The Honjin Murders
The Honjin Murders (本陣殺人事件, Honjin satsujin jiken) is a mystery novel by Seishi Yokomizo. It was serialized in the magazine Houseki from April to December 1946, and won the first Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948. It was filmed as Death at an Old Mansion in 1976. In 2019, it was translated into English for the first time by Louise Heal Kawai,[1] and the translation was named by The Guardian as one of the best recent crime novels in 2019.[2]
The novel introduces Kosuke Kindaichi, a popular fictional detective who featured in seventy-seven Yokomizo mysteries. In it, he solves a locked-room mystery murder that takes place in an isolated mansion (honjin) blanketed in snow. Yokomizo had read classic Western detective novels extensively, and the novel makes allusions to John Dickson Carr, Gaston Leroux, and others, with several mentions of Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room as an emblematic locked-room mystery. Though writing a noir and sometimes graphic murder mystery, Yokomizo worked within the tradition of literary Japanese aesthetics. He frequently paused to include lyrical descriptions of nature, the mansion, and the characters. The novel provides a detailed sense of place, including repeated references to cardinal directions and a detailed sketch of the murder scene. Koto music, instruments, and implements play a recurring role in the case.[3]
In addition to the central mystery, Yokomizo uses the story to illuminate the traditions, customs, and agrarian rhythm of rural Japan in the early twentieth century as well as anxieties about changing class distinctions.[4] The omniscient narrator, in an aside to the "Gentle reader," explains that the word "lineage, which has all but fallen out of usage in the city, is even today alive and well in rural villages like this one," and the killer's motive is revealed to relate to an obsession with traditional concepts of honor and family bloodlines.[5]
Story
On 25 November 1937, at a former honjin in Okayama, the wedding of Kenzou Ichiyanagi and Katsuko Kubo is held. The celebrants include the mother Itoko, the third son Saburo, the second daughter Suzuko, the cousin Ryousuke, and Ginzo Kubo, Katsuko's uncle. During the ceremony, Suzuko plays the koto, and everything ends without incident.
Later that night, the wild sound of the koto is heard across the mansion. Ginzo rushes to the newly wedded couple's bedroom, only to find the couple killed in a brutal fashion. A Japanese sword is later found thrust into the ground in the middle of the garden, with no footprints on the surrounding thick snow, creating a perfect locked room mystery.
Main characters
Key figures
- Kosuke Kindaichi
- A private detective, summoned by Ginzo Kubo
- Tsunejiro Isokawa
- An inspector from Okayama prefecture in charge of the case
- Katsuko Kubo
- A schoolteacher, fiancee of Kenzo Ichiyanagi
- Ginzo Kubo
- Katsuko's phlegmatic uncle and guardian, prosperous and yet a tenant farmer and therefore lower class
House Ichiyanagi
- Itoko Ichiyanagi
- The widowed matriarch of the family
- Kenzo Ichiyanagi
- The eldest son, the present head of family, and an independent scholar of philosophy
- Taeko Ichiyanagi
- The eldest daughter, married and living in Japanese-occupied Shanghai
- Ryuuji Ichiyanagi
- The second son, a doctor employed at an Osaka hospital
- Saburo Ichiyanagi
- The ne'er-do-well third son, an avid reader and collector of detective novels
- Suzuko Ichiyanagi
- The second daughter, a seventeen-year-old but with the mind of a child but a skilled koto player
- Ryosuke Ichiyanagi
- An Ichiyanagi cousin, the head of a branch of the family who shoulders much of the day-to-day management of the estate
- Akiko Ichiyanagi
- Ryosuke's wife
References
- "The Honjin Murders". Pushkin Press. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
- Wilson, Laura. "The best recent crime novels". The Guardian (22 November 2019). Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
- Gilmartin, Sarah (21 December 2019). "The Honjin Murders: Classic Japanese murder mystery". The Irish Times. The Irish Times. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
- Maloney, Iain. "'The Honjin Murders': Japan's own Sherlock Holmes is on the case". The Japan Times (Jan 11, 2020). The Japan Times, Ltd. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
- Kawana, Sari (2007). "WITH RHYME AND REASON: YOKOMIZO SEISHI'S POSTWAR MURDER MYSTERIES". Comparative Literature Studies. 44 (1/2): 118–43. doi:10.1353/cls.2007.0035.