and historic places he had read of only in books or

heard of from his father. Travel outside Kyushu allowed him to experience various

artistic performances as well. While supporting the family was the reason for these

journeys, ironically the trips also provided a respite from the daily reminders of his

poverty. By the spring of 1948, Seicho had exhausted the revenue potential of his

entrepreneurial venture, and sales bottomed out. While trying his hand at business had

allowed him to feed his family and satisfy his curiosity for travel, he had no capital to

purchase more brooms.

Late in 1950, Seicho saw an advertisement soliciting submissions from the public

for original short stories to be published in Shukan asahi {Weekly Asahi) as part of the

magazine's “hyakumannin no shosetsu" (‘‘Fiction of the Millions") campaign. Aware of

the substantial cash rewards for the three best stories, he entered the contest in hopes of

supplementing his paltry income. Working against the deadline, he wrote his submission.

"Saigo satsu ” (“Saigo Currency") in approximately twenty days. It was awarded third

prize in the nationwide contest, earning him a much-needed cash prize of ¥10,000.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Seicho continued writing period fiction and ‘‘pure" fiction while he worked at Asahi in

Kyushu over the next three years.

In 1953. SeichS’s short story "Aru Kokura nikki den" (“A legend of The Kokura

diaries ”) was awarded the twenty-eighth Akutagawa Prize. The announcement came as a

surprise to him because he thought his work was being considered for the Naoki Prize

instead. In retrospect, it is ironic that a work of Seicho's won the Akutagawa Prize

considering his taste in literature, the types of works which would earn him fame, and his

proletarian sympathies. The Akutagawa Prize is widely regarded as recognizing works of

■‘pure" literature jun( bungaku), while the Naoki Prize is presented for the best work of

“popular literature"taishu ( bimgaku). Seicho writes in his 1970 autobiography of his

dislike for authors of a prominent form of “pure" literature, the shishdsetsu (“I-novel")

that had its heyday during the 1910s and 1920s. He found the I-novel's depiction of the

quotidian lacked the narrativity that he felt made fiction appealing. He certainly did not

think of himself as having written a pure novel in the form of an ‘i-novel" in writing

"Aru Kokura nikki den." However, the story's subject matter and Seicho's own treatment

of it were sufficient to earn the Akutagawa Prize. The prize carried with it an award of

¥50,000 and a commemorative watch. After winning the prize. Seicho requested and

received approval for his transfer to theAsahi paper's home office in Tokyo in November

1953. He moved to Tokyo ahead of his family, who arrived the following year. The

family of eight occupied one six-mat room and two four-and-a-half-mat rooms in Seki-

chd in Nerima ward. Seicho continued to write “pure" literature occasionally but he is

best known for his innovative, gripping detective fiction. His career as a detective fiction

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. writer began with the publication in 1955 of his short story "Harikomi" ("Stakeout").

Although he continued to write fiction while employed at Asahi. by the end of

May 1956, he was sufficiently solvent to devote himself completely to writing. The

decision to become a fulltime writer led to the short story "Kao" (‘The Face"). Not only

was it popular, it became the first o f Seicho's novels to be made into a movie. In

February 1957. "Kao" was awarded the Eighteenth Japan Mystery Writers' Club Award.

That year also saw the beginning of serialization of a seminal work pivotal to both

Seicho's career and the development of Japanese mystery fiction. In February. Ten to sen

{Points and Lines) began al2-month run in the magazine Tabi {Travel). In April. Me no

kabe {Visual Barrier) was serialized for eight months in Shukan Yomiuri {Yomiuri

Weekly). Both works were acclaimed by the critics, as well as being extremely popular,

thereby sparking what came to be known as the "Seichd boom." From 1957 through the

1970s. his detective works were so popular that it was common for Seicho to serialize

multiple stories in different magazines simultaneously. In 1958. both Ten to sen and Me

no kabe were published in book form to great success, and they were adapted to the

screen. Mis output was so prodigious that by the middle of 1959 he had developed

tendonitis in his writing hand. This led to his hiring a professional stenographer to whom

he dictated stories.

At the peak of his productivity, he produced roughly 1,000 pages of manuscript

monthly. His legendary productivity seems to have been related to his childhood poverty

and his relentless calculation of his income based on the number of manuscript pages that

he produced for serialized novels, rather than income derived from the sales of books.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ..[S]ince [book sales] are fluid, I can’t rely on such an unpredictable source. In the

end, my standard is the number of manuscript pages I've actually written.”12 His

stenographer reports that Seicho regularly worked from ten o’clock in the morning until

ten o’clock at night with only an hour-long nap in the afternoon.

Ironically, his phenomenal literary success did not dispel Seichd's insecurities.

He remained unsure of his role as a writer, often feeling like an outsider in the literary

establishment despite the tremendous popularity of his work. Much of this insecurity

originated in what he perceived as a lack of formal training in the craft of writing. His

response to an editor who suggested that he write about the events of his life before he

became a writer is indicative of his ambivalence toward his profession. He cites two

reasons why he did not feel comfortable with the subject.

First of all, because 1 had no intention of becoming a writer from the beginning, I can’t write of my so-called '‘writer’s training.” As for the second reason, I lived forty-some years before I came to make a living from writing and a mere twelve or thirteen since. Because I have so few contacts in the literary establishment, and I cannot write about being close friends with such-and-such an author, or knowing so-and-so, it would be tiresome for the person who reads it.13

Even after his great success, a tone of despair still pervades his appraisal of his life in

1964. More than a decade into a successful career, his self-reflection reads like that of an

outsider.

His insecurities notwithstanding, Seicho embraced his role as a liberal intellectual

public figure in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1975 he joined others such as writer Nakano

Yoshio (1903- ) in voicing opposition to the effort to reform the laws governing the

election of public officials. A series of meetings organized by him in 1974 and 1975

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. between officials of the Japan Communist Party and the political wing of the religious

organization Soka Gakkai to facilitate an accord between the two groups resulted in the

signing of an agreement in July 1975. His personal contacts with the leaders of both

groups and their common denunciation of fascism led Seicho to encourage the

agreement. In 1982, Seicho and six other intellectuals formed the Kokutetsu no jishu

saiken no kai (Committee for the Re-establishment of an Independent National Railway)

in protest against the privatization of the national railway system.

By the 1970s, Seicho had earned a reputation as a formidable scholar of Japanese

history, including Japanese pre-history. Responding in 1974 to a novel by Takagi

Akimitsu, Yamataikoku no himitsu (The Secret o f Yamataikoku), Seicho disputed

Takagi’s claim concerning the location of the first organized state on the Japanese

archipelago, arguing that Yamataikoku was located in northern Kyushu. The dispute

sprang from Seicho’s own work on the same subject. Yamataikoku o saguru {Lookingfor

Yamataikoku). In January 1977, the Asahi Shinhun Company convened a symposium on

the issue of the location of Japan’s first “government.” Seicho served as both organizer

and moderator.

The popularity of his fiction also influenced the Japanese television and movie

industry. In February of 1978. Japan's national broadcasting company NHK presented

him with its 29th Broadcasting Culture Award for the contribution that adaptations of his

works to movies and television had made in improving the media. In the same year, he

collaborated with film director Nomura Yoshitaro to form Kiri Productions, a company

that produced films and television programs. Kiri Productions released its first feature

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. film in 1980, Nomura's adaptation of Seicho's Waruiyatsura (Bad Guys). The company

was dissolved four years later after adapting a number of other Seicho works for the big

and small screens, but in 1985 Seicho formed a smaller corporate entity. Kiri, with the

same purpose of adapting his works to television and film. He himself, at the age of 76.

served as a consultant to the company.

In addition to domestic travel. Seichd frequently ventured abroad to Asian and

European countries. The objective of his travels was primarily research for novels or

essays on history. Notable travels abroad included a visit to Cuba in January 1968 to

attend the World Cultural Meeting held on the ninth anniversary of Castro's rise to

power. In February 1968 he was invited to North Vietnam for an interview with Prime

Minister Phan Van Dong. Seicho's socialist political sympathies paved the way for these

visits sponsored by Communist governments. In 1987. he was invited to attend the Ninth

World Mystery Writers' Convention in Grenoble. France where he lectured on mystery

fiction.

He continued to be recognized for his contributions to the Japanese literary world.

On January 1. 1990. the Asahi Newspaper Company awarded him the Sixtv-Second

Asahi Prize for 1989. In 1991 four major television networks - TBS (Tokyo

Broadcasting System), Fuji Television. TV Asahi and Nihon Television - aired a

dramatization of a Seicho novel every month for a year in tribute to the author's forty

years of work.

His health began to fail in the late 1980s. In 1988. he was hospitalized, and the

vision in his right eye steadily worsened. In the summer of 1991. Seicho stopped writing

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. after 40 years of producing a steady stream of mystery fiction, historical fiction, "pure"

fiction, historical essays and social criticism. On April 20, 1992 he suffered a cerebral

hemorrhage. He appeared to recover in the following months until his condition took a

sharp turn for the worse in late July. By that time, he was diagnosed with liver cancer.

He died on August 4, 1992. Within a year o f his death, a committee formed to plan a

memorial hall in honor of Seicho. the author and man. The committee selected Seicho's

boyhood home Kokura in northern Kyushu as the site. The museum opened in 1998 on

the sixth anniversary of his death.

The above outline of Seicho's life provides a general framework for

understanding the relationship between his life and the motifs that suffuse his writing.

His works repeatedly return to the following motifs: travel, regional cultures, compassion

for the working- and middle-class, and critiquing the establishment. These recurrent

motifs have their roots in Seicho's poverty, the injustices he endured at work while

struggling to feed his family, and the temporary release that travel afforded him.

Travel itself became an especially important motif that recurs in his writing. The

most common form of travel at the time was rail, and it is the principal mode of

locomotion in his works. Seicho takes great pains to provide precise timetables for the

trains, detailed descriptions of the routes taken by his characters, including the names of

train lines and stations along the route, and those of connecting stations and lines. In

addition to the logistics of rail travel, he includes descriptions of train interiors, station

waiting rooms, and small rural stations. He describes the behavior and dress of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. passengers. His successful literary career afforded him the opportunity to fulfill his

ambition to travel widely domestically, and eventually, internationally. In every way. he

sought to capture the romance of travel.

The travel motif is not only a practical means of delivering characters to distant

locales, but it is also closely related to the incorporation of local culture. Regional

dialects, local scenery, prominent architecture, regional heroes and folk crafts regularly

appear in Seicho’s works. Of all the regional locales he details, his home island of

Kyushu figures in his early works with the greatest frequency. It is no coincidence that

all of the works treated in this study are set partially or completely in Kyushu. If. as I

state at the beginning of this chapter, Seicho's novels suffer from the danger of now

being considered dated, this may be due to the significant technological advancements in

modes of travel in Japan since the 1970s. Invoking the train, an institution central to the

ethos of domestic travel and adventure in Japan. Seichd harkens back to a time in

twentieth-century Japan when rail was the chief and best form of transportation.

Let us turn now to consideration of Seicho’s early non-detective fiction.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2

SEICHO’S EARLY SHORT FICTION

This chapter presents an analysis of Seichd's representative early works of short

fiction in order to identify the thematic commonalities between his jiticii shosetsu (“ p e rio d

fiction”) and mystery fiction. Regardless of the genre in which he worked. Seicho used

popular fiction throughout his career as a means to critique the contemporary political

establishment. Toward that end, his works o f both period and mystery fiction feature

more emphasis on characterization and emplotment than earlier mystery fiction: a

tendency to feature working- and middle-class protagonists: intelligent, perceptive and

inquisitive characters cast as underdogs in a struggle against political or social systems:

and the foregrounding of the Japanese countryside, especially Kyushu, which stands in

opposition to the center. The three works to be discussed in this chapter are "Saigo

satsu" ("Saig5 currency." 1951). "Aru Kokura nikki den" ("A legend o f ‘The Kokura

Diaries.’” 1952) and "Harikomi" (“Stakeout." 1955). They are highly indicative of the

characteristics mentioned above.

In the early phase of his career between 1951 and 1957. Seicho's work straddled

the tenuous boundaries between "pure” and popular literature. In spite of his intent to

write a work o f historical fiction, and therefore, one in a genre typically classified as

taishu bungaku (“popular literature”), “AruKokura nikki den” was the recipient of the

Akutagawa Prize, an award that is typically reserved forjunbungaku “pure” or "high

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. literature.” Likewise, '‘Harikomi.” which he intended to be a bittersweet, romantic

character study was received by the critics and general readership alike as a work of

mystery fiction. Ironic as it may seem, it was as though Seicho stumbled upon the genre

o f detective fiction. Detective fiction would become, of course, the source of his

remarkable success.

These ironies notwithstanding, Seicho's literary career got off to a fortuitous start.

His maiden work, “Saigo satsu” and his third work. “Aru Kokura nikki den.” won

immediate critical acclaim by attracting the attention of established authors and critics.

Saigo satsu was awarded third prize in the Asahi Shinhun's contest Hyakuman-nin no

shosetsu (“Fiction of the Millions") held in 1950.1 In being awarded the Twenty-Seventh

Akutagawa Prize in the latter half of 1952. “Aru Kokura nikki den” won immediate

critical acclaim from established authors such as Kawabata Yasunari. Sato Haruo and

Sakaguchi Ango.

"Saigo satsu"

Publication of “Saigo satsu” (“Saigo currency”) in March 1951 launched Seicho's

literary career. Struggling to feed a wife, children and parents at the time, Seicho wrote

this piece of period fiction in hopes of supplementing his meager income as an illustrator

who worked in the advertising department of the Northern Kyushu branch of the Asahi

Shinbun. With no formal training as a writer, or real prior experience writing fiction, he

did not regard his prospects as very favorable. He had chanced upon the idea for the

story while perusing an encyclopedia. He was intrigued by the entry for "Saigo satsu." or

currency printed to pay rebel soldiers who joined Saigo Takamori in the 1877 Satsuma

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Rebellion against the imperial government, and he decided to construct a fictional story

around it.2

The plot runs as follows: In 1950, a newspaper in Kyushu was soliciting

documents and artifacts to commemorate two thousand years of Kyushu history. One

resident submitted paper currency printed for the rebel forces of Saigo Takamori. as well

as a manuscript of events related to it. The man who submitted the manuscript received it

from his grandfather, who in turn received it from its author. It purports to be the

autobiography of a friend of the man's grandfather. The newspaper employee in charge

of handling the submissions becomes engrossed in the story, and he transcribes the

manuscript into modem Japanese for publication in the newspaper. The manuscript is the

autobiography of Himura Toshimichi. the son of a minor samurai from Satsuma in

southern Kyushu. Toshimichi works as an assistant to Mori Hansei. the director of the

Currency Office, where the rebel currency is printed. During the rebellion led by Saig5

Takamori. Toshimichi is wounded in the battle against government forces. Moreover,

when Saigo?s forces retreat under the cover of darkness, he gets separated from his

comrades. Unable to call out for fear of alerting the enemy, he wanders alone through the

mountains until he faints from pain and exhaustion. Villagers sympathetic to the rebels'

cause find him and tend to his wounds for two months. Finally, he is wel! enough to

return home. Toshimichi has been away for fourteen months.

Chaos ensues following the suppression of the rebellion by the imperial army.

Toshimichi returns home to find his father died six months earlier, their home burned and

the whereabouts of his stepsister, Sueno, unknown. With no family ties to keep him in

Kyushu, he travels to Tokyo to make his way in the world. He arrives penniless.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although he is samurai, he is forced to take a job pulling a rickshaw. One evening, he

delivers a wealthy customer to an elegant residence. When they arrive at the house, he

discovers the passenger, Tsukamura, is married to his stepsister. Sueno does not

recognize Toshimichi, however, when she approaches to pay the fare for her husband.

Toshimichi returns to the same street the next day. hoping that she will need his services.

When she boards his rickshaw, she finally recognizes her stepbrother, and they enjoy a

tearful reunion. Brother and sister meet several times over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the husband. Tsukamura. grows jealous and suspects his wife of having an

affair.

An acquaintance. Uzaburo. introduces Toshimichi to a paper manufacturer named

Minetaro, who has a moneymaking scheme. Minetaro plans to purchase the worthless

rebel currency at a fraction of the cost and then persuade the government to buy it back at

a slightly higher value. He bases his plan on the well-known case of Iwasaki Yataro. the

founder of the house of Mitsubishi, who used a similar scheme at the beginning of the

Meiji era to purchase devalued local currencies prior to a buyback by the national

government. Minetaro seeks Toshimichi's help because he has seen him in the company

of Sueno. Minetaro hopes the rickshaw driver will use his relationship with Sueno to

gain access to Tsukamura, a respected bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance. He hopes

Tsukamura will convince his superiors to buy back the Saigo currency. He suggests that

Toshimichi emphasize the benefit that the buyback will have on those suffering economic

hardship because they were forced by the rebel government to use devalued currency.

When Toshimichi approaches Tsukamura, the bureaucrat’s previously warm demeanor

changes. He adopts the coldly analytical demeanor of a professional bureaucrat and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rejects the idea out of hand. Not long after the conversation, however. Tsukamura

reverses himself and voices his support for the plan, promising to convince his superiors

of its merits. Before Toshimichi and Minetaro leave for Kyushu, he tells them to keep

everything absolutely secret. That way, he says, they will avoid the kind of hysteria that

accompanied the Iwasaki buyout.

Toshimichi and Minetaro go to Kyushu to buy the currency. Initially, their

attempts are unsuccessful, and they enlist the aid of Ito Junpei. Junpei had nursed

Toshimichi back to health when he was wounded and became separated from the fleeing

rebel army. He tells the two men that people are reluctant to sell their devalued currency,

although a rumor is circulating that there will be a government buyback in the near

future. Toshimichi and Minetaro are stunned. How could the details of their plan already

be known in Kyushu when they have told no one of their intentions? Junpei tells them

that the problem is compounded by the memory of a similar rumor that raised people's

hopes in the past. Ultimately it came to naught, thus making residents suspicious of

future unfulfilled promises.

Convinced that he too has an opportunity to turn a profit. Junpei casts his lot with

Toshimichi and Minetaro. Because Junpei is well known in the area, the three men are

able to buy back the rebel currency. Still, people are suspicious, and they demand twice

the price that Minetaro and Junpei intended to pay. As word of the buyback spreads, the

three men are only able to buy ten thousand yen worth of currency. Because of the

inflated selling prices, their capital is exhausted in a couple of months.

When Toshimichi returns to Tokyo, he learns from Uzaburo that he is wanted by

the police for his involvement in a currency scam that has targeted residents of southern

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Kyushu. He is convinced that Tsukamura lied about his promise to convince the Ministry

of Finance to buy back the currency. Tsukamura must have leaked word of the "scam” to

the Miyazaki Prefectural Office via official channels in order to prevent the entrepreneurs

from turning a profit. Toshimichi vows to carry out an unspecified "final deed” against

Tsukamura.

Because part of the last page o f the autobiography has been tom off, however, it

is impossible to determine what his intentions are. or what his "final act" means. At this

point the focus of the story returns to the reporter gathering the historical materials for the

Asahi Shinbun. Puzzled by the manuscript's cryptic conclusion, he wonders why

Tsukamura is unknown to historians. After all, he was sufficiently well connected and

had the ear o f high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Finance. This fact, coupled with

the missing portion of the final page, causes him to guess that Toshimichi killed

Tsukamura in anger. However, a careful search of newspapers from the period does not

turn up any articles about Tsukamura's murder or Toshimichi's arrest. Saigo satsu ends

with a brief citation from an 1879 Kyushu newspaper. It cites rumors of a government

currency buyback circulating among people living in Miyazaki prefecture.

Seicho's maiden work - a work of period fiction - anticipates his later detective

works in several ways. The traditional interpretation of Saigo satsu as period fiction is

correct because of repeated mention of historical figures, events and artifacts in the story.

Nevertheless, it is the mysteries at the core of the work that provide the tension that

drives the narrative. However, unlike the more traditional mysteries of Seicho's mature

fiction, this story exhibits an unresolved conclusion. As such, it is a break from the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. generic conventions established in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States

and then employed in Japan. While this maiden work exhibits many of the same

characteristics found in Seicho’s later mysteries, it does not present them with the same

degree of realism typical of his more mature detective stories.

Saigo satsu merits its traditional classification as period fiction. Unlike historical

fiction, period fiction is understood as fiction set in a historical period with real historical

figures, who often occupy a peripheral space in the narrative, yet the work lays no claim

to historical veracity. Its protagonists are fictional characters in fabricated plots whose

lives unfold before the backdrop of historically verifiable events. When historical figures

appear in period fiction, their presence is often no greater than mere mention of a name or

a tenuous connection with one of the primary characters. When they speak or act in

period fiction, they often occupy a liminal space, with their words or deeds having little

impact on the plot. By contrast, historical fiction is set in a historical era. but its

treatment of the events and the deeds of the historical figures is more consistent with the

historical record. Thus, Saigo satsu qualifies as period fiction because Seicho does not

claim historical accuracy for any of his characters' identities or actions. Similarly.

numerous historical figures are mentioned in the work, but they have no direct bearing on

the characters or the action of the plot. Historical events such as the Seinan War and the

Iwasaki buyback scheme provide a backdrop for Toshimichi’s actions, but Saigo

Takamori. Okubo Toshimichi, Okuma Shigenobu, Matsukata Masayoshi and Itagaki

Taisuke are consigned to the periphery. Their names are mentioned, but they do not play

any role in the work beyond establishing the historical authenticity of the period. To

borrow terminology from the murder mystery, historical personae act as witnesses who

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. testify to the veracity of the historical setting - in this case the 1880s - by mere mention

of their names.

Although the period fiction elements of the work are important, the initial

identification of the Saigo currency and the disappearance of Tsukamura from the

historical record prove to be the mysteries that make the work compelling reading. When

he sees ''Saigo satsu or Saigo fuda” on the list of submissions, the newspaperman

narrator and his fellow employees are initially confounded. The nature of the submission

is in doubt due to the dual reading possible for the final "satsu" character. A young

employee asks"Oi, kore wa nan da, Saigo fuda to wa nan da? ” (“Hey, what's this?

What's a ‘Saigo card?'”).3 While the narrator correctly identifies the first two characters

as the "Saigo" of Saigo Takamori. he does not know which reading to apply to the third.

Nobody seems to know how to read the final character of the entry because the item is

very rare. Reading the character with its Japanese pronunciation o f "fuda" (card) rather

than the Chinese reading of "satsu " (paper currency, bill) is due to the obscurity of the

item. Only by checking a reference volume does the narrator leam the proper reading of

the character and the history of the currency.

Saigo satsu - Seinan senso ni saishi Satsugun no hakko sita shihei. Meiji jyu, Saigo Takamori kenpei, atumaru mono yonman. [churyaku] Ddnen shigatsu Kumamoto ni yabure, Hinata ni tensen suru ni oyobi Kagoshima to no renraku ga laeta tame, tsui ni rokugatsu ni itatte fukan shihei o hakko shita. Kore ga iwayuru Saigo satsu de. kanreisha o nimai awase, sono shin ni kami o hasande, keiko to shita. Jyu-en, go-en, ichi-en, gojyu-sen, nijyii-sen, jyu-sen no rokushu. Hakko sokaku wa jyuu-man en o kudaranakatta to ii. Gakumen no dai naru mono wa saisho yori shin yd ga mazushiku shokaku no mono nomi Saigo no ihd niyori shibaraku iji shita ga Satsu gun ga Nobioka ni yaburarete Kagoshima ni laikyaku suru ya shinyo wa mattaku t sue hi ni ochi, tame ni dochiho no shojisha wa odai no songai o komurashita. Rango kono songai tenpo o seifu ni koshin shita ga, zokugun hakko no shihei no yue o mote yoirarenakatta. 4

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Saigo currency - Currency issued by the Satsuma Army during the Seinan War. In 1877 Saigo Takamori raised an army of 40.000. (...) In April of the same year he was defeated at Kumamoto and. following a shift in the battle to Hinata, he lost contact with Kagoshima whereupon he issued the inconvertible notes in June. They were called “Saigo satsu,*' and were made by pressing a piece of paper between two pieces of cheesecloth. There were six denominations: ten yen, five yen, one yen, fifty sen, twenty sen and ten sen. The total amount issued was said to be no less than 100,000 yen. The major problem was that, from the outset, there was little confidence in the larger denominations and only the smaller denominations were maintained based on the popularity of Saigo. however, the defeat of the Satsuma Army at Nobioka and the subsequent retreat to Kagoshima caused confidence [in the currency] to plummet leading to great losses among those people in the region holding the notes. After the war. there was an appeal to the government to stop the losses but nothing was done because the currency had been printed by the rebels.

Intrigued by his discovery of the existence of the rebel force's currency. Seichd

invests his newspaperman narrator with the same curiosity about the story that Seicho

himself experienced upon learning of the currency himself. Seicho provides insight into

his motivation for writing Saigo satsu. He came across a citation about the Saigo

currency in an encyclopedia, and it led him to draw a correlation between the financial

turmoil of Japan at the time of the Seinan War (1877) and that of the immediate post-war

period.5 Both periods saw Japan struggling to recover from war - one civil, the other

against foreign countries. While Seicho does not specifically equate the effects of a

localized civil war in Meiji with those of a global conflict in Showa. it seems plausible to

argue that he is drawing a parallel between the two periods of economic crisis.

Seicho's linking commonalities in the economic condition of the 1880s and the

1940s/1950s is an example of what the literary scholar Ri Tokujun identifies as Seicho's

ability to write period fiction that remains faithful to the period in which it is set but

resonates with modem readers, an essential strategy in period fiction. He suggests

Seicho's historical fiction is successful because he carefully identifies appropriate

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. materials with an eye toward connecting the past with the present.6 In the case of Saigo

satsu, a resonance is set up between the economic condition of the past and present. For

example, Seicho's choice of Toshimichi as the protagonist enhances the effectiveness of

the work in this respect. He is the son o f a well-to-do samurai. After the Seinan War. as

a soldier in the vanquished army, his economic situation becomes desperate.

Nevertheless, he travels to Tokyo determined to solve his financial troubles. The

relationship between his situation and that of the average Japanese after World War II is

clear. Most readers would have appreciated the plight of a character who fights on the

losing side, and as a result, loses economic stability. Yet he retains his intelligence, his

innovativeness and his work ethic - qualities that occur with consistent regularity in

Seicho's characters. Hence, Seicho is able to not only draw an analogy establishing a

connection between historical eras, but also commonalities among the personal

experiences o f people living in different periods.

Saigo satsu has been criticized for the excessive use of coincidence. Perhaps the

weaknesses cited by Kuwabara Takeo in his critique are typical of an inexperienced

writer.7 He cites, for example, the following glaring coincidences: Toshimichi's picking

up Tsukahara in his rickshaw and the reunion with his stepsister occasioned by this

meeting; Uzaburo and Minetaro seeing them together.8 But. as I argue, these

coincidences merely follow formulae carried over from pre-war mystery fiction. It is the

form that is the source of the problem. Although the guzensei (“coincidental nature") that

Kuwabara identifies in Saigo satsu can be viewed as proof of the author's inexperience,

given Seicho’s voracious reading of Ranpo, Poe and other mystery writers, it is likely that

his early writing reflects the influence of pre-war mysteries in which the skill a inventing

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. plot twists was privileged over believability. Moreover, Kuwabara also writes that the

“use of coincidence in fiction is, of course, forgivable." yet without specifying when and

to what degree coincidence is acceptable.9 He seems to be advancing a view of fiction

that privileges realism, but he does not provide guidelines for evaluating when

coincidence is or is not realistic.

In contrast to Kuwabara, Tamura Sakae finds the coincidences of the story less

problematic than Seicho's use of hackneyed imagery and vocabulary. He cites Saigo

satsu as typical of a writer’s first effort. As an example of Seicho's “purple prose.'* he

cites a passage from the meeting between Toshimichi and Sueno after their long

separation.

Kurai naka kara marumage ga uki deta ga, kukkiri to shiroi kao o mita shunkan no Toshimichi no keigaku wa nan ni tatoe yd mo nai. Yiirei o mite mo ko wa odorakanakatta dard. Sakkaku ka to utagatta kurai de aru. — Sueno de atta.

The head of carefully-coiffed hair in the woman's marumage style emerged from out of the darkness. The moment Toshimichi saw the white face there was no way to describe his utter surprise. Even if he had seen a ghost, he probably would not have been more surprised. He was so taken aback, he wondered if he had not seen an illusion — It was Sueno.10

Tamura finds Seicho's use of “ghost" ( yiirei) and "illusion" ( sakkaku) as signs of

inexperience. These words evoke images reminiscent of thrillers and horror stories from

pulp magazines of the 1920s. Moreover, they run counter to the realistic tone that Seicho

is attempting to establish. In addition, the device of the tom final page of the manuscript

is also highly reminiscent of the contrived and cryptic clues of pulp mysteries. Because

the mystery of Tsukamura’s fate hinges on the absence of a portion of the final page, the

plot device is vital, albeit hackneyed. The missing portion leaves the reporter to guess at

Toshimichi’s “final deed.” The lack of information about Tsukamura in the historical

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. record leads the reporter to suspect that Toshimichi killed Tsukamura. Despite the

importance of the device to the plot, the gimmick is inconsistent with the realistic tone

that will become the hallmark of Seicho’s mysteries.

The mystery in this work revolves around the unknown fate of Toshimichi and

Tsukamura. The reporter-narrator suspects Toshimichi of murdering Tsukamura based

on clues present within the manuscript, the condition of the manuscript as he received it.

and the historical record. In the tale told in the manuscript, the final phrase reads

" ... nokoru wa saigo no saku nan ' 11 ("...all that’s left is the final deed”). The reporter

finds this last line disturbing. Although the description of events at the end of the

manuscript is vague, he believes Toshimichi planned to exact revenge on Tsukamura as a

'Mast resort.” After all, the bureaucrat’s deception led authorities to seek to arrest

Toshimichi on suspicion of swindling the residents of Kyushu. Although Toshmichi had

been encouraged by Tsukamura to undertake the purchase of the devalued currency, he

soon found himself wanted by the government for attempting to defraud citizens. The

reporter believes Toshimichi’s "final deed” was the murder of Tsukamura.

The final page of the manuscript also suggests the nature of Toshimichi's action

against Tsukamura. The reporter believes that the manuscript was sent to Toshimichi’s

friend immediately before Toshimichi carried out the "final deed" rather than afterward.

He does not say what leads him to this conclusion, nor does the text provide a clue. Yet

he surmises that Toshimichi wrote to his friend Tanaka of his intentions. The reporter

guesses that when Tanaka learned Toshimichi had killed the bureaucrat, he destroyed the

incriminating part of the final page. He infers that Tanaka’s actions were motivated by a

desire to save his friend from prosecution should the authorities come across the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. manuscript. Still, because the final page is incomplete, the reporter cannot be

categorically certain of the nature of Toshimichi’s final deed.

The reporter’s theory of Tsukamura’s murder is corroborated by the conspicuous

absence of the young bureaucrat’s name from any historical record. He reasons that an

official who occupied a post in the Meiji bureaucracy as prominent as assistant to the

Minister of Finance Okuma Shigenobu (1838-1922). was surely capable, if not politically

well connected. He finds it odd that Tsukamura's name never appears on lists of

government officials commonly known to historians. He spends a day at the library

scouring newspapers from 1869 in hopes of finding information about the murder of

Tsukamura. But he finds nothing.

Thus we see that the narrative appears to offer a solution to the mystery of

Tsukamura's “death." while actually withholding elucidation. The newspaperman

conducts his investigation but is unable to determine what happened to either Toshimichi

or Tsukamura. Seicho presents the pieces of the puzzle in such a way as to suggest only

one plausible conclusion for the events of the narrative - Toshimichi killed Tsukamura.

Yet the ending is not nearly so tidy as Seicho suggests. Because the reporter does not

know if a crime occurred, the conclusion of the work suggests yet another mystery. Did

any crime occur at all? Based on circumstantial evidence and the assumptions that

Seicho assigns to the narrator, it would seem Toshimichi killed Tsukamura. This

conjecture is based on the assumption of a cause-and-effect relationship between two

details in the narrative: Toshimichi’s mentioning his “final deed” and the historical

obscurity of Tsukamura. Despite the assumed connection between Toshimichi's

mentioning his “final deed" and the missing portion of the manuscript, there is no way of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. knowing the particulars of the “final deed." or if he followed through with it. After

having written of his intentions, and having sent the manuscript to his friend, perhaps

Toshimichi lost his nerve and did not kill Tsukamura. If we follow this line of reasoning,

then it is logical to assume Tanaka tore the incriminating information from the final page

in order to “save face” for Toshimichi. As a samurai. Toshimichi would have been

obligated by honor to carry out his vendetta. Meanwhile, one can hypothesize a number

of reasons why Tsukamura may not have risen to a more prominent position in the

bureaucracy and earned a place for himself in history. Death by illness or accident are

possible. Or falling out of favor with his superiors may also explain his obscurity.

Lacking verification by an unbiased third-party - for example, a newspaper article - the

narrator cannot automatically assume that Toshimichi killed Tsukamura.

The pervasiveness of government corruption and its relationship to the

exploitation of the poor and members of the working class is a recurring theme in

Seicho's fiction. It emerges in his maiden work as well. Tsukamura is the first

incarnation of a type of villain who reappears throughout Seicho's fiction: the self-

serving bureaucrat who manipulates those beneath him to serve his own ends.

Tsukamura’s motivation for setting up Toshimichi is not monetary gain or the

consolidation of power in his capacity as a government official. Rather, he acts out of

jealousy for the perceived romantic relationship between Toshimichi and his wife Sueno.

The currency buyback ruse is intended to discredit Toshimichi and thereby remove an

apparent rival for his wife’s affections. Manipulating the bureaucracy for his own ends

marks Tsukamura as a typical Seicho villain.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In contrast to the privileged and powerful villain, Seicho often casts his hero as a

poor or working class underdog. Toshimichi is the first of many examples. The personal

transformation he undergoes evokes sympathy in the reader. Although he was originally

bom to a samurai family, his father loses his lands and title as a result of the abolition of

the feudal system. He and his father turn to farming. His upbringing as the son of a

samurai - even as a minor, provincial samurai - initially leads him to look down on his

stepmother and sister Sueno, who are commoners and not of samurai background. After

his father's death, Toshimichi sells the farmland and moves to Tokyo. There he takes a

menial job pulling a rickshaw. His lowly occupation and the time he spends among the

working class cause him to change his previously haughty ways. He works and

socializes with the townspeople he once disdained. He even goes so far as to fall into the

currency speculation scheme with two townsmen. Uzaburo and Minetaro. However, his

desperate attempt to overcome poverty by purchasing the devalued currency fails because

Tsukamura conspires against him. He struggles to better his station in life but a wealthy

representative of the establishment, in the person of Tsukamura. intervenes and thwarts

the hero.

In Seicho’s first work o f fiction, the elements of the mystery genre in which he

would excel are already apparent. The struggle between social classes, the most clearly

developed aspect of his later fiction, is evident in his earliest work. His social agenda is

also apparent in his sympathy for the working class and his critique of the bureaucratic

establishment. Moreover, Saigo satsu represents an early attempt at literary realism and

believable motives seen in his later fiction. Finally, “conspiracy," prominent in Seicho’s

later fiction and in his view o f history, is central to the plot.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "Aru Kokura nikki den"

'‘Aru Kokura nikki den (“A legend of the Kokura diaries" 1952) originally

appeared inMila bumaku and won the Akutagawa Prize for the latter half of 1952. While

it is similar to "Saigo satsu” in its use of techniques borrowed from period fiction, it too

can be linked to Seicho’s later detective fiction. The story is Seicho's literary adaptation

of facts taken from the life of a poet and novelist from northern Kyushu. Tanoue Kosaku

(1900-1945). While he alters certain details for literary effect, the fictional character at

the heart of the work remains true to the historical man. That is. the character shares two

central traits with the historical man: an intellectual curiosity for literature and a physical

disability.

According to Seicho, the motivation for writing this story came after meeting

Tanoue Kosaku and later learning of the publication of Mori Ogai's diaries from his years

spent in Kokura (1899-1902). Kosaku became interested in Ogai's literature because of

Kokura’s proximity to his hometown M5ji. His research on Ogai and local history

earned him the respect of such Kyushu literati as the novelist Hino Ashihei (1907-1960)

and the poet Anami Tetsuo. There are commonalities in the lives of both Seicho and

Kosaku that seem to indicate the reason for Seicho's interest in Kosaku. Both men were

natives of Kyushu and writers. It is not clear how Seicho felt about Kosaku personally,

but it is apparent that he was interested in utilizing the withered leg of the character

Kosaku as a source of scom that isolates Kosaku in much the same way that his own

poverty and lack of formal education handicapped him. At least as perceived by Seicho.

both men were marked for scom because of conditions beyond their control.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A brief synopsis of the story is appropriate at this point. Similar to "Saigd satsu.”

the narrative begins with the receipt of a manuscript. This time it is about Ogai's years in

Kokura, and it was sent by an unknown scholar to the physician and noted Ogai scholar

K.M. (said to have been modeled after Kinoshita Mokutaro [1885-1945], doctor, poet and

novelist). Much was unknown about Ogai's “Kokura years,” because his diaries from

that period were missing. K.M. is hopeful that the author of the manuscript will, as a

result o f his investigations, fill the void left by the missing diaries. Impressed by the

manuscript, he encourages the author to continue his research.

The author of the manuscript sent to K.M. is Tanoue Kosaku. He is the son of

Tanoue Teiichi. nephew of a leading Kyushu politician, and Tanoue Fuji, the politician's

daughter. From birth, he has suffered from a condition that doctors can neither diagnose

nor cure. It has left him with a severe speech impediment and a limp. As a result he is

almost entirely confined to the house. Unlike other children, he grows up in virtual

isolation. One of his earliest and most pleasant memories is of an old man who rented a

house from his father. He knows the old man only by the name of his occupation

“denbinyd" (postman) because that is what his parents call the old man. Early every

morning the denhinya makes his rounds, ringing his tiny bell as he goes. Kosaku enjoys

burying his face in the pillow while he listens to the sound of the bell fade into the

distance as the old man walks into town. The bell is heard again in the evening as the old

man returns home at the end of the day.

Kosaku’s father spares no expense to cure his son's illness, but his efforts are to

no avail, and he dies when his son is ten. Kosaku is the best student in his class in

primary and middle school despite his physical limitations, and this is a great source of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. satisfaction to his mother. His friend, Enami Tetsuo, also appreciates his sharp mind and

he introduces him to Japanese literature via the works of Mori Ogai. Kosaku is

particularly moved by Ogai’s work “Dokushin” (“Bachelor’) in which Ogai makes

reference to a postman’s bell. The passage reads - '‘Soto \va itsu ka yuki ni naru. Oriori

ashi o kizande kakete tdru denbin to sitzu no oto ga suru."12 (Outside it will begin to

snow soon. Occasionally 1 hear the small footsteps of the postman as he runs by and the

sound of his bell.) Ogai also uses the old-fashioned term "denbin' for postman. Later,

when the boy grows up, Enami helps Kosaku find a job working in the private library of

Shirakawa Kei’ichiro, a Kokura doctor who is a scholar and patron of the arts. While

working for Shirakawa. Kosaku learns that the whereabouts of Ogai's diaries from 1899-

1902. or his years in Kokura, are unknown. Motivated by the connection between Ogai

and Kosaku’s hometown, he decides to make a contribution to the world of Japanese

letters by reconstructing the events of Ogai’s days in Kokura. He sets about interviewing

people who knew Ogai in Kokura. Although this proves to be far more difficult than it

would seem, he succeeds in collecting information from people who had direct contact

with Ogai: a priest who taught Ogai French; a widow of one of Ogai's colleagues; a priest

at a temple where Ogai practiced Zen; and a local newspaper editor who published Ogai's

stories. Not only is the task mentally challenging, but also his handicap makes his quest

for information physically grueling. On more than one occasion, he must travel to

interview the people who knew Ogai. For the young man who had been confined to his

home by his handicap, the trek up a mountain to a remote village requires superhuman

effort.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Meanwhile, Kosaku's health deteriorates steadily. By the end of the Pacific War.

he is bedridden. He dies in 1950, his research unfinished. Ironically, in 1951 the Ogai

diaries from the Kokura years are found among trash in a chest owned by the Mori

family. The chest had been shipped to Tokyo from where it had been stored during the

war. Seicho’s concluding passage succinctly captures this irony.

Showa niju-roku nen nigatsu. Tokyo de Ogai no "Kokura nikki" ga hakken sareta no \va shiichi no tori de aru. Ogai no shisoku ga sokaisaki kara mochi kaetta hogo bakari haitta tansu o seiri shite iru to, kono nikki ga dete kita no da. Tanoue Kosaku ga kono jijitsu o shirazu ni shinda no wafuko ka kqfuku ka wakaranai .l3

It is common knowledge that Ogai's “Kokura Diaries" were found in Tokyo in February, 1951. The diaries were found upon cleaning out a chest filled with trash that Ogai’s descendants had brought back from where they had evacuated it during the war. We will never know if the fact that Tanoue Kosaku died ignorant of this discovery was a curse or a blessing.

The story appears to be a factual account, but we cannot take it at face value

however, because Seicho freely admits to reworking details of Kosaku's life. His most

notable departure from the facts surrounds the nature of Kosaku's death. It had occurred.

in fact, six years earlier. As a matter o f fact, both Kosaku and his mother died in an

American bombing raid on Moji in June 1945. During the raid in which he died. Kosaku

fled the shelter o f a house for fear it would collapse around him. and he died in the street.

By contrast, Seicho’s version of Kosaku's death is far more poetic because the imagery

Seicho chooses is more poignant. Moreover, Kosaku's death is accompanied not by fear.

or the sound of bombs exploding, but by the pleasing memory of the postman's bell

echoing from his childhood. Seicho presents his death as follows:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Aruyoru, chodo. Enami ga kiawasete ini toki datta. Ima made uiouto nemugatta yd ni site ita Kosaku ga, makura kara kao o futo motiagaeta. Soshite nani ka kiki mimi o latent yd na kakkd o shita. "Do shita no? " to Fuji ga kiku to, kuchi no naka de henji o shita yd datta. Mo kono koro \va higoro no wakarinikui kotoba ga sara ni hidoku natte, oshi ni chikaku natte ita. Ga, kono toki, nao mo Fuji ga, "Do shita no? ” to kiite, kao o chikazukeru to fushigi to hakkiri to mono o itta. Suzu no oto ga kikoeru, to iu no da. "Suzu? ” to kikikaesu to, kokkuri to unazuita. Sono mama kao o makura ni uzumeru yd ni shite, nao mo jitto kiite iru yosu o shita. Shigo ni nozonda ningen no kondaku shita no wa nan no gencho o kikaseta no de ard ka. Fuyu no yoru no kogai wa ashiato mo nakatta . 14

It happened one night just as Enami happened to be visiting. Kosaku. who had been nodding off suddenly lifted his face from the pillow. He then adopted a posture as if he had pricked up his ears. "What is it?” asked Fuji. A groan came from deep in Kosaku's throat. Lately his speech, which had always been hard to understand, had grown unintelligible until he was practically mute. Nevertheless, this time Fuji asked again, leaning her face close to his, “What is it?” His reply came back surprisingly clear. I hear a bell, he said. “A bell?” He nodded in response to her question. He turned as if to bury his face in the pillow, continuing to listen as intently as before. What auditory illusion was presented to the addled brain of this man facing death? There were no footsteps outside in the winter night.

K5saku’s death, as presented by Seich5, seems exceedingly peaceful. The dying man

leaves the world surrounded by loved ones, his mother Fuji and his friend Enami.

Although his last experience in life is an auditory hallucination, he experiences a rare

moment of clear communication just before the end of his life, and he is able to rouse

himself from his drowsiness to express to Fuji what he hears. Moreover, the memory that

returns to him in his final moments is a happy one from his childhood. The " denbinya " is

like a mysterious but benevolent character in a fairy tale whose comings and goings are

marked by the gentle, otherworldly tinkling of a bell. Kosaku’s final hallucination links

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. him, moreover, with Ogai, who once recorded the sound of the passing postman's bell in

a short story written while in Kokura. On his deathbed, as it is presented by Seicho.

Kosaku achieves the connection with Ogai that he struggled to achieve while alive. The

theme of perseverance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds lies at the heart of

this work.

Ironically, the discovery of the missing diaries in Tokyo makes Kosaku’s efforts

to document Ogai’s time in Kyushu moot. The time and energy that he spent tracking

down people who knew Ogai go for naught. In the midst of his research this

meaninglessness is foreshadowed when Kosaku is challenged by one of the people he

interviews. “Soma koto o shirabete, nani ni narimasu?"ls (What good will it do you to

look into that?) The question causes him to doubt the merit of his quest. He feels empty

(munashii) that his life should be wasted on a seemingly frivolous pursuit. For a

moment, he even disregards K.M.’s praise as mere flattery. He feels hopeless. Yet it is

Kosaku’s perseverance that Seicho holds forth as a model o f human behavior. Despite

physical limitations, and the way he is often dismissed as inconsequential by others.

Kdsaku doggedly pursues leads concerning Ogai’s stay in Kokura. He does not allow the

derision of others to keep him from his research.

Seicho adopts a technique from period fiction by introducing figures from Ogai’s

time in Kokura to lend authenticity to his story. He has Kdsaku encounter people who

actually knew Ogai as a means of delving into the world of the famous author, yet

without exploring the facts o f his life in great detail. For example. Kosaku meets Father

Bertrand, the priest who taught Ogai French; he meets the widow of the priest whom

Ogai instructed in German; he meets the priest at a temple where Ogai practiced Zen; and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he meets Azabu Sakuo, the newspaper editor at the time Ogai published in the local

papers. By invoking the names of real people at the periphery of Ogai's life in Kokura.

Seicho provides the reader with a sense of authenticity about Ogai's time in Kyushu.

These characters and their stories provide the reader with eyewitness testimony, although

the veracity o f each anecdote remains to be determined.

Seicho's depiction of Kosaku reflects his tendency to create sympathetic

underdogs as his protagonists. Like the detectives in Seicho's subsequent novels. Kosaku

is a sympathetic character because of his honesty, intelligence and perseverance.

Although he is 32, he appears almost childlike because he is nearly incapable of

intelligible spoken communication. Indeed, many characters treat him like a child. He is

unable to communicate easily because his condition has left him unable to make his

mouth and tongue to work properly. Moreover, he must overcome multiple physical

limitations. One of his legs is withered and this makes walking difficult. His physical

deformities prove unsettling to many. As a result they treat him as if he were mentally

deficient. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. His mental acuity is extremely

sharp. He possesses not only the intellectual wherewithal to read widely, but also the

curiosity to develop a research project and conceive a methodology that proves

successful.

His physical limitations are an emotional, as well as physical, obstacle to be

overcome. Although many characters mock his inability to communicate. Kosaku

ignores their taunts in pursuit of the information he desires. The villagers make fun of his

requests for information. The priest at the Zen temple initially turns him away, gruffly

saying he cannot understand him. Even the pretty nurse Teruko. who seems to have

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. befriended him, scoffs when he misinterprets her friendliness for romantic intentions. In

ignoring their scorn, he demonstrates single-minded dedication to the pursuit of

knowledge. Like so many of Seicho's detectives, he displays remarkable determination.

The effect of his diligence is to endear him to the reader.

By having the reader look at Kosaku through his mother’s eyes, moreover. Seicho

utilizes yet another strategy for gaining sympathy for Kosaku. Fuji has always been

proud of her son’s mind, but Seicho’s depiction of her makes her seem especially proud

of her son’s dedication to his project. Her listening to K5saku talk about Ogai adds a

touching scene of love and devotion.

Motsurela shita de waga ko ga Ogai no koto o hanasu no o, ika ni mo ureshiso na kao o shite kono haha wa kiite ita no de aru. 16 (His mother was listening with a decidedly happy expression on her face to her child talk with his tangled tongue about Ogai.)

Not only do Fuji’s emotions display her devotion to her son, her actions are equally

telling o f her commitment to Kosaku’s research.

Fuji wa kaette kita Kosaku no sugala o hitome mini to, sono tukarekilta kaoiro de, do iu kekka da ka sugu sashite shimatta. "Do datta? ” to kiite mini to, Kosaku wa kyu ni mono o ienaiyo na kuro no hageshii karada o tatami ni aomukete, taigiso ni rusii datta to tsuhuyaku yd ni kotaeta. Sore de, kare ga do iu shiuchi o sareta ka, Fuji ni wa sugu wakatta. Fubin de naranakatta “Asita, mo ichido itte miyd, okaasan mo issho ni ne .17

One look at Kosaku’s exhausted expression when he came home told immediately what had happened. “How did it go?” Kosaku collapsed face first on the tatami and muttered in response. There was nobody there. Then Fuji understood right away how he had been treated. She felt sad for him. “Tomorrow let’s go try once more. Mom, too, alright?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. These two scenes illustrate not only Kdsaku’s commitment to his project, but also Fuji's

pride in her son’s intelligence and devotion.

Like Toshimichi of Saigo satsu , Kosaku is a combination of hero and victim.

Although his research has nothing to do with a criminal investigation, his intelligence and

persistence in the face of opposition are the values embodied most often by the detectives

in Seicho’s fiction. Like many o f Seicho detectives, he is bright, diligent and possesses

an interest in literature. His intelligence allows him to take advantage of a rare

opportunity to work in the doctor’s library, much as Seicho's detectives are bright enough

to make informed inferences. His slow, plodding approach to his project is a function of

his desire to be meticulous in his research. In fact, it is his desire to contribute to the

scholarship on Ogai, and thereby prove his worth, that drives him to track down

acquaintances of the writer from four decades earlier. All of this develops from the small

seed planted by his discovery of Ogai’s reference to the"denbinya." His passion for

more information grows as he spends more time reading.

Kosaku’s personality is in line with the middle-class virtues that make Seicho’s

detectives "heroic.” At the same time, he also exhibits characteristics of a victim or

"failed hero.” His physical condition is the most obvious cause of his being treated as a

victim, or katawci. He is marked for scorn by insensitive people because of his speech

impediment, his limp and his physical deterioration and illness, which prevent him from

completing his research. Seicho makes his situation seem doubly poignant when he tells

us that the missing diaries are later found in a chest in Tokyo. Kosaku’s quest for fame

as a scholar and researcher proves fruitless in the end. After his death, Fuji moves in

with relatives in Kumamoto.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fuji ga, Kumamoto no tdi shinseki no ie ni hikitorareta no wa, Kosaku no sabishii shonanuka ga sugite de, ikotsu to furoshikizutsumi no soko to ga. kanojo no taisetsu na nimotsu datta.,s (Fuji was taken in by distant relatives in Kumamoto after the lonely memorial service for Kosaku on the seventh day after his death. His remains, and the manuscript bundled in a cloth, were her cherished baggage.)

Even if he had lived to complete his research, its significance would have been

diminished by the discovery of the original diaries. Still his heroic qualities dominate

and they make him more sympathetic both as hero and victim.

Kosaku’s research bears many similarities to a detective's investigation. Much as

a good detective continues to pursue the trail of the criminal even when confounded by

early failures, KSsaku actively pursues any lead that will shed light on Ogai's life in

Kokura. He goes beyond Ogai’s fiction to collect sufficient biographical material about

Ogai's acquaintances and activities in Kokura. He remains undaunted, despite the

resistance he meets from those who believe his project to be pointless, and those who

mock him for his appearance. He makes, for example, a journey to the mountain village

of Nishitani in pursuit of clues. While the village is relatively close to his home, his

condition makes the ten mile trip - five of it up a mountain on foot - all the more

arduous. In Nishitani he interviews those who knew Ogai. He records the information he

gleans and compiles his findings. In submitting a draft of his report to the well-known

intellectual K.M., moreover, he follows a course of action that we shall see used in

Seicho’s detective novels: he seeks advice from a specialist. He uses the feedback from

the specialist as verification of his methodology, and in moments of doubt, as the source

o f inspiration to continue his work. As we shall see. specialized knowledge is an

essential element of the appeal of modem detective fiction.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Tanaka Minoru suggests that Seicho’s use of an omniscient narrator contributes to

the interpretation of the story as detective fiction.19 He argues that, rather than giving the

reader access to Kosaku’s inner monologue, the narrator shows us how others react to

Kosaku. Thus, while Kosaku is engaged in researching Ogai, the reader sits apart from

him, speculating about Kosaku, and attempting to learn more about him. He is mentally

isolated from the world by his speech impediment and physically limited by his crippled

leg. Therefore, showing him through the eyes of others is an effective narratorial

technique for evoking sympathy for his condition. The reader learns that although

various characters react negatively to Kosaku because of his physical appearance, later

they come to appreciate the effort he invests in his research. Most of them change their

minds. Indeed, his investigation becomes the central aspect of his identity. By

publishing the results of his research on Ogai, he hopes to transcend his fate as a bright

but lonely cripple. Somehow he hopes to overcome the effect that his crippled body and

speech impediment have on others by producing a significant contribution to the world of

scholarship.

"Harikomi'’ ("Stakeout")

"Harikomi," published in 1955, marks a shift away from period fiction and it is

Seichb’s first attempt at crime fiction. After “Harikomi," Seicho begins a period in

which he published short crime pieces such as "Kyohansha" ("The Co-conspirator”),

“Ichinen-han mate" (“Wait a year and a half’), “Kao" ("The Face") and "Koe" ("The

Voice”). As noted above, Seicho stated that he did not intend to create a detective story

when he wrote “Harikomi.”20 However, despite its relative lack of emphasis on the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. investigative process, a careful reading of the work reveals many elements typical of the

genre. While it lacks the heightened ratiocinative element of his later mysteries.

“Harikomi” contains a considerable amount of problem solving, even if it is of a less

spectacular nature. It is an important step toward the novels that generated the Seicho

mystery boom that began with the publication of Ten to sen in book form in 1958.

“Harikomi” is an important work in Seicho's corpus because it represents his first

piece of socially realistic detective fiction. It is not the detection processper se that

makes this piece exceptional; rather, it is the sympathetic, moving portrayal of a woman's

brief encounter with a former lover, and the welcome diversion it provides from her

mundane existence, that provide the emotional power that drives the narrative.

The story begins with Detectives Yuzuki and Shitaoka leaving Tokyo for Kyushu

in hopes of apprehending a robber. Ishii. who murdered a man whom he robbed in

Tokyo. While Yuzuki believes the murderer will flee to his former lover in Kyushu.

Shitaoka argues that Ishii will return to his hometown outside Hiroshima. Yuzuki

proceeds to Kyushu where he stakes out the residence of Ishii's former lover. Sadako, for

five days. During that time he observes her daily routine of caring for the household and

stepchildren of her miserly older husband. On the fifth day o f the stakeout, he sees a

salesman making the rounds of the neighborhood. As soon as the salesman leaves

Sadako's house, she too hurriedly leaves. This strikes Yuzuki as strange because she has

been so consistent in her daily routine. He suspects the salesman was actually Ishii. He

follows Sadako but loses her trail. He makes his way to the train station, but no train has

departed in the time since she left the house. He deduces that she took a bus. He learns

from the bus driver that she boarded the bus with a man fitting Ishii's description. At the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. end of the bus line, Yuzuki learns from the driver that the couple got off on a country

road and headed over the mountain toward a nearby hot springs resort. Yuzuki searches

the mountain forest for the couple. He learns from passersby that the couple was seen

heading toward a nearby reservoir. Fearing they have drowned themselves, he hurries to

the reservoir only to find them laughing and embracing. Yuzuki does not arrest Ishii on

the spot. Instead, he calls detectives who come to the resort where the couple is staying.

Later, he apprehends Ishii at the inn without a struggle when Ishii is on his way back to

his room after taking a bath. When a startled Sadako returns to find Yuzuki waiting in

her room, he tells her the truth about Ishii. He puts her on the next bus so that she will be

home in time to cook dinner for her husband.

Aside from the presence of a detective chasing a criminal, at first glance

‘‘Harikomi" bears little resemblance to Seicho's later mysteries, largely because the

narrative begins in medicis res , at a point closer to the resolution of the mystery. In most

mysteries, including those by Seicho presented later in this study, it is the process of

detection that is the focus of the narrative. The reader follows the detective's efforts to

discover clues and interpret them. However, in "Harikomi" that legw'ork is nearly done

at the outset of the story. The reader is provided only a piecemeal version of the

detection process that led the police to suspect Ishii because the process occurs before the

reader joins the story. This abbreviated description of the detection process presented

after the fact is a unique feature of this work, and it is one that is rarely encountered in

Seicho's later detective fiction. In “Harikomi." many traditional elements of mysteries

such as the an examination of the scene of the crime, the discovery of clues, the minutiae

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of the investigation process and even the identity of the victim, who is known only by his

title, "aru juyaku" (“a corporate executive"), are excluded.21

The reader assumes that the detection process involves Yuzuki deducing the

suspect’s actions and then traveling to Kyushu to await the suspect’s appearance.

However, a great deal of ratiocination is involved in this apparently simple process. The

chain of clues that leads police to suspect Ishii is introduced in an important flashback

recalled by Yuzuki. It was quite by chance that back in Tokyo Yuzuki had questioned a

suspect who confesses to conceiving of the robbery only to leam that it was not the

mastermind but his accomplice. Ishii. who committed the murder. The corroboration of

the suspect’s confession is explained in only one line: "Shirabete mint to, jihaku ni

machigai nai koto ga wakatta'' (“Upon investigation, it was learned that his confession

was accurate.”).22 Seicho forgoes a potentially longer foray into the detection process in

favor of a simple statement by the omniscient narrator about the veracity of the

confession. Although the story begins with Yuzuki already on his way to Kyushu, his

first act of detection had occurred before the narrative began. His first act of detection -

namely his assumption about Ishii’s behavior after the murder and robbery - is presented

to the reader in flashback. Moreover, his decision to go to Kyushu is influenced by a

second chance comment made by the same informant:

“Aitsu wa, itsu ka, chikagoro, mukashi no onna no yume o yokit mint, to itte imashita. Watashi wa, sono onna wa do site irit no ka to kiitara, hito no nyobo in natte Kyushu no ho ni iru, sono jiisho mo wakatte iru, to iimashita."

“One time, not long ago, Ishii told me he dreamed about his old girlfriend a lot. I asked him what she was up to and he said she got married and lives in Kyushu. He told me he even knew her address."23

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. While his superiors favor sending a detective to Ishii's hometown outside Hiroshima.

Yuzuki concludes that the criminal will seek out his former lover and lavish his stolen

loot on her. This is his first exercise in detective work on the case. The reader later

learns that it proves to be accurate.

Seicho has the reader experience the stakeout through Yuzuki’s eyes, providing a

unique perspective on Sadako’s daily life as a housewife. The reader is privileged to

Yuzuki's observations as a professional investigator. He is careful to note the people in

her family, the clothing Sadako regularly wears, and her daily routine. It is this careful

observation that causes him to register the irregularity of her reaction to Ishii's

clandestine arrival. Although Ishii played the role of a traveling salesman at other houses

on the street as if he suspected the police may have Sadako under surveillance, his ruse

does not fool Yuzuki. When Sadako breaks her routine and hurriedly leaves the house

wearing her apron after the visit from the salesman, Yuzuki assumes she is leaving to

meet Ishii. He does not immediately recognize the salesman as Ishii but his careful

observations of Sadako’s routine - combined with his police training - enable him to

correctly decipher the clues and see through Ishii's strategy.

Yuzuki’s pursuit of Sadako through the town and by bus into the mountain

requires further detective work in order to apprehend his criminal. Losing track of her on

the street, he must predict her destination. At a nearby intersection he chooses from three

possible routes. His initial assumption is that she is headed for the market, and it is based

on habits he has observed over the past five days. It proves incorrect, but his next guess

about her goal, the train station, is more on target. At the station, he learns that no trains

have arrived or departed. Simple deduction indicates she could not have boarded a train.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. He assumes she has either come to the station to meet ishii or proceeded to a prearranged

location where they will rendezvous. The next transportation alternative suggested by the

surroundings is the bus stop in front of the station. In questioning the bus drivers, he

learns that a woman fitting Sadako's description boarded a bus with a young man.

Moreover, the young man had instructed her to remove her apron, presumably to render

her less conspicuous. The bus was headed to a nearby village. Yuzuki takes a taxi to a

village where he interviews the driver of the bus. Passengers had also seen the couple.

The detective sets off in the direction indicated, which is away from the village and

toward a hot-springs resort.

Yuzuki’s pursuit of the couple requires mundane, yet believable detective work.

Tracking Sadako’s movements through the town necessitates a series of choices based,

first, on his observations of her routine, and then, on assumptions about the affect of

Ishii's arrival on her behavior. An understanding of human psychology is essential to his

detective work. This realistic sequence shows him to be similar to later Seicho detectives

who are intelligent, sometimes fallible, yet always relentless in their pursuit despite minor

setbacks.

"Harikomi’' lacks the complexity of both the conspiracy and the detection process

that are the hallmark of Seicho’s more developed mysteries, but it contains a strong

element of social realism. The shakai suiri shosetsu (social detective fiction) sub-genre

of the mystery is marked by an emphasis on the depiction of the social causes and effects

of crime, rather than an emphasis on contrived details of the means of murder.24 While it

is true that “Harikomi” does not delve into Ishii’s motive for robbery or murder, the story

does treat the effect of his crime on at least one person - Sadako. Seicho emphasizes

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sadako's routine as seen through Yuzuki‘s eyes. Moreover. Yuzuki observes her long

enough that he comes to pity her for her life of confinement and mundane routine.

Nonetheless, it is Ishii’s appearance that creates the dramatic and romantic tension

that leads the narrative toward its climax. Days of boring surveillance by Yuzuki give

way to a denouement in which the detective’s powers of reason and observation are pitted

against Sadako, and then the couple, as they attempt to evade him. Seicho heightens this

tension as the story proceeds toward its conclusion. Following the couple through the

forest. Yuzuki hears two gunshots. Fearing that Ishii has killed Sadako and then

committed suicide, he is relieved to come across a local hunter who had fired the shots.

Having the reader experience the events concurrently with the detective is an effective

and immediate technique for heightening the element of suspense.

It is the sympathy evoked for Sadako through his five days of surveillance that

becomes the source of the tension in Yuzuki’s chase through the woods. Yuzuki serves

as a sympathetic lens through which Seicho provides the reader a prolonged voyeuristic

glimpse into the mundane life of this woman in her unsatisfying marriage to an old miser.

His character functions as a means by which the reader accesses the life of Sadako. or

perhaps most any housewife caught in an unhappy marriage. While the detection process

is realistic, the chain of evidence is subordinate to the emotional effect the reader is

meant to experience.

The effectiveness of the conclusion originates not in the depiction of the Yuzuki’s

capture of the criminal. Instead it arises out of the continued sympathetic depiction of

Sadako’s monotonous reality. Eschewing a melodramatic and violent final confrontation.

Seicho constructs a scene in which Yuzuki quietly apprehends Ishii in a hallway o f the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. spa as Ishii is returning from the bath. The conclusion is effective because of the

sympathetic manner in which Yuzuki shields Sadako from an ensuing police

investigation. Nonetheless, while he can prevent her from being the subject of an

investigation, he is powerless to alter her domestic situation, and she must return to her

sad, quotidian routine. Seicho’s deft portrayal highlights the emotions of the crestfallen

Sadako at her realization that the when she returns to the monotony of her daily life.

nothing will remain of the excitement she felt with Ishii. A scant few lines at the story’s

conclusion convey the ultimate futility of her ill-fated liaison and its powerful impact her.

Kono onna wa sujikan no seimei o moyashita ni suginakatta. Konban kara, mala, nekoze no kechi na otto to sannin no keishi to no seikatsu no naka ni modoranakereba naranai. So shite asu kara wa, sonna jonetsu ga hisonde iyo to wa omowarenai heibon na kao de, orimono kikai o ijitte iru ni chigai nai.

This woman did nothing more than send up a few hours of her life in flames. Starting tonight she must go back to her life again with the miserly, stoop shouldered husband and three stepchildren. Then tomorrow she would certainly be working the loom with her same expression. One would never think it revealed the passion she secreted inside herself.-3

Yuzuki feels great sympathy for Sadako. He knows that she has committed no crime.

His sympathy stems from his pity for the young woman trapped in a hopeless marriage

but attempting to experience passion nonetheless. Having seen the events transpire

through Yuzuki’s eyes, the reader cannot help but share his feelings.

The motifs common to Seicho’s later detective novels occur regularly in his

earlier short fiction and anticipate what is to come. Harikomi is no exception to this rule.

Travel, regional culture and characters with an affinity for various literary genres all

figure in this story.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For the detectives" trip to Hiroshima and Kyushu. Seicho provides details about

their travel arrangements including departure times and the name of the train they will

take. In addition to these logistical details, he provides details that recreate the

atmosphere of a cross-country trip train travel in Japan in 1955. The crowded cars, the

dearth of seats causing passengers to sit in the aisle, ekiben (“boxed lunches'") and the

scenery viewed from the train window combine to convey the ambience of a long

distance train ride, which experienced a revitalization after the destruction of Japan's

railroad infrastructure during World War II. In Kyushu, Seicho provides the reader with

characteristically detailed information about the arrival, departure, and transit times of the

buses operating from the station. Much like a traveler who merely passes through the

station on his way to the train. Seicho does not bother to describe the station itself, but he

does describe the scenery Yuzuki passes through in his pursuit of the bus carrying Ishii

and Sadako.

Harikomi contains examples of Seicho's ear for dialect. The first instance occurs

as Yuzuki's pursuit leads him to a village on the mountainside. He asks an old woman in

the village near the bus stop if she has seen the couple. She replies."Achirci e iki n shatta

ba na " (“They went that a way."). And. questioning a young man leads to the following

answer: "Aa, yosui ike no tokoro o aruitottaya na" (“Oh. They were walking by the

reservoir.").26 Aside from the relatively key role that these two witnesses play in the

narrative by directing Yuzuki in his search for Ishii. the inclusion of the local color of

their speech lends an air of authenticity to the story. At the same time, it pays homage to

Seicho's roots in Kyushu. Their speech efficiently identifies these characters as residents

of rural Kyushu. Rather than relying upon a lengthy description of clothing or

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mannerisms, Seicho relies upon the reader’s ear for language to identify characters as

members of rural and regional culture.

Seicho has a penchant for introducing references to literature. This too can be

seen in Harikomi. Once his fellow detective disembarked from the train at Hiroshima.

Yuzuki is free to read a book of essays about poetry that he has brought on the trip. The

reader learns he only reads literature when alone. His reluctance to read literature in the

presence of his fellow detectives stems from their harassment of his intellectual interests.

His colleagues called him a bungaku seinen ("literary youth”), and he does not want to be

exposed to their taunts.

Critic Tamura Sakae disagrees with the orthodox view that holds "Harikomi” as

Seicho’s first piece of mystery fiction. In his opinion. Seicho’s first detective story is “Hi

no kioku.” published two years earlier in 1953 in Shosetsu Koen. In "Hi no kioku,"

Seicho tells the story of a young man raised by his mother. Narrating the story is the

first-person narrator, a boy who has almost no recollection of his father, because his

father left home when he was four years old. He does, however, retain vague memories

of another man living with his mother. The boy has grown up. and now he is engaged to

be married. In delving into his prospective brother-in-law’s background, the brother of

his fiancee unearths details about his family’s past. The story’s conclusion reveals that

the man with his mother was a former police officer who had been removed from his

post. A criminal was under police surveillance, and the officer was dismissed for having

alerted the wife of the criminal of the danger to her husband. He had allowed the

husband to escape on condition that the woman marry him. Out of love for her husband,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the woman agreed. The criminal and his wife are the narrator's parents, and the

policeman is the mysterious man from his childhood memories.27

There are obvious similarities between Hi no kioku and Harikomi. In addition to

the Kyushu setting, a stakeout figures prominently in both stories. In both works, the

continued careful observation demanded by the stakeout leads to the policeman

developing an emotional attachment to the subject under surveillance. It is true Yuzuki's

sympathy for Sadako inHarikomi does not equal the intensity of the policeman’s love for

his subject in Hi no kioku. Nevertheless. Yuzuki develops an undeniable appreciation for

Sadako’s situation that causes him to feel sympathy for her, even if his duty prevents him

from allowing Ishii to escape.

Tamura’s rationale for labeling Hi no kioku as Seicho’s first work of detective

fiction is flawed. He is correct in arguing that aribai yaburi (“alibi busting") and nazo

toki (“puzzle solving”) are not the sole requisites for a mystery.28 However, one is not

convinced that the quest for information about his childhood by the narrator of Hi no

kioku, coupled with research by the brother of the narrator's fiancee constitutes the same

sort of detection that goes into making a mystery. Obviously, research is an essential part

of any investigation, but what Tamura neglects to acknowledge is that the investigations

in Hi no kioku are not aimed at unearthing the facts of a crime but discovering truth about

events from the narrator’s youth. Even given the criminal history of his father, the

narrator’s investigations are not intended to uncover details about the father’s crimes or

even locate his father for prosecution. In short, no one in this story is looking into the

narrator’s past means to investigate or solve a crime. The narrator is simply accessing or

clarifying memories for his own well-being. Meanwhile, the older brother of the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. narrator's fiancee is investigating the narrator's background before granting his sister

permission to marry.

Harikomi is an important work in Seicho's oeuvre because it marks the

beginnings of his socially realistic detective fiction. While the emphasis in this work

shifts toward the sympathetic depiction of Sadako and away from the investigation

process, the fledgling combination of criminal investigation and social commentary

marks this story as important. The success of this work lies not in its realistic detection

process, but in the author’s sympathetic and moving portrayal of a woman's brief, ill-

fated escape from a loveless marriage.

The three works discussed in this chapter are key examples of Seicho's early short

fiction. They chart the development of his shift toward detective fiction. In all three,

characteristics typical of detective fiction are prominent. Investigation and specialized

training or knowledge play a central role, although the role of investigator assumes

different forms - a newspaperman, a budding scholar or a police detective, respectively.

The investigation need not center on crime, as shown by Kosaku's research into Ogai's

life. While the process of inquiry differs in all three cases - textual analysis,

interviewing, and extended observation, respectively - the common motivation is the

quest for information as a means of problem solving. In the following chapters, this

dissertation will demonstrate how Seicho's mature detective fiction expands upon the

features enumerated above.

It is significant that sympathetic characters figure prominently in all three works.

and the greatest factor influencing the reader's sympathetic reaction is the characters'

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. failures. Toshimichi’s reputation is ruined, and he may have committed a murder.

Kosaku dies before he can complete his task. Sadako is forced to return home. All three

are “underdogs” whose attempts to escape from are doomed to failure from the outset.

Toshimichi’s money-making scheme is foiled by Tsukamura who uses his contacts in the

Meiji bureaucracy to destroy him. Kosaku must overcome others' prejudices against his

handicaps. Sadako is bound by marriage and the promise of financial stability to a

husband for whom she appears to feel no love. Later. Seicho will use the same

sympathetic characters in his portrayal of Japan’s middle-class.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3

TEN TO SEN (POINTS AND LINES)

This chapter considers Seicho’s groundbreaking novel Ten to sen (Points and

lines. Tabi , February, 1957-January 1958.). Although not his first novel, it was his first

work of detective fiction. Hailed as Japan's first work of socially realistic detective

fiction, critics praise Ten to sen for its powerful critique of the often nefarious

relationship between big business and government ministries in post-Occupation Japan.1

In addition, the novel served as the catalyst for Seicho's rise to prominence as a mystery

writer and for the widespread popularity that mystery fiction enjoyed in Japan in the late

1950s through the 1970s.

Before analyzing Seichd's detective fiction, it is important to review briefly the

status of mystery fiction as a genre at the time of the publication of Ten to sen. Mystery

fiction has been available to Japanese readers as early as the 1880s in the form of

translations of European mysteries. Works by such early writers of crime fiction as Edgar

Allan Poe. Emile Gaborieau, William Wilkie Collins and G.K.. Chesterton were translated

by prominent novelists such as Tsubouchi Shdyo, Koda Rohan and Kuroiwa Ruiko.2

While many translations were careful recreations of the original, there were equally as

many work labeled “translations” that did not faithfully reproduce the original. The

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Japanese make a distinction between hon 'an and hon 'yaku. The former provides the

translator a framework to adapt to his own literary style, while the latter is an attempt to

replicate the tone and content of the original. Examples of hon 'an include Tokutomi

Roka’s recreation of Alan Upword’s “The White Thread" and Tsubouchi Shoyo's version

of Anne Catherine Green's “The Counterfeiters." Early European detective fiction and

the Japanese detective fiction that emulated it entertain readers with plots featuring

crimes resembling puzzles described in lurid, even grotesque, detail as in Poe's maiden

work “Murders in the Rue Morgue."3 Since the reader is provided with all of the

evidence at the detective’s disposal, the reader attempts to solve the puzzle of the crime

along with the detective. Early detective fiction features creative and improbable physical

gimmicks or “tricks” ( torikku); however, little emphasis is placed on the development of

characterization.

As Japan entered the twentieth century, the development of the mystery paralleled

that of Japan's urban economy. War with China in the last decade of the nineteenth

century (Sino-Japanese War [1894-5]) and Russia in the first decade of the twentieth

century (Russo-Japanese War [1904-5]) helped stimulate the growth of an extensive

urban industrial base in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe and Fukuoka. The populations o f these

major cities boomed during the 1890s and 1900s as people left the countryside to work in

the nation’s steel mills, shipyards, textile mills and armaments factories. The population

shift coupled with the government-sponsored mass literacy movement of the 1890s

resulted in a large portion of the population that was functionally literate.

Publishers began releasing dozens of periodicals designed to capitalize on the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. interests of the educated urban consumer. Many of these periodicals prominently featured

mystery fiction. The most notable of these periodicals wasShin seinen (New Youth).

Marketed toward adolescents fascinated by the potential danger as well as the hustle and

bustle o f life in the city. Shin seinen first appeared in 1920 and remained in existence

until it ceased publication in 1952. In its early days it served as a vehicle for innovative

detective fiction and as a forum for experimental literary movements such as modernism.

In particular, it began its foray into detective fiction by publishing translations of

European and American works, such as “The Puzzle of the Bone" by Richard Austin

Freeman and “Lupin’s Notebook" by Maurice Leblanc. By 1923 such Japanese writers as

Yokomizo Seishi, Mizutani Jun, Kozakai Fuboku, Oshita Udaru and Edogawa Ranpo

were contributing original works on a regular basis. In particular. Ranpo’s "Ni-sen doka"

(“The Two-Sen Copper Coin." 1923). "D-zaka no satsujin jiken" (“The D-Slope

Murder.” 1925) and “Inju” (“The Dark Beast." 1928) greatly helped to increase the

popularity of mystery fiction and to solidify the reputationShin o f seinen as an important

forum for literary experimentation.4

While the number of original works by Japanese authors increased and there was

more variety and experimentation, writers, editors and readers continued to measure

works by the earlier standard which valued detective fiction for its grotesquerie and the

prominence of the master sleuth. In Japan and elsewhere, the omniscient master sleuth

(mei tantei), modeled on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and

Gaborieau’s LeCoq dominated the pre-World War II mystery. Japanese incarnations of

the master sleuth include Ranpo’s Akechi Kogoro, Okamoto Kido’s Hanshichi, Takagi

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Akimitsu's Kamizu Kyosuke and Nishimura Kyotaro's Totsugawa Shozo. These

detectives are depicted as demigods of deductive reasoning. Well-versed in many fields

of learning, they are able to use their keen powers of observation and penetrating

knowledge of human psychology to make seemingly miraculous deductions from the

most trivial pieces of evidence. During the process of collecting physical evidence, the

master sleuth invariably withholds his thoughts about the importance of each piece of the

puzzle, a technique that serves to simultaneously frustrate his assistant and. by extension,

the reader. For example, Sherlock Holmes withholds his observations from Watson --

and the reader -- until the story's dramatic climax at which point Holmes unveils his

deductions based on his incomparable knowledge across a wide range of obtuse fields.'

Likewise, the Japanese master sleuth, for example Ranpo's Akechi Kogoro. is similarly

gifted in observation of both physical evidence and human nature. The genre evolves no

further in the 1920s and 1930s; Akechi Kogoro and other sleuths remain masters of

ratiocination but the works in which they appear are not concerned with issues of literary

realism or social commentary.

It is only the arrival of Matsumoto Seicho that introduces a new dimension of

literary realism and social commentary to the Japanese mystery novel. Seicho and the

Shin seinen writers were not entirely dissimilar. Both Seicho and many Shin seinen

writers were decidedly anti-Naturalist. Seicho preferred a more narrative literary style

than that favored by the Naturalists. He strove to balance realistic depiction with

narrativity while eschewing the Naturalist practice of writing aru ga mama (“as things

are"). Seichd preferred shosetsu-rashii“ mono'' (“novelistic works"). He disliked the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vast majority of the Naturalist authors and their works. He preferred Tayama Katai's

earlier travel literature to his more famous and Naturalistic Futon and Ippei sotsu. He

found himself terribly bored by Masamune Hakucho's Doro ningyd. Finally, he could not

understand the appeal of such works by Shiga Naoya asKinosaki nite and Anya kdro.6

What separates the writers ofShin seinen and Seichd is the way he applies the

ideals of the 1920s proletarian movement to the mystery genre. In addition to his

aversion to the Naturalist style, Seicho also found himself disaffected by the bourgeois

ideals o f Shin seinen. Having worked at unskilled jobs from a very young age. he knew

the travails of labor all too well. His early experience in a writing circle composed of

factory workers in Kyushu circa 1929 exposed him to working-class values and their

literary expression. His own writing during this time took on a proletarian tone as

indicated by his short story that imagines the hardships suffered in Korea during a

famine.7 With his arrival on the literary scene, critic Ara Masahito stated that a new

category was needed to describe the type of fiction created by Seicho. With that Ara

coined the term “ shakai ha" (social school) as it applied to mystery7 fiction.8

The brand of literary realism adopted by Seichd is closely related to the Marxist

theory of literature expressed in Karl Engels’ famous letter of November 26, 1885. This

letter is widely regarded as the origin of Marxist theory on the value of literary realism.

In his letter, Engels writes, “Realism, to my mind, implies, besides truth of detail, the

truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances.”9 Seicho’s

reaction to earlier mystery Fiction appears to have been greatly influenced by the Marxist

proletarian ideals expressed in this letter.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Seicho’s realism is intended to lay bare inequities in society and its institutions.

He establishes middle-class, Everyman detectives as his instrument of social criticism.

These detectives gain access to those segments of society from which they would be

excluded based solely on socio-economic status. The hard-working, honest detectives

embody the values of the middle-class of Japan's economic resurgence, thus enhancing

their appeal to readers. Invariably, the working-man’s detectives are proven to be more

noble than the officials in the upper echelons of government, business and academia

whose crimes they expose.

Ten to sen introduced to Japan for the first time a realistic, egalitarian and populist

approach to mystery fiction. Seicho’s most notable departure from the conventions of

pre-war detective fiction was to banish the archetype master sleuth from his plots. InTen

to sen the master sleuth is replaced by the collaborative efforts of police detectives

Torigai and Mihara. Torigai is an aging detective in Kyushu who demonstrates a

personal and professional rapport with Mihara, his younger colleague from Tokyo.

Despite the success of the two novels in which they appear. Seicho avoids the creation of

serialized characters by using the same detective pairing only twice. He reunites

Detectives Torigai and Mihara in a later novel Jikan no shiizoku (Conventions o f Time.

1961-2). Unlike the pre-war sleuths, the police detectives of his works strike the reader

as realistic characters. Like Peter Falk’s Columbo of television, they are plodders,

unassuming and humble yet careful, career policemen with a great deal of experience.

While by no means dim-witted. Seicho’s detectives do not display the superhuman

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. powers of ratiocination exhibited by masters like Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, the

detectives in modem, realistic mystery fiction often find themselves embarrassed, unable

to determine the significance of a piece of evidence or decide how best to proceed in a

complex investigation. They utilize a process of trial and error, making mistaken

assumptions about an important clue or relationship or being sidetracked by false leads.

While such traits serve to make Seicho's detectives less heroic, they are more human and.

perhaps, more sympathetic. The novel's emphasis is on the monotonous reality of

investigation rather than on the dramatic conclusion. That readers are able to identify

with Seicho’s detectives is not surprising since they epitomize the working-class values

of his readers.

Seicho’s novels were enormously popular, their success due to the ironically

humble status that his detectives occupy both within the hierarchy of the police force and

society at large. His detectives are mid-level career policemen. They are rarely section

heads because it is simply not realistic for a detective section head to devote significant

time to investigating a single case. It is the section head's responsibility to dole out

assignments to junior detectives. Assistant inspectors are likely to be assigned to

important cases because they have sufficient experience but are not burdened by the

administrative responsibilities of their superiors.

Just as Seicho's detectives are placed in the middle of the police hierarchy, they

are also members of society's middle class. They often live in small apartments in large

danchi-sty\e housing complexes typical of the post-war housing boom. They and their

families must make do on modest incomes. They enjoy the simple pleasures of life, such

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. as a glass of cold beer at the end of the day. Their shoes are worn at the heel, and the

elbows of their coats are shiny from prolonged wear. But Seicho's detectives' middle-

class appearance deceives those who assume a scruffy exterior denotes second-rate

intellect. Appearances notwithstanding, his detectives’ minds are of the highest quality.

In Ten to sen , for example, it is the tired-looking, veteran detective Torigai who first takes

note o f a seemingly inconsequential receipt that becomes the initial clue that sparks an

investigation. Seicho presents detectives whose physical appearance lulls witnesses or

suspects into a false sense of security. Appearance alone may be enough to convince a

suspect that the tired detectives are bored or merely incompetent, depending on the

circumstances. Moreover, the detectives seem to expect to be looked down upon but they

persevere undeterred. Their daily struggle at work to pursue investigations in spite of

being stymied by the police bureaucracy and indecipherable clues seem to feed their

appreciation for the value of perseverance. This value is at the center of Seicho’s novels.

Near the end of Ten to sen , the same tired-looking. veteran detective urges his junior

colleague in Tokyo to continue his dogged pursuit of leads that may weaken the suspect's

alibi. He encourages the younger man by telling him of a difficult case early in his career

and his regret at having failed to press on at a frustrating point in the investigation. His

detectives' middle- to working-class economic status, intelligence and competence on the

job and their devotion and perseverance are typical of thesarariiman (“white-collar

worker”) are indicative of Seicho’s effort to write a more egalitarian mystery.

Ten to sen was serialized in the Japan Travel Bureau’s magazine Tabi (Travel)

from February 1957 to January 1958 and was published in book form by Bunkosha in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. February 1958. Its success, combined with that of Seicho’s other serialized novel of the

same year,Me no kabe ( Visual Barrier, Shukan Yomiuri, April- December 1957), inspired

what is commonly known as the “Seicho boom” which lasted from 1958-1969. During this

period, Japanese readers became ardent fans of Seicho’s detective stories, and publishing

houses inundated him with requests for short stories and serialized novels. Tax records for

1960 indicate that Seicho earned almost 38.5 million yen that year, more than any other

writer.10 For much of the remainder of his career, Seicho continued to gross more than any

other Japanese author. During the Seicho boom, when his popularity and productivity were

at their peak, he published nearly half of his career’s literary output or over 300 novels,

short stories, social commentaries, histories and travel essays. In a given month it was

common for him to serialize four or five works in different publications. Only once during

this period did he publish fewer than twenty works in a year.11 Even after the “boom”

subsided, his popularity continued well into the mid-1980s.12

Although Seicho had been writing short stories since late 1950, Ten to sen was his

first full-length detective work. Previously, he had published short crime fiction marked

by a brand of social realism similar to that in Ten to sen. These stories include

“Harikomi” (“Stakeout,” Shosetsu shincho, December 1955), “Kao” (“The Face,”Shosetsu

shincho, August 1956), “Koe” (“The Voice,” Shosetsu koen, October - November 1956),

“Kyohansha” (“The Accomplice,”Shukan yomiuri, November 1956). These stories

concern themselves almost exclusively with the commission of a “perfect crime”

(kanzen hanzai) and the subsequent effort of the criminal to prevent the crime’s

detection. With the exception of “Harikomi,” the emphasis is not on the detection

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. process itself but the exposition of the criminal’s attempt to carry out his crime and/or

prevent its detection. Only with “Harikomi” does Seichd write from the detective's

perspective; yet. even here, the story is less a work of detection than a glimpse into the

life of a criminal’s former lover as viewed by a detective on a stakeout.12

Ten to sen was the first of Seicho’s serial novels and his first deliberate attempt at

writing a novel of detection. “Detection.” refers here to the process of solving a crime

through the deductive logic of connecting forensic evidence of a crime with a suspect's

motives and opportunity to commit the crime. Accordingly, the process must

demonstrate conclusively that the evidence can be interpreted to indicate only one guilty

party. The procedure need not be limited to the work of a professional detective, that is. a

member of a public, government-supported police force. In fact, people from many walks

of life find themselves “detecting” in Seicho's works; academics, artists, housewives,

students and office workers can assume the role of detective.13

Nonetheless, the professional detective proves to be the most viable protagonist

for a work of realistic detective fiction. He is trained in investigative techniques and

contemporary police methods that are used to discover the identities of dead bodies,

establish cause of death, find suspects and collect evidence to form a viable case against a

suspect. Of course, it is not inconceivable that a layperson, too. might also carry out such

tasks, but the process is sufficiently complex, time-consuming and laborious that Seicho

favors the professional detective in his novels.

Constructed of thirteen chapters. Ten to sen can be separated into four major

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sections. In Section One or the first chapter, three of the main characters are introduced

and two of the mystery’s signature acts of deception occur. In Section Two. Chapters

Two through Four, the bodies are discovered and a veteran Kyushu detective develops an

unorthodox theory about the deaths after conducting a preliminary investigation. In

Section Three, Chapters Five through Twelve, the reader follows a Tokyo detective as he

develops additional theories about the crime, identifies a prime suspect and attempts to

disprove the suspect’s alibi. Section Four or Chapter Thirteen constitutes the mystery’s

solution in the form of a letter from the junior detective in Tokyo to his veteran

counterpart in Kyushu. The letter serves as a recapitulation of the important elements of

the plot in addition to providing the mystery's solution.

I will summarize the plot in considerable detail as it is germane to a discussion of

the larger issue of the importance of Seichd's work as an innovation in Japanese mystery

fiction.

The novel begins on the evening of January 13 with Yasuda Tatsuo. the president

of a small machinery firm, entertaining a government official. The men are at Koyuki. a

small, traditional Japanese restaurant in Akasaka. Tokyo, favored by Yasuda for such

business-related occasions. As a regular customer. Yasuda merits the waitresses’

attentive service; he regularly is waited on by Otoki. an attractive young waitress. His

patronage of the restaurant also means the staff displays discretion regarding the identities

of his guests. Yasuda has become increasingly protective of his guests' identities as in

recent months the newspapers have brought to light a bribery scandal involving collusion

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. between corporations and a government ministry.

That evening Yasuda invites Yaeko and Tomiko, two waitresses, to join him for

an early dinner on the following day before their shift at the Koyuki begins. He says he

does this “out of gratitude for their service." The waitresses want to invite Otoki. but

Yasuda suggests she be excluded. They happily agree to meet him at 3:30 the next day.

The next day, during the meal, they notice that Yasuda repeatedly checks his watch. He

then asks the women to see him off at Tokyo Station. He explains he must take the train

to Kamakura to check in on his wife who is ill. Yaeko and Tomiko agree to accompany

him; they even see him to the train platform.

While the three are standing on platform 13 awaiting the arrival of Yasuda's train,

he points across two empty tracks at platform 15 where he spots a familiar figure. He

indicates a certain passenger boarding the Asakaze Express for Kyushu on platform 15

and asks the waitresses whether they recognize her as Otoki from the restaurant. What's

more, she appears to be in the company of a handsome young man. Recognizing their

coworker. Yaeko and Tomiko want to rush over and say hello, but Yasuda suggests they

leave the couple alone. Soon after, he boards his train for Kamakura. The waitresses are

now free to make their way hurriedly to platform 15 to catch a glimpse through the train

window of Otoki and her beau aboard the train. The waitresses return to the restaurant to

relay their gossip to the proprietress. Nobody has suspected Otoki of being involved with

a man. When Yasuda asks at the restaurant for Otoki the following two nights, he is told

she will be away for a week.

The title of Chapter One in the original Japanese version is Mokugekisha, or

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "Witness(es).” Makiko Yamamoto and Paul Blum, the translators.14 have altered it to

“The Asakaze Express.” Yet it is clear that Seichd uses the term to invoke the image of

those who have observed an event and are able to provide an account of what they have

seen. The question posed for the reader is then, exactly what have the waitresses seen and

how is their testimony relevant to the plot? In other words, as early as Chapter One.

Seichd raises questions about Yasuda’s role in the events that transpire at the station:

Yasuda arranges the time and location of the dinner: Yasuda asks the waitresses to

accompany him to the platform; Yasuda carefully marks time during dinner: and finally.

Yasuda, by sheer chance, catches sight o f Otoki at the station. Even at this early point in

the plot a “coincidental” sighting seems intended to pique the reader’s curiosity if not

arouse suspicion about Yasuda. Suspicions are also raised about Otoki and perhaps her

beau as well.

In Section Two, the narrative resumes a week later on January 21. A laborer on

his way to work finds the dead bodies of a young man and woman on the rocky shore of

Kashii Beach, outside the city of Fukuoka in northern Kyushu. The two bodies lie side by

side; there are no visible wounds on either of them. An examination of their personal

effects reveals business cards that identify the man as Sayama Ken’ichi, Assistant Section

Chief at a government ministry in Tokyo. The woman’s card identifies her as Otoki. a

waitress from the Koyuki restaurant in Akasaka. Sayama’s position attracts the attention

of the local police because the section in which he worked is currently under investigation

in a nationally publicized bribery scandal. The local police infer from a bottle of orange

soda found near the bodies and the flushed complexions of the deceased that the couple

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ingested potassium cyanide and killed themselves in a so-called "love suicide" ( shinju).

They hypothesize that Sayama resorted to suicide either to avoid prosecution for

involvement in illegal acts or to protect his superiors from being exposed by his being

compelled to testify against them. They decide he chose to have his lover join him in

death. The prevailing hypothesis is that the couple traveled to this lonely spot far from

their homes in order to die together. An autopsy confirms cyanide poisoning is the cause

of death. The autopsy also reveals the two lovers had not had sexual intercourse

immediately prior to their deaths. The time of death is established as between nine and

eleven o'clock the night before, January 20.

On the basis of a dining car receipt giving the date and destination of the train, the

police assume the couple stayed in the Fukuoka area between their arrival in Kyushu and

their deaths on the shore at Kashii. A thorough search of local hotels and inns turns up an

inn where Sayama stayed from the time of his arrival in Kyushu on January 15 until the

evening of January 20. He registered alone and under an alias. While at the inn, Sayama

appeared to be waiting anxiously for a phone call. He had no visitors. On the evening of

the twentieth around eight o’clock, there was a call from a woman who asked for him by

the name of Sugawara Taizo, his alias. Soon after, he paid his bill and asked the inn to

hold his luggage until he returned.

Over the course of the investigation, the local senior detective. Torigai Jutaro is

troubled by the inconsistencies surrounding the "love suicide” at Kashii. He wonders

why Sayama and Otoki did not spend their last days together. The dining car receipt in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sayama's pocket specifies a meal for only one person, indicating that Sayama dined alone

on the train from Tokyo to Fukuoka. Detective Torigai is puzzled by the receipt. It does

not seem natural to him that a couple traveling the length of the country to die together

will not eat one of their final meals together. In discussing the issue with his grown

daughter, she confirms his suspicions. She agrees that even if she herself were not

hungry, she would join her Fiance by having a cup of coffee while he ate. She calls it ”a

question of love rather than of appetite”(shokuyoku yori mo aijo no mondcii)}’ The

narrative introduces this episode as evidence of Torigai's ability to apply his

commonsensical understanding of human psychology to a piece of forensic evidence and

thereby extrapolate a promising lead. Whether the clue will prove significant remains to

be seen.

We also learn there are two railway stations near the site where the bodies were

discovered. Although the private train line runs closer to the beach. Torigai calculates it

as no more than an eight-minute walk at a leisurely pace from the national rail station to

the private station. Which train line had the couple used? He surmises that one. if not

both, of the deceased was familiar with the area because they chose to die on a rocky,

desolate shore in the middle of the night. Before boarding the train home, he decides to

make inquiries at the shops in front of the station.

He leams from a shopkeeper that a couple fitting the description of the deceased

arrived at the national railway station at Kashii station on the 9:24 train on the night of

January 20. Yet another witness said she saw the same couple leave the Kashii station on

the private line at 9:35 the same night. Torigai forms two tentative theories: one, there

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. are two separate couples or the couple seen leaving the national railway station stopped

briefly along the way before arriving at the private rail station where they passed the

second witness. However, Torigai is unable to find any railway employees at either

station who are able to positively identify either couple.

At this point Detective Mihara Kiichi of the Second Investigative Division. Police

Headquarters in Tokyo, arrives in Fukuoka to assist with the investigation. Torigai shares

his assumptions about the case with the polite and attentive young man who has come to

investigate the death of an important witness in the government's bribery case. Because

the case has been ruled a double suicide, the First Investigative Division which is

responsible for cases of violence -- murder, rape, assault, robbery -- does not have

jurisdiction over it. Furthermore, the Second Investigative Division, responsible for cases

of fraud and bribery, has been assigned the case because of Sayama's suspected

involvement in the government bribery scandal.

Torigai realizes Mihara shares his suspicion that all is not as it appears to be in

this case. Mihara tells Torigai that Otoki's coworkers suspected her of having a lover yet

no one had ever seen her with a man prior to her boarding the Asakaze on January 14.

The waitresses at the restaurant told police Otoki used to receive calls from a man. but no

one ever saw him visiting her apartment. Two waitresses tell of seeing Otoki and a

strange man on the train platform. They explain that Yasuda had called attention to Otoki

and her companion boarding the train two tracks away. Mihara begins to wonder how it

is possible to have an unobstructed view of a platform that is two tracks away in a

terminal as busy as Tokyo Station.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. He tells Torigai that as a result of the investigation into the bribery scandal at the

government ministry, the police have learned Sayama knew a great deal about the day-to-

day operations of the section. He may even be implicated in the bribery scandal. The

police regret the loss of Sayama, not as a suspect, but as a key witness. Yet. after visiting

the Kashii shore and discussing the case with Torigai. Mihara reluctantly admits that he

must adhere to the theory that Sayama and Otoki died in a love suicide. He discounts

Torigai’s conjecture about two couples leaving from two different stations. Even so. he

remains perplexed by the eyewitness account of Otoki and her beau being sighted across

two open tracks at Tokyo Station.

The investigation in Kyushu outlined in the second section of the novel continues

to arouse the reader's suspicions about Yasuda but withholds any solution to the

questions posed. What is the significance of the curious receipt from the dining car in

Sayama’s pocket? Does his suspected connection to the bribery scandal cast a different

light upon the deaths of Sayama and his lover Otoki? What was the nature of their

relationship? Were there two couples walking toward the beach that night from two

different stations at Kashii, as Torigai argues, or only one couple as Mihara believes?

What is the relationship between the two dead bodies and Yasuda pointing out Otoki at

Tokyo Station? How could such a sighting be possible at busy Tokyo Station? Seicho

continues to arouse the reader’s suspicions concerning Yasuda. directly linking one of the

dead characters, Otoki, to the carefully arranged "coincidence” at Tokyo Station. By

providing the reader with a description of the events leading up to the sighting at Tokyo

Station before the detectives themselves are aware of them, Seicho invites the reader to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suspect Yasuda of foul play even before he becomes a suspect in the investigation into the

deaths of Sayama and Otoki. Yet nothing definitely connects Yasuda to the two dead

bodies in Kyushu.

At the outset of Section Three. Mihara returns to Tokyo and proceeds to platform

13 where he waits for an hour observing the comings and goings of trains along tracks 13

and 14. His view of platform 15 is always obstructed by at least one train arriving and/or

departing on the intervening tracks. He consults the stationmaster to leam if there is an

interval when both tracks 13 and 14 are clear between the arrival of the Asakaze at 5:49

on track 15 and its departure at 6:30. After consulting his timetables, the stationmaster

explains there is a four-minute interval between 5:57 and 6:01 when both tracks are

unoccupied. Based on this new information. Mihara suspects for the first time the

sighting of Sayama and Otoki at Tokyo Station has been a carefully arranged scenario

rather than a coincidence.

One of the waitresses tells him how she came to be on platform 13 during this

crucial interval. He also leams for the first time of Yasuda's frequent business contact

with Otoki. These "coincidences” seem to suggest a connection between Yasuda and the

dead couple in Kyushu. Yet when he questions Yasuda about seeing Sayama and Otoki

boarding the train together. Yasuda expresses surprise. How could they know each other?

He had never taken Sayama to the Koyuki restaurant. He also tells Mihara the

relationship between himself and Otoki had been strictly professional. When Mihara

wonders why Yasuda was boarding a train for Kamakura on the day of the sighting,

Yasuda explains he was making one o f his frequent trips to see his sick wife.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Mihara grows more suspicious when investigations reveal that Yasuda has

connections to Ishida Yoshio, the division chief involved in the ministry bribery scandal

and Sayama's boss. Yasuda’s firm has been awarded a contract to produce machinery for

the ministry. In fact, Ishida is suspected of playing a crucial role in the bribery scandal.

Nonetheless, there appears to be no connection between Yasuda and Sayama. Mihara and

his supervisor decide to investigate Yasuda’s whereabouts on the two days before the

bodies were discovered.

Yasuda explains he had traveled alone by train to Sapporo in Hokkaido. Japan's

northernmost island, on the evening of January 20. the night before the bodies had been

found. The train did not reach the ferry to Hokkaido until nine o'clock on the morning of

January 21. He then spent the rest of the day traveling by train to Sapporo, and his

business associate met him at Sapporo station on the evening of January 21. He tells

Mihara he spent the next three nights at the Maruso Inn in Sapporo before leaving

Sapporo on the evening of January 24 and arriving in Tokyo the following day. Yasuda’s

schedule accounts for his whereabouts during the period immediately before and after the

discovery of the two bodies in Kyushu. Mihara sends a telegram to the Sapporo police to

confirm Yasuda's stay at the Marusd Inn. While waiting for a reply, he decides to visit

Yasuda's wife in Kamakura to verify her condition for himself.

During his brief call on Yasuda’s wife. Ryoko, he leams that she suffers from

tuberculosis, has little hope of quick recovery, and occupies her time by reading. He does

not disclose his identity as a police detective; he simply implies that he and Yasuda are

business acquaintances. He leams from her maid the name and address of Ryoko’s

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. doctor. The doctor tells Mihara that Ryoko does have tuberculosis, but her case is not

severe. She is able to take short walks and, on rare occasions, brief trips by train to visit a

nearby relative. The doctor says he visits Mrs. Yasuda twice a week. Sometimes on

Sundays he drops by to discuss their shared interest in literature. He shows Mihara an

essay written by Ryoko and published in a local coterie magazine some six months

earlier. This essay proves important to Mihara's investigation, but also gives the novel a

tale-within-a-tale construction and develops important themes of the novel.

Ryoko's brief essay, “Suji no aru fukei" (“Landscape with Figures"), relates how-

having grown bored with contemporary novels, she begins to “read" the railway

timetables her husband purchased on his frequent business trips. She looks on them as a

new form of “travel literature." Although she herself is unable to travel, she can envision

the trains that travel the length and breadth of Japan and the lives of those people who

ride them. She writes, “If I check the time and the station I may even learn how trains

pass each other and at which station and at what hour. This can be fascinating! How and

when trains connect or pass each other is deliberate and planned, but the meeting and

parting of passengers is purely accidental."16

A passage that appears early in “Landscape with Figures" makes Mihara uneasy:

“My husband uses a timetable very often because of his many business trips. He is

familiar with it for practical business reasons, whereas I, an invalid, have become a

constant reader not out o f necessity but for the sheer pleasure it gives me."17

More and more facts of the case suggest to Mihara that Yasuda may be more involved

than his alibi suggests. Yasuda is a frequent traveler experienced at deciphering

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. timetables. He also is connected to the ministry at which Sayama worked. His

considerable familiarity with timetables leads to his discovery of the four-minute window

at Tokyo Station that allows the "coincidental" sighting of Sayama and Otoki. The more

that Mihara analyzes the lengths to which Yasuda may have gone to make the sighting

appear random, the more he suspects Yasuda’s involvement in the deaths of Sayama and

Otoki.

Returning to police headquarters. Mihara finds a telegram from Sapporo

confirming Yasuda’s alibi. On January 21. Yasuda had been met at the station by the

man with whom he did business in Sapporo. He stayed at the Maruso Inn on the nights of

January 22 and 23. Accordingly, he can account for his whereabouts on the day that

Otoki and Sayama died, as well as the three following days. The great distance between

the Kashii shore in Kyushu and Yasuda’s business meeting in Sapporo the following day

precludes any possibility of his traveling by train from southwestern Japan to its

northernmost island — a journey of forty hours. A grudging respect for Yasuda. his

formidable opponent, grows inside Mihara. The detective is beginning to realize that

Yasuda is too careful to let himself be caught in a lie which can be easily disproved.

Mihara believes Yasuda is connected to the deaths of Sayama and Otoki. yet he is unable

to prove his suspicions.

Mihara is given permission to travel to Hokkaido by his supervisor who also

suspects Yasuda. At the northern tip of Honshu, Mihara fills out a form required of all

passengers transferring from the train to the ferry to Hokkaido. Although he arrives in

Sapporo tired from the long journey, he immediately visits the inn where Yasuda stayed.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Yet there is nothing new to be learned from the staff. Next, he visits Yasuda's business

acquaintance, Kawanishi. Kawanishi explains how he received a telegram stating Yasuda

had “important business” to discuss. The telegram asked him to meet Yasuda in the

Sapporo Station waiting room where Yasuda appeared about ten minutes after the other

passengers had already disembarked. Moreover. Kawanishi was a bit taken aback when

the business matter did not turn out to be as urgent as Yasuda's telegram implied. Mihara

suspects Yasuda has deliberately created another witness in Kawanishi. Kawanishi

reveals that he did not actually see Yasuda disembark from the train, but met Yasuda in

the waiting room as prescribed in the telegram.

Mihara suspects Yasuda did not arrive by the train he claims, but. instead, came to

Hokkaido on a later ferry. After that. Yasuda caught an express train that put him in

Sapporo only slightly after his scheduled arrival time. In order to verify his theory.

Mihara checks the forms filled out by the passengers aboard the ferry that Yasuda claims

he to have taken to Hokkaido, but Yasuda’s alibi remains intact. The form bears his

name, the signature matches the one on the hotel registry, and Sayama's superior Ishida

was aboard the same ferry.

Mihara’s supervisor obtains confirmation from a source in Ishida's ministry that

Ishida and Yasuda traveled together to Hokkaido. The witness, Sasaki Kitaro, tells the

police that he accompanied both men. He recalls that Yasuda was seated in a different

car, but he made repeated visits to Ishida's seat during the trip to talk with Ishida.

Between Otaru and Sapporo, Ishida introduced Yasuda to an official of the Hokkaido

government who happened to be on the train. Ishida and Yasuda parted ways at Sapporo

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Station.

Sasaki’s testimony raises many questions, however. If Yasuda regularly visited

Ishida’s seat, why did he first meet the Hokkaido government official only five hours into

the train trip from Hakodate to Sapporo? Was Yasuda actually on the train between

Hakodate and Otaru or did he board the train at Otaru? How did he arrive in Otaru ahead

of the super express if he was with Ishida and Sasaki on the ferry to Hokkaido? Finally,

how did Yasuda travel from one end of the country to the other in such a short time?

It dawns on Mihara that traveling such a distance is only possible by plane. He

checks the departure time for the flight from Fukuoka to Tokyo and the connecting flight

from Tokyo to Sapporo. Perhaps Yasuda flew from Tokyo to Fukuoka on January 20. the

day of the murder. After killing Sayama and Otoki, he could have flown the following

day from Fukuoka to Sapporo via Tokyo. He would still have arrived in time to first

board the train at Otaru and then have Ishida introduce him to the local government

official. Mihara guesses that the passenger lists for the three flights are not likely to

reveal Yasuda’s name, but the lists should reveal the same alias. Surprisingly, there is no

repetition of names on the passenger lists. Furthermore, after contacting all the

passengers he leams that each one was aboard the appropriate flight. Mihara appears to

be at an impasse.

Simultaneously, the investigation into the bribery scandal at the ministry has

bogged down. The death of Sayama is hampering investigators. Men of his rank,

assistant section chiefs, are long-time employees at the ministry. While their superiors

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. hold the academic pedigrees essential to promotion in the bureaucracy, the assistant

section chiefs handle the day-to-day operations of the department. They are invaluable to

the ministries they serve, yet they receive little recognition from their superiors who often

care more about their own career advancement than the business of the government.

Because their careers depend on recognition by their fickle superiors, assistant section

chiefs are often willing to go to great lengths to please any superior. Mihara and his

supervisor surmise that Sayama was overly eager to please his superior. Ishida. They

believe his need to appease his superior left Sayama vulnerable to Yasuda's intimation

that he should commit suicide to protect Ishida. They assume Otoki. as his lover, chose

to accompany him in death. Yet the case continues to trouble both Mihara and his

supervisor.

In a letter to his young counterpart. Torigai Jutaro. the veteran detective, urges

Mihara to doggedly pursue the case. He exhorts him to trust his instincts about the

suspect Yasuda and he cautions him against hasty assumptions: "Sometimes, a

preconceived opinion will make us overlook the obvious. This is a frightening thing. We

call it common sense, but it often leaves us with a blind spot. Even if something appears

to be obvious one should investigate, objectively, to make absolutely sure."18 Torigai

again asserts his opinion that there must have been two couples sighted on the night of

January 20 at the Kashii stations. He believes one was Sayama and Otoki and the other

was Yasuda and an unknown woman.

Mihara continues to fret over the details of the case. He investigates the telegram

sent by Yasuda to his business associate in Sapporo. Mihara leams the telegram was sent

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. not from Fukuoka or Tokyo but from a station near the end of line at the northernmost tip

of Honshu further proof that Yasuda was on the train in Ishida's company. Questioning

the conductor of the train reveals, however, that it was Ishida's subordinate who asked to

have the telegram sent. Mihara deduces from the physical description given by the

conductor and the presence of both Yasuda's and Ishida's signatures on the ferry registry

that the subordinate was Sasaki Kitaro from Ishida's ministry.

Thus in the third section of Ten to sen. Mihara's suspicions concerning Yasuda

prove justified; however, he remains unable to detect any weaknesses in Yasuda’s alibi.

Yasuda has carefully documented his whereabouts at certain times in such a thorough

way that refutation of his alibi seems impossible. He has witnesses and paperwork that

can account for his movements before, during and after the suspected time of death of

Sayama and Otoki. The passenger lists from the airline flights indicate he did not travel

under his name nor does he appear to have used an alias. Either Mihara's suspicions

about Yasuda are unfounded or Yasuda has carefully considered the police detection

procedure and fortified his alibi in anticipation of a relentless investigation.

The fourth and concluding section of the novel takes the form of a lengthy letter

from Mihara to Torigai in which Mihara at last reveals the facts of the crime as they are

understood by the police. Namely, Yasuda was directly involved in the murder of

Sayama and Otoki. He arranged for Sayama and Otoki to board the Asakaze for Kyushu

together. He utilized the four-minute window to manufacture witnesses who would attest

that Sayama and Otoki appeared to be a couple when, in fact, Yasuda was Otoki's lover.

Sayama and Otoki boarded the train together, but Otoki disembarked at Atami. Yasuda

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sent her to Atami with instructions to await his call. Sayama was also ordered to Kyushu

where he was to await word from Yasuda concerning a resolution to the scandal raging at

the ministry.

After making sure he could be placed at the restaurant in Akasaka on the nights

following the departure of Sayama and Otoki. Yasuda flew to Fukuoka. His wife Ryoko

roused herself from her sickbed to collect Otoki at Atami under the pretext that her

husband was waiting for both of them in Kyushu. The two women - wife and mistress -

traveled together to Fukuoka. In Fukuoka, Yasuda and Otoki left for the beach at Kashii

while Ryoko called Sayama at his inn. asking for him by his alias. Responding to a call

from the wife of his superior's trusted business acquaintance, Sayama left the inn

immediately, presumably in hopes of resolving the ministry bribery scandal. Therefore,

there were two couples seen at the Kashii stations -- Yasuda and Otoki and Sayama and

Ryoko. The Yasudas separately led their victims to the beach under the cover of

darkness. Yasuda poisoned Otoki and Ryoko poisoned Sayama by giving each a drink

laced with cyanide. When sufficient time had passed after Otoki’s death. Yasuda called

out to his wife on the dark beach. He then carried Otoki's body to where Sayama*s

corpse lay. Yasuda and Ryoko then neatly arranged the bodies and planted the soda bottle

to create the illusion of a love suicide.

The following morning, January 21. Yasuda flew from Fukuoka to Tokyo and

then caught the connecting flight to Sapporo. He arrived in time to catch the bus from the

Sapporo Airport to the train station and take the local train to Otaru where he boarded the

super express carrying Ishida, the Hokkaido official and Sasaki. On an earlier trip to the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. region, Yasuda had taken a blank copy of the form available at the station and filled in the

necessary information in advance. Sasaki posed as Yasuda on the trip from Tokyo to

Aomori. He sent the telegram to Yasuda's Sapporo business acquaintance asking him to

meet Yasuda in the station waiting room and he submitted Yasuda’s ferry registration

form instead of his own, establishing Yasuda’s presence on the ferry and the train. Ishida

introduced Yasuda to the Hokkaido official only after leaving Otaru because Yasuda was

not aboard earlier. Yasuda had instructed his acquaintance to meet him in the waiting

room on the off chance that his flight might be delayed. He did not want his acquaintance

waiting for him on the train platform if he were not able to board the train at Otaru.

Yasuda booked the three flights using three different names of actual businessmen

connected to the ministry. Ishida asked each man to allow Yasuda to use his name.

Ishida swore all three to secrecy.

Mihara tells Torigai that all of the information concerning the Yasudas'

involvement in the crime has to be inferred because the Yasudas committed suicide

before the police could apprehend them. Ishida’s future in the ministry seems bright,

however, as he has been transferred to another division and promoted. Sasaki too has

been promoted to section chief. Yet Mihara remains dissatisfied: "The whole case has

left a bad taste in my mouth. Sitting here at home, completely relaxed, a glass of cold

beer at my elbow. I don’t have the satisfaction 1 generally feel when a case is solved and

the criminal has been turned over to the Public Prosecutor.”19 The novel ends here with

the mystery solved but half of the guilty parties unpunished.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This analysis of Ten to sen explicates why the novel is regarded as a successful

mystery. Japanese critics have viewed this novel alternately as an indictment of the

Japanese bureaucracy, an example ofaribai yaburi (“alibi busting”) mysteries and a

reincarnation of earlier detective fiction based on contrived torikku. This section will

delineate weaknesses of the above theories while demonstrating the importance of motive

to detective fiction as understood by Seicho. In addition, this section will discuss the

three major torikku that comprise Yasuda's alibi.

Seicho's most important contribution to Japanese mystery fiction is his

understanding of the relationship of motive to crime. It is his introduction of the realistic

motive, as opposed to the unrealistic or nonexistent motive, that marks his detective

works as socially realistic, innovative and singularly important to modem Japanese

detective fiction. For him, motivation functions to establish a correlation between not

only the victim and the murderer but also between the murderer and society. The

connection between the murderer and the victim in pre-war mystery fiction had been

tenuous or random. However, for Seicho and other writers whom he influences,

motivation becomes an important, realistic means of expressing relationships between the

characters and the crime. The motivation for a character's actions becomes as important,

if not more important, than the torikku. Seicho's addition of motive to the genre

accompanied a heightened realism in plot, characterization and, inextricably related to

both, motive.

In Hirano Ken’s analysis of Ten to sen included in the Matsumoto Seicho zenshu ,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he praises the work as a superior example ofaribai the yaburi (“alibi busting") sub-genre

of mystery fiction. Hirano cites the influence on Seicho of Freeman Wills Crofts, an Irish

mystery author who often used this model. In the aribai yaburi mystery, the detective

develops a theory concerning the identity of the criminal, but he is unable to prove it due

to the care with which the suspect has constructed his alibi. Relatively early in the

narrative the detective eliminates other suspects in favor of one whose identity is known

to the reader. The remainder of the mystery deals with the detective's collecting

sufficient evidence to prove that the suspect is indeed guilty. All of the information

presented to the detective is duly presented to the reader.20

Hirano credits Seicho’s approach to the mystery with the creation of the term

shakai-hu suiri shosetsu or “socially-minded mystery novels." Where Crofts, for

example, locates the source of evil in the criminal’s own deficient character or individual

evil (kojin aku), Seicho regularly identifies societal forces that influence people to

commit crimes against their fellow citizens. In Seicho’s fiction, social forces are

invariably responsible for man’s inhumanity to man. He calls this “organizational evil"

(soshiki aku).21 “Organizational evil” can take two basic forms: the organization makes

demands on the individual that require him to a commit crime to remain a member o f the

organization; or, the individual identifies his imminent removal from the organization and

commits a crime to maintain his present status.

Thus, in an analysis o f Ten to sen which follows Hirano’s line of reasoning, the

criminal Yasuda contrives a plan to kill the key witness in the government’s case against

him not because of any evil inherent in himself, but because he has been corrupted by

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prolonged involvement with an inherently corrupt system. Viewed from a different angle,

the perpetrator is manipulated by the system that he has exploited for his own monetary'

gain in order to preserve the flow of capital into business ventures with which he is

associated. Moreover, Sayama's boss. Ishida, has Yasuda kill Sayama in Kashii where

Ishida has ordered his subordinate to wait. In return, Yasuda receives assistance from

Ishida in the form of a witness who provides an alibi for Yasuda's whereabouts at the

time of the murders. Although Hirano does not go so far as to suggest that human beings

are stripped of agency when absorbed into an organization or system, he does support

Seicho’s belief that organizations exploit the baser human desires and fears for the

organizations’ benefit.

Whereas Hirano praises the work for its implied critique of the seemingly

incestuous connection between government and business. Fujii Hidetada argues the novel

is less about government corruption in the 1950s than it is a more traditional detective

story constructed around Seicho's use of the torikku ('‘trick") of the four-minute window

at Tokyo Station. For Fujii, when aribaiyaburi is emphasized, the critique of institutions

of power is necessarily de-emphasized. Fujii argues that the reader's attention is drawn

away from Seicho’s commentary on organizational evil when the narrative chronicles

Imanishi's attempts to disprove Yasuda’s alibi.22

Despite the heightened social content of Ten to sen in comparison with its

predecessors in the genre, there is sufficient evidence to cast doubt on an interpretation of

Ten to sen as a stinging social critique. Primary among these weaknesses is the

vagueness of the criticism. Seicho approaches the target of his criticism obliquely. For

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. example, the critique against Ishida is weakened because readers do not know in which

ministry he works or even which section he heads. Nor do readers know the details of the

bribery scandal or the extent of Ishida’s involvement. For that matter. Sayama’s role in

the scandal is inferred but unclear. Another weakening factor is the lack of detail

provided about the daily workings of the bureaucracy. Unlike fiction in the business

novel genre that is rife with jargon, information and data germane to that industry.23

Seicho’s detective fiction often barely penetrates the perimeter of the targeted institution.

In Ten to sen , readers learn nothing about any of the myriad facets of the bureaucracy.

My analysis holds that motivation and “organizational evil” are inextricably

related in Ten to sen. A study of motivation within an organization becomes a critique of

those at liberty to manipulate the organization to further their own ends. That is. those in

power abuse their influence in order to coerce others to commit crimes. As Fujii

suggests, focusing a narrative on a detective’s efforts to penetrate the layers of deceptions

created by a criminal does set up an exercise in puzzle solving rather than a political

commentary. Yet it can also be argued that the novel remains a critique of the upper

echelons of government despite the prominence of the torikku. Ishida's power and

connections enable him to put at Yasuda's disposal all the resources necessary to

construct a sufficiently complex alibi. Ishida uses his influence to coerce subordinates

and sub-contractors to play roles in the alibi constructed by Yasuda. The message of this

interpretation is simple: those who possess great power are able to craft a more elaborate

alibi based on the power, monetary resources, and influence at their disposal. While Fujii

does not dispute that Seicho’s works have a strong socially realistic bent, he does not

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. address the important relationship between the strength of the alibi and the power of those

who create it. Fujii believes that Seicho is more successful in depicting an underling

murdered by his boss in “Aru shokanryo no massatsu” (“The death of a minor official."

February 1958). This work is an example of Seich5 combining the techniques of

detective fiction and the facts of an actual murder to create a piece of reportage.24

In Ten to sen , Seicho has identified an important motivation for human conduct:

the protection of one’s station in society. In both novels analyzed in this study. Ten to sen

and Sana no utsuwa, self-preservation is the motive for multiple murders. InTen to sen.

self-preservation leads Ishida to enlist the help of Yasuda. who murders two people to

protect Ishida from the scandal at the government ministry. Because Yasuda dies before

confessing, the reader cannot know precisely what factors motivated his decision to help

Ishida. Perhaps he feared criminal prosecution stemming from his involvement in the

bribery scandal at the ministry. Perhaps he sought to curry favor with Ishida. Because

Seicho has so clearly emphasized the importance of motive, it is interesting to note that

such an important piece of information as the murderer's motive remains unknown.

While the motive of Yasuda is never explicitly stated, we can infer that he acts out

of a sense of self-preservation. The ministry for which Sayama works is being

investigated on suspicion of corruption. Yasuda has done business with the ministry and

has close ties to the section in which Sayama worked. Sayama’s section chief, Ishida. is

able to persuade Yasuda to murder Sayama suggesting to readers that Yasuda is either

involved in the corruption under investigation or has committed some transgression in the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. past that Ishida uses to blackmail him.

In addition to emphasizing the importance of motive in mystery fiction. Seicho

attempted to revolutionize the /orikku, leaving behind hokey gimmicks and developing

greater realism in this area o f the genre. Let us now consider the three major torikku of

Ten to sen.

The novel's signature trick is Yasuda’s manipulation of the four-minute window

at Tokyo Station in which the waitresses on Platform 13 see Sayama and Otoki boarding

the Asakaze on Platform 15. The device reflects the importance of travel and train

schedules in the novel. Indeed, Seicho’s own affinity for travel and the importance of rail

travel in Japan are represented by repeated use of travel motifs in his fiction.

Discovery of this improbable four-minute window allows Yasuda to stage a

coincidence. He coordinates the arrival of the two waitresses on Platform 13 and Sayama

and Otoki on Platform 15 to coincide with the four-minute interval during which the

intervening tracks are clear. The carefully constructed scene is designed to appear

coincidental. However, from the very beginning of the novel. Seicho hints to the

observant reader that Yasuda has ulterior motives. Throughout dinner with the

waitresses. Yasuda is concerned about the time, frequently checking his watch somewhat

surreptitiously; he insists the women see him to his train; and Yasuda. points out Sayama

and Otoki on the far platform to the waitresses.

In fact, Mihara’s realization of the sheer improbability of such a sighting makes

him more suspicious of Yasuda’s involvement. Mihara’s suspicions are confirmed when

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he learns that there were only four minutes in which the sighting is possible. His

subsequent discovery that Yasuda is a frequent traveler and adept at deciphering train

schedules further implicates Yasuda.

Critic Sato Tomoyuki finds several faults with this torikku, some of which do not

warrant discussion here. He criticizes as unrealistic the trick and questions the likelihood

of Yasuda effectively using the “four-minute window" as part of his plot. He doubts that

Yasuda could have visualized the physical locations and lines of sight at Tokyo Station

given only a railway timetable. Sat5 also claims that the distance between the people

standing on Platforms 13 and 15 is so great that one would not be able to recognize

someone from so far away. He claims Mihara wastes his time investigating the four-

minute window, calling Mihara’s efforts "mucla na tansci' (“a worthless investigation").2'

Another question he raises is why Sayama went unquestioningly to Kyushu at the order of

Yasuda. the president of a company indebted to the ministry that employs Sayama. Sato

calls into question the possibility of Sayama and Otoki traveling together as strangers.

Why were they together at the station? Why were they boarding the same train when she

would eventually disembark at Atami and he would continue on to Hakata? He wonders

if it would not have been more logical for Sayama to have a sleeping berth for the

overnight trip. Yet perhaps the most salient problems raised by Sato about the four-

minute window concern the timing of events on the platforms. How did Yasuda convey

to Otoki and Sayama that they were to be on the platform, but not yet on the train,

between 5:57 and 6:01?

Concerns such as those expressed by Sato would likely not have bothered Seicho,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. who strove for a balance of realism and narrativity. Recall his fondness for works with a

high degree of narrativity. He believed it essential for a work to manifest an interesting

quality (omoshirosa) above all else. Commenting on the difference between “pure" and

popular literature in his essay "‘Suiri shosetsu no miryoku” (‘'The Appeal of the Mystery")

Seicho writes, "shosetsu wa omosirosa ga hontai na no da'' (“the core of the novel is

being interesting.”)26 He was willing to sacrifice a measure of a work's realism in order

to create entertaining stories or utilize innovative torikku. Even given Seicho's elevation

of narrativity over minor points of verisimilitude, many of Sato's questions ring hollow

and they are easily explained away.

His doubts about the Yasudas being capable of devising the trick at Tokyo Station

seem easily refuted. Both Yasuda and Ryoko are sufficiently bright and familiar with

train timetables to have conceived of the trick on their own. Although her essay "A

Landscape in Figures” seems to be a collection fanciful musings. there is actually a great

deal of imagination and creativity involved in her writing. Mihara even believes that

Ryoko. not her husband, discovered the four-minute window. Regardless, both Yasuda

and his wife knew the timetables well enough to discover the elusive four minutes and

exploit them.

Sato’s questions spotting the couple at Tokyo Station can be answered, too. It is

not clear how many people are on the distant platform when Sayama and Otoki board the

Asakaze, but a crowd on the platform would make recognizing even familiar faces

difficult. However, either Yasuda or Sayama’s boss Ishida bought the tickets for Sayama

and Otoki. Therefore, Yasuda could have known where they were seated and.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. subsequently, where they would board.

Sato calls Mihara’s investigation of the four-minute window "worthless." Sato

believes that once Mihara learns Yasuda has staged the scene at Tokyo Station for the

benefit of the waitresses, it is not necessary for him to go to the station to investigate the

scene for himself. Yet firsthand observation of Tokyo Station establishes Mihara's

character as a detective with a thorough understanding of standard investigating

procedures. He does not rely solely upon the statements of the waitresses who may or

may not have reason to lie on Yasuda’s behalf. Instead, he confirms the situation by

going to the site.

Sato suggests that Yasuda has the social obligation to treat the mid-level

bureaucrat Sayama with greater respect. On this point, it is unclear what interaction, if

any, Yasuda has with Sayama. The text does not specify who asked or ordered Sayama

to go to Kyushu. If asked or more likely, ordered by his superior Ishida. Sayama would

have little choice but to go. If, indeed, it is Yasuda who sends Sayama to Kyushu, it is

highly likely that the request is made, or the order is given, with the full knowledge of

Sayama’s superior Ishida. Thus, Yasuda could rebuff any challenge or question from

Sayama by invoking Ishida's name.

Sato’s finds many problems with the details of the travel arrangements. Both

Sayama and Otoki are naturally on the same train because both would travel south and

west until the train turns west after passing Otoki’s connection for Atami; thus, it is not

unusual that the two would be traveling on the same rail line. Nor is it unusual that

Sayama does not have a sleeping berth for the overnight journey. Since Sayama does not

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. buy the ticket, he likely is not given a sleeping berth: whoever bought the ticket, either

Yasuda or Sayama’s superior Ishida. would not waste money on the comfort of a man

they intend to kill a few days hence.

Sayama and Otoki traveling together is plausible even if they did not know each

other from the restaurant Oyuki. It is conceivable that Ishida or Yasuda arranged for them

to travel together under some pretext. Ishida may have ordered Sayama to accompany

Otoki as far as her connection to Atami ostensibly to provide a favor to a business

acquaintance. Sato suggests that Yasuda (via Ishida) needs to concoct a reason for

Sayama to go to Kyushu but Ishida’s order is sufficient to send his underling on his way

to await further instructions from his superior. Once Sayama knows his trip is related to

the scandal at the ministry, he might dutifully follow the orders of a superior and go to

Kyushu to wait without asking questions or without having his questions answered.

The only significant question Sato raises concerns the timing of the victims’

arrival on the platform. The ’‘couple” would have been able to board the train any time

during a 45-minute window before and after 6:00. Why would they feel the need to board

the train at that exact time? Surely, Yasuda could not explain to Sayama or Otoki that he

wanted them to be seen together in order to create for witnesses the illusion of a romantic

relationship between the two of them in order to establish an alibi for their murder which

he would commit six days later.27 Arranging the timing is possible given the train

schedules. What seems more difficult to manage is the coordination of both parties being

in their appropriate places at the appropriate times. Yasuda can control to a great degree

when he and the waitresses will arrive on the platform. What he cannot control is the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. arrival of Sayama and Otoki. If one of them were delayed by five minutes, it might ruin

the timing of the plan. They might have been ordered to meet at the station and board

precisely at 6:00. Regardless, precisely coordinating the timing of both the witnesses and

the subjects to be witnessed without either group knowing they are being manipulated

seems implausible.

When he visits the platform, Mihara tries to recreate the events of the day in

question. He discovers exactly what a rare coincidence it must have been for both tracks

13 and 14 to be vacant at precisely the moment the "couple” was on Platform 15. He also

realizes how hard it must have been for Yasuda to spot the "couple” on the distant

platform. Mihara uses the complexity of Yasuda's plan against him. turning what was

intended to be an alibi protecting Yasuda into a reason to continue investigating him. In

realizing that the scene must have been staged, he comes to suspect Yasuda even more

strongly.

With the second major torikku of the novel. Seichd continues exploring a common

epistemological theme found in earlier detective writers, questioning the reality of the

crime scene. Such questioning lies at the very heart of the mystery genre. One expects a

villain to take great pains in order to conceal a crime. Similarly, the role of the detective

is to disprove the alibi established by the criminal and thereby reach an understanding of

the nature of the crime. The detective must adopt a variety of analytical strategies in

assessing clues. Considering the clues at face value is one approach that can be

productive. For example, Torigai asks himself if the dining car receipt for one person is a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. genuine receipt. Since it is authentic, he begins another type of inquiry, inference, by

considering what the receipt might imply; Torigai supposes that a young couple on their

way to commit suicide would spend as much time together as possible. Thus, he posits,

Sayama must have been traveling alone and. therefore, he and Otoki were not

romantically involved.

Another type of analysis is evaluating clues as constructs designed to mislead the

police or preserve the criminal's alibi. Mihara is suspicious of Yasuda from early in the

novel but is unable to make headway in disproving the suspect's seemingly irrefutable

alibi until he begins to consider the clues as products of Yasuda's scheming. Of course.

Yasuda’s objective in creating the illusion of suicide is to encourage the authorities to

conduct a less rigorous investigation by suggesting that there was no murderous third

party involved. The presence of only one body on a cold, lonely shore would lead the

police to assume foul play. A second body, particularly one of the opposite gender, in

close proximity suggests a love suicide — a not-uncommon phenomenon in Japan.

From the vantage point of the murderer, the difficulty inherent in his plan lies in

luring the victims to the lonely spot before killing them. For the sake of convenience and

secrecy, the victims must arrive at the location. The shore at Kashii was not accessible by

car and obviously, it will not do to carry a body down shop-lined streets and past

witnesses hurrying home from work. Thus, Yasuda and his wife must lure their two

victims to the same part of the shore, yet out o f sight of each other. They must also trick

each victim into drinking potassium cyanide. Yasuda takes Otoki to the shore, perhaps

under the pretense of a romantic rendezvous, and Yasuda's wife takes Sayama to the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. shore on the pretext, perhaps, of meeting someone who will provide information

calculated to ameliorate the scandal within the ministry where he works. Ryoko offers

Sayama whiskey to calm his nerves and the alcohol laced with potassium cyanide kills

him. Yasuda offers Otoki a bottle of juice laced with the same poison. Once the two are

dead, husband and wife seek out each other in the darkness, and Yasuda carries the body

of Otoki to where Sayama lies. The corpses are carefully arranged and the juice bottle

containing traces of potassium cyanide planted near the “couple.” The murderers return

to the station, leaving behind no footprints on the rocky shore.

The critic Sato Tomoyuki questions assumptions the police make on finding the

victims o f an apparent love suicide. According to Sato, after determining that the

‘‘couple” died of potassium cyanide poisoning, the police should have investigated how

they came to possess the toxic substance. He claims such an investigation would be

appropriate even when suicide is presumed. It is questionable, however, whether

members of a provincial police force caught up in the excitement o f the discovery of two

bodies would pursue such details. Even if the police had conducted an investigation into

the origin of the cyanide, there is no guarantee it would have led them to Yasuda.

The “love suicide” at Kashii exemplifies the importance of viewing a crime scene

from a variety of perspectives. Yasuda counted on the police adhering to a predictable

explanation for the death by poison of a man and woman of roughly the same age found

side by side in a remote area: “love suicide.” Initially the police do follow this line of

reasoning. Only with Torigai’s assertion of his opinion about the dining car receipt that

the deaths are reclassified as murders. His analysis combines not only the physical

100

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. evidence at the crime scene but also an understanding of psychology. Aided by the

commonsensical “expert testimony" of his daughter based on her own experience with

her fiance, Torigai correctly assumes that Sayama and Otoki were not together when

Sayama dined aboard the train. That they were not together on the train raises a series of

questions for him and subsequently, Mihara. Where did Otoki disembark? Why was she

not in the dining car with Sayama if the two were, in fact, a couple? If they were not a

couple, why were they seen together boarding the Asakaze at Tokyo Station?

Like the ruse of the “love suicide" and the four-minute window at Tokyo Station

Yasuda uses a meticulously crafted ploy to create a fa?ade designed to mislead

investigators. The pretext of his business trip to Hokkaido provides an excuse to travel

to the opposite end of the country away from where the two bodies were discovered, a

distance and direction that Mihara regards as conspicuous. In the end. of course, the

purpose of every component of his complex alibi is to disguise the connection between

himself and the two victims.

The trip to Hokkaido is effective as an alibi because of the cooperation oflshida

and his subordinate Sasaki. Ishida convinces Sasaki to play the role of Yasuda on the

train. Sasaki acts as Yasuda's double in submitting the telegram to the conductor on the

train and the ferry documentation at Aomori. When Yasuda appears on the train after

Otaru, Ishida introduces him to the Hokkaido government official, an unanticipated but

fortuitous witness. A business acquaintance collects Yasuda at Sapporo station, a second

reliable witness confirming that Yasuda was on the train after Otaru. Thus, Yasuda’s

101

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. location appears to be conclusively documented at various points along the route from

Tokyo to Sapporo. Mihara comes to suspect Yasuda's Hokkaido alibi not because of the

weakness of any one portion, but because of the connection between Yasuda and the

victims previously established at Tokyo Station. It is only with the testimony of Sasaki

and the subsequent connection that the police make in identifying him as Ishida's

previously unidentified traveling companion that weakens Yasuda's Hokkaido alibi.

At the time, the use of the airplane as a plot device must have struck readers as

unique and modem. While Mihara's realization that air travel may have played a part in

Yasuda's alibi may seem all-too-obvious to us forty years after the novel's creation;

however, in 1958 domestic air travel was still rare in Japan. Up to this point in the novel,

trains have been the focus of the narrative in the incident at Tokyo Station, the two

stations in Kashii. the essay based on the timetable and Yasuda's alibi about his trip to

Hokkaido. Thus, Seicho’s introduction of the relatively new mode of travel was,

doubtless, an unforeseen twist that lent the novel an air of sophistication and modernity.

Without it, all of Yasuda’s other scheming would have been for naught. Regardless of

his cleverness, Yasuda needs the help of another person the night of the murder. He turns

to his wife Ryoko

Yasuda cannot carry out the double murder by himself. Mihara suspects Yasuda’s

wife Ryoko plays an integral role in planning and carrying out the murders. She has a

formidable imagination and knowledge of railway timetables. Mihara believes that

Ryoko envisions the four-minute window at Tokyo Station by which her husband

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. manufactures witnesses and strengthens his alibi; that Ryoko leads Sayama to the shore at

Kashii and administers the fatal dose of potassium cyanide. Surely, hers must be a very

strong motive, as well. Unlike her husband, boredom and anger, rather than greed,

motivate Ryoko.

Ryoko plays a role inconsistent with the amount of space devoted to her in the

novel. She only appears in a brief portion ofTen to sen. during Mihara's visit to

Kamakura to question her, but her essay introduced during that visit and her presence

behind the scenes are metaphors for themes that lie at the core of the work. She is an

enigmatic figure whose function in the murder plot is essential, yet the extent of her

involvement is never clear. Even at the novel’s conclusion, Mihara knows the Yasudas

killed Sayama and Otoki but is unable to learn to what extent each was involved in

developing the scheme. An analysis suggesting Yasuda planned the crime and enlisted

his wife’s assistance to further his own ends is both plausible and predictable. Mihara

suggests that it is Ryoko who discovers the four-minute window at Tokyo Station and

recognizes its potential as a possible means of creating witnesses. This analysis makes

her an active participant rather than a passive pawn of her husband.

Her essay “A Landscape with Figures." makes it clear that Ryoko possesses a

powerful imagination and the capacity to think creatively. Her essay demonstrates her

facility for converting the abstract information of station names, routes and times into a

coherent visual image. And surely, if she can envision that. Mihara hypothesizes, she

may have used that remarkable ability to conceive of a solution to her husband's

problems. Mihara begins to see a connection between her unique perspective and the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. four-minute window at Tokyo Station. He finally discloses his suspicions about her in

the letter that is the finale of the novel. "I came to the conclusion that the plot was not

originally Yasuda’s but Ryoko’s.”28 In addition, he believes it is she who kills her

husband to prevent their public embarrassment at the end of the novel.

The disparity between the front Ryoko presents and the revelation of her true

nature provides a thrilling twist at the novel’s conclusion. The invalid wife turns out to

be anything but benign and helpless. While she had many reasons to plan the murders, a

need to protect her husband, a desire to eliminate an embarrassing rival and a necessity to

secure her own position in Yasuda's comfortable house in Kamakura. Mihara believes

boredom ultimately drove her to plan the murders. Planning the murder and creating her

husband’s alibis would have required considerable time and energy. It may have served

as a welcome diversion to the bedridden and bored Ryoko whose intelligence is clear in

her writing.

From an item as mundane as a timetable. Ryoko imagines a world that is a

balance of order and coincidence and in which trains contribute to its order and chaos.

The physical function of trains is orderly: they are a reliable means o f travel that allows

passengers to conduct the business of their lives. That orderly physical space of the train

and its environs provides a place in which the uncoordinated and unpredictable

interaction of passengers occurs. Therefore, the railroad provides the impetus for change

through the unforeseen stimuli passengers receive in the process of riding a train. As

Ryoko writes, “How and when trains pass each other is deliberate and planned, but the

meeting and parting of passengers is purely accidental.”29 That is. individuals may

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. control when and where they take a train, but they are unable to control whom they will

meet on that train or how that person will affect them. The schedules that control the

trains are all but immutable, but the ebb and flow of humanity around a station, its

platforms and the trains are in a state of constant flux.

Ryoko's commentary on the dual function of trains also applies to the creation of

her husband’s alibi. The Yasudas attempt to create an orderly plan. Yet they are unable

to anticipate many important factors: the capabilities and diligence of the police, the

testimony of witnesses and the behavior of their co-conspirators. In anticipating the

investigative procedure, Yasuda has developed a series of plausible explanations to

counter each potential weakness in his alibi. Yet for all his planning, he is only able to

control the circumstances around the crime up to the commission of the murders. At that

point, he must play the role of the observer for fear of arousing Mihara's suspicions by

appearing unduly interested in the events of the crime. He is not able to dissuade

Mihara’s dogged pursuit. He is not able to forbid the police from questioning witnesses.

To borrow the train metaphor, Yasuda has planned the route and timing of the journey,

but he cannot foresee who will board the train or how and with whom passengers will

interact. For all of his efforts to control the situation, certain elements remain beyond his

influence.

Ryoko is only "‘on stage” for a few pages but the contrast between her public

persona and her presence “behind the scenes,” which is only made apparent at the

conclusion, is central to the novel's theme. Her brief appearance during the interview by

Mihara presents her as a beautiful but sickly wife, who patiently awaits the weekly visits

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. from her busy husband. She gives the impression o f being lonely but appears to have

found a diversion in her literary pursuits. However, her image at the end of the novel is

quite different. She is not the invalid that she played for Mihara. On the contrary, she is

able make a 20-hour train journey twice in three days and suffers little more than a fever.

Her physical beauty is belied by how coldly she sacrifices the lives of two people

to mete out revenge on her husband’s former mistress. Ryoko seems to be the patient

wife, but she proves to be an unfeeling, calculating murderer motivated by jealousy and

anger. But that she conceives of the elaborate murder plot to assuage her feelings of

ennui at being isolated in a small house in Kamakura is more reprehensible. The

boredom that seems to stimulate a literary diversion involving the study of timetables

actually proves to be an instrument of vengeance.

Any discussion of social critique in his mystery fiction must bear in mind that the

effectiveness of Seicho's critique is limited by its vagueness. The vague critique is a

double-edged sword; ambiguity makes his message widely acceptable to a less

discriminating audience but fails to satisfy readers expecting a pointed indictment of a

particular branch of government. Often, there is so little detail in Seicho's criticism that

it lacks authority. Similarly, Seicho’s characters recur so regularly that they eventually

read like stereotypes: the modest detective, the pathetic victim, the scheming member of

the establishment, the devious henchman and the femme fatale. The critique in Ten to sen

is a function of the characters’ actions and interaction rather than anything explicitly

stated by the author.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Throughout Ten to sen the reader cannot help but compare the nefarious, self-

serving members of the elite. Yasuda and Ishida. with the diligent, working class heroes

Mihara and Torigai. The powerful but corrupt Ishida fears that the exposure of his role in

the bribery scandal will jeopardize his career in the bureaucracy. He chooses to sacrifice

Sayama to protect his own future. Although. like Ryoko, he does not figure as

prominently in the novel, Ishida is perhaps more reprehensible than either Yasuda or

Ryoko because he not only survives the investigation of the bribery scandal but also

somehow advances his career. The promotion comes despite his direct involvement in

the deaths of Sayama and Otoki and his indirect involvement in the deaths of the

Yasudas.

The reader can assume that Yasuda is motivated by greed, which causes him to

seize the opportunity to further ingratiate himself to Ishida by killing Sayama. In a

singularly calculating fashion, Yasuda plots the death of Sayama. Equally heartless is his

sacrifice of his mistress Otoki in the attempt to make Sayama's death appear a double

suicide.

Both Ishida and Yasuda have different motives, fear and greed, that drive them to

crime but they share a common failure to accept responsibility for their crimes. Ishida

uses Yasuda to eliminate Sayama because Ishida is unwilling to face censure for his role

in the bribery scandal. After doing Ishida’s bidding, Yasuda finds his vaunted alibi

threatened by the tenacity of Mihara. The irony of the novel is that while Mihara often

voices his admiration for Yasuda’s cunning intellect, the murders were driven not by the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Yasudas’ cleverness but by Ishida’s instinct for self-preservation. Yet Ishida alone

among the villains escapes not only unharmed but better off than ever. In either case,

there is no justice meted out by society. Ishida is promoted and the Yasudas avoid

punishment by taking their lives.

Seicho's guiding concept as revealed in the title of Ten to sen. points and lines,

can be interpreted on a variety of levels, including the cartographical sense of points and

lines. The character ten or "point(s)" can be linked to images of travel so important to

this novel. Ten can be used to refer to a dot on a map or an actual physical location, as in

the term “shuppatsuteri' ('‘point of departure") or"shfiten" (“end of the line; terminus").

Similarly, ''sen' or “line" is both a line in a drawing and the character used to denote

railway lines. On a map. cities and towns are represented by dots or points o f various

sizes, and lines are the roads that connect the cities and towns. But railroad lines are

perhaps more germane to Japan in the 1950s. This was a period when trains were the

predominant means of travel. On rail maps, points represent the stations and the lines the

railways crisscrossing Japan. Out of context, the names of towns or railways have little

meaning unless one is familiar with the area of the country in which they are found.

However, a map allows its user to learn the location of a given city or “point" or identify

the towns or “points” along a given railway “line.” The relationship of one point to

another, or of one line to another, becomes clear through the use of an accurate map and

the ability to read it.

That Japan of the 1950s was a country whose citizens were accustomed to

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. traveling by rail is evident in the plot device that has Yasuda use less predictable "lines"

to make his way quickly from one end of the country to the other: namely, the newly

initiated domestic air traffic. Mihara chastises himself for not considering the obvious

but. in 1958 air travel in Japan was still quite limited.

Most important to Yasuda’s alibi is the distance or length of the lines between the

location of the bodies and his supposed location at the time of the murders. It is

understood that a person can only ever be in one place at one time. Thus, it is essential to

Yasuda’s alibi that he establish his presence at a point at the opposite end of Japan, far

from Kyushu and the deaths of Sayama and Otoki. To do so. he and Ishida arrange for

Sasaki to assume his identity. The faux Yasuda uses the name "Yasuda" to send a

telegram just before the train reaches the northernmost point of Honshu, and he submits a

form on the ferry to Hokkaido that bears Yasuda's authentic signature. These ploys are

designed to establish Yasuda's presence at a point so distant from the location of the

bodies of Sayama and Otoki that he could not be suspected o f foul plav.

Another aspect of Seicho's metaphor of points and lines deals with the temporal

dimension. Time, as we perceive it, flows in one direction, that is. forward into the

future. We often speak of history as a “timeline” of events. There are an infinite number

o f points along the line of time that stretches from the past through the instant that is the

present and into the future. Each point can only be experienced once before it moves into

the past. It is essential to Yasuda’s alibi that he establish not only his physical location in

Hokkaido, but also the point in time that he was there on business. Because he can be in

only one place at any given time, he relies on Sasaki to act as his substitute in sending the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. telegram and submitting the paperwork for the ferry. Both acts are intended to establish

his location at a definite point in space at a definite point in time.

An additional interpretation of the metaphor of points and lines concerns the

logical reconstruction of events by the police in order to determine the facts o f the case.

From the starting point of the dead bodies of Sayama and Otoki on the beach at Kashii.

Mihara and Torigai use physical evidence and insights into human nature to lead them to

each subsequent point of fact; they hope these factual points will eventually explain the

events leading up to the mysterious “love suicide." The bodies represent but one point on

the graph of what will become the investigation into the deaths of Sayama and Otoki.

Each piece of evidence can be seen as representing a coordinate on a graph. By

determining the relationship of each piece of evidence to the other pieces (points) and the

case (line) as a whole, they are able to plot a series of points, a concept as old as mystery

fiction itself. It echoes the sentiment expressed by Watson to Holmes: “ 'You reasoned it

out beautifully,' I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. Ml is so long a chain, and yet every

link rings true.”’30 By linking one point to the next, the police achieve a greater

understanding of the case. In the process of collecting evidence. Mihara draws a

conclusion from the evidence the police gather; that is, he develops a line of reasoning.

Once he can prove his line of reasoning is accurate, he can make an arrest.

The importance ofTen to sen to modem Japanese detective fiction cannot be

overestimated. It marks a seminal shift to an emphasis on motive and realism in mystery

fiction while simultaneously paving the way for a de-emphasis on the less realistic

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mechanical tricks common in pre-war detective fiction.

This novel is not without flaws. Some may criticize Ten to sen for the vagueness

o f key points surrounding the mystery or for the implausible plot device of the four-

minute interval at Tokyo Station. Some may dislike the epistolary style in which the

conclusion is delivered, an aspect of the novel Seichd himself found not wholly

satisfying. The reader may fault Seichd for recapitulating the story on numerous

occasions, but this convention is a function of the serialized form in which the novel was

originally published. Some may castigate Seichd for his unfocussed social critique.

Nevertheless, a final analysis must conclude that Seichd achieves his objective of creating

a realistic mystery that critiques contemporary society.

Ill

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 4

SUNA NO UTSUWA (VESSEL OF SAND)

Suna no utsnxva (Vessel o f sand) was originally serialized in Yomiuri Shinbun

between May 1960 and April 1961. LikeTen to sen , it is another example of Seicho's

honkaka tantei shosetsu , or orthodox detective fiction; however, it is far less successful as

a mystery. Nonetheless, it evinces many characteristics typical of Seicho's detective

novels: the importance of motive to the mystery, an element of social criticism and

inclusion of samples from other literary genres in the body of the narrative. What it lacks

is the realism of Ten to sen. Coincidence plays far too central a role in the development

of the narrative. After providing a synopsis of the novel, this chapter turns to a discussion

of the tricks in the novel, the importance of motive, the preponderance of coincidence and

its effect on the novel.

The novel opens as two men enter an inexpensive bar near Kamata Station in

Tokyo.1 The younger man is in his thirties and wears a sport shirt, while his companion,

probably in his fifties, wears an old suit. The two take a booth at the back of the bar in

order to distance themselves from the other patrons who are loudly discussing movies and

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. actors. When the waitress delivers their drinks, she overhears the younger man ask.

“How’s Kameda? Everything’s still the same, right?” ( ICarneda wa ima mo aikawarazu

desyoo ne.). The older man responds in a “non-Tokyo” accent that strikes the waitress as

typical of northeast Japan. She gets the impression that “Kameda” is someone’s last

name, but the remark is open to interpretation. In reply the older man says. “Yeah, same

as always.” (Inya. aikawarazu... ). The waitress notes that only portions of the older

man’s speech are comprehensible. (Toshiue no otoko no koe wa. kiregire ni shika

kikitorenai.).2 The younger man asks her not to disturb them so that the two men can talk

alone. The two men are the murderer and his victim. The reader learns the identity of the

victim well in advance of learning the identity of the murderer.

Early the following morning, a railway worker making a routine inspection finds

the body of a man under a train at the rail yard at Kamata Station. The dead man's face is

smashed beyond recognition, making identification impossible. Despite the severity of

the wounds to the face and head, an autopsy reveals the cause of death to be strangulation.

In addition, a sleep-inducing agent and whiskey are found in the victim's stomach. A

door-to-door search of the area leads to the nearby bar described in the opening scene of

the novel. The waitress tells the police about the two men whom she served the night of

the murder and the reference made to “Kameda” by the younger man.

A search for a man named “Kameda” in the Tokyo area reveals no one connected

to the deceased. Inspector Imanishi Eitaro appears to be stymied after long hours of work

spent attempting to discover a lead. By chance during a casual perusal of one of his

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. wife's magazines, he comes across a promotional map for hot spring resorts. He notices a

town in Akita Prefecture named “Ugo Kameda." For the first time, he comes to regard

the mysterious '‘Kameda” not as the name of a person but of a place.

A preliminary investigation by the police in Ugo Kameda reveals that no one

recognizes the deceased from a photograph. However, the police relay reports of a

stranger spending an inordinate amount of time loitering about Kameda several days after

the murder. Inspector Imanishi and his junior colleague. Yoshimura Hiroshi, are

dispatched to Kameda to investigate any connection between the town and the victim.

Their search turns up nothing.

While waiting at Iwaki Station for the train back to Tokyo, they see four urbane-

looking men in their late 20s standing on the platform surrounded by reporters.

Yoshimura learns from two high school girls who have solicited the members' autographs

that the men are members of the Nouveau Group, a loose collection of avant-garde artists

and critics. The men have just returned from a tour of a nearby national laboratory for the

development of rocketry. On the return trip to Tokyo. Yoshimura comes across a

newspaper column written by a member of the Nouveau group. Sekigawa Shigeo. Both

Yoshimura and Imanishi recognize Sekigawa as one of the young men that they had seen

on the platform at Iwaki Station.

A month passes, and the case remains unsolved. Headquarters decides to formally

close the investigation but Imanishi cannot get the case out of his mind. He and

Yoshimura go to an out-of-the way bar to confidentially talk over the details of the case.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. They agree that the severity of the wounds means the murderer was probably covered in

the victim’s blood. To avoid detection, the murderer probably changed clothes

somewhere near the railway yard. They believe the murderer probably has an apartment

or hideout near the yard. But aside from this theory, they have no leads.

As Imanishi is returning home, he notices a moving van in front of an apartment

building on his street. He mentions it to his wife who tells him that, according to

neighborhood gossip, a young theatre actress has moved in. On their way back from a

local festival later that evening, the Imanishis come upon the scene of a traffic accident.

The policeman tells Imanishi that one of the victims in the non-fatal crash was a

musician. Perusing the newspaper the following morning. Imanishi is surprised to see a

picture of the musician Waga Eiryo accompanying the article about the car crash. Waga

was taken to the hospital to be treated for injuries. Imanishi recognizes him as a member

of the Nouveau group that he had seen in Akita Prefecture. Coincidentally, the paper

carries a column by Sekigawa Shigeo the same morning. Thoughts of the Nouveau group

linger in Imanishi’s mind, but other cases demand his attention.

Two months after the murder in the Kamata railroad yard, a man appears at police

headquarters to inquire about the victim. Miki Shokichi fears it may be his father. Miki

Ken’ichi, who left three months earlier from their home in Okayama in western Japan on

a pilgrimage to Ise Shrine. He has never returned. The son identifies his father from

clothing and photographs o f the victim’s battered face. Imanishi learns the father was a

well-respected policeman before he retired and opened a grocery store. According to the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. son, people regarded his father as "a saint.” The son has no idea about the significance of

the word “Kameda.” His father had never been to Tokyo nor does his son have any idea

why he would have come to Tokyo. Before the son leaves, he urges Imanishi to do

everything possible to find his father’s killer.

Imanishi returns home to dinner with his wife Yoshiko and younger sister Oyuki.

Oyuki has dropped by after helping a new tenant move into the apartment building that

she and her husband own in Kawaguchi, a town on the outskirts of Tokyo. The new

tenant is a young woman who works as a hostess at a bar in the Ginza. Rumor has it that

the woman has a patron; otherwise, how could she afford the rent on a hostess' paltry

salary? When the young woman has no one to help her move in, Oyuki volunteers.

Oyuki comes to visit again a few days later. As Imanishi and his wife escort

Oyuki to the train station, they pass their new neighbor who works at a theatre. The

young woman hurries by, seemingly anxious to avoid eye contact. Then on the way home

from the station, Imanishi sees a man in a dark beret and a black shirt standing outside the

woman's building, whistling at her window. Imanishi and Yoshiko continue on their way

and stop at a local sushi shop for a late dinner.

Imanishi continues to puzzle over the connection between the word “Kameda."

uttered in what sounded to the waitress like a dialect from northeast Japan, and the

victim’s hometown in western Japan. He consults a knowledgeable former supervisor

who refers him to a college classmate specializing in Japanese dialects. The specialist is

able to locate a text that identifies the only two regions in the country where the dialect of

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. northeastern Japan is spoken: the Tohoku region in the northeast and the Izumo region in

the west. Imanishi finds a town named "Kamedake" on a map of the Izumo region in

Shimane Prefecture. An inquiry into the career of Miki Ken’ichi’s background reveals

that he was a policeman in Shimane from 1928 to 1938, when he retired. That night.

Imanishi boards a train for Shimane Prefecture.

He leams from the local police chief in Nita that Miki Ken’ichi advanced quickly

through the ranks because of his devotion to duty and the citizens whom he served. He

earned citations for bravery for saving a baby from a burning house and rescuing an old

man from a building engulfed by a landslide. He was extremely popular with the local

residents. He was married, but his wife died in 1933. leaving him childless. In the

impoverished countryside, Miki acted as much as social worker as policeman. He saw

that no sick person went without medical treatment, often paying for the services himself.

He also established a daycare center at the local temple that allowed mothers to work

outside the home. Miki’s old friend tells Imanishi that when a leper beggar by the name

o f Motoura Chiyokichi, and his son came to the village. Miki made a place for the boy in

the daycare center. Still, in spite all the information he gathers about Miki Ken'ichi.

Imanishi leaves Shimane without any leads.

Three months into the investigation he is no closer to catching Miki Ken’ichi's

murderer. One day he buys a magazine, and a brief essay catches his eye. The author

writes of a strange encounter on a fairly uncrowded train returning to Tokyo from Omachi

in Shinshu. A stunning woman boarded the train at Kofu. Before long, she opened the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. window and began throwing small, white pieces of an unidentified material from the

window. The effect reminded the author of a blizzard. The woman repeated this strange

ritual three more times. Wondering if there is a connection between the woman's strange

behavior and the Kamata murder, Imanishi visits the author of the essay, a university

professor. The professor sheepishly admits he did not witness the scene: instead he had

borrowed the anecdote from a friend. Imanishi visits the friend and verifies the location

where the woman scattered the objects from the train window.

The next day Imanishi walks the train tracks at the designated spots searching for

remnants of the woman's “blizzard." Three months have passed since the incident

occurred, and he is not optimistic about finding any clues. However, he perseveres under

the hot sun and finds a scrap of white cloth marred by a brown stain. Laboratory tests

reveal the blood is type O, the same as the victim's.

One morning Yoshiko informs her husband that the young theater woman living

on their street has committed suicide in her apartment. Imanishi goes to investigate. He

learns her name was Naruse Rieko, and that she died from a massive overdose of sleeping

pills. Her diary contains an entry on the loneliness of unrequited love and the sacrifices

that it demands. Imanishi wonders if she committed suicide out of guilt over her

involvement in the Kamata murder cover-up. He recalls the man who stood outside her

apartment. When the landlord has no knowledge of the man. Imanishi inquires at the

nearby sushi restaurant. The proprietor remembers a young man fitting the description

who ate at the restaurant late one night in July. He remembers him because a young

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. female customer approached “the man in the beret” and asked him for his autograph. The

proprietor’s young assistant, a devotee of the theater, remembers the customer even

though he visited the restaurant only once. He identifies the man in the beret as Miyata

Kunio. a character actor with the Avant-Garde Theater.

Imanishi confronts Miyata with the news about Rieko. Because her death has

been ruled a suicide, the police have no intention of prosecuting Miyata for murder.

Imanishi’s sole interest is to establish a connection between Miyata and Rieko. Miyata

agrees to cooperate with Imanishi’s investigation, but since he is uncertain about key

information, he asks if he may meet Imanishi the following evening after making

inquiries. Imanishi agrees, relieved that he has found a fruitful lead at last.

The following night, he goes to the coffee house in Ginza at the specified time.

He waits an hour but Miyata does not show. The following morning, he reads in the

newspaper that the 30-year-old Miyata died of a heart attack on his way home from

rehearsal the previous night. He rushes to the morgue and persuades the coroner to

conduct an autopsy on Miyata. The autopsy confirms the fact that Miyata died of a heart

attack.

Imanishi questions the actors and staff of the theater where Miyata and Rieko

worked. Miyata was known to have a weak constitution: he was often excessively tired

after long rehearsals. Little is known about Rieko. One actress, asked about a romantic

relationship between the two, says she thought Miyata was attracted to Rieko. Rieko did

not return his affections, however. Her aloofness probably explains why Miyata was left

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. standing outside her apartment attempting to attract her attention even as she was inside

writing of unrequited love.

Imanishi learns from Miyata’s landlady that Miyata went to Akita Prefecture in

mid-May. Imanishi's colleague Yoshimura hypothesizes that Miyata was sent to Ugo

Kameda by the murderer after reports of the investigation appeared in the newspaper. He

believes that Miyata played the role of “the conspicuous stranger" seen in the town after

the murder. The murderer must have intended Miyata’s strange behavior in Kameda to

distract the police and send investigators off on a false scent. Miyata was probably

unaware, moreover, of the significance of the role he was asked to play.

Imanishi wants to learn more about the Nouveau Group and the “musique

concrete" composed by Waga Eiryo. When his sister Oyuki tells him that the bar hostess

who moved into her apartment building reads complex articles and books on the topic of

modem music, he has his sister arrange a “chance" meeting with the young woman.

Miura Emiko. He talks with Emiko about her life as a bar hostess as well as her hobbies.

She is particularly interested in the essays written by Sekigawa Shigeo o f the Nouveau

Group because Sekigawa is a regular customer at the bar where she works. When Emiko

leaves, Imanishi comments that Emiko must be pregnant because she wolfed down the

sour tangerine that he offered her. Oyuki mentions hearing that Emiko has been sick in

the mornings. They wonder if Sekigawa might not be the father.

On one of her regular visits a month later, Oyuki tells her brother that the bar

hostess vacated the apartment the day before. The two of them rush to the building to

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. take a look. Imanishi finds a matchbook from the Club Bonheur. which he assumes to be

Emiko’s employer. He also learns she did not use local movers. Instead she used a

company from another part of Tokyo. One of the local movers recalls seeing the van

parked outside the apartment and tells Imanishi the name. Imanishi is surprised to learn

that the area where Emiko moved, Okubo. is in a completely different part of the city

from where she told Oyuki she was moving. He goes to Club Bonheur only to find that

Emiko quit the day before.

The following day. the madam from Club Bonheur calls Imanishi to say Emiko is

dead. Emiko's new landlord. Kubota, tells Imanishi that he was unaware of anything

wrong until a doctor arrived in the middle of the night in response to a call from an

unknown man. The doctor tells Imanishi that Emiko was already beyond help when he

arrived. She kept murmuring, "Stop it, please. Oh. no. no. I'm afraid something will

happen to me. Stop it, please, stop, stop.” Her words make no sense. To whom was she

speaking? What caused her to say such things? The doctor reports the cause of her death

as massive internal hemorrhaging brought on by blunt force trauma. Moreover. Emiko

miscarried an already dead fetus. Imanishi is struck by the close proximity of the house

where Emiko dies to the locale where Miyata’s body was found.

Imanishi poses as a private investigator doing a background check on Sekigawa

for a potential marriage proposal. He questions Sekigawa’s maid and learns that

Sekigawa earns a comfortable living by maintaining a busy schedule of writing articles,

participating in panel discussions and appearing on radio talk shows. The maid tells

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Imanishi that Sekigawa regularly receives phone calls from two women, one of whom

speaks very politely; the other is far less refined. The calls from the latter stopped

abruptly just about the time that Naruse Rieko committed suicide.

Imanishi is puzzled by Sekigawa’s origins. Sekigawa claims to be a native of

Tokyo, but his place of birth is Akita prefecture. He was sent to Tokyo as a child to stay

with Takada Tomijiro. No one in Akita seems to know him or his parents. Imanishi also

happens to see a review of Waga’s “musique concrete" written by Sekigawa. Unlike

earlier columns by Sekigawa. which were critical of Waga's music, this one praises its

originality. Imanishi is perplexed by the sudden shift in Sekigawa’s taste.

Meanwhile, in response to an inquiry from Imanishi. Miki’s son indicates that the

last postcard he received from his father said had him traveling to Ise Shrine; he planned

to be home in a week. Imanishi sets off for Ise and the inn where Miki stayed. He learns

from the maid that Miki changed plans and decided to go to Tokyo after going to the local

theater two days in a row. Imanishi visits the theater and leams the titles of the two

movies shown on the days Miki was in Ise. Back in Tokyo, he watches both movies, but

he is unable to detect anything that might have caused Miki to watch either movie a

second time.

Disheartened that the movies fail to provide any lead. Imanishi is reminded by

Yoshiko and Oyuki that theaters often show previews or newsreels before the main

feature. Imanishi believes Miki recognized someone in these short publicity pieces and

decided to go to Tokyo to find that person. Imanishrs junior colleague Yoshimura also

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. recalls a publicity newsreel about a movie's opening night. Many critics, artists and

celebrities were in attendance. Imanishi reviews the promotional shorts that Miki

Ken’ichi saw at the theater in Ise, but he finds nothing of importance.

He travels to a remote mountain village in Ishikawa Prefecture to locate the only

surviving relative of the wife of Motoura Chiyokichi, the leper beggar whom Miki

Ken’ichi had befriended and who lived in a sanatorium for twenty years. From this

relative he learns that, after Motoura contracted leprosy, his wife left him. Motoura then

traveled the country with his young son Hideo seeking a cure for his disease at various

temples. On returning from one pilgrimage, Motoura told the relative that he had left his

son with someone in the mountains of Shimane Prefecture. Unfortunately, this new

information does not offer Imanishi any leads.

Detective Yoshimura tells him of an incident involving one of the suspects in the

Kamata murder case;3 a peddler connected to organized crime called on the suspect and

delivered a high-pressure sales pitch for over-priced housewares in the foyer of the

suspect’s house. The peddler harangued him for almost thirty minutes before leaving the

house abruptly, pale and shaken. The news quickly spread throughout the neighborhood

because such gangster salesmen rarely leave without forcing a sale. Intrigued by the

story, Imanishi has Yoshimura arrange a meeting with the peddler. The peddler says he

went to the house after another member of his gang had been unsuccessful in extracting a

sale. Both peddlers complained of experiencing physical discomfort that grew more

intense until each felt compelled to leave the premises. Nothing else was out of the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ordinary, however. A local policeman visits the house at Imanishi's request. He stays for

fifteen minutes, alert to any abnormality, but he detects nothing.

Later, at police headquarters, Imanishi overhears his fellow officers discussing a

"peddler deterrent” machine that induces a feeling of nausea through the use of ultrasonic

waves. He meets the inventor who explains that the modulated tone creates a "sound”

that, although inaudible, produces a palpable physical reaction. The inventor explains

prolonged exposure to powerful ultrasonic waves can result in severe physical damage.

They may even prove fatal to those with weaker constitutions.

A familiar name in a newspaper article on the mass resignation and subsequent

reshuffling of the prime minister's cabinet catches Imanishi's eye. He notes that the new

Minister for Agriculture and Forestry, Tadokoro Shigeyoshi. has the same family name

and home prefecture as the owner of the theater in Ise that Miki Ken'ichi visited twice.

An investigation by the Ise police reveals that the Minister and the theater owner are from

the same village, and they maintain close contact. In fact, an enlarged photograph of the

minister and his family is prominently displayed in the theater. The police send the

original photograph to Imanishi who recognizes one of the men in the picture as his prime

suspect, although the suspect's identity is not yet revealed to the reader. Imanishi has

Yoshimura do another door-to-door search of the area near Kamata station in an effort to

determine Naruse Rieko’s address at the time of the murder. Once again, the search is

unproductive.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. One evening after work Imanishi goes to the Avant-Garde Theatre to ask if

anyone knows Rieko’s previous address. As he watches the dress rehearsal, he notices

the great number of costumes required for the large cast. He asks the wardrobe mistress

if any of the costumes were missing before the night of Miki Ken'ichi's murder. She

checks her records and learns that a long, gray overcoat worn by Miyata Kunio was

missing the day of the murder. Imanishi theorizes the murderer had called Rieko. who

was working late that night, and ordered her to bring him something to conceal his

bloodstained clothing. Rieko quickly agreed and took him the long overcoat. Imanishi

feels confident that he is closing in on the murderer at last. Still the reader is not made

privy to the suspect’s name.

A letter from Shimane prefecture reveals that Miki Ken'ichi arranged for

Motorura Chiyokichi to enter the leper sanatorium; he probably also arranged for a family

to adopt Motoura's son. That night. Imanishi travels to Osaka to look into the family

in the March 14, 1945 firebombing of Osaka. Coincidentally. March 14 is the same date

listed in the records for the deaths of the parents of Waga Eiryo. the musician. Imanishi

realizes his suspect submitted false information after the war as a "replacement"’ for a

registry that had never existed. Because hundreds of children lost their parents and their

family records during the bombing raids, the suspect’s case would not have seemed

irregular to the authorities. The records from the suspect’s public high school near Kyoto

were also destroyed during a bombing raid. The principal refers Imanishi to a local

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. resident who may have known the suspect in school. The former classmate tells Imanishi

the suspect left school in the middle of his second year. The suspect did not have family

living in the area; he boarded near the school.

Imanishi sees another newspaper article while in Osaka that heightens his sense of

urgency. He sees that both Waga and Sekigawa are planning trips abroad to pursue their

respective careers. Imanishi and Yoshimura prepare a final test to examine their

hypothesis. Accompanied by officials charged with investigating violations of

broadcasting regulations, they visit Waga Eiryo one morning. Imanishi notices Waga

turns pale when he sees Yoshimura wearing an overcoat borrowed from the Avant-Garde

Theater. Imanishi is certain Waga is Miki’s murderer.

He presents his conclusions to his superior officers in hopes of securing their

permission to petition for an arrest warrant for Waga. Waga is. in fact, Motoura Hideo.

the lost son of Motoura Chiyokichi. Embarrassed by his father's leprosy, he fled the

kindness of Miki Ken’ichi. Crossing the mountains, he arrived in Kyoto where he

concocted a phony story about his past. After the war, he went to a part of Osaka that had

been destroyed in the bombing raid and established a new lineage and identity as Waga

Eiryo, one that was impossible to verify due to the destruction of the ward’s records.

With the secret of his father’s illness hidden once and for all, Waga was free to pursue a

career as an experimental musician. Not only that, he became engaged to the daughter of

the powerful politician Tadokoro Shigeyoshi. Hence, his inclusion in the family portrait

sent to Tadokoro’s friend, who ran the movie theater in Izu. But when the murder victim

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Miki Ken’ichi saw the enlarged photograph proudly displayed in the theater lobby, he

recognized Waga as Motoura Hideo. The following day he returned to the theater to

confirm his suspicions. Instead of returning home as planned, he went to Tokyo to find

the man identified in the photo caption as Waga Eiryo. Waga feared Miki would ruin his

opportunity to marry into money by revealing that his father was a leper. He killed Miki

to protect his secret and avoid the social stigma attached to leprosy. Waga called his

mistress Naruse Rieko after killing Miki and ordered her to bring him the long, gray

overcoat. Later, he sent her to dispose of his bloody shirt by cutting it into little pieces

and throwing it from the window of a moving train. She obeyed him but later she

regretted her role as an accomplice to murder, and she committed suicide. Meanwhile.

Miyata, who was enamored of Rieko, became suspicious of Waga's possible involvement

in Rieko’s death and Miki’s murder. However. Waga used the ultrasonic device on him.

and because of his weak constitution, Miyata died before he could tell Imanishi what he

knew. Meanwhile, Sekigawa. who had been critical of Waga's music, approached Waga

for help when his lover Miura Emiko became pregnant. At Sekigawa's request. Waga

used the ultrasonic device on Emiko to induce a miscarriage, but the device proved too

powerful. It not only kills the fetus but also causes Emiko to collapse and hit her head on

the concrete floor in the foyer. Waga then uses Sekigawa's role in Emiko's death to

blackmail him into writing favorable reviews of his music.

A warrant is issued for Waga’s arrest. Police at Haneda Airport prevent Waga

from boarding a plane for the United States, where he is scheduled to give a concert.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Waga is quietly lead away as the loudspeaker announces for the benefit of those who have

come to see him off that he has been detained on urgent business and will not be

departing after all.

Before considering the particulars of the torik/ai in the novel, it is important to

understand the term as it is used by Japanese critics. The definition of the term torikku

(trick[s]) is complicated by the dual nature of the word as used by Japanese critics.

Obviously, the author creates the torikku. However, does the term torikku refer to the

machinations that the character identified as the criminal and his accomplices carry out to

mislead the police investigation? Or does torikku refer to the puzzling clues or leads that

the author incorporates in the narrative to be discovered, interpreted and pieced together

by police to establish the facts of the crime? Clearly, both definitions are possible.

The distinction between these two types of torikku is clear when the function of

each type is analyzed within the framework of the novel. When the author assigns a

torikku to be carried out by a character, such as the criminal or an accomplice, it is

intended to deceive the detective, and therefore, the reader. However, when the author in

his role as author inserts a torikku into the narrative, it is with the intention of providing a

clue that will lead ultimately to the solution of the mystery. The author functions in a

paradigm dictated by the rules of the genre; he knows the outcome of the mystery in

advance but is compelled nonetheless to maintain a level of suspense that keeps the

reader’s attention. For much of the novel, he must keep the identity of the criminal

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. secret, and gradually reveal the clues that prove guilt, while providing a steady stream of

information about the crime to sustain the reader's attention and gradually broaden the

detective’s understanding of the events surrounding the crime. The author must make

enough facts available to the detective, and the reader, to further the progress of the

investigation without revealing the solution too early in the narrative. The tw'o types of

torikku - one, those assigned to the criminal, and two, those the author inserts as the

author - are the rhetorical means used to maintain the tension of the mystery.

Therefore, the battle of wits in mystery fiction is not between the detective and the

criminal, or even between the reader, as an extension of the detective, and the criminal.

The real struggle is between the author and his criminal. The author is compelled to

create a criminal character who seeks to prevent the discovery of his connection to a

crime that the author must disclose and prove. In fact, the struggle is illusory, because it

is merely a postponement of the inevitable epistemological resolution. The author is sure

to win given his complete control over the narrative and its characters. The author creates

situations that obscure the identity of the criminal, either through the criminal's own

actions or circumstantial obfuscation, and yet at the same time lead police closer to

proving the facts of the crime. Convention demands that, in the end. the latter must prove

more compelling than the former. Otherwise, the mystery ends unresolved.

The two types oftorikku presented in Suna no utsuwa entertain and mislead the

reader, but the first type, those “perpetrated” by the criminal, have the additional function

of also attempting to mislead the investigators. Take for example, the “woman of the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. paper blizzard” or Miyata"s trip to Kameda to play the part o f the stranger. Both are

torikku used by Seicho to obscure Waga's identity as the criminal. Waga's character

"conceives” of these strategies and he enlists the aid of accomplices in their execution.

Seicho is the writer, but Waga is the agent of these torikku within the narrative. On the

other hand, in the second type of torikku Seicho designs the "Kameda” clue and Miki's

visits to the movie theater in Ise in order to plant clues that lead to the mystery's solution.

The author creates these situations as part of the novel's plot, yet no character is directly

responsible for the circumstances that obscure Imanishi's investigation of the murder.

The series of torikku that Waga uses in Suna no utsuwa reflects the coincidental

nature o f the events that led up to the crime. Unable to anticipate Miki's arrival in Tokyo.

Waga has little time to plan his murder. Thus, the torikku that he uses to prevent the

discovery of his identity as the murderer occur after the murder rather than as a prelude

to, or an actual part of. the killing of Miki Ken'ichi. His hastily planned murder of Miki

is the only attempt to deceive the police that he carries out prior to killing Miki. All other

attempts to deceive the police are conceived after Miki's murder and carried out by him

or a collaborator to obscure his connection to the crime.

The first torikku of concealing the murder victim's identity results from another

hastily conceived plan. After Miki's arrival, Waga lacks sufficient time to design a

complex means to eliminate the old policeman, so he drugs Miki. strangles him and beats

him about the face in order to make identification impossible. However, the murder itself

does not constitute the torikku. Seicho does not require the reader to detect the method of

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the murder; instead, he provides the details of the murder via the autopsy. It is

withholding the identity of the victim, which remains unknown to the police for the first

quarter of the narrative, proves to be the novel's first torikku.4

This first torikku results from Waga's efforts to obscure the relationship between

the victim and himself, and it succeeds because of the victim's anonymity. Waga is only

partially responsible for Miki's anonymity. He destroys Miki’s face to prevent police

from identifying him. Because Miki has no identification when his body is found, the

reader can assume that Waga has removed it. preventing recognition by the victim's

family. However, a physical description of Miki suffices to uncover witnesses who saw

Miki and Waga together the night of the murder/ The first canvassing of the

neighborhood turns up the waitress at the bar. as well as two street musicians who report

having seen the victim the previous night in the company of another man. Waga's violent

disfigurement of Miki's face proves unnecessary. On the contrary, it is the absence of

personal identification, and the lack of apparent link between Miki Ken'ichi and Tokyo

that effectively delay the discovery of Miki's identity.

It is typically the case in mystery fiction that investigators do not know or are

unable to initially identity the murderer with any degree of certainty. In fact, concealing

the identity of the murderer is a convention in the genre. What is relatively rare, however,

is for the identity of the victim to be unknown. This break with convention on Seicho's

part is a step toward creating a mystery that can be called ‘‘more realistic.” An

unidentified corpse found in the city is an all-too-common phenomenon of modem urban

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. living, for example. As is often the case in actual crimes victims are frequently not

identified. Imanishi and the other investigators do not solve the mystery of the victim’s

identity. Rather, it is solved for them by the son of the victim who comes forward at the

suggestion of the local police. The discovery of Miki’s identity, which takes two months,

is largely one of luck. Had the son not identified the father’s remains, the police could

not have learned Miki’s identity. The delay in identification, and the subsequent

satisfying resolution, reflect both Seicho’s attempt at literary realism and the importance

he attaches to coincidence as being realistic.

While the method of Miki’s murder is easily discernible to the police, the later

murders of Miyata, Miura Emiko and her unborn child are not. They are complex and

sophisticated, reflecting the greater amount of time that the murderer has to plan his

crimes. Once the modus operandi is understood, however, the police quickly perceive a

correlation between it and the murderer.

The next trick Seicho uses is one of language. "Kameda.” heard in a snatch of

conversation uttered in the bar by the killer to the victim, is assumed to be a surname.

When the surname does not result in any leads. Imanishi suggests a second interpretation.

Perhaps "Kameda” is the name of a town. Imanishi locates a town in Tohoku called Ugo

Kameda, yet investigators are unable to discover any connection between the victim and

Ugo Kameda.

Because of the son’s assertion that his father never lived in the Tohoku region.

Imanishi raises a question about the distribution of dialects throughout Japan. If Miki did

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. not hail from Tohoku. why did he speak in that region's dialect? Imanishi learns that the

Tohoku dialect is spoken in a small pocket in the Izumo region in western Japan where

Miki once lived. He also learns the dialect of this region commonly elides the final

syllable of a word. Thus, if the man suspected of killing Miki is also from the same

region, the name “Kameda” spoken him could actually refer to any town whose first three

syllables are “ka ,” “me” and "da." Imanishi's locating a town in Izumo called

“Kamedake” leads him to leave for Izumo the following day to look for witnesses who

might remember Miki. As it turns out, his hunch was correct: Miki did live in Kamedake.

Therefore, Imanishi assumes that the suspected killer is also from Kamedake for two

reasons: he asked Miki about the town, and he elided the final syllable of its name,

presumably out of habit, when speaking with someone from his hometown. When

speaking to someone from his hometown and referring to the town, it seems that he slips

into the practice of pronouncing the town's name in the local dialect. Despite the fact

that the waitress does not identify the murderer as speaking with an accent, one word

betrays his hometown he is attempting to conceal. Thus, this torikku requires Imanishi to

consider both Miki’s accent and the name uttered by his murderer to make a deduction

about the location of their hometown.

Every aspect of thistorikku reflects the author's drive to create realistic mystery

fiction. Realism connotes that which can be encountered in the day-to-day world. The

manner in which the clue is obtained is realistic: it is overheard in a bar where the dialect

in which the sentence was spoken is memorable because it is hardly used by patrons.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. What makes the conversation memorable to the waitress is not its content. When heard

out of the context of the rest of the conversation, it may make little sense. Rather, the

dialect in which the snatch of conversation is spoken causes her to remember both what

was said and who said it. While it is common to overhear part of a conversation in a

public place and forget details about the speaker or the nature of what was heard, if there

is some noteworthy characteristic about the language used, the topic of the conversation

or the speaker, one is more likely to remember information about what is overheard or

who the speaker is. Thus, a line from a conversation spoken in Tohoku dialect makes the

line and the speaker memorable because of the infrequency with which the waitress hears

the dialect in her bar, if not Tokyo.

The content of the remark is sufficiently bland and apparently unrelated to crime

to suggest its realism. Had the overheard utterance contained threatening or intimidating

language, the waitress might likely have called the police on the spot. However, what she

interprets as a benign conversation about a person named "Kameda" gives her no cause

for alarm.

The steps in the detection process are also realistic: Imanishi's nagging doubts

about Miki's use of the dialect cause him to consult language experts. Unlike master

sleuths who are virtual living repositories of knowledge. Imanishi is presented as a

detective whose areas of expertise are limited to those that most often pertain directly to

police investigations. Although his intelligence is without question, he would have little

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. cause to know about regional dialects because such information is rarely germane to a

typical homicide.

Finally, the treatment of the relative significance of the clue to the investigation is

realistic, as well. While solving the meaning of the “Kameda" clue provides Imanishi

with another link in a chain of clues, it offers no miraculous solution. It is an important

clue, but it is treated in a realistic manner. In the realm of investigative police work, the

number of crimes that can be solved by decoding a single clue must certainly be limited.

The collection of multiple pieces of evidence builds a strong case against a suspect.

Thus, while solving the '‘Kameda" clue provides Imanishi a lead, it does not result in the

immediate solution of the mystery. A visit to the town of Kamedake provides

considerable information on Miki's background but no indication of what drew him to

Tokyo.

The nature of the “Kameda" clue is reminiscent of language-based codes or

decoding puzzles in pre-war mystery fiction;6 Seicho brings the convention of the

language-based clue into a more realistic treatment by “hiding" the clue not in an obscure

code but a dialect foreign to the area in which the murder occurs. Workers in some

specialized professions may encounter cryptographic messages on a regular basis, but in

reality the majority of people do not. A more typical “decoding" in daily life involves

unraveling confusion and misunderstandings that arise from miscommunication.

Therefore, a snippet of conversation overheard by a third party and subsequently

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. misinterpreted is more typical and realistic as a clue than a written code designed

specifically to hide information.

Furthermore, the inclusion of a clue based on a dialect reflects a number of

important themes in Seicho’s literature: the author’s interest in regional culture; the

growing national interest in domestic travel in Japan that began in the 1950s; and, a

heightened awareness of the fragile nature of peripheral cultures facing absorption through

mass migration to metropolitan areas. Japan’s postwar economic resurgence led to the

relocation of many formerly workers to the city. The decreased population in the

countryside not only meant fewer people to work family farms, but fewer people to

continue age-old traditions. Among the traditions lost in the move to the city was the

speaking of local dialects. Just as Waga and Sekigawa attempt to disguise their

connections to hometowns other than Tokyo, many of those newly arrived in urban areas

doubtless made every effort to assimilate themselves into their new surroundings. Perhaps

some of them even went so far as to attempt to mask a provincial accent. Eventually, a

reaction to this trend toward homogenization set in, and Seicho is quick to incorporate it in

his writing. The re-familiarization with regional Japan through travel that occurred in the

1960s and 1970s,7 for example, not only makes the language trick based on a dialect of the

Izumo region a realistic torikkit, it also provides a reason within the narrative for Imanishi

to travel to rural Japan. Indeed Imanishi does a fair amount of official travel in the novel,

which surely must have been enviable to Seicho’s readers.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As in Ten to sen , Seicho uses diversions in remote locales in Japan to distract the

investigating detective's attention. In Suna no utsuwa. the diversion is suggested by the

victim’s accent and the killer’s mention of “Kameda," and the detectives pursue the lead

in its most obvious direction, namely, traveling to T5hoku. Ultimately, it proves to be a

red herring but it is not one intended by the murderer to establish his alibi. Although

Waga does not utter the name “Kameda" with the intent of leading detectives astray, he is

nonetheless able to take advantage of their misunderstanding when he sees their mistaken

interpretation published in the newspaper. This is why he dispatches Miyata to Ugo

Kameda.

When Imanishi and Yoshimura are investigating the connection between Miki and

Ugo Kameda in Tohoku. they hear reports of a stranger loitering about the village and

behaving oddly. They wonder if he is connected to the murder but are unable to discover

his identity. Much later in the investigation. Imanishi learns that Waga. after reading

about the investigation in the newspaper, ordered the young actor Miyata Kunio to go to

Ugo Kameda and divert the attention of the police away from Tokyo and himself. Once

again, Waga is responding to events he could not foresee. When he killed Miki. he could

not have known what clues police would gather, nor could he have known if it would be

prudent or even possible to attempt to stymie the police investigation with diversionary

tactics. It happens in the case of the “Kameda” clue that it is to Waga's advantage to

encourage continued investigation of the phony correlation between the victim and Ugo

Kameda. The assumption of a connection between Miki and the Tohoku region, spurious

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. as it proves to be, delays Imanishi’s discovery that Miki is from the Izumo region. It buys

Waga time and protection.

When Imanishi learns of the victim’s connection to Izumo. he also learns there is

no connection between Miki and Tokyo. The lack of a clear motivation for Miki to come

to Tokyo baffles the police for months. Despite tracing Miki’s movements on his journey

on the basis of postcards sent to his son. Imanishi is unable to piece together what caused

Miki to visit Tokyo. Only after he learns Miki saw the same movie twice before

departing for Tokyo is he able to piece together the novel’s next majortorikku. This

torikku too is a narrative device that Seicho inserts to provide a clue that will ultimately

lead to the mystery’s solution, rather than a torikku employed by Waga to deceive his

pursuers.

The torikku of the photograph hanging in the movie theater is valuable as a study

in human perception rather than an example of literary realism in mystery fiction.

Imanishi assumes, as most of us would do, that Miki goes to the movie theater a second

time because of his interest in the films. Yet careful viewing of the same features and

trailers that Miki saw does not reveal any clue as to what drew Miki to Tokyo. It is not

until Imanishi actually visits the theater that he is able to understand Miki's sudden

motivation to go to Tokyo. Miki had recognized Waga from the picture of the Tadokoro

family that was proudly displayed in the theater lobby. Thistorikku reminds us that there

is more to be seen in a movie theater than movies, and there is more to the space of a

movie theater than the screen and auditorium.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Just as there is more to see in a movie theater than films, Seicho suggests that

there are also multiple ways to listen. Waga’s experiments with technology and sound in

his musique concrete affords him the unique opportunity to design a device that utilizes

ultrasonic waves to disrupt the body’s equilibrium and damage internal organs. He uses

the device not only to discourage peddlers but also to cause the pregnant Miura Emiko to

miscarry and die. The torikku of the sound device can be seen as an innovative attempt at

broadening the methods for having characters commit a homicide while simultaneously

expanding upon the theme of non-standard sensory perception. It does seem, however,

the most contrived of all the tricks used in the novel. There are lapses in logic concerning

the practicality of the sound device’s usefulness. For example, the machine does not kill

quickly, necessitating that the target remain within the range of the device for a

considerable period of time. Yet there is no indication that Waga’s victims are ever

restrained or prevented from escaping. Were they unable to flee at the onset of the

disturbing sensations? And why was Waga not affected by the sound waves? The novel

is vague on these and other points.

The torikku of the essay in a magazine about the “woman and the paper blizzard"

(kami fubuki no onna) also provides an interesting aesthetic image yet it too lacks the

realism of earlier clues. The woman seen throwing pieces of what Imanishi later

identifies as white cloth is Naruse Rieko. Doubtless people on a train would remember

seeing someone do this. But that one of the passengers suggests the incident be converted

into an essay, and that Imanishi chances upon it and associates the event with Miki’s

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. murder, all seems highly contrived. Does Imanishi examine every piece of information in

life as potentially relating to the case at hand? Seicho's inclusion of this initially

aesthetically pleasing torikku provides an image that seems ephemeral and beautiful, but

it is soon revealed to be a grisly piece in a murder investigation. The pieces of cloth

floating past the train window evoke a lyrical image o f wind-blown snow or falling cherry

blossoms. But the pristine pieces of cloth turn out to be stained with blood. What

appears to be clean, white paper is, in reality, bloodstained cloth. Not only was the initial

assessment of the material in the '‘blizzard" inaccurate but the nature of the incident is

misconstrued as innocent. Rieko is not participating in a frivolity but is disposing of

evidence from a murder. Imanishi's happening on the essay leads to the discovery of

pieces of bloodstained fabric along the railroad tracks. Testing concludes that the blood

type on the shirt is the same as Miki’s. but beyond establishing some sort of connection

between the unidentified "woman of the paper blizzard" and Miki, the clue does little to

advance the investigation.

Sima no utsuwa is one of many examples of Seicho’s penchant for creating

characters intent on hiding aspects of their identity. While deception is an essential

element in any mystery, Seicho’s characters often attempt to deceive not only the police

but also those who are closest to them. Both suspects. Waga and Sekigawa. attempt to

conceal their backgrounds in order to preserve the social status that grants them access to

Tokyo’s cultural elite. Sekigawa, for example, withholds information about his actual

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. birthplace for fear that his birth in the Tdhoku region will detract from his image as

urbane critic of the arts. Moreover, he hides his romantic involvement with the bar

hostess Miura Emiko because her job in the “water trade"’ {miiu shobai) does not fit his

public persona. Similarly, for years Waga successfully hides the fact that he is the son of

a leper. Only the arrival of Miki on the scene threatens to expose his past. Waga’s desire

to protect his social status results in three murders.

Social self-preservation motivates all three murders Waga commits: however,

there are subtle differences in the motive for each murder. In the first murder, he intends

to save himself from the embarrassing revelation of his father’s leprosy. His goal is to

preserve the sham pedigree he believes he needs to secure admission to "respectable"

society. He feels he must hide his past and his father's disease if he is to marry the

daughter of the powerful bureaucrat Tadokoro. Marriage to the beautiful young socialite

is essential to his career plans because he intends to take advantage of the political and

financial clout of his fiancee’s father. Doubtless the discovery of leprosy in his family

would have destroyed his chances of marrying Tadokoro Sachiko, given that Japanese

convention frowns on a history of serious illness in the family of the betrothed. Killing

Miki erases any connection between his constructed persona and his actual past. The

reader needs to accept the validity of Waga's perceived need for social self-preservation,

which is the center of his character’s motivation. Indeed, an assessment of the

plausibility of his motive in the novel rests on the reader’s willingness to accept "social

self-preservation as a valid need. It is worth noting that only in 2001 did the Japanese

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Supreme Court decide a class action suit against the government in favor of patients

suffering from Hansen’s disease. The Court ruled that the government’s quarantine of

patients in the 1950s was unconstitutional.7 This suggests that the social stigma of

leprosy was still very real at the timeSum no utsuwa was serialized during 1960-1961.

Although Waga’s motive for the murder of Miyata Kunio is also intended to

conceal his identity, it arises primarily out o f a need to deceive the police rather than

solely to preserve his hard-earned social status. Now he kills primarily to thwart the

police investigation into Miki’s death. Fearing Miyata will tell Imanishi, Waga takes

advantage of Miyata’s weak constitution and kills him using the ultrasonic device. When

he kills a third time, the motive shifts again to include blackmail. In response to

Sekigawa’s request for aid, he causes Emiko to miscarry, inadvertently killing her in the

process. In so doing, he gains the means to blackmail Sekigawa into writing flattering

reviews of his performances. He calculates that positive reviews from a respected critic

will be invaluable to an aspiring artist. Now his motive has become self-promotion.

Meanwhile, Sekigawa passes himself off as a native of Tokyo, to lend greater

legitimacy to his claim to be a progressive, urbane critic. He actually hails from the

Tohoku region of northeast Japan, an area significantly more rustic than Tokyo. Deeming

his rural background inappropriate for a critic, he attempts to hide his past by disguising

his origins. It may be reasonable to think that he does not need to conceal his rural

background in order to be a successful critic. Given the steady post-war migration of

many Japanese out of rural villages and into metropolitan areas, there were certainly

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. many other non-natives in Tokyo. But whether or not his rural past interferes with his

success as a critic, he cannot completely hide his regional accent, which betrays his

northern roots.

Sekigawa makes himself vulnerable to Waga by seeking help in concealing his

relationship with the bar hostess. In the name of self-preservation, he too takes great

pains to represent himself as something other than he is. He is embarrassed that the

woman he loves. Miura Emiko. works as a hostess in a bar. To conceal their relationship,

he visits her apartment only late at night. After a chance meeting with a college student

in the hall of the apartment building, he worries incessantly that he will be identified, and

he demands that Emiko move to a different location. Emiko acquiesces to his need for

deception and self-preservation. Only after she confronts him with her pregnancy does he

agrees to marry her and publicly acknowledge their relationship. Although he says he

intends to marry her. he does not want the birth of the child to reveal the length of their

relationship. So he approaches Waga for help. When the ultrasonic device kills Emiko.

his feelings of guilt over the deaths of mother and child drive him to confess to the police.

The police use his confession as the final piece of evidence needed to close the case on

Waga. In the final analysis, Sekigawa's instinct for self-preservation is less dominant

than Waga's, and he is overpowered by a sense of remorse.

Further reflection on the place of motive in the novel leads to a consideration of

characters' emotional states. Since Sekigawa feels ashamed of both his past and his

present love, he is given to feeling vulnerable and lonely. The critic Satd Tadao argues

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that Suna no utuswa is rife with lonely characters.8 He argues that Waga's lover. Naruse

Rieko, and Sekigawa’s lover. Miura Emiko, exist only to be manipulated by the men they

love. Rieko assists Waga in his cover-up of Miki’s murder, and Emiko suppresses her

desire for a publicly acknowledged relationship with Sekigawa. As a matter of fact,

Sato's argument can be expanded to include Sekigawa and the actor Miyata Kunio. Both

allow Waga to manipulate them. In exchange for Waga's help in aborting Emiko's baby.

Sekigawa is forced to write a favorable review of Waga's music and completely reverse

his earlier position. Meanwhile, Miyata follows Waga's orders to make himself

conspicuous in Ugo Kameda in hopes of sending the police off on a false scent. We find

that male characters are as lonely and vulnerable as their female counterparts.

Of course, the loneliest of all is Waga who resorts to murder to hide his identity

from his fiancee and her politically powerful father. His inability to admit the truth of his

origins to his fiancee is the least nefarious of several attempts to preserve his

manufactured identity at any cost. As Sato Tadao points out, Waga's experiences as the

son of a wandering leper condemn him to an outsider's view of society. By adopting a

new identity, he hopes to create a different life for himself. Sato states Waga is typical of

many villains in Seicho's works because Waga is "a frightfully lonely character"

(osorubeki kodoku na jinbutsu ).9 Sato claims Waga is an example of a person who has

distanced himself from society to alleviate the discrimination experienced at the hands of

strangers from an early age. His interactions with others occur at only a superficial level

in order to reduce the risk of exposing himself to further harm. That he has chosen to

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. conceal his identity insures this superficiality and necessitates the need to manipulate

others to further his own cause.

Still, it appears that Seicho’s objective is to show no one exists apart from society,

however alienated he may feel. His works often focus on characters struggling to handle

the loneliness of life in mid-twentieth century Japan. Waga, the murderer, is driven to

murder by the sense of isolation he felt as a boy at being ostracized because of his father's

illness. The young women Naruse Rieko and Miura Emiko are kept at a distance by men

who deny their relationships for fear their mistresses’ professions will destroy the facade

of their aristocratic pretensions. Furthermore, the other artists of the Nouveau Group

break with the establishment in their respective fields and isolate themselves in a small,

self-congratulatory clique.

Detective Imanishi also experiences moments of loneliness and frustration, but he

stands out as the least lonely of all. He investigates the crime almost single-handedly,

spending long hours traveling the country, often alone, in pursuit of the murderer. Yet he

maintains successful relationships with other characters, both professional and private.

Ever the model of middle-class values, he is able to reduce his loneliness through a

balanced life. In contrast to the villain Waga whose values are selfishly skewed, he is

portrayed as having a sense of proportion about life. Although he is committed to his job.

nonetheless he is mindful of his family and the junior detective. Yoshimura. Rather than

acting out of obligation, he genuinely seems to care about the people in his life. He

demonstrates a touching affection for his son when, upon returning late from the office,

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he risks waking the boy to peek in on him. Despite the long hours and frequent travel

required to solve the murder, he still finds time one evening to go shopping with his wife

at the local temple bazaar. A light moment occurs that night and it provides a telling

glimpse into his married life. Before they leave for the bazaar, his wife playfully chides

him, asking him to resist buying any more bonsai as there is nowhere left in the garden to

display them. His perfunctory, mildly gruff response shows an acknowledgement of his

weakness for bonsai. He feels a certain pride at limiting himself to buying only one

bonsai that night, when he had wanted to purchase two or three.

Moreover, he maintains a healthy relationship with Yoshimura who seems to

respect his superior’s determination and insight. On the trip they take to northern Japan

to chase down the term "Kameda," he suggests they take their families on a joint

vacation. At various times in the investigation, the two detectives meet at an out-of-the-

way bar to discuss the case. They appear to provide each other with emotional as well as

professional support. Both comment after these informal get-togethers that they value

being able to talk with a sympathetic colleague during a trying investigation. The

humanity of Imanishi and Yoshimura provides a counterpoint to the cold calculation of

the criminals whom they pursue and the brutality of the crimes that they are investigating.

Rampant Coincidences

Where Ten to sen succeeds as a mystery because there is a clear chain of events

that the detectives are able to follow and reconstruct, Suna no utsuwa is less effective

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. because of the overabundance of happenstance. Perhaps the difficulty of the detection

process in each novel is relative to the degree to which the crime is premeditated. That is

to say, the murders perpetrated by the Yasudas Tenin to sen are carefully planned and

flawlessly executed thereby creating almost the perfect crime. But once the connection

between Yasuda and the victims becomes apparent, the entire mystery unravels.

However, the first murder in Suna no utsuwa reflects little advance planning and a great

deal of maneuvering after the fact. Yasuda and his wife have time to plan their murders

and construct an apparently irrefutable alibi before they kill Sayama and Otoki. Their

careful planning makes proving their involvement all the more difficult to detect, despite

an obvious link between Yasuda and the victims. Conversely, there is little premeditation

in the case of Waga’s murder of Miki Ken’ichi. Although this is a crime of desperation

that is hastily planned, it turns out there is surprisingly little evidence to link the assailant

to the victim. Waga is able to remain above suspicion for a longer period because the

identity of the victim remains unknown. Even after the victim is identified, the police are

unable to connect him to anyone in Tokyo. It is only through a series o f random

occurrences, overheard conversations and chance sightings of key magazine articles that

Imanishi solves the crime.

Happenstance in the narrative is emphasized by the sheer coincidence of the

events that lead to Miki’s murder. It is pure coincidence that leads Miki to the theater in

Ise where he recognizes Waga in the photograph. That the picture is on display when

Miki visited the theater, or that he chooses to go to said theater is yet another coincidence.

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travel to Tokyo to find Waga.

The coincidences central to Imanishi’s investigation and his leaps in logic are

obvious and numerous. Imanishi and Yoshimura see members of the Nouveau Group,

including Waga, at the train station on their trip to Tohoku. Naruse Rieko just happens to

move in across the street from the Imanishis. Waga is involved in an automobile accident

in Imanishrs neighborhood, and Imanishi is on the scene. Imanishi’s sister. Oyuki, helps

a new tenant move into the apartment building that she and her husband own. and the

tenant turns out to be Miura Emiko, mistress of Sekigawa Shigeo. Imanishi's wife points

out their new neighbor, Naruse Rieko, who turns out to be Waga's mistress. The same

night, the Imanishis see a man outside Rieko’s window whistling to attract her attention.

Imanishi remembers the incident, and when later he inquires at a local sushi shop, he

discovers the name and occupation of the man. He had eaten at the restaurant the same

night, and he happens to be the young actor Miyata Kunio. Three days after Miyata is

killed by Waga, Imanishi and Yoshimura find a scrap of paper near the site where his

body was found. The paper is a record of the sound frequencies used to kill Miyata

disguised as a list of insurance payments.

When Naruse Rieko commits suicide, Imanishi assumes automatically she is

connected to the case. When he comes upon the essay in the magazine describing the

“woman of the paper blizzard,” naturally he links the woman in the essay to the case.

Oyuki happens to tell her brother of the bar hostess in her building who clips all of

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sekigawa Shigeo’s columns on Waga’s musique concrete. Imanishi sees an article by

Sekigawa that praises the same music criticized earlier. He also overhears policemen

talking about an incident in which peddlers are driven away by a device that utilizes

sound waves. Once again, he connects all of this scattered information to the case. The

novel is rife with coincidence.

There is a conspicuous line of dialogue that suggests Seicho intended to highlight

its importance in the novel. While in Ugo Kameda in Tohoku. Yoshimura makes the

following comment:

''Chotto fushigi na ki ga simasu ne. fVareware ga ko shite, kono tochi ni kita no wet, Imanishi-san ga oku-san no zasshi no furoku o mita kara desho. Are ga nakattara, hokn nan ka konna tokoro ni karu wake wa nakatta n desu. Shite miru to, jinsei nan te. choito shita kikkake de unmei ga kawaru to in koto gayoku wakarimasuyo."

“It seems odd, you know. The reason we've come to this place like we have is because you noticed a supplement in your wife's magazine, right? If it weren't for that, somebody like me would never have come here. When you think about it. you really understand that with a thing like life, the smallest opportunity can change your fate."10

Although Yoshimura rarely comments on anything more than the murder case or

Imanishi’s abilities as an investigator, in these few lines of dialogue early in the narrative

he enunciates a central theme of the novel. It may seem incongruous for a minor

character to serve as the voice of such a broad observation, yet it appears that Yoshimura

speaks for Seicho. Given the prominence of happenstance inSuna no utsuwa. an element

previously eschewed in Seicho’s mystery fiction, we notice a shift away from the more

rational, realistic tone o f an earlier Seicho work such as Ten to sen. This shift toward the

coincidental in mystery fiction may not prove satisfying to the reader, however. The

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prominence of coincidence in the novel undermines the rationality that traditionally

underlies a detective novel. In short, coincidence robs the investigator of his opportunity

to shine at detective work. It is true that a detective must know how to analyze the clues

presented to him by coincidence; nonetheless, coincidence meshes poorly with the

rational, scientifically quantifiable world of the detective novel.

Perhaps the problem with this novel is not that coincidences occur but that they

occur in ways that allow Imanishi to take advantage of them readily. Many o f the

coincidences related to the murder happen in his immediate vicinity or to someone in his

immediate family. For example, not only does Naruse Rieko move into his

neighborhood, she moves in across the street from the Imanishis. Similarly. Miura Emiko

moves into an apartment owned by his sister. In a city the size of Tokyo, the odds are

astronomically against not only one, but two people connected to a murder moving into

apartments under the direct or indirect observation of the detective investigating the case.

The ratiocinative requirements of realistic detective fiction simply will not suffer the

repeated occurrence of happenstance gladly. Were it not for coincidence in all likelihood.

Imanishi could not have solved the case.

While one might counter that a "lucky break" adds an air of realism to a detective

novel, the sheer number of coincidences in this work overpowers even the most

sympathetic reader. Or one might argue that a detective novel that assigns a significant

role to coincidence reflects a more realistic depiction of police work than detectives might

care to admit. As mentioned in Chapter 3, it is characteristic for Seicho to eschew the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. master sleuth style of ratiocination and his ex cathedra pronunciations in favor of the

ordinary, plodding detective. Emphasizing the workaday detective constitutes a shift

toward realism in the detective genre. One might argue that a further shift along the same

continuum would also emphasize the importance of coincidence. Still, the sheer number

o f coincidences in Suna no utuswa makes it less than successful.

The target of Seicho’s social criticism in Suna no utsuwa is the individual who

ignores his past in favor of establishing a new. more socially acceptable identity. Seicho

appears to target the intellectual establishment as a whole, but his criticism is directed not

toward older scholars and critics, but the young avant-garde known in the novel as the

Nouveau Group. He describes the members of the group as pretentious and arrogant.

Although they declare themselves to be dedicated to the higher cause of the advancement

o f their respective arts, as well the reform of art in Japan in general, the novel shows the

pettiness of their intellectual infighting. Seicho juxtaposes conversations between

characters speaking about the lofty ideals of the artist with scenes that reveal their

machinations in their quest for success. In particular, the severest criticism is leveled at

Waga and Sekigawa who deny their rural origins in order to create more urbane personae

for themselves. Their motives for involvement in the murders of Miki. Emiko and

Miyata stand as Seicho’s critique of those who, like them ignore their past and identity in

favor of a manufactured present and false identity.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In one important scene excluded from the Cary translation, the “R Newspaper

Corporation” holds a cocktail party for academics, industrialists, government officials and

artists. Seicho provides an unflattering portrait of the Nouveau Group artists who stand

apart from the other guests, disdainfully watching the procession of older critics and

artists. Their sarcastic comments to each other show an utter lack of respect for the

intellectual and bureaucratic establishment. Their venom is even directed at one of their

own. Waga. for entering the room in the company of a well-known, older critic. In

particular. Sekigawa expresses disdain for Waga's act of tacit and fawning support of the

older generation. When it is explained the critic is a relative of Waga's fiancee. Sekigawa

forgives him, albeit reluctantly. The hypocrisy inherent in Waga's agenda, and

Sekigawa’s too. lies at the heart of Seicho’s critique. For all of Waga's claims to

challenge the artistic establishment, he intends to borrow the clout of his fiancee's father,

a member of the political establishment to advance his career. Waga's lack of confidence

in his art prevents him from forsaking the power of his fiancee's family for the love of

Rieko. Yet he denies his association with the establishment implied by fellow Nouveau

Group member Katazawa Mutsuo. Katazawa compliments Waga on the fine

appointments of his hotel room, and suggests that Sachiko's father is paying for the room.

Waga, in turn denies the allegation. "Boku mo iji ga aru kara na, zenba, futan sasete \va

inai."’ "I’ve got my pride, you know. I’m not letting him pay for all of it."11 However,

his dismissal lacks any believability. That he is allowing his would-be father-in-law to

pay any of his medical bills suggests a reliance on a member of the establishment that is

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. counter to his revolutionary artistic views. Later in the same conversation. Katazawa

implies that Sachiko, a sculptor herself, has chosen Waga not merely because of their

common interest in the arts, but because of something engaging about his personality

{ningenteki na miryoku). Perhaps because he is aware of the gap in ideology that exists

between his words and his actions, Waga interprets the compliment as an insult intended

to imply that there is something of the establishment in him. In defending himself, he

suggests that young artists avoid the trap of material wealth by turning instead to the

creative arts as a means of furthering the struggle against bourgeois capitalism.

''Nani, boku xva burujowa nan ka ate ni site inaiyo. Karera wa itsu do naru ka wakaranai kara ne. Nani siro, gendai shihon shugi wa botsuraku katei o isogitsutsu aru. Sonna mono o ate ni site, oretachi wakai geijutsuka ga zenshin dekiru to omou kai? ”

“Hey, I’m not trying to be bourgeois or anything like that. I don't know what's going to happen to them, or when. Whatever it is, modem capitalism is speeding down the path to destruction. Do you think we young artists can advance if we tty to be like that?” 12

Waga deftly maneuvers around the issue of his hypocrisy by couching his defense in the

Marxist rhetoric of class struggle.

Even in personal matters, Waga exhibits the same hypocrisy. He maintains a very

public relationship with the daughter of a former cabinet member while continuing a

secret romance with Naruse Rieko, an employee of a theater company. The reader is not

told how he actually feels about Rieko, but one suspects he keeps her in his life for her

value as an object or tool. He feels no compunction about using her as part of his cover-

up of Miki’s murder. His selfish nature suggests that she is present to provide emotional

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and erotic fulfillment. He keeps her separate from his public self, relegating her to a

hidden, private role in his life because her social status does not promote his career.

Sekigawa also comes under fire from members of the Nouveau Group because his

columns appear in mainstream publications. His colleagues view his writing in

conventional forums as collaboration with the values of the intellectual establishment,

and they find his notoriety as a “radical critic" contradictory. While, unlike Waga, he is

not "wedded” to the establishment by an impending marriage, he gains notoriety by

writing progressive columns that appear in mass-market newspapers and women's

magazines. In addition, he adopts a conservative stance on Waga’s progressive music.

The reader does not know if his opinions are based on an honest assessment of Waga’s

musical talents or if they arise from differences unrelated to aesthetics, such as a political

disagreement over the future of the Nouveau Group or personal disagreements. In any

event, Sekigawa is critical of Waga's music, at least initially.

His private life is also rife with duplicity. Much like Waga, he takes great pains to

keep secret his romantic relationship with a mistress whose profession does not suit his

public persona. For example, he demands that Emiko move when he fears he has been

recognized by the college student who lives across the hall. He visits her bar often, but he

never lets on that their relationship is anything but professional. Even after agreeing to

marry her, he seeks to conceal how long they have been involved, and this reluctance

leads him to solicit Waga’s help in aborting Emiko’s baby. Therefore, his inability to

fully commit himself to a working-class woman leads to her death.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In addition to denying the false realities of their romantic lives, both Waga and

Sekigawa are guilty denying their provincial origins. Both seek to enhance their

cosmopolitan image by establishing an identity associated with the city. Waga

manufactures a background that locates his origins in Kyoto, the age-old capital of Japan,

while Sekigawa claims to hail from Tokyo. Both men reflect a cultural bias that equates

intellectual superiority and cultural authority with either birth or long-term residence in

major metropolitan areas and exposure to urban culture. As self-styled members of the

intellectual vanguard, they hope to shed their provincial past, and become cosmopolitan

arbiters of culture.

Seicho develops this theme of the struggle between urban and rural cultures in yet

another way. He establishes a simplified dichotomy between traditional Japan, which he

locates in rural society, and modem Japan, which he finds in urban areas. Characters

representing the traditional values of rural Japan are the murder victim. Miki Ken'ichi.

and Kirihara Kojuro, an old craftsman and maker of abacuses whom Imanishi interviews

about Miki. Traditional Japan in this novel is associated with ideals such as honesty,

charity, kindness and compassion. Meanwhile, Waga and Sekigawa represent a modem

Japan in which duplicity is inextricably intertwined with progress and individualism. In

reinforcing a commonly held stereotype of "country vs. city," Seicho praises the

selflessness of traditional Japan and castigates the selfishness of modem Japan.

In their every act Miki and Kirihara embody the selflessness that Seicho extols.

Indeed, Miki represents it on a grand scale. He showed great wisdom in policing his

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. district in Izumo and treated its residents with kindness and respect. His selflessness is

legendary in the region. He risks death braving floods and fire. In kindness too. he has

no equal. He finds a sanitarium for Waga’s ailing father, and, initially, he takes in the

young Waga, intending to raise him as his own son. Meanwhile, Kirihara represents

selflessness on a smaller but no less important scale. When Imanishi visits Izumo

seeking information about Miki's background. Kirihara graciously entertains Imanishi at

his home even though he does not know the detective and has little information to offer

him. Learning that they both share an interest in haiku, Kirihara produces an antique box

that was used centuries before during local poetry competitions. Later he sends a

handmade abacus to Imanishi as a memento of the detective's trip to the region. Kirihara

writes a properly polite and carefully constructed letter to accompany the gift. Imanishi

remarks to his wife on the politeness of people from the countryside. These objects from

the hinterlands - the box. the abacus, the letter -not only represent traditional, regional

culture but they also give physical expression to the high regard that Kirihara accords to

human relationships. Through his deeds and actions, Kirihara represents a traditional

Japan in which etiquette serves as an expression of concern for the feelings of others.

The countryside becomes the repository of the positive social values that Seicho equates

with tradition in this model. For him, denizens of the countryside, such as Miki and

Kirihara, represent traditional Japan's spirit of cooperation and communal living. Sato

Tadao identifies Miki as an example of what he callsfuruki yoki kyodotai shcikai, "the

good ole’ communal society."13

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. At the opposite end of the rural vs. urban paradigm is the dangerously selfish

example set by Waga and Sekigawa. Motivated by self-promotion and self-preservation,

their actions serve as Seicho’s example of the reprehensible effect of modem urban life

on city dwellers. Seichd identifies the city, and its lure of fame and fortune, as the force

that corrupts people from the countryside. Miki is safe until he goes to Tokyo. As a

cultural center, the city lures young artists such as Waga into its dens of iniquity. It

creates an environment in which high culture and critics like Sekigawa thrive: the city

fills the role of the organization ( soshiki) in the concept of "organizational evil" (soshiki

aku) first identified in Hirano Ken's critique of Ten to sen. Interestingly enough.

Imanishi’s hometown is not known, placing him in a neutral central position. This makes

him a suitable arbitrator of the conflict between rural and urban that the murder of Miki

represents. Based in the urban hub of Tokyo, he possess the know-how about the ways of

the city required to investigate crime, but he is nonetheless sufficiently fluent in the

language and customs of the periphery to interact effectively with its residents. This

combination of abilities enables him to move between the extremes of the conflict

without favoring the values of one pole over the other.

However, not all critics read Seicho’s depiction o f the city as negative. Critic

Suzuki Sadami argues that Seicho's eye for detail creates a pleasant chronicle of city life.

O f course, Suzuki is writing in retrospect. The feelings that one gets from reconsidering

the early days of Japan's resurgence from a vantage point three decades removed is

certain to be different from living during those heady but uncertain times. For Suzuki.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Seicho’s regular inclusion of the terminology of the day and the popular activities invoke

a sense of nostalgia of the period in readers old enough to remember that outweighs any

negative memories that may still exist of that time.14 Communal toilets in apartments,

three-wheeled motor scooters, waitresses referred to as jokyu and seedy Tory's bars all

strike him as representative of Japanese cities, especially Tokyo in the 1950s and 1960s.

Fujii Hidetada too, sees Seicho’s work as important for its reflection of cultural

institutions of the period. In his book on Seicho's mysteries in the context of the Showa

thirties. 1955-1965. he provides a detailed analysis on the following topics germane to

Seichd’s work: urban growth of major metropolitan areas like Tokyo: the entertainment

culture of the commuting salaried worker ( sarariiman ); the prosperity of small businesses

during this period; the resurgence of travel, especially among women; the postwar

tuberculosis epidemic and the government’s failed efforts to combat its spread; and the

changing attitudes regarding love and sex among men and women.I? One essay based on

the use o f the movie theater in Suna no utuswa. traces the connection between the

proliferation of movie theaters and the rise of the middle class. Fujii's essays show

Seicho’s fiction functioning both as a critique of societal institutions and a record of daily

life in economically resurgent postwar Japan.

In the novel Seicho introduces examples of three genres prized throughout Japan's

literary history: poetry(haiku), the "random jottings" of essay writing (zuihitsu), and letter

writing (shokan). The incorporation into the novel of examples from these genres injects

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. moments of literary art into a narrative that is otherwise dominated by the clinical tone of

a murder investigation. Moreover, they provide Seicho an opportunity to work in genres

other than mystery fiction during the long process of serializing a novel.

The first of use of traditional genre appears in the form of the haiku that Imanishi

composes on his trip to the Tohoku region. Usually unable to find time in his busy

schedule, he takes advantage of the unhurried trip to compose his thoughts. He writes

three haiku inspired by his first trip to the north country, the subject of Basho's famous

Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Interior) of 1694.

Hoshi-udon wakaba ni nagashite hikari keri.

(Drying noodles - flow among the young leaves - and glisten.)

Kita no labi umi aiiro ni natsu nokoshi.

(Trip to the north - the sea a dark blue - summer still young.)

Neta ato ni kusa no muragaru Koromogawa.

(The grass springs back - after a nap - at Koromo River.)16

Ever the epitome of modest, middle-class values. Imanishi dismisses the quality of his

poetry, which is quite high and is hesitant to share it with his colleague Yoshimura.

Seicho’s inclusion of this detail provides concrete insights into Imanishi's character; it

also establishes the existence of interests outside his career as a detective. As a matter of

fact, Seicho regularly includes haiku in his novels and short stories.17

Meanwhile, Seicho includes an example of “random jottings’" in the form of the

university professor’s essay on “The Woman of the Paper Blizzard.” After Imanishi

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. comes across it in the newspaper, he tracks down its author to determine if the events

actually occurred. The professor explains it was not he but an acquaintance who

witnessed the beautiful young woman tossing pieces of paper from the train window. He

had merely borrowed the anecdote and recast it with heightened literary effect as an

incident that he himself supposedly witnessed. The essay's importance as a clue proves

to be relatively minor, but the beautiful imagery that it evokes via the "woman of the

paper blizzard” provides a lyrical interlude in the first quarter of the novel.

Finally, the letter from Kirihara thanking Imanishi for his efforts in finding Miki's

murderer is an example of epistolary prose, a common device in Japanese novels (cf.

Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and Kojin). We have already seen Seicho's use of a letter to

deliver the solution to the mystery in Ten to sen. As a symbol of traditional Japan.

Kirihara's letter embodies proper Japanese etiquette. Being able to craft a beautiful letter

is important in many cultures, but especially so in Japan where it is seen as an important

part of being a proper Japanese. A letter represents a manifestation of the sender's

goodwill toward the recipient. The art of letter writing in Japan is an aesthetic

experience, consisting of such components as paper selection, calligraphic prowess and a

sense of beauty related to the seasons. That Kirihara is able to craft such a letter is further

evidence of his role in the novel as a symbol of traditional Japan.

The English version of Suna no utsuwa. translated by Beth Cary as Inspector

Imanishi Investigates, contains problems that result from its adaptation rather than

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. complete translation. Although there is no mention that the English translation is in

abridgement, there are a number of omissions from the English version. Not only is it

incomplete, the criteria for adaptation and deletion are unclear. While Cary opts to

translate the three important genre pieces - the haiku, the letter and the essay already

described - she chooses to exclude entire scenes, music reviews, articles and diary entries

from her translation. A list of the elisions central to the text includes Sekigawa's critical

review o f Waga’s music18, an encyclopedia citation on musique concrete19 and an article

on ultrasonic boring20 presented twice in the original.21 These excluded portions are

examples of Cary’s editing removing much of the depth from the original. In addition, all

three excluded examples could potentially help the reader solve the mystery. Sekigawa's

criticism of Waga marks as odd his later shift to complimentary pieces on the same

music. The repetition of the article on ultrasonic boring seems to denote the author's

attempt to draw the reader’s attention to the importance of its contents. Whereas the

citation on musique concrete indicates Waga is capable of thinking unconventionally

about the uses for and power o f sound.

While Cary is careful to include any information from omitted passages that has a

direct bearing on the mystery, by ignoring pages of text at a time, she is presenting an

incomplete translation. Cary also arbitrarily selects recapitulations from the original for

her adaptation. Because the novel was serialized over eleven months, admittedly it

contains regular recapitulations initially intended to update new readers,22 yet Cary

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. eliminates all but one, which appears at the beginning of Chapter 12.23 Why. one

wonders, is this synopsis worthy of inclusion when the others were not?

Moreover, the Cary adaptation overlooks key scenes in the original that augment

the novel’s social criticism and it leaves out minor details that round out the development

of major characters. In the original, Imanishi's character is more realistic because he is

portrayed as a man with likes and dislikes, and a lack of patience for certain subjects.

While he enjoys cultivating bonsai and writing poetry, in the original we also see his

complete aversion to baseball and a lack of understanding about its popularity.

“Imanishi wa, tsugi no shimen o aketa ga, spootsu ran clatta no cie kanshin ga nakatta. Kono goro, wakai keiji ga spootsushi ni bakari netchu shite iru koto ga, kare ni wa gesenai. Sore hodo yakyu ga omosiroi no ka, to omou. Jissai, densha ni nolle, hito no yonde iru spootsushi o miru to, maru de sensochu no yd ni, geemu no keika ga dmidashi de hojirarete iru. Keiyoshi mo sensd yogo de saidaikyu na no de aru.''

"Imanishi opened the paper to the next page but paid no attention because it was the sports page. He didn’t understand the young detectives' passion lately for nothing but the sports page. He wondered if baseball really were all that interesting. In fact, when he saw sports pages people were reading on the train, he noted that the results of the games were announced in big headlines, just like in time of war. The adjectives, too, were martial terms in the largest possible typeset.”24

His disinterest in baseball is in keeping with his artistic interests, but incongruous with

his middle-class lifestyle. Similarly, his frustration with Sekigawa's review of Waga’s

music shows an impatience that we do not see during much of the investigation.

"Imanishi Eitaro wa, koko made shinbo shite yonde, ato o nageta. Shinbun ni nolle iru katsuji wa, mada, sanbun no ichi nokotte iru. Shikashi, totemo owari made yomituzukeru konki wa nakatta.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Imanishi persevered and read up to a point, but he abandoned the rest. There was still about a third of the article left unread but he could not bring himself to keep reading through to the end.”25

However, because passages like this show him to possess genuine emotions, his

impatience makes his character more realistic and likable. Imanishi's character as

presented in the adaptation is more bland than that presented in the original.

As a matter o f fact, the translation deviates from the original from the outset. The

key opening scene in which two unidentified men, later proven to be Waga and Miki,

share a drink at a bar near Kamata Station is omitted. Cary introduces information

germane to the mystery from this section as evidence gathered by the police in the early

stages of the investigation by interspersing prose of her own creation with that translated

from the original. Although the reader is presented all the information necessary to solve

the mystery in Cary’s abridgement, her significant elisions privilege the communication

of the plot of the novel at the expense of its substance.

Another glaring omission excludes a scene central to the novel's social criticism

and title. The scene is that of a large cocktail party thrown by a major newspaper

company. Seicho describes the party as follows:Hanayaka na naka ni komi alia ningen

ga, mizu ni uita suna no yd ni yurarete ita. “People packed into the colorful crowd were

being jostled like sand drifting in water.”26 Although Seicho does not elaborate on the

significance of this reference to sand, it is the only mention in the text of the “vessel of

sand” of the novel’s title.27 Critic Suzuki Sadami suggests that the image can be

interpreted as a metaphor for the Japanese people living in the period of rapid economic

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. growth in which the novel was written.28 For him, the sand represents Japan's citizenry,

and he interprets the image of the vessel as the expanding Japanese economy of the

1960s. Suzuki imagines a container filled with water and a layer of sand. Vigorously

shaken by a booming economy, people, represented in his metaphor by the sand,

originally relegated to the bottom of the vessel drift upward through the water to mingle

with the middle class and elite of society. Suzuki's interpretation refers to the social

restructuring that results from Japan’s economic resurgence. By and large, he sees this

period as one of by and large positive results, including the growth of the middle class

and the increase in its social and political power.

Another interpretation yet to be suggested by any Japanese critics takes into

account Seicho’s critique of the pretentious young intellectuals, who are the members of

the Nouveau Group. In this interpretation, the individual intellectuals are the vessels. As

budding members of the intellectual elite, they affect the dress and bearing of members of

their class. They also attempt to show the quality of the contents of their intellects by

creating, performing and publishing. At first glance they appear to be repositories of

precious knowledge; however, closer inspection reveals that, void of knowledge, they are

filled with only pettiness and pretension. In short, the affected personae of the

intellectuals belie the nature of their contents, and it is in this important cocktail party

scene that the reader is first introduced to all of the members of the Nouveau Group.

True, some of the members are introduced earlier when Imanishi and Yoshimura see

them at the train station in Tohoku,29 but here they are all assembled before the reader.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with their names and artistic specialties presented in full force. Via this careful itemizing

of information so early in the narrative. Seicho marks the group as essential to

appreciating both the novel’s social criticism and the mystery.

Other omissions later in Cary’s abridgement also ignore attempts to establish

other members of the group as possible suspects in the eyes of the reader. Seicho

attempts to divert the reader’s attention by suggesting that any number of the group can

be identified as ’‘the man in the beret” who stands outside Rieko's apartment. He

describes at least two of the group members, neither Waga nor Sekigawa. as regularly

wearing a dark shirt and a black beret.

Some of the most glaring omissions negate Seicho's efforts to incorporate details

about Waga’s music into the novel. Cary omits an essential passage regarding musique

concrete that, in addition to faithfully presenting Seicho’s text, could have introduced this

rather esoteric school of music to a broader audience.

“Myuujikku konkureeto - Gutai ongaku to yakusu. Ongaku tciru to iya to o towazu, sonzai suru kagiri no arayuru onkyo o sozai to shi, sorera ni samazama na (denkiteki, kikaiteki) kako o hodokosu nado shite, leepu montaaju no hoho ni yori kosei shita ongaku. Sono chdshu wa denshi ongaku doyo maltaku ensdka nashi ni, supiikaa o tdshite okonawareru. Sen-kyiihyaku-yon-jil-hachi-nen ni Furansu no gishi Pieeru Sheferu ni yori sozo sare, ongakkai ni tsuyoi shokku o atae, ichihu no zeneiteki sakkyokukatachi no shiji to kydryoku o ete shidai ni sekai ni hiromatta. Sono meisho wa suzaiin to shite omo ni gutaiteki onkyo (shizenin, kikai no oto, jinsei, nadonado) o yoiru koto kara yurai shite iru ga 'gutai ongaku ’ to iu meisho wa taihen gokai o idaki yasui. Sunawachi, kore kara no suzaiin wa suhete onkyo honrai no imi (hatsuon no gen 'in, mokuteki nado) to wa mukankei ni, koko no dokuritsu shita oto sono mono, sunawachi 'onkyo obuje ’ to shite sakkyokuka ni toraerare, yoirareru no de, gutai ' naru go wa 'gutaiteki naiyd' to ka 'bydsha' nado to iu kotogara o imi shite iru no de wa nai koto ni chid shinakereba naranai. Kono 'onkyo obuje ’ naru shisd wa torai no ongaku ni wa mattaku nakatta mono de, 165

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. shururearizumu kara kita. Sore yue gutai ongaku wa tdrai no ikanaru ongaku to mo hanzetsu shita tokoro kara hassei shita to ieyd. Shikashi, shiite, sono kigen o ongakushi no uchi ni motomeru nara, sen-kyuhyaku- niju-nendai ni okeru Edogaa Vareezu no zeneiteki shosha sakuhin (ionka nado) ya, kore ni sakitatte sen-kyuhyaku-ju-nendai no ichijiki ni Itaria de katsudd shita miraiha (Marinetti-ra) no iwayuru ‘soon geijutsu' nado ga agerareyd. Miraiha kara gutai ongaku ni itaru ichiren no ‘soon ongaku' wa, tdrai no ongaku no arikata ni honshitsu teki ni hiteteki de ari. kono hitei kara shuppatsu shite, tdrai no ongaku de wa mimuki mo sarenakatta atarashii onsuizai (soonrui) no motsu kydryoku de shinsen na enerugii to hyogenryoku o motte, ongaku no sekai ni mattaku atarashii hito hunya o kaitaku kakuritsu sen to suru ugoki o shimeshite iru...(Moroi Makoto) ”30

“Musique concrete - Translated as ‘tangible music.' Disregarding the question of its classification as music, it is music presented in a taped montage that is composed using any sound in existence as its raw material and to which are applied various processes (electrical or mechanical). As with electronic music, it is presented through speakers, without the presence of any musicians whatsoever. Created in 1948 by French engineer Pierre Schaeffer, it greatly shocked the musical community and spread throughout the world with the support and cooperation of a group of avant-garde composers. The name comes from the use of actual sounds (natural sounds, mechanical sounds, human speech, etc.). however this is rather inviting of misinterpretation. Namely, because these component sounds are all completely unrelated to their original meanings (the cause of the utterance, the objective, etc.), and each independent sound, that is ‘sound objet.’ is adapted and manipulated by the composer, one must be careful to realize that the terms ‘concrete contents' or ’depiction.' among others, do not refer to the traditional pattern. The concept of the ‘sound objet’ did not exist at all in previous music, originating in surrealism. One could say that musique concrete was bom out of the separation from all other music. However, if one wishes to search for that origin in the history of music, one might suggest Edgardo Vareses's avant-garde montage compositions of the 1920s (Ionka, etc), or the so-called 'art of noises" of the Italian futurists (Marinetti, et al) active in the 1910s who preceded them for a time. ‘The art of noises’ that musique concrete inherited from the Futurists in its essence was contradictory to the system of inherited music and, beginning with this departure, refers to a movement possessing the overwhelming force of new sounds (noises) that traditional music ignored, a fresh energy and an expressive power that attempted to pioneer and establish a completely new field in the world of music. (Moroi Makoto)31

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In a similar vein, Cary also omits an attempt by Waga to explain his latest music project

to his fiancee Tadokoro Sachiko.

“ 'Ningen no seimeikan to itta mono o dashitai to omotte imasu. Sono tame oto no motte iru enerugii to itta mono, sore o shusei shite mita n desu. Tatoeba, gunshu ga rasshuawaa ni kokuden no satto shite iru toki no koe da to ka, kyofu no unari da to ka, kojo no goon, sore mo, kikai kara chokusetsu de wa naku, maiku o kojo no tatemono no sugu yoko no chimen o hotte fukaku sashiire, shindo to itta mono made rokuon shite mimashita. Kore o bunkai shitari fukugo shitari shite choshi o totonoemashita. Umaku itta ka do ka, hitotsu kiite itadikmashd ka . 32

*‘I was thinking of producing something called The Sense of Human Existence. Toward that end, I attempted to collect energy embodied in sounds. For example, the voices of the masses pouring into a train at rush hour, or the howls of a storm, or the deafening roar of machinery, but even in that case, I didn’t want the sounds directly from the machines. I tried digging a hole in the ground right next to the factory and sticking a microphone deep into it to record the vibrations. I arranged the tones after deconstructing and reassembling them. Shall we listen to one to see how it turned out?”

The narration goes on to describe the sample of his music he plays for her.

“Isshu iyd na oto ga dehajimeta. Sore wa, kinzokusei to omoeru shi, nibui hara ni hibiku yd na oto de mo atta. Kangcn gakki to iu kore made no baitaibutsu o tsukawazu, atarasii oto o tsukuru to iu no ga sakkyokuka Waga Eiryo no shucho de atta. Kiita bakari de wa, futsu no ningen ni wa merodii mo biteki kanno mo kanjirarenakatta. Kusagusa zatta no oto ga, kikaiteki na sosa niyotte, noroku, hayaku, tsuyoku, yowaku, nagaku, mijikaku, iroiro na henka de namiutte deru no datta. Soko ni wa futsuu no ongakuteki na tosui wa nakatta. Muchitsujo de kaijuu na onkyo ga chosha no chino o imi arige shigeki shite ita.

“A certain bizarre sound came forth. It made one think of a metallic sound, but it was also a dull sound like one that would resonate in the abdomen. The objective of composer Waga Eiryo was to make a new sound without the use of the traditional medium of wind and string instruments. The average person on hearing it did not feel any melody or aesthetic potential. The cacophonous sounds, altered by the mechanical manipulations, came undulating forth - slowly, quickly, powerfully,

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. weakly, extended, abbreviated. It held none o f the typical musical intoxication. The disharmonious, ambiguous noise stimulated the listener’s intellect significantly.”33

Not only does this passage describe in great detail the sound and the physical sensation

caused by Waga’s music, it also provides information that points to Waga as the killer of

Miyata and Emiko. This passage occurs between the death of Miyata and the death of

Emiko. The perceptive reader might make the connection between the visceral sensation

caused by this music and its potential effect on internal organs.

Earlier in the novel, there is another series of scenes in which sound plays a key

part. When Sekigawa goes to visit Emiko, there are multiple descriptions of sounds.

When he knocks on the door of her apartment, his knock is barely audible. Sekigawa wa

cioa oyubisaki de sawareru hodo ni karuku tataita ,34 ("Sekigawa lightly tapped the door

with his fingertips as if he were caressing it.”) Sekigawa is worried that one of the

college students who are staying up late playing mahjong across the hall will see him. but

he redirects his fear, turning it into anger at their noisiness. He says the sound of their

mahjong tiles is annoying him. Urusai renchu bakari , anna ni 6:ei de wa, sho ga nai?~

(Nothing but a bunch of noisy kids. What do they think they are doing, so many of them

together?) Then follow four separate references to the sound of the tiles clicking as they

touch the tabletop.36 Elision of these passages is especially curious. Given the

prominence of sound in the novel, it represents a lack of understanding of the central

themes. As an instrument of murder, and as the core of Waga’s profession, as well as in

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the description of sounds heard in Miura Emiko's apartment, sound is important to the

work.

Similarly, a conversation between Nouveau Group member Katazawa Mutsuo and

Waga about the relationship between artists and the establishment is also omitted/7 The

passage clarifies the liberal political stance of the Nouveau Group, while exposing Waga

as an opportunist for allowing the wealthy father of his fiancee to pay his hospital bills.

An incomplete translation gives the impression of a work that is less developed than the

original and obscures themes important to the narrative.

Although a flawed mystery. Suna no utsuwa provides an interesting counterpoint

to Seicho's most famous detective novel. Ten to sen. because of its dissimilar narrative

structure and the differing degree of effectiveness as a mystery. A comparison of the

narrative differences of the two novels is informative. Ten to sen is a prototypical "alibi

busting” mystery in which the reader is made aware that the detective identifies the

murderer early in the novel but remains unable to prove the character's guilt. Suna no

utsuwa. on the other hand, has the reader follow the detective as he tracks down clues that

establish a pair of murder suspects, whose identities are not explicitly provided to the

reader, and eventually collects sufficient evidence to arrest one of them for the crime. In

Ten to sen. the reader is aware of the identities of the victims and the prime suspect early

in the novel. In Suna no utsuwa, the reader learns the identity of the victim at the same

time as the detective, but does the identity of the prime suspect is withheld until it has

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. been proven that he is the murderer. The role assigned to the reader is different in each

work, in Ten to sen , he is part o f the detecting process. In Suna no utsuwa, he is

challenged to see into the mind of the detective in addition to assessing the significance

of the clues. Ten to sen is the more effective of the two. Its success resides less in the

particulars of its narrative structure, than its realism, the realistic method used by the

murderer and the more realistic depiction of the detection process.

Studying Suna no utsuwa helps to identify principal themes that recur in Seicho.

The novel reflects the strong social orientation for which Seicho is known. In his vague

social critique, he again targets a segment of the privileged class, directing his criticism at

morally bankrupt young intellectuals. His inclusion of relevant details from the period

provides a feel for theZeitgeist of the times. The increased opportunity for domestic

travel occasioned by the Japanese economic recovery and the migration of rural Japanese

to metropolitan areas that fueled Japan’s economic recovery find their way into Seicho's

work in the form of a repeated travel motif and the treatment of regional cultures,

including dialects. As a means of preserving provincial culture. Seicho included dialects,

locations and local crafts to lend authenticity at the same time he celebrates regional

Japan. As counterpoints to the clinical tone of the mystery, there are multiple examples

other traditional Japanese literary genres inserted into the narrative. Characterization too

is typical of Seicho’s formulas. The detective Imanishi is the dedicated plodder. The

murdered Miki is the sympathetic victim. Waga is portrayed as the despicable individual

who utilizes others to further his own ends. Imanishi is a conscientious colleague and

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. caring father and husband; Waga is an arch-criminal who violates the Confucian tradition.

Waga is also an unfilial son who denies the relationship with his diseased father and who

murders the man who befriended him. Ironically, the society he seeks to escape by

assuming a false identity and committing a murder to protect it. and the society he hopes

will embrace him at the highest level as a talented musician and a member of one of its

prominent families, is one and the same. Perhaps Seicho's message is to warn readers of

the futility of W aga's quest for legitimacy at the expense of his past and the lives of those

around him.

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SEICHO AFTER 1960: FICTION AND ESSAYS

This chapter contextualizes the first decade of Seicho's career by analyzing

representative works from his last three decades as a writer. Seicho establishes the

stylistic, thematic and ideological foundations for his writing in the first decade o f his

career (1951-1960). the period that has been the focus of this study. In order to

demonstrate the later manifestations of his political critique, his characterization of

heroes and villains along proletarian ideological lines, and his repeated use of motifs such

as travel and regional cultures, this chapter provides analyses of characteristic works

from 1961-1992.

This study has focused on the fiction of Seicho's first decade because the

foundation for his extensive body of work is laid between 1951 and 1960. However,

because his later work also includes non-fiction essays, a consideration of his later work

must reflect that shift. It should be remembered that, while his early successes as a writer

allow him to quit his job at Asahi in March 1956. it is the phenomenal success o f Ten to

sen in 1957 that launches Seicho's career. The resulting financial stability and his well-

established reputation allow him the freedom to write non-fiction that acts as a vehicle for

social criticism with little concern for sales figures. Regardless, his non-fiction is highly

regarded by critics and remarkably popular with readers.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Post-1960 Seicho works are typically detective fiction or non-fiction histories.

His detective fiction from this period generally falls into two categories: domestic and

international. The topics for his histories also fall into two categories: twentieth-century

scandals and the ancient origins of Japanese civilization. Examples of domestic detective

fiction from this period include Hi to shio {The Flame and the tide , 1967). Kikanakatta

hasho {Silent locale , 1970), and Watasareta hamen (The Overlooked scene. 1976).

Mysteries set before the backdrop of exotic international locales include Amusuterdamu

unga satsujin jiken (The Amsterdam canal murder, 1969). Atsui kinu {Hot silk. 1972), and

Akai hydkaki (Red ice age , 1984-1989). His histories of twentieth-century scandals

include Nihon no kuroi kiri {Japan's black mist, 1960) and Showa shi hakkutsu

{Unearthing the history o f the Showa era , 1964-1971). Meanwhile, his essays on Japan's

prehistory includeSeicho tsushi {Seicho's history. 1976).Nihon no kodai kokka -

Yamataikoku no nazo o saguru {Japan s ancient state - searching for Yamataikoku.

1971) and Kodai tankyu {Investigations into ancient history , 1971-1972).

This chapter features analyses of three non-fiction essays and one mystery. The

essays originally appeared Showain shi hakkutsu {Unearthing the history o f the Showa

era , Shukan bunshun 1964-1971), which was awarded the first Yoshikawa Eiji Prize in

1967, and the 18th Kikuchi Kan Prize in 1970. This series of essays represents Seicho's

use of history as a tool to expose instances of corruption and criminal misgovemment

perpetrated by those in power. Because the targets of his criticism in these essays are

those at the highest levels of the bureaucracy and military, the critique is consistent with

that developed in his earlier mystery fiction. However, rather than creating a mystery, he

applies techniques from the detective fiction genre to historical narratives. The result is a

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. blend of journalistic reportage, historical analysis and mystery fiction that questions the

conventional interpretation of some of the more notorious events in Japanese history.

This chapter will also consider a detective novel from the final decade of Seicho's

career. Giwaku (Suspicion, February 1982) originally appeared under the titleNoboru

ashioto {Climbing footfalls). This mystery is another example of Seicho's use of realistic

detective fiction as social critique. However, his target is not government officials or big

business, but the media. Like other Seicho mysteries, his detective is a middle-class

overachiever who wins through persistence and tenacity. In addition. Giwaku features a

femme fatale similar to Yasuda Ryoko in Ten to sen.

In Showa shi hakkutsu, Seicho treats a wide range of historical events from

international and domestic politics, as well as scandals involving political officials or

literary figures. While his sources are historical, he combines techniques of journalistic

reportage and fiction to turn history into a gripping narrative. Analysis of Showa shi

hakkutsu in this study will cover three of the 32 essays in the series. "Ishida kenji no

kaishi” (‘The strange death of prosecutor Ishida." August-September 1964) is

representative of Seicho’s use of mystery fiction elements in his construction of a

historical narrative. Like so many of Seicho’s mysteries, this essay adopts the middle-

class public servant as the sympathetic victim, and exposes members of the bureaucracy's

upper echelons as the villains. “Manshu bo judai jiken” (“A major incident in

Manchuria,” May-June 1965) is an account of the murder of Zhang Tsolin. an incident

that precipitated Japan’s involvement in World War II. It is representative of Seichd's

combination of historical sources and mystery fiction elements in its commitment to

reveal the underhanded ways of the government and military. In “Kobayashi Takiji no

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. shi” (“The death of Kobayashi Takiji," August-October 1966) Seicho uses the murder of

the prominent proletarian author Kobayashi Takiji (1903-1933) to explore the rise of

proletarian literature, and the government’s brutal repression of Communists and leftists

in the March 15th incident of 1933. This essay combines Seicho’s interests in political

events and literature.

The three essays represent both Seicho’s commitment to research and his opinion

about the pervasiveness of conspiracy in the corridors of power. Research often plays a

central role in Seicho’s fiction, as seen in the earlier explications of works discussed in

this study. Research for Seichd is a tool for removing what obscures the facts of an

incident. Through diligent research, he brings to light Ishida's murder - a relatively

minor, largely unknown event - out of a commitment to expose the nefarious plotting of

those vested with the public trust. While the murders of Zhang Tsolin and Kobayashi

Takiji may be more widely known, Seichd nonetheless uses newly available material to

construct indictments of the military and the police, respectively.

Let us turn to analysis of these three essays.

"Ishida kenji no kaishi” analyzes the suspicious death of Assistant Prosecutor

Ishida Motoi of the Tokyo District Court District Attorney's Office. Seicho provides an

interpretation of Ishida’s death that places the blame on high-ranking members of the

government seeking to avoid the disclosure of their involvement in various scandals.

According to the historical record that Seicho makes available to the reader, on

the evening of October 29lh, Ishida left a restaurant in the middle of the party fifteen

minutes after receiving a phone call. Although he excused himself, saying he was going

home, according to his wife he never arrived home. Early the following morning, a

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. railway worker discovered Ishida's body in an area along the tracks somewhat removed

from Kamata station. The newspapers reported that Ishida died from injuries sustained

when he stumbled drunk onto the tracks and was struck by a train. However. Seich5 is

unwilling to accept such a simplistic explanation. Ishida was a highly respected

prosecutor. Seicho reveals that Ishida was not intoxicated at the time of his death, nor

were his wounds consistent with those of one struck by a speeding train. Finally, he

notes that Ishida had been investigating charges of corruption against certain public

Figures.

Among the incidents that Ishida was investigating were an alleged slush fund

established by Tanaka Giichi, General of the Army, and subsequently a member of the

House of Peers and Chair of the Seiyukai. the conservative political party. Supposedly

secret funds had been siphoned off from Siberian mining operations by Tanaka and Army

General Yamanashi Hanzo. Ishida was also investigating government involvement in the

Pak Yol incident (Boku Retsu jikeri) in which Pak Yol, an outspoken Korean opponent of

the Imperial Japanese government, and his Japanese wife Kaneko Fumiko were

imprisoned for possessing explosives, allegedly with the intent of assassinating the Prince

Regent in 1923.1 Finally, he had been looking into the issue of the relocation of the

Matsushima pleasure district in Osaka, a scandal in which land developers bribed

officials in Tokyo to ensure relocation of the lucrative pleasure district to their site.

Because of his zealous approach, Ishida was given the nickname oni kenji (“the

prosecuting demon”). Seich5 describes him as a diligent man, bom into a samurai

family, who took advantage of his family’s place in society to make the most of his

education at Tokyo University. He worked his way through the legal system until he

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. attained the rank of Assistant Prosecutor. Seicho extols Ishida" s honesty and high ethical

standards, lauding him as a prosecutor who allowed no compromise in the pursuit of the

facts of a case or the prosecution of those suspected of breaking the law.2 Such honesty

stands in direct opposition to the deceit and corruption of public officials in higher

offices. Thus, Seicho juxtaposes Ishida’s ethics - or those of a mid-level professional

public servant - with those of high-ranking officials who scheme to further their own

political futures or harm their enemies. Seicho’s juxtaposition emphasizes both the virtue

of Ishida and the ethical impoverishment of the bureaucratic elite.

As Seicho goes on to explain. Ishida was killed by those in the government who

wanted to topple Prime Minister Wakatsuki’s cabinet in order to prevent the exposure of

any of the previously mentioned scandals. Seicho identifies a high-ranking official.

Suzuki Kisaburo, as the pivotal figure who determined that someone must be "sacrificed

for the good of the country.” Ishida is to be that sacrifice.

According to the testimony of various witnesses Seich5 gleans from the records,

Ishida had almost reached the door of his house when he was attacked by thugs. Seicho

believes at least one of Ishida’s attackers was proficient in a martial art such as judo. He

hypothesizes that Ishida was stunned with a blow to the jaw. The attackers then placed

him in the trunk of a car and drove to a deserted stretch of railroad track where they

administered a fatal blow to the head with a blunt instrument. Ishida"s body was placed

near the tracks to create the appearance that he had been struck by a train. However, the

localized bruising, lack of blood at the scene, and the minor damage to his clothing all

suggest that the cause of death was something other than massive trauma caused by a

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. speeding train. The police are able to establish a connection between the suspected

attackers and Suzuki Kisaburo through common membership in the Seiyiikai.

Seicho's choice of Ishida as the subject of an essay on the underhanded ways of

the ruling majority reflects his evenhanded approach to justice. A man of integrity,

Ishida did not let political ideology influence his application of the law. He prosecuted

both conservatives in the Seiyiikai and leftists. For example, in April 1925 he prosecuted

Yamakawa Hitoshi, Sakai Toshihiko. Takase Kiyoshi and twenty-one others for

formation of, and participation in the Japanese Communist Party. The defendants were

charged with violating the laws prohibiting "organizing and joining a secret society."

Ishida pushed for stiff sentences - one year at hard labor - for those whom the state

deemed the most serious threats. The judges in the case decided, however, to be and

gave the defendants credit for time served during the trial. From this account we can see

that Ishida was an oni kenji, and his commitment to rigorous prosecution was based on

the application of the law regardless of his opponent in the courtroom. His prosecution of

leftists as well as members of the establishment, indicates his dedication to the faithful

execution of his duties.

If this story based on history sounds familiar, indeed it is because it is highly

reminiscent of Ten to sen and Suna no uluswa. This historical essay contains elements of

the socially realistic murder mystery that Seicho pioneered. Thus, although the incident

is based on historical fact, in certain passages its presentation follows Seicho’s formula

for the detective novel. For example, the essay begins with a description of the area in

which the body is discovered by the railroad employee patrolling the tracks.

178

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Kono kogawa wa Ikegami Honganji homen ni tozuru michihaba san shaku gnrai no dord ni sotte ite, katawara in fu mikiri ga aru. Komine ga dotei o kakeorite hajimete wakatta no wa, nenrei yonjuyon.go gnrai no, kuchihige o takuwaeta omonaga no otoko ga kuroi koto o kite, mune kara shita o mizu no naka ni hitashite aomuke ni yokotawatte iru koto datta?

On one side of this stream following the three-foot wide path that runs toward the Ikegami Hongan temple there is a railroad crossing bar. When Komine scrambled down the embankment, the first thing he was aware of was a man in a black coat in is mid-forties, with a long face and a mustache. The man was lying face up, soaked up to his chest by the water.

The laborer, uneducated in the analysis of a crime scene, assumes the man is just another

victim who wandered onto the rails and was killed. He contacts the police, and Detective

Fujii reports to the scene of the crime. There is a detailed description o f the condition in

which police find the body and clothes. Business cards on the body indicate the identity

of the victim. Seicho describes the results of the preliminary autopsy. And he lists the

early theories considered by the police concerning the cause of Ishida's death. Did he

jump from a train? Was he struck by a train because he slipped under the lowered

railroad crossing bar? Although initial police reports in the newspapers suggest that

Ishida may have been killed elsewhere and his body placed near the tracks, the official

results of the autopsy performed by the police coroner declare Ishida's death as

accidental. According to the official version, the force of the passing train, and Ishida's

unsteadiness due to being intoxicated, caused him to be sucked under the train as he stood

at the crossing gate.

An alternative interpretation of the crime scene, coupled with the information that

Seicho provides about the cases that Ishida was investigating, is essential to grasping the

chain of events that Seicho reconstructs for the reader. By positing early in the essay that

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the official explanation as to the cause of Ishida’s death is inconsistent with the physical

evidence found at the scene, he effectively causes us to wonder how professional

investigators could ignore the obvious. The wounds found on Ishida’s body - a small

bruise at the jaw, another to the left side of his head - make it obvious to even a non

professional that Ishida was not killed by a train. This inconsistency tempts the lay

reader to question the motives of the investigators. Why would the investigators advance

such an unlikely explanation? In answering this question, Seicho turns to an explanation

of contemporary political events in which Ishida was involved. He outlines the scandal

over the slush fund controlled by Tanaka Giichi. citing the fact that Ishida was

investigating the matter. He explains Ishida’s connection with other politically sensitive

incidents, providing a brief sketch of each issue and naming the prominent political

figures involved. Seicho attempts to demonstrate a motive for murder by convincing the

reader that there is a direct correlation between Ishida's investigations, and the threat he

posed to powerful figures in the government. Seicho brings to light the seedier side of

government, politics and big business -- a realm to which most of his contemporaries

would not have been privy. He demonstrates the nefarious relationships among

institutions and individuals and argues that the decision to kill Ishida Motoi originated in

the halls of power out of a perceived need to prevent corruption being exposed and

prosecuted. Although the details of this particular case many not have been known to

Japanese citizens in 1926, or even to Seicho’s readers in 1964, Seicho is appealing to the

longstanding and popularly held notion in Japanese culture that politics and business are

conducted behind-the-scenes by well-positioned kuromaku or “wire pullers.”

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This essay, like others in Showa shi hakkutsu blends elements of detective fiction

and historical research, highlighting the commonalities between detective work and

historical inquiry. The modus operandi of both detective work and historical research are

explorations of the past undertaken with the intention of discovering facts and uncovering

new connections. Yet bias can taint both processes, thereby skewing the results of the

investigation. Therefore, it is imperative that both the historian and the detective analyze

pertinent data with an objectivity unimpeded by preconceptions. In addition to avoiding

preconceptions, it is often beneficial for both historians and detectives to approach a

problem from a different angle. A different perspective often exposes inroads not

previously apparent. Both detectives and historians work from materials in the present -

documents, interviews, artifacts - in an attempt to reconstruct a description of what has

happened some time before. In detective work police utilize similar methods intended to

provide information about the commission of a crime: victim, perpetrator, accomplices,

time, location, motive, etc. In other words, policework involves a reconstruction of the

"history” of the crime.

Throughout his essay. Seicho juxtaposes elements of the detective novel with

historical research. In writing about a murder that occurred forty years earlier, it is

necessary for him to treat both the historical aspects of the case and the forensic details of

the murder because both are intrinsically connected. The forensic evidence supports his

position that Ishida was not killed by a train, and the historical facts support his

hypothesis that the murder was politically motivated. However, there is nothing in

Seicho’s argument that categorically connects Suzuki Kisaburo to Ishida's murder. The

result of Seichd’s own detective work into the events surrounding the death of Ishida

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Motoi provide no new revelations and only reflect the author’s distrust of bureaucracy

and his interest in history.

In “Manshu bo judai jiken” (“A major incident in Manchuria”) Seicho probes the

1928 assassination of Zhang Tsolin (1875-1928) by the Japanese Army stationed in

Manchuria. Seicho documents the plotting between the prime minister, his cabinet, and

the military that led to a breakdown in Japanese governmental control over Japanese

Kwantung Army in Manchuria. Seicho argues that, although a Japanese Army officer

planted the bomb that killed Zhang, ultimately Tokyo's lack of control over the Army,

and the Army’s desire for autonomy on the Asian mainland, contributed significantly to

the death of Zhang Tsolin.

Seicho begins his investigation into Zhang’s assassination with a sympathetic

description of what Zhang was doing at the moment his railway car was blown up

beneath him - he was drinking tea - and a description of his tom and bloody body.

Cho Sakurin wa dai hachiryome ni nolle ita. Hoten mo ma chikaku nalta no de, kare wa sude ni shindai kara oki agatte, demukae no tame Shanhai seki kara nolle kitaGo Shunshd to sashi mitkai de cha o nonde ita. Totsuzen no bakuhatsu wa kdbu sanrydme kara okotta. Zenbu rokuryo made tenpuku shita ga, Cho Sakurin wa chimamire ni natte nagedasare, Go Shunshd wa sokushi shita.4

Zhang Tsolin was riding in the eighth car. Since Mukden was coming up soon, he had already gotten out of bed and was drinking tea with Wu Zhouli who had boarded at Shanghai to accompany him. The sudden explosion originated at the third car from the rear. The first six cars overturned, with Zhang Tsolin thrown bloodied from the car. and Wu Zhouli killed instantly.

The Army’s official version of the events of June 4, 1928 blamed the explosion on three

Chinese suspects. According to the Army’s narrative, Japanese soldiers approached the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. men to question them, but the three became nervous and threw bombs at the soldiers. In

the ensuing melee, two of the alleged bombers were killed, but the third escaped.

Soldiers found documents on the bodies of the two dead Chinese indicating that the men

were plainclothes soldiers in the Kuomintang (KMT). According to a newspaper article

that ran on June 22 in the Asahi shinbun , Zhang’s supporters rushed to his railway car

and placed him in an automobile for transfer to a hospital. The article continues that

Zhang’s death was caused by the forty-minute trip to the hospital, as well as the refusal of

Zhang’s compatriots to seek the medical services of a Japanese surgeon.

In order to understand why the Japanese Army wanted to kill Zhang, Seicho

revisits events that date back to World War I. He pointedly reminds the reader of the

tremendous growth of Japanese industry, especially heavy industry, during World War I

as a result of American and British orders for supplies. Essential to the expansion of this

industrial base were raw materials in short supply in Japan. Manchuria became an

essential source, and in order to preserve the flow of raw materials out of Manchuria.

Japan’s Kwantung Army was charged with maintaining the security of the Manchurian

Railway, initially won from the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. After

explaining the practical reasons for Japan’s expansionist policy on the Asian mainland,

Seicho provides extensive detail about the debate that occurred among members of the

Japanese cabinet concerning Army activity in Manchuria.

In a series of five meetings held from May to June 1927. and attended by Prime

Minister Tanaka Giichi, his cabinet ministers and Japan’s top bureaucrats, leaders stated

their belief that it was essential for Japan to control Manchuria and Mongolia in order to

prevent the communization of China. However, to do so necessitated these areas being

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "separated’' from the Chinese state. Seicho presents information from Tanaka’s

memorandum on the meetings. The government’s rationale for taking control of

Manchuria and Mongolia was twofold. First, Japan argued that Manchuria covered three

times the area of the Japan archipelago, but its population was only one-third of Japan’s.

Therefore, according to this argument, Manchuria should share its wealth of space with

Japan. Second, Japanese bureaucrats argued that Manchuria and Mongolia were not

actually "Chinese” (in spite of the fact that this position was a complete reversal of the

Japanese policy stated in the treaty of the Russo-Japanese War). Officials find a Tokyo

University scholar, Dr. Yano, who publicly supported their newly founded belief. After

the foundation of the puppet state of Manchukuo, the government acknowledged China

has sovereign rights to Manchuria, but it declared that Japan also exercised the same

sovereign rights over the country. Seicho does not explain how the cabinet rationalized

this tortured logic.

Once Japan established a foothold in Manchuria, the Army felt support from a

local military leader would facilitate control of the local populace. It decided to support

Zhang. But in 1927 Chiang Kaishek’s KMT Army was threatening to wipe out Zhang's

forces in northern China. In an ostensible move to protect "the freedom of Asians against

European powers,” Japan sent 20,000 troops to Tsingtao in May 1927. In actuality, the

troop deployment served notice to Chiang of Japan’s resolve to support Zhang's bid for

power in northeast China and Manchuria. Zhang used the support of the Japanese

military to secure power in Manchuria. Nonetheless, the Japanese Army felt he had

become intractable. They believed he had taken advantage of their support but was no

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. longer willing to follow their wishes, a violation of what the Kvvantung Army officers

saw as an implicit quid pro quo agreement.

Zhang’s assassination was planned and carried out by Japanese Army Colonel

Komoto Daisaku (1883-1953). The official version of Komoto’s “independent act” that

was put forth by the government ipso facto asserted that Komoto’s immediate superior in

Manchuria, General Saito, did not know of his subordinate's scheme. However. Seicho

disputes this official version. The record shows that prior to the assassination, Komoto

requested troop support from General Saito to counter the security forces that

accompanied Zhang. Saito refused. Thus, Seicho argues, because Komoto petitioned

Saito directly, Saito must have in some manner anticipated the objective of Komoto’s

plan. Seicho questions why Saito did not notify Tokyo of his subordinate's impending

act. After all, it would have proved destabilizing to the already tenuous situation in

Manchuria. Seicho’s implicit criticism finds Saito’s failure to stop the assassination

attempt, or notify officials in Tokyo, to be the result of Komoto acting - in accordance

with the wishes of the Kwantung Army high command.

He is equally critical of the arrogance displayed by the cabinet members in

Tokyo, outlining the relationship between the assassination of Zhang and the outbreak of

World War II. When the Japanese army occupied Mukden, U.S. Secretary of State

Cordell Hull demanded details of Japan’s intentions. Cabinet members warned Tanaka

that failure to answer Hull’s questions would lead to American involvement in China, and

inevitably, to war with the United States. When asked if Japan could cope with

American involvement in China, Tanaka replied with confidence. “Daijobuf he said.

(“It’s all right.”)

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The military found its most ardent supporter in the cabinet in Minister of the

Army Mori Tsutomu (1882-1932). Mori pushed for greater autonomy for the Kwantung

Army, and he supported their desire to expand control in Manchuria. However, the

Ministers of the Navy, Finance and Foreign Affairs regularly lobbied against increased

military independence on the Asian mainland. Resistance at home had the effect,

however, of stiffening the resolve of Army officers in Manchuria to solidify their power

base in Manchuria.

Prime Minister Tanaka was ineffectual in handling the crisis at home. Initially

there was no call from the opposition parties for an investigation. The only questioning

of government actions came from opposition party leaders in the form of weak, rhetorical

questions in the newspapers about the possibility of restoring the people's trust in the

military and government. When serious questions were finally leveled at Tanaka by the

opposition parties in December of 1928, he was unable to provide satisfactory

explanations for the government’s actions. He attempted to brush aside further inquiries

by stating that the matter was "under investigation.” However, he soon found himself

caught by contradictions of his own making. In December he presented the results of the

official inquiry, reporting to the Emperor that, despite lapses in security along the

railroad, the military was not responsible for Zhang’s death. However, at a meeting

weeks earlier, he had told the Emperor that responsibility lay with the military. The

Emperor lost faith in Tanaka, and Tanaka resigned from his post as Prime Minister soon

thereafter.

Seicho appeals to the reader's emotions as he humanizes Zhang by detailing his

actions on the morning of the attack. Historically Zhang had been presented to the

186

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Japanese public as a “warlord/’ Zhang was in the eighth car of the train. He was already

awake, anticipating his arrival in Mukden. He is drinking tea with Wu Zhouli when the

explosion rips through his car and two others. Both men were blown from the car. Wu

died instantly, and Zhang survived until midmoming. If Zhang is the victim, then Seicho

casts Prime Minister Tanaka as a duplicitous murderer. On an earlier visit to Tokyo,

Tanaka had called Zhang “his brother.” When Zhang died Tanaka publicly announced

that Zhang’s orphaned son was now "his own son.”

Seicho’s critique of the orthodox version of events is organized much like his

detective fiction. He presents an account of the explosion that killed Zhang, followed by

the government version. He then adopts the role of detective and deconstructs the official

report. He uses government documents and eyewitness accounts to challenge the state's

claims. He uses the diary and memoranda of Tanaka and other ministers to cast doubt on

the reliability of the government’s account. These documents serve as the evidence that

Seicho uses to build his case.

Seicho uses the historical record and the documents of those he indicts to disprove

the Army’s official claim that Zhang’s death was the result of Komoto's rogue activities."

He argues that Zhang was killed because Kwantung Army officers, acting on their own

initiative, believed that doing so would pave the way for the establishment of a puppet

state in Manchuria operated by the Imperial Army. Zhang's death was the first step

toward the creation of a puppet state, and ultimately, the destruction of Japan in World

War II.

187

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Kobayashi Takiji no shi.*' is one of three essays in Showa shi hakkutsu that treat

the lives of prominent Japanese writers. The other two - "Jun'ichiro to Haruo”

(“Jun’ichiro and Haruo, August-October 1965), which details the love triangle that

resulted in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro divorcing his wife and “giving” her to Sato Haruo. and

“Akutagawa Ryunosuke no shi” (“The death of Akutagawa Ryunosuke." November

1964-January 1965), Seicho’s tribute to the celebrated author - have little to do with

twentieth-century Japanese politics. However, Seicho analyzes both politics and

literature in considering Kobayashi’s death because Kobyashi's literature is intentionally

political. Kobayashi was a leading Marxist or proletarian writer. After the government

roundup of communists in 1928, he went underground. In 1933 he was arrested by the

police and tortured to death in his jail cell.

Seicho begins the essay by comparing the lives and works of Kobayashi and

Akutagawa. While he sees many similarities between the two, he believes that the

differences in their backgrounds - one working class, the other a product of Tokyo's elite

educational system - governed the course of their careers. Both became famous at a

young age and died of unnatural causes in middle age. Both represented important

literary movements and continued to be widely read after their deaths. However, the

dissimilarities in their educational experiences, their literary origins and their opinions

about the purpose of literature led to drastically different careers.

Seicho outlines both writers’ literary backgrounds. Akutagawa was the product of

elite schooling at the Tokyo First High School and Tokyo University. Natsume Soseki

“sponsored” Akutagawa’s literary career, ensuring that Akutagawa would be nurtured in

the rarified atmosphere of the urban literary establishment. By contrast, Kobyashi

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. graduated from a commercial high school in Hokkaido, and went to work at a bank after

graduation. Seicho suggests that the divergent backgrounds of the two writers are related

to their respective readings of Shiga Naoya’s call for literary realism. Kobayashi's

working-class background led him to understand realism as a means of depicting the

world, while Akutagawa’s sheltered existence among the Tokyo literati led him to

eschew realistic depiction in favor o f creating fictional constructions. As such.

Akutagawa’s works strike Seicho as the quiet, intellectual writings of an observer of life,

while Kobyashi’s works possess an energy that leaves a vivid impression with the reader.

Seicho further notes that the demand for broad changes in government and economic

institutions and policies advocated by the proletarian literary movement, represented by

Kobayashi, proved unsettling to intellectuals like Akutagawa.

Seicho uses the death of Takiji, whose most famous work Kani kosen (The Crab

cannery boat , 1929) marks a watershed in proletarian literature, to introduce a discussion

of the rise of the proletarian literary movement and the government's attempts to quash it.

Moreover. Seicho discusses the influence of Kurahara Korehito’s article "Puroretaria

riaruizumu e no michi” (“The road to proletarian realism, Senki. May 1928) on

Kobayashi. Kurahara classified realism as having three manifestations: bourgeois, petit

bourgeois, and proletarian. Bourgeois realism is based on the attitudes of an artist

influenced by ideals. Thus, any art created under this influence lacks the objectivity of

realism. Seicho states that “bourgeois realism” is another way of identifying “idealism.”

According to Kurahara, the modem bourgeois realists in Japan were influenced by the

French writers Zola, Maupassant and Flaubert, and adopted the perspective of the

gentrified class. Thus the Naturalist experiment in individualism resulted in the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. individual being cut off from society. The works of the naturalists are anti-social and

individualistic because they do not consider the impact of social systems on individuals.

In naming Japanese writers typical of bourgeoisie realism. Kurahara lists Tayama Katai.

Tokuda Shusei and Shimazaki Toson.

Petite bourgeoisie writers, however, exist in a state that is neither bourgeoisie nor

proletarian. This brand of realism is intended to portray the lives of the working class

with sympathy, but it has no larger political agenda. Kurahara labels European authors

Ibsen and Hauptman, and Japan’s Arishima Takeo as petite bourgeoisie.

In contrast, proletarian realism emphasizes the objective depiction of characters'

personal problems set in a social context. The discourse of the class struggle infuses it.

Likely subjects for proletarian literature are laborers, farmers, soldiers and industrialists -

in short, anyone whose story furthers the struggle for liberation of the proletariat.

Seicho cites a visit to Tokyo by Kobayashi that is instrumental to Kobayashi's

literary career. In mid-May, 1928, Kobayashi traveled from Hokkaido to meet Kurahara

in Tokyo. Kurahara’s statement that proletarian writers needed to use literary realism and

the ideology of class struggle to tackle issues of social injustice and class struggle on a

larger scale had enormous impact on Kobayashi. He adopted Kurahara's approach in his

literary response to the suppression of Communists and proletarian leaders by the

government in March of the same year. Becoming the voice of those victims of the purge

who could not speak for themselves, Kobayashi wrote "Sen kyuhyaku nijyu hachi nen

sangatsu jyugonichi.” (“March 15th, 1928,” August 1928). In it, his colleagues in the

proletarian movement appear in thinly disguised form as the victims of torture conducted

by the Special Police in the days following the purge. Seicho includes long passages

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. from the story which carefully detail the methods used to torture Kobayashi’s comrades

as evidence of not only Kobayashi’s literary style but also the brutality of the police. He

notes that the violence committed against members of the Communist party and other

leftists deemed “non-subjects" ( hikokumin ) by the ultra-conservative Special Police was

at least partially condoned by the Tanaka government, which allowed the purges to

proceed. What Seicho calls “terrorism'’ tero( ) was legitimized to the public as alleged

orders from the emperor. In fact, the emperor, along with the government officials, was

aware of the Communist opposition to the emperor system. The purges were intended to

weaken or destroy any Communist party support growing among the people.

Kurahara praises his protege Kobayashi for creating “an epoch-making work of

proletarian art," complementing him in particular on the broad scope of the material that

“March 15. 1928” treats. He applauds Kobayashi’s decision to describe the abuse of his

comrades in objective terms, rather than lionizing their suffering with political rhetoric or

exaggerated statements about their bravery.

Nami o hadaka ni sareru to, ikinari mono o iwanaide. ushiro kara shinai de tataki lukerareta. Chikara ippai ni naguri tukent no de, shinai ga pyu to unatte, sono tabi ni saki ga shinori kaetta. Kare wci tin, im to, karada no gaimen ni chikara o dashite, sore ni taeta. Sore ga sanjyuppun mo tsuzuita toki, kare wa toko no ue e, hi ni kazashita surume no yd ni hinekurikaette ita.6

After stripping Nami. without saying a word, they began beating him from behind with bamboo swords. Since they were hitting him with all their might, the bamboo swords whistled and their tips snapped back. He moaned and withstood the beating by forcing his strength into the surface o f his body. When that had continued for thirty minutes, he curled up on the floor like a dried squid exposed to the flames.

It was Kurahara’s opinion that Kobayashi’s representation of the torture techniques

reflected a keen understanding of the proper tone to be adopted in a work of proletarian 191

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. art. The dispassionate descriptions focus on the police savagery, leaving the suffering of

the political activists to be implied by the reader. The literary technique effectively

criticizes the actions of the police without using the language of political critique or

propaganda. According to Seicho, the literary establishment also praised Kobayashi's

story as a masterpiece, but Seicho himself provides no particulars about the nature of that

praise or. for that matter, his own opinion of the work.

Seicho also provides details about a romantic relationship between Kobayashi and

Taguchi Taki, and he suggests that this human streak in Kobayashi helped readers to

identify more closely with Kobayashi. When Kobayashi met Taki first in 1924. she was

working as a waitress. Kobayashi began to correspond with her. She was uneducated,

but he tried to teach her poetry and prose through his letters. He included samples of

poetry and passages from Shiga Naoya's works for her consideration. In April 1926.

after taking out high-interest loans to buy out her contract, he had her move in with him.

The two seemed happy together, but Taki suddenly left him six months later. He

managed to locate her and they lived together again for a short time, when Taki left him

for good. Seichd's inclusion of the details about Kobayashi's romantic life round out the

reader's understanding of his personality. Knowledge of his romantic failure makes

Kobayashi a more sympathetic figure. His unsuccessful relationship with Taki shows the

reader a softer, more private side in contrast to Kobayashi’s public persona as writer and

political activist.

The circumstances surrounding Takiji's death are well known. On February 20.

1933, he went to meet Mifune Ryukichi, a fellow activist, only to be met by the Special

Police. Unbeknownst to Kobayashi, Mifune had been working as a spy for the police for

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. over a year. Kobayashi fled the scene but pedestrians stopped him when the police

shouted “■thief."’ The police subjected Kobayashi to three hours of beatings until, covered

in bruises from his kneecaps to his shoulders, and he could no longer stand. He died that

night at 7:45. The official cause of death as it was printed in the newspapers was heart

attack. Police officials categorically denied the use of torture, saying that Kobayashi was

not well. Furthermore, they expressed regret at his death because he was to be an

important witness in the government’s ongoing investigation of leftist political parties.

Seicho believes that the police had a vendetta against Takiji stemming from his 1928

story about the police torture of leftists during the March 15 Incident.

Throughout his essay, Seicho lauds Kobayashi for his contribution to Japanese

letters and for his bravery. He praises him as a central figure in the proletarian literary

movement. The reader senses that Seicho particularly admired the courage of writers like

Kobayashi who openly criticized the government, although he was fully aware of the

potential for violent retribution. It is clear that Seicho closely identifies himself, and his

anti-establishment prose with Kobayashi, and he sees himself as the heir to a tradition of

using literature as a means of opposing authority figures.

As it is not possible here to detail all the scandals and controversial incidents

Seicho '‘unearths” in Showa shi hakkutsu, the examples cited here provide a

representative sampling of his political agenda, his sympathy for the middle class, and his

use of characteristics typical of mystery fiction. The critique of those at the highest levels

of government and the military that dominates both his fiction and his non-fiction are also

represented in all three essays in Showa shi hakkutsu. Seicho exposes corruption and

conspiracy in the cabinet, among the military hierarchy, and in the ranks of the police

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. force. He casts the hard-working, middle-class hero in opposition to the corrupt official.

For example, he hypothesizes that the honorable, just prosecutor Ishida was murdered by

the dishonest bureaucrat Suzuki in order to save Suzuki from prosecution. Similarly,

Kobayashi, the author attempting to bring about civil change through his writing, is

murdered by the police because his political affiliation is outlawed by the conservative,

reactionary government. While Zhang Tsolin is not a member of the middle class. Seicho

casts him as a patriot who was murdered for refusing to kowtow to the Japanese Army.

In his presentation of these narratives, the methods of ratiocinative detective fiction

figure prominently. Seicho uses eyewitness testimony, government documents,

newspaper articles and diaries as the sources of his facts. However. Seicho also shows

that documents of public record such as newspapers and official statements can often be

sources of misinformation. Using logic and research methods, he deconstructs the

official version of events to arrive at a more realistic conclusion, just as his detectives do.

and just as he would have Japanese citizens do.

Finally, let us turn our attention to one of Seicho's mysteries from the last decade

of his career: Giwaku (Suspicion)7. This mystery features typical components of the

Seicho mystery. A persistent investigator, a murder involving a realistic motive, and a

strong element o f social criticism all figure in the work. However. Giwaku features a

twist at the conclusion that is atypical of Seicho's detective fiction. I have chosen this

work as representative of his detective fiction (even with its atypical twist) because it

features a plodding detective, an innovative yet realistic torikku. and a mysterious femme

fatale as the accused.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Giwaku begins with a chance meeting at a local hospital between Akitani

Shige'ichi, a reporter on the metro beat for the Hokuriku nichinichi shinbun. and the

respected, older lawyer Harayama Masao. Harayama is at the hospital getting a

prescription filled for a liver ailment, and Akitani has been visiting a sick relative.

Akitani politely questions the lawyer about a case that has been attracting the attention of

the press. Harayama is defending Onizuka Kumako, a woman accused of murdering her

wealthy husband, the prosperous landowner Shirakawa Fukutaro. Akitani has written a

series of articles arguing for Kumako’s conviction. In a case that lacks substantial

physical evidence, he has taken advantage of the overwhelmingly negative circumstantial

evidence to stage a campaign in the press to convict Kumako in the court of public

opinion.

The circumstantial evidence is indeed daunting. First of all. Kumako has a shady

background. She became acquainted with her husband while she was working as a

hostess in a Tokyo bar. The first time they met, they left the bar to spend the night

together at a 'io v e hotel.” Seduced by the charms of the tall, glamorous hostess.

Shirakawa traveled to Tokyo at least three times a month for six months before the

couple married. Shirakawa was unaware of Kumako’s connections to the yakuza in

Shinjuku, her criminal record or the time she served in jail. Equally damaging to her case

is the fact that less than six months into their marriage, Kumako took out a life insurance

policy on her husband worth 300 million yen.

Six months later, Shirakawa and Kumako were involved in an auto accident.

While returning from a drive up the sea coast, the car careened toward a retaining wall at

thirty miles per hour. The momentum of the crash caused the car to flip over the wall and

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. fall into the sea upside down. Kumako swam to safety, but Shirakawa drowned.

According to an eyewitness who was using a phone booth near the scene of the accident.

Kumako was driving. Meanwhile, police found Shirakawa’s right shoe and an eight-inch

long wrench loose in the car when they pulled the vehicle from the water. The shoe had

scuff marks on it. To aid in his campaign of slander, Akitani has nicknamed Kumako

“Oni kuma,” invoking not only the ferocious images implied by the characters that

compose the nickname (i.e.. '‘demon.” and "bear,” respectively, with a play on the name

Kumako), but also a notorious murder case from 1926. In August 1926 Kumajiro. a

farmer in Chiba prefecture, had killed his wife in a fit of jealousy over her affair with

another man. In the rage that ensued. Kumajiro also killed his mother-in-law. his wife's

lover and a policeman. He fled to the mountains, never to be caught. Because of the

horrific nature of his crime, he was christened "Oni Kuma” in the press.

Harayama does not believe Kumako is guilty of the crimes with which she has

been charged. Because of his failing health, he asks Okamura Kozoku. a Tokyo defense

attorney known for his investigative prowess, to serve as co-counsel. Akitani is worried

that in tandem, Harayama and Okamura may be able to secure an acquittal for their

defendant. Okamura arrives in Hokuriku amid great fanfare in the media to meet with

Harayama and Kumako. He does not agree to serve as co-counsel, however, and his

reasons for rejecting the position are unknown.

Harayama is criticized by both the public and his family for defending Kumako.

His son questions the reasoning behind his father's determination to defend a woman

whose guilt seems a foregone conclusion. His wife argues that, even if he wins in court.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his reputation will suffer for helping a guilty defendant escape justice. Harayama

explains that his job requires him to do his utmost to secure an acquittal for his client.

When Harayama declines to meet with Akitani ten days after Okamura's refusal

to take on Kumako‘s case, the newsman assumes the lawyer is avoiding contact with him

out of embarrassment. But then he learns from Harayama's assistant that the attorney's

liver condition has taken a turn for the worse. The assistant confides that Harayama's

poor health will force him to turn Kumako"s defense over to another attorney. Akitani's

hopes soar. He knows that if Harayama resigns, the court will appoint another attorney.

Traditionally, court-appointed counsel are not particularly dedicated in their defense, nor

are they necessarily specialists in the field of law required by their defendant. Akitani

believes there is a good chance Kumako's new lawyer will mount only a perfunctory

defense especially in a case as controversial as this one. There is. in fact, more good

news for Akitani. Harayama has decided he will not designate a successor, leaving the

selection to the court. After some difficulty locating an attorney willing to take the case,

the court finally selects Sahara Takichi. a specialist in civil law.

Akitani visits Sahara soon after the lawyer is appointed to the case. But Sahara is

unwilling to make any comment. When Akitani visits him a week later, however, the two

discuss matters at length. While acknowledging that his client is disagreeable in her

speech and behavior. Sahara is passionate in his conviction that she is not guilty of

murder.

Akitani and Sahara exchange opinions about the case. Sahara is puzzled by the

presence of the wrench in the car. Akitani repeats the theory advanced by the police.

The police believe that Kumako placed the wrench under the driver's seat in anticipation

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of the crash. They hypothesize that she put the vvrench there because, while it would be

hidden from Shirakawa, she could reach it easily after the crash. She knew she would

need a hard, blunt object to break the front windshield after the car was submerged.

However, Sahara reminds the reporter that two police crash tests conducted with the same

model car under the same conditions revealed that the windshield shattered automatically

at a depth of ten feet, rendering the wrench unnecessary. He wonders aloud why

Kumako chose an eight-inch long wrench, rather than a tool, such as a hammer, that

would be more likely to break the glass. Akitani counters that a hammer would have

seemed to Shirakawa out of place under the front seat of the car. Sahara responds that a

wrench would seem no less so.

Sahara is also puzzled by the presence of Shirakawa's right shoe found floating in

the submerged car. Akitani again agrees with the official explanation which holds that

the shock of the impact knocked the shoe from the victim's foot. In that case. Sahara

ponders, why did the impact not knock off both shoes, or for that matter, one or both of

Kumako's shoes? He remains baffled by the scuff marks on the side of the shoe as well.

Akitani returns home where he attempts unsuccessfully to solve the riddle of the shoe.

His failure grates on his already frazzled nerves.

The narrative shifts to a court transcript of Sahara's cross-examination of the

prosecution witnesses. In his cross examination. Sahara attempts to undermine the

credibility of the prosecution’s circumstantial evidence. The first two witnesses he

questions on the stand are members of the yakuza organization who know Kumako in

Tokyo. They initially testify that she married Shirakawa for his money, but Sahara

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. dismisses these statements as mere supposition. He gets both witnesses to admit that

Kumako never specifically said she was marrying Shirakawa to gain access to his wealth.

Next, he cross-examines Kinoshita Yasuo, a construction business owner and

longtime friend of Shirakawa. Kinoshita had been quoted in the papers stating that

Shirakawa expressed regret at marrying Kumako. When Kinoshita suggested that

Shirakawa divorce her and pay her a hefty sum in alimony. Shirakawa claimed she would

demand a sum greater than he could afford. According to Kinoshita. Shirakawa then

said, *4I suppose I’ll have to get used to the fact that she is going to be the death me."

Kinoshita admits under cross examination that Shirakawa did not say Kumako was

planning to kill him. He also testifies that Shirakawa's statement about resigning himself

"to death” at his wife's hand could be interpreted as a joke.

The final witness whose testimony is included is Fujiwara Yoshio. the only

eyewitness to the crash. Fujiwara was standing in the phone booth when the car passed

him before it crashed into the wall. He testifies that a man was sitting in the passenger

seat. Sahara asks him about the weather the night of the crash. Fujiwara testifies that it

was raining and the only light was that given off by the phone booth. Sahara further

challenges his testimony by asking Fujiwara to recall what he was doing in the phone

booth. Fujiwara says he was arguing on the phone with his girlfriend when the car

passed him. Sahara gets Fujiwara to admit that not only was visibility poor that night, but

the distraction of the contentious phone call prevented him from identifying the gender of

the person in the passenger seat with any real certainty. Finally, Fujiwara testifies that

the driver neither applied the brakes, nor swerved as the car sped into the retaining wall.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The success of Sahara’s cross-examination gives Akitani further cause for worry.

He grows more and more frightened that Kumako may not be convicted. He visits

Sahara’s office to discover how the case is progressing. There, the attorney reveals his

explanation of the wrench and the shoe loose in the car. Sahara believes that Shirakawa

was driving the night of the crash. Fujiwara mistook Kumako. sitting in the passenger's

seat, for a man because of her height and her large frame. Shirakawa intended to commit

suicide because he was tired of living, overcome with grief at the death of his wife and

son in a mountain climbing accident two years earlier. The night of the crash, Shirakawa

removed his shoe and lodged it between the brake pedal and the floor o f the car. But

because the shoe was not quite wide enough, he inserted the wrench to hold the shoe in

place. He wanted to be sure that his instinct for self-preservation would not intervene and

prevent him from crashing the car into the retaining wall. He was determined to commit

suicide. Sahara is convinced of the accuracy of his theory because he has tested his

hypothesis in his own car, which happens to be the same model as Shirakawa's.

Akitani returns home despondent. He feels certain that Kumako will be acquitted.

Sahara works late that night finishing his closing arguments. He hears footsteps climbing

the stairs to his office, but he assumes that they belong to the night watchman. The story

ends with Akitani entering the office carrying a lead pipe.

While the process of detection plays an important role inGiwaku . it is coneived

differently from other Seicho mysteries treated in this study. In this work. Seich5 reveals

the detection process to the reader through the dialogue of Akitani and Sahara, rather than

using the perspective of a character at the scene of the crime, or of a narrator who

presents the details of the investigation. The respective relationships of Akitani and

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sahara to the case allows Seicho a realistic context in which to present their

conversations about the murder.

Sahara is typical of Seicho’s detectives. Although he is a lawyer, he can be

considered an amateur because his specialty is not criminal but civil law. His

inexperience in handling criminal cases makes him leery of defending a client in a high

profile murder case. However, he takes on Kumako’s case out of a sense of obligation to

a friend at the court. His uncertainty in his abilities at the outset of the assignment is

evident in his initial unwillingness to speak candidly with Akitani. However, after

Sahara has reviewed the files for the case, and interviewed his client, he speaks openly

with the newsman, sharing his opinions about the wealth of circumstantial evidence

amassed against his client. Once Sahara is familiar with the evidence, he uses his

analytical skills, his research abilities and his common sense to deconstruct the

prosecution’s case.

Sahara possesses the intelligence and dogged determination typical of Seicho's

model detective. He solves the key riddle of the wrench and the shoe using cognitive

processes similar to those used by other Seichd detectives. A fortunate miscue provides a

lead to the solution of this puzzle. Stuck in traffic one day, his right foot slips between

the brake pedal and the floor. When he steps on the brake with his left foot, the brakes do

not engage because his right foot impedes the motion of the pedal. This accidental

discovery leads him to believe that Shirakawa used his own shoe on the night of his death

to prevent the depression of the brake pedal. The difference between the width of

Shirakawa’s shoe and the space between the pedal and the floor necessitated the use of a

hard object to brace the shoe in place. Shirakawa chose the wrench. The chance

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. recreation of Shirakawa's method for preventing the depression of the brake pedal would

have gone for naught had Sahara not been bright enough to make the connection, and

persistent enough to keep the case in his mind.

In addition to his cognitive prowess, Sahara's refusal to accept the conventional

wisdom regarding the evidence, and its implications for his client, reflects a willingness

to think independently that is also typical of Seicho's detectives. It is unclear whether

Akitani's articles influence the police investigation, or whether his articles reflect the bias

of the investigating officers, but it is clear that Sahara rejects the version of events

advanced in Akitani's articles. He is immune to the prejudices that circulate about

Kumako's character. He forms his own opinion of the case after reading the file and

meeting his client. He refuses to assume, as so many others have, that Kumako's shady

background, reprehensible personality and previous assault conviction necessarily

indicate that she killed her husband. Independence of thought allows him to suggest

alternative interpretations of the circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution.

Similarly, he resists Akitani's attempts to convince him of the validity of the official

version. With public opinion stacked against him, there is little to recommend mounting

a vigorous defense on behalf of Kumako. but he proceeds nonetheless.

Sahara doggedly pursues the facts of the case not only to the potential detriment

of his career but also at considerable risk to his safety. His son points out that defending

a client convicted in the court of public opinion is damning to an attorney's reputation,

regardless of the outcome. Successfully defending Kumako means that Sahara risks not

only a potential loss of future clients but also a damaged reputation. If he fails, his failure

may save him from vilification by the public. Nonetheless, he runs the risk of violent

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. retribution at the hands of Kumako's yakuza associates who may take umbrage with her

attorney’s unsuccessful efforts.

As in other examples of Seicho’s detective fiction, there is a realistic investigative

process in Giwaku, but the reader learns about the results of the investigation after the

fact via dialogue or a trial transcript, rather than through a running, "real time*’

explication by a narrator. We have already seen how documents, communication by

letter, etc. appear so often in Seicho’s fiction. The professions of Sahara and Akitani

make it plausible that both characters have access to information about the case.

However, because neither is directly connected to the police, they do not have access to

the scene of the crime. They must carry out their investigations based on the results of

the police investigation. They are at a disadvantage because they must not only interpret

the evidence but also the police analysis of the evidence. For reasons unknown to the

reader, Akitani chooses to follow an interpretation that parallels the official version,

while Sahara opts for an unorthodox reading of the evidence. Their opposing viewpoints

create a natural opportunity for debating the evidence before the reader, and thereby

presenting the pros and cons of the information gleaned from the police investigation.

Like other works presented in this study, the solution of the case does not resolve

the tension between the characters involved in the investigation. Sahara and Akitani

disagree about the interpretation of the evidence. However, Akitani comes to believe

that, even if Sahara’s hypothesis is not correct, it is at least plausible enough to convince

the judge and win an acquittal for Kumako. Sahara presents to Akitani a believable

explanation for the events surrounding Shirakawa’s death, but the reader is left to assume

that he does not prove Kumako’s innocence in court because he is murdered by Akitani

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. before he can make closing arguments. The conflict at the crux of the narrative, the death

of Shirakawa. remains officially unresolved at the story's end. The reader is encouraged

to believe Sahara’s explanation, but there is no judicial resolution of Kumako’s case. The

facts point to her innocence, but no official verdict is rendered. She remains an enigmatic

figure hidden at the center of controversy.

Seicho does not give Kumako the opportunity to tell her story. Despite the

importance of her actions, her associations and her personality, the reader never "meets"

the woman on trial for murder. We are told at various times that she is prone to

"hysterics" in protesting her innocence; that she is a frightening woman; that she is

ruthless in dealing with business rivals. Yet Seicho never allows her to speak for herself,

and her words are presented to the reader only through her attorney. Indeed, the reader

has no real idea of her appearance beyond the vague description that she is statuesque and

glamorous. Much like his treatment of Yasuda Ryoko in Ten to sen . Seicho assigns

Kumako to the role of the femme fatale in the narrative, but she remains enigmatic

because she is unable to "speak for herself.’’8

Giwaku is no exception to Seicho’s tradition of using fiction as social critique.

This work targets irresponsible members of the media, as well as those who accept media

reports unthinkingly without considering the veracity of their content. Seicho ironically

juxtaposes a representative of the nominally reputable media with a character who has

dubious connections to criminal organizations as a warning against the dangers of

deciding a case on preconceptions. Kumako's connections to organized crime, her

ruthless handling of business rivals and her criminal conviction make her an easy target

for public scorn. The public, influenced by the media’s biased portrayal of Kumako, is

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. all too willing to assume her guilt before judgement is passed at trial. Akitani uses

Kumako’s past to influence public opinion about the case in order to make a name for

himself as a journalist. His success comes only by denigrating Kumako's reputation in a

public forum and potentially depriving her of her freedom. His articles gain currency

among his readers who blindly accept his version of events, making both the writer of the

articles and their readers responsible for Kumako’s public disparagement.

The nature of the conclusion to Giwaku is similar to that o f “Saigo satsu” in that

the ambiguous endings in both works suggest that one of the primary characters kills

another. Yet the motives for the murders are quite different. Toshimichi kills Tsukamura

in anger for portraying him as a swindler to the Tokyo police. On the other hand, Akitani

kills Sahara in a desperate attempt to prevent Kumako’s acquittal because he has

convinced himself that she will seek revenge against him if she goes free. Therefore.

Akitani’s motive is similar to those of Yasuda in Ten to sen. Both murder to cover up

previous transgressions that would prove embarrassing or even criminal if they were to

be discovered.

The introduction of three lawyers in Giwaku - Harayama. Okamura and Sahara-

is an effective means of portraying the deterioration of Akitani's mental stability.

Akitani’s emotions fluctuate as the prospects for Kumako’s acquittal rise or fall with the

comparative skills of her lawyer. Kumako’s first lawyer. Harayama. is a respected

criminal defense attorney. The newspaperman is nervous about Harayama's accepting

Kumako as a client. He grows more anxious when Harayama announces that he will ask

the brilliant researcher and criminal defense attorney Okamura to act as co-counsel. He

is worried that the two lawyers will mount a strong defense and win Kumako’s acquittal.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But then, Okamura declines Harayama’s request, and Akitani is relieved. Skilled though

Harayama may be, Akitani hopes that the aging, sickly lawyer will be unable to help

Kumako. He is beside himself with joy when he learns Harayama's liver illness will

prevent the lawyer from acting in Kumako’s defense. He is hopeful that Harayama’s

replacement will lack the Harayama’s commitment and ratiocinative powers. Sahara

proves to be bright and dedicated, however. His successful defense of Kumako drives

Akitani ultimately to murder.

As we have seen in not only his fiction, but also his non-fiction. Seichb's

sympathy for the middle- and working-classes, his critique of the establishment, his

interest in history and reportage, and his use of the ratiocinative elements of detective

fiction to advance his political views are all facets of his style that develop in the works

from his first decade as a writer and continue to figure prominently in his work

throughout his career. His narrative style features archetypical characters, plot-driven

storylines and frequent inclusion of letters, diaries, documents, etc. as a means of

introducing a character’s voice. But, above all else, the driving force behind Seicho’s

work is an understanding of motive. It is also his most important contribution to

Japanese literature.

Seicho’s emphasis on the importance o f motive in mysteries changes the

landscape of Japanese detective fiction, a genre that was innocuous and relatively devoid

of a larger political agenda before World War II. Seicho molds the genre to fit his

political purposes, casting those in power as the villains while lionizing the hard-working

middle-class victim. The motives behind the crimes committed by those in power are

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. essential to Seicho. In his fiction, he sees motive as crucial to establishing the realism of

the plot. The greed, self-promotion or self-preservation that motivate his villains are

representative of the corruption he believes exists in institutions. In his novels, only the

persistent probing by the dedicated detective brings about an understanding of the facts of

the case. Even then, however, there is no guarantee that justice will be served. The

same pattern can be seen in his non-fiction, in which Seicho becomes the detective

investigating the crimes of Japan’s past. He directs his intelligence, research skills and

persistence on some of the country’s most controversial scandals in an attempt to reveal

the facts to the Japanese public. Yet even when he succeeds in convincing his audience,

there is no assurance that wrongdoers will be punished. Consideration of Seicho's life

work indicates that he seems to be in constant pursuit of an understanding of the motives

behind the actions of the nation’s elite.

This dissertation has demonstrated the remarkable consistency of Seicho's

literature throughout his career. For four decades he uses period fiction, mystery fiction

and non-fiction essays to champion the cause of the common citizen against shady

members of large, powerful institutions. This distrust of institutions has its origins in

Seicho’s working class background. His lack of formal education prevented Seicho from

advancing rapidly and seems to have colored his opinions of those who did. His

literature features working- and middle-class heroes who struggle to overcome the

handicap o f a difficult past.

Given his unsatisfying experiences as a low-ranking member of establishment

bulwarks like Asahi shinbun and the Imperial Japanese Army, it is ironic that his hero is

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. often a middle-class cog in a large institution. Seicho’s impoverished childhood and his

relative lack of education lead to his affinity with the middle-class hero. Like his author,

the middle-class hero relies on hard work and persistence, rather than pedigree or

privilege, to make his way in the world. He often shows an affinity for Japanese

literature or history, like Seicho himself. Similarly. Seicho’s years confined to Kyushu

because he was too poor to afford to travel results in a fascination with travel and

regional cultures that permeates his literature. His characters regularly make the kinds of

journeys that Seicho was only able to make in the latter half of his life.

Seicho’s perception of his place in society is essential to his literature. He sees

himself as an outsider, both at the newspaper and in the Army. Even after he achieves

phenomenal literary success, he considers himself an outsider in the literary

establishment despite the acclaim of critics and fans. Firmly planted at society's

periphery and below the class he most often criticizes. Seicho proves the perfect critic of

his generation. Driven by his desire to root out those who abuse power. Seicho produces

a body of literature that advances the cause of the common Japanese citizen across four

decades.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOTES

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHY

I Fukuoka Takashi, Ningen Matsumoto Seicho (Tokyo: Daikosha, 1968), 75-77. ‘ Matsumoto Seicho kinenkan (Tokyo: Suna shobo, 1996), 54. ’ See Chapter Three for an analysis of the prewar Japanese detective novel. 4 Lilian R. Furst. All is True: The Claims and Strategies o f Realist Fiction (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 5-18. 5 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation o f Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 554. 6 Simon Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader (New York: Routledge, 1995), 23. 7 Ibid, 92. s Ibid, 23-24. 9 Ezra Vogel, Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (Berkely: University of California Press, 1957), 142-162. Vogel notes that the core value of the middle- class in the immediate postwar is a tendency toward consensus that exists without a codified ideological platform based on government-imposed beliefs. However, loyalty to the family and community, and competence as represented by ability and perseverance are essential to middle-class Japanese. 10 Northern Kyushu proved a rich source of coal, producing half as much coal as all of the rest of Japan by 1899. Leading production was the Yahata iron works. The prominence of heavy industry and the harsh conditions under which employees worked combined to make northern Kyushu a hotbed of protest during the laborers’ rights movements of the 1920s. See Yokoyama Koichi and Fujino Tamotsu’s Kyushu to_Nihon shakai no keisei (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Hiroshi Bunkan. 1987), 309-312. See also Kawazoe Shoji and Seno Sei’ichiro. Kyushu no Judo to rekishi (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha. 1977), 310-330. II Seicho recalls enjoying Kikuchi's “Oshima ga dekita hanashi" and Akutagawa’s short story collections Harufuku and Hunan no ogi. quoted in Fukuoka, 44-45. 1 ’ Matsumoto Seicho. Hansei no ki (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1976), 150.

CHAPTER 2: SEICHO’S EARLY SHORT FICTION

1 This contest was intended to increase readers’ interest in the weekly publication by soliciting fiction from unpublished writers. This work was also a runner-up for the Twenty-fifth Naoki Prize, the award for the best works of popular literature in Japan, for the first half of 1951. : Saigo Takamori (1828-1877) was a general from Satsuma in southern Kyushu. Opposed to the Westernization of Japan, his 1867 rebellion supported continued rule by the Imperial household. For more information, see Ivan M orris’s The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 217-275. 4 Matsumoto Seicho. MSZ, vol. 35:7 (Note: Seicho assigns ateji to specify the pronunciation used by the young employee.) 4 Ibid, 9. 5 MSZ, vol. 65:469-470. 6 Ri Tokujun. “Suiri shosetsu no atarashii kigen: Matsumoto Seicho ran - Chugokuteki shiten," Matsumoto Seicho kenkyu 1 (1996): 95. 7 Kuwabara Takeo, “Kaisetsu" in MSZ vol. 35: 529-536. s Ibid, 531.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9 Ibid. 10 Tamura Sakae. Matsumoto Seicho: sono jinsei to hungaku. (Tokyo: Seisansha, 1977), 39-42. 11 Matsumoto, MSZ, vol. 35.34. 12 Ibid, 55. 15 Ibid, 72-73. 14 Ibid, 72 15 Ibid, 63 16 Ibid, 59 17 Ibid, 61 18 Ibid, 72 19 Tanaka Minoru, “Kokura o meguru Seicho to Ogai,” Matsumoto Seicho kenkyii 1 (1996): 20. 20 Tamura, 73. 21 MSZ, vol. 35: 507. 22 Ibid, 508. ^ Ibid 24 More will be said on this subject in Chapter 3. 25 MSZ, vol. 35: 520 26 Ibid, 517 27 Ibid, 157-167. 28 Tamura, 73.

CHAPTER 3: Ten to sen (Points and lines)

I See Hirano Ken’s “Kaisetsu” in MSZ, vol.1:425-38. ■ For more on this subject see Nakajima Kawataro. Nihon suiri shosetsu shi. (Tokyo: Tokyo Sogensha, 1994). or Mark Silver’s unpublished dissertation Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature from 1861-1945. (Yale University, 1999). ’ Two women are found brutally murdered in a room locked from the inside. The culprit is determined to be a razor-wielding orangutan escaped from a ship docked in the harbor. Written in 1841. It was first translated into Japanese in 1887 by Takamura Kdson. 4 Nakajima, Nihon suiri: 209-11. 5 There are any number of examples of this phenomenon in Conan Doyle’s works alone. See “A Study in Scarlet” and “The Red-headed League” as two of his most famous examples of the master sleuth’s pronoucement as the story’s climax. b Matsumoto, Hansei no ki: 36. 7 Matsumoto, Hansei no ki: 39. 8 Nakajima, Seicho igo: 126. 9 George J. Becker, Documents of Modern Literary Realism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 484. 10 Fujii Hidetada. Seicho misulerii to Showa sanjunendai (Tokyo: Bungei shunju, 1999), 160. II In 1968, Seicho published only six works. That year, in addition to a two-week visit to Cuba for the state-sponsored World Culture Conference and a six-week visit to North Vietnam at the request of Prime Minister Phan Van Dong, Seicho was hospitalized for forty days with peritonitis of the duodenum. 12 In a national survey conducted by the Mainichi Shinbun, readers voted Seicho their favorite author every year from 1976 to 1984 (except for 1977 and 1979). 1' See Chapter 2 of this study for a detailed discussion of “Harikomi.” 14 See, for example, Seicho’sZero no shoten. Me no kabe, and Yuganda fukusha. 15 Seicho Matsumoto, Points and Lines. Translated by Makiko Yamamoto and Paul C. Blum. (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1970). 16 MSZ, vol. 1: 22. Yamamoto and Blum: 36. 17 MSZ, vol. 1: 66-7. Translation, Points and Lines, Yamamoto and Blum, trans.: 92. 18 MSZ, vol. 1: 66. Translation, Points and Lines, Yamamoto and Blum, trans.: 91. 19 Yamamoto and Blum, 130. 20 Ibid, 158-159.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21 MSZ, vol. 1: 427-430 22 Ibid, p. 431 “ Fujii, 162-163 24 See the translations of Shimizu Ikko and Shiroyama Saburo by Tamae K. Prindle in Made in Japan and Other Japanese "Business Novels. " (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989). 25 See Chapter 5 for a discussion of Seicho’s essays. "6 Sato Tomoyuki, Matsumoto Seicho to sengo minshu shugi (Tokyo: San’ichi shobo, 1999), 85 '7Matsumoto, “Shosetsu no miryoku” p. 8 inZuihitsu: Kuroi techo 28 Sato, p. 86 29 MSZ. vol. 1: 107 and Yamamoto and Blum: 150. mMSZ. vol. 1:67 and Yamamoto and Blum: 92. Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1936), 190.

CHAPTER 4: Sun a no utuswa ( Vessel o f sand)

1 A detailed synopsis of the 430 pages ofSuna no utsuwa is complicated by the many storylines Seicho weaves into the narrative. A series of mysterious deaths, multiple suspects, severaltorikku and the perspectives of characters not related directly to the investigation are but a few of these. Unlike Ten to sen, police pursue multiple suspects, and the narrative perspective shifts between the viewpoints of multiple characters. This synopsis covers only those aspects of the narrative that relate directly to the investigators’ detection process. Other salient aspects will be discussed where applicable. Meanwhile, a translation of the novel is available. However, Beth Cary’s English translation. Inspector Imanishi Investigates. (New York: Soho Press, 1989) is an incomplete version of the original that reflects editing on her part. More will be said about her translation at the end of this chapter. 2 MSZ, vol. 1:8 ’ Although the narrative mentions a suspect as early as page 344, the references to this character are oblique; the reader is not told the suspect’s identity until the solution is revealed almost 100 pages later at the novel’s conclusion. 4 Chronologically, the incident involving the “Kameda” torikku occurs before the murder, but the police learn o f this clue after the discovery of the body. 5 MSZ, vol. 5: 14-15. 6 See Edogawa Ranpo’s Ni-sen doka in which a thief uses a complex code to fool detectives on his trail.

s Asahi Shinbun, May 12 2001, evening edition:! 9 Sato Tadao, “Kaisetsu" in MSZ, vol. 5:442 10 MSZ, vol. 5: 445. 11 MSZ, vol. 5: 36-37. 1 include my translation of the passage as a substitute for the looser version in the Cary translation. The English translation from Cary reads as follows: “Isn’t it strange? W e’re here because you happened to look at the supplement in your wife’s magazine. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have seen this place. One’s life can be changed by a chance happening." (20-21) 12 MSZ, vol. 5: 95. 15 Ibid, 95-96. 14 Sato Tadao, 445. 15 Suzuki Sadami, “Kokuhaku to sakugo: 'Suna no utuswa’ o megutte,” Matsumoto Seicho kenkyii 4 (1999): 83. 16 Fujii, 16-38 17 MSZ, vol. 5: 53. Translations are from Inspector Imanishi Investigates: 34. 18 Imamura Motoichi. “Matsumoto Seicho to haiku.” Matsumoto Seicho kenkyii 3 (1998): 147-151. Imamura includes a list of other Seicho works containing haiku, including Me no kabe, Kikanakatta basho, Dansen and Soshitsu no gisei. |9 MSZ, vol. 5: 208-209 20 Ibid, 218-219 (Translated later in this chapter.) 21 Ibid, 324 and 411

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “ These omissions from the Cary text are the most important to the mystery, but there are several other examples of similar editing on her part, including editing the article on the distribution of dialects (141- 142), and the autopsy of Miyata Kunio (193-196). Among those portions of the novel completely excluded are the detailed explanation of the test results on the bloodstained piece of shirt 173), a poem by Miyazawa Kenji (224-225), and a meeting between Waga and Tadokoro Sachiko (235-242). 23 MSZ, vol. 5. The recapitulations appear in Chapter 6, Chapter 8. Chapter 12 and Chapter 15. 24 Seicho Matsumoto, Inspector Imanishi Investigates: 204-205. 25 MSZ, vol. 5:91-92. 26 Ibid, 209. 27 Ibid, 57-58. 28 There is only one other mention of “sand” in the novel. In Rieko’s diary, she writes that her relationship with Waga leaves her feeling “an emptiness like sand flowing through the gaps between my fingers.” (...jibun no vuhi no aida kara suna ga kobore ochini vo na...) munashisa (A/SZ, vol. 5: 179) 29 Suzuki, 82. 30 MSZ, vol. 5:47-50. " Ibid, 218-219. ’■ Despite the spread of musique concrete from Europe to North America, it does not appear that there was a concrete musician working in Japan in the 1960s. However, always interested in art, Seicho was likely influenced by an article on the genre. 33 MSZ, vol. 5: 237. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid, 71 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid, 71,72,73, 75. 38 Ibid, 95-97.

CHAPTER 5: SEICHO AFTER 1960: FICTION AND ESSAYS

1 R. L. Sims, .-I Political History o f Modern Japan, - 18681952. (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1991), 165 2 MSZ. vol. 32 : 7 3 Matsumoto Seicho, “Ishida kenji no kaishi,” in Showa shi hakkutsu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko, 1978), 67-68. 4 Matsumoto Seicho, “Manshu bo judai jiken” in Showa shi hakkutsu, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko, 1978), 7-8. 5 Among those sources Seicho cites are Tanaka Giichi’s memorandum on the “Chugoku no kai” (China group) meetings, and newspaper articles. h Matsumoto Seicho, “Kobayashi Takiji no shi” in Showa shi hakkutsu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko, 1978). 217. 7 It was originally published in Oruyomimono in February, 1982. There is no English translation available. 8 Note also the Seicho short story “Joshuin” (“The female prisoner,” 1964) in which a female inmate is interviewed by the warden about her motive for killing her drunken, abusive father. Her responses are quizzical, and, although the reader is left with the sense that she killed her father to ruin her sisters’ chances for marriage, one never knows what motivates her to do so.

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