The Gun by Fuminori Nakamura

Although Nakamura's first novel, first published in 2003, and awarded the Shincho Prize, The Gun is the fourth novel of his to appear in English translation, this time by Allison Markin Powell, it's also great to see that the momentum of translations continues with another of Nakamura's novels on the way in 2016 also from Soho Crime, The Kingdom is set to be published in July. The Gun/Jū displays Nakamura's foray into dark psychologies with his central character Nishikawa who stumbles across a crime scene and procures from it a gun, listening to Nishikawa's inner ruminations can feel that we are taking a few steps into the realm of a character from Dostoyevsky, as step by step we begin to venture further and further into the world of a young man so disenchanted with life that the centre of his world begins to revolve around the found gun.

This obsession being essentially at the centre of the novel Nakamura's narrative inhabits a few other patches of distraction, firstly Nishikawa's relationships with two women in the novel, Yuko Yoshikawa, whom Nishikawa has the more deeper relationship and fascination with and also another woman whom Nishikawa eventually refers to as the 'toast girl' which is a more casual relationship, the pair seem to use each other solely to satisfy their own lusts. Out of the two women Yuko displays the more complexity as we see she and Nishikawa get closer then further away from each other, the reasons for this on her part never seem to become too obvious, a troubled past?. Secondly is the discovery that Nishikawa's biological father is dying of cancer, which seems to be an event that will shake Nishikawa off his obsession from the gun, and posits another possible opportunity to gain a differing perspective on his transfixation with it. Another similarity The Gun has with The Thief is the appearance of a child, a young boy, caught in an abusive situation with his single parent, similar also is the empathy the main character has towards the boy, and his desire to rescue him from his predicament. The Gun could be described as noir, and in many places it is, but there remains a deeper portrait of drab morality in all quarters of the novel which again could be described as resembling aspects from a Russian novel, this darkness Nakamura captures and conveys very well.

That said, the prose has a lightness to it making it highly readable and in places it makes for quick reading, at times it's unfolding events might be visualized in the form of a dark manga, when Nishikawa contemplates the gun and it's wider philosophy sometimes the images of thought bubbles appearing on the pages come to mind, and the ending bears the possibility as being visualized as filmic, in it's sudden and unpredicted way of turning the tables around over it's last pages. Through this though we see the beginnings of Nakamura's writing being drawn to the examination of one man's attraction to violence and follows him through his compulsion to act upon it, it's consequences for him remain on the pages beyond the end of this book, as deftly as the borderlines his characters find themselves drifting over.
  

The Gun at Soho Press     

A Kiss of Fire - by Masako Togawa



 

Sometime ago I read and enjoyed Togawa's The Master Key which won the Edogawa Rampo Award way back in 1962, recently a copy of A Kiss Of Fire came my way and the jacket art alone grabbed my attention, although unfortunately I can't see mention of the artist's name anywhere, which is a shame, the book, Hi no seppun was translated by Simon Grove and published in the U.K by Chatto and Windus and previously in the U.S by Dodd, Mead and Company. A Kiss of Fire is a novel that's slightly difficult to fit into any one genre, perhaps it could be best described as an off kilter crime novel, something that I remember from reading The Master Key is of the originally inventive twists and turns Togawa incorporates into her storytelling. At it's beginning three boys witness a fire that kills an aspiring painter, when interviewed the boys claim that they saw a man shaped like a bat who breathed fire ascending the stairs of the building, one of the three boys was the painter's son. After this introductory opening, which sets up the preliminary scenario the novel accelerates forward twenty six years later revisiting the lives of the three boys whose lives have each gone their separate ways, until that is until a spate of arsonist attacks. Ikuo is now a fireman pursuing the elusive arsonist, but in the process he becomes so embroiled he becomes a suspect as his ID and wallet are discovered in the stomach of a lion who falls victim to the arsonists flames. Ryosaku is now a detective who is also on the arson case, in the process he becomes involved with Ikuo's girlfriend Chieko, finally of the three boys is the painter's son Michitaro who has become a director of the family's insurance company. Under chapters named The Fireman, The Detective, The Arsonist, Togawa begins to put the pieces together, at first each of the characters are unaware that they are the three friends who in their youths witnessed the fire that killed Michitaro's father.

 

Over this progressing narrative it becomes slowly more clearer as to who the arsonist is, or so we think, in the meantime Ikuo has self doubts that he might be the arsonist, as an actress he has an affair with is killed by an arson attack, and a pair of jogging shoes linking him to her incriminates him to the degree that he remains suspect number one, but as Ryosaku points out as Ikuo was under police surveillance he is ruled out as a suspect. A clue that begins to emerge is that of something seen by Ikuo in the fire twenty six years previously, running up to the second floor Ikuo had caught Michitaro's father in a compromising position with a young nurse. The story is full of some interesting side plots and arresting motifs that at first seem to sit out of place with the rest of the advancing story, of a local temple where Michitaro's grandmother visits and places a sutra, and of stone effigies that resemble dogs or lions, these things Ryosaku picks up on in the course of his investigations, the temple is also fighting a neighbouring development to turn land adjacent to the temple into apartments. A motif that appears as details of the scenario of the original fire unfold is that of a dog with a burning tail used as a fuse to light the fire, another trigger of a fire later in the book is that of a crystal ball placed in a window to magnify the rising sun's rays to ignite the flames.

 

The deeper mystery of the novel is the reason or motive of the attacks, the main options are that it could be to cover up the escalation of a sham insurance claim linking back to the death of the lion which was secretly highly insured, another is that the arsonist was carrying out his crimes to satiate an almost orgasmic thrill he got when starting fires, or another path begins to lead to Michitaro's grandmother whose husband started the insurance company wanting to avenge the death of her son, the painter, Togawa's great ability is to draw this picture that links each of these different paths so closely together that it's left only to the final stage of the book for all to be made clear. Towards the end of the novel Michitaro is at the centre of a kidnapping plot, in the name of the book Togawa uses it in relation to the dangerous attraction of fire and also of it being utilised as an instrument of vengeance, another imaginative motif that that appears in the novel is the bundle of burnt matches used in the original fire preserved by Michitaro's grandmother as a strange slightly macabre momentum. The novel does show it's age in a number of places, (in one scene I think Ryosaku is described as wearing a 'safari' suit), although this does add to the flavour of the novel and it seems more erotically charged than I remember The Master Key being, but I enjoyed this greatly for Togawa's originality and inventiveness.      

 

As well as her writing Masako Togawa is also known as a chanson singer and also as a writer for television and for her many appearances on television. Aside from The Master Key and A Kiss of Fire another two novels have been translated Slow Fuse and The Lady Killer which won the Naoki Prize, although I think they are all currently out of print it would be great to see these reappear with a reissue.   

 

Masako Togawa's entry on Wikipedia

 

for a glimpse of the jacket art - A Kiss of Fire at Library Thing

 

Hi no seppun at Amazon.jp

       

The Face

Seichi Matsumoto had an unique ability of pushing his characters to extraordinary lengths, their actions appear to come to us from some intangible place, The Face/Kao is a short story from 1959 collected in The Voice - Stories published by Kodansha in 1989 and translated by Adam Kabat.Its made up from the fragmentary diary of Ryokichi Ino an actor for the dramatic group The White Willow Players, the group are facing financial difficulties and the boss has been negotiating a deal with T.Company to use some of their actors in a forth coming film Spring Snow, Ino is chosen and the film goes ahead as planned, the film receives favourable reviews, Ino getting special mention by the critics,the director, Ishii, contacts him again about a bigger role,starring in the company's next film The Red Forest.In his diary, Ino begins to contemplate the success that this will bring him with a slight anxiety,'I already fantasize about the fall that will follow on the heels of my success' and he begins to mention the probability of 'him' seeing my face. Ino's diary/story tells us he has,(through the use of a private detective agency), been checking on the life and background of Teizaburo Ishioka,born in 1922, employed in the Kita Kyushu Steelworks, over the years his circumstances change, he gets a new job,gets married and they have a son. Ino's story goes back again by 9 months, and he's travelling by train with a hostess, (Miyako Yamada), they bump into Ishioka who knows Miyako from the bar that she works at, the two exchange a few words, then Ishioka says goodbye turns away leaving the couple, noticing though Miyako's silent and slightly suspicious companion, smoking and staring out of the window. Ino's diary skips back to the present tense as he looks for the news that the strangulated body of a woman has been found, it's the body of Miyako Yamada. As Matsumoto begins to put the pieces together we learn that the day Ishioka saw Miyako and Ino together was the day Ino had murdered her, and that Ishioka is the only witness that could possibly link the two together, Miyako had become pregnant by Ino and wanted him to marry her and settle down, Ino had come to Tokyo to make it as an actor, the last thing he wanted was to settle down with Miyako, a hostess.

Now on the brink of success, Ino's concerns that if Ishioka recognises his face on from the film he'll be caught out, he decides on luring Ishioka to a remote spot and killing him. He decides to write a letter to Ishioka posing as a relative of Miyako asking for his assistance in tracking down Miyako's murderer.The narrative switches to a statement like narrative from Ishioka, saying that he had received a letter from Miyako's relative, after the initial police investigation he had been questioned by the police about Miyako, he told them that he had seen her on the train with a man he didn't know, the police feel that this man is the murderer, but Ishioka no matter how hard he tries to recall the man he can't remember his face. He shows the letter to the police who become suspicious of the sender,when they realize that the sender knew his address, something which hadn't been released in the media.Ino in the letter asked Ishioka to meet him in Kyoto, hinting that he may have found the killer, but his intention was to lure him to Mount Hiei and murder him.The police advise Ishioka to go to Kyoto to meet the sender, but to be accompanied by two police officers.Ino goes over and over his plan. In Ishioka's description of the day of the meeting he tells that he and the officers arrive early in Kyoto, they decide to check the sites and then go for some imobo before the meeting at two o'clock, they enter a restaurant and Ishioka's statement ends with 'There was a man there eating by himself...' Returning to Ino's description of the meeting he tells of his arrival at Kyoto, he too is early and decides on imobo for lunch too, sitting at the restaurant he almost lets out a cry when Ishioka walks in but manages to keep himself in check, after a while he comes to the realization that Ishioka doesn't recognise him, filled with the euphoria that he will get away with his crime, he brazenly asks Ishioka for a match to light his cigarette, which he smokes and then leaves the restaurant. The story returns to Ishioka saying how the suspect never turned up for the meeting, but the police believed it was not a hoax, due to the contents of the letter. The Red Desert is released, to good reviews and Ishioka hearing the good reviews decides to see it for himself, the character in the film is running away, he takes the train, staring out of the window, he lights a cigarette, the realization hits Ishioka, who runs out of the theatre to the nearest police station.




Seicho Matsumoto can be seen briefly in this trailer for the film adaption of his novel Zero Focus from 1961,the film was remade recently,Zero Focus

Villain by Yoshida Shuichi

 

 

 

At it's centre Villain/Akunin is a murder story although there's many things about this novel that sets it apart from being pigeon holed into being solely a crime/murder novel. Published in Japan in 2007 it won Shuichi Yoshida both the Jiro Osaragi Prize and also the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award, Villain is Yoshida's first book to be appear in English,the translation is by Philip Gabriel. After the body of a woman, (Yoshino Ishibashi) is found on Mitsuse Pass, a mountain range reputedly haunted and a haven for murderers on the run,Yoshida's novel begins to piece together the scenario of her last moments. The night she was murdered she had dinner with her friends, during their conversation Yoshino exaggerates her relationship with Keigo Masuo, a popular guy, who's parents run an expensive inn, later in the night her friends say goodbye to her thinking she was meeting up with Keigo on a date. In actuality she's arranged to meet with Yuichi Shimizu, a guy she had met through an online dating agency, the following day her friends at work are curious that Yoshino hasn't arrived at her job, the t.v is on at work and a report comes on that a woman's strangled body has been found on the mountains, worryingly the description matches Yoshino's. After following up the leads the police find that mysteriously Keigo Masuo has gone missing. Yoshida's approach to telling his story has a real originality about the way he introduces his characters, starting with descriptive passages and scenes that lead on to connect with those of the main characters, as the history of their lives are emptied out before our eyes, we learn more about Yuichi from the eyes of Miho, a woman who he had met at a massage parlor and had an unsuccessful relationship with, Yuichi was abandoned by his mother when he was a child after his father had run off with another woman, adopted by his grandparents, Fusae and Katsuji, and and in turn the narrative takes us back to Fusae's childhood, and we see a life spent largely struggling, from picking up rationed potatoes thrown on the floor, in the post war days of her youth, to being bullied into buying unwanted medicine.

 

The story is shot through with the quiet desperation of the loneliness of it's characters, Tamayo and Mitsuyo are sisters living a rather dissolute existence together, and through online dating Mitsuyo contacts Yuichi, but after he asks her to meet him she stops the communication between them, but after a period of loneliness she contacts him again out of the blue, over the course of some emailed texts Yuichi's own loneliness comes to the fore, he texts -''These days I haven't talked to anybody', He looked down and saw the words on the screen. They weren't words someone has emailed to him. Without realizing it, he'd typed the message'. This time the couple meet up and after Yuichi's forthright invitation head for a love hotel, the anonymous world of online dating is summed up when Mitsuyo asks, 'is Yuichi Shimizu your real name?', she revels in Yuichi knowing that her lonely isolation is nearing an end. Yoshida has drawn an accurate portrait of contemporary Japan, name dropping many brand names, and I think this has the most references to Japanese food and customs that I've read in a contemporary novel in a long while, furikake, butaman, kamaboko, chikuwa to name but a few, and the novel opens with Yoshino's father doing the calculation of how much money you can save by choosing between the slower and faster train service, and the price of the ETC system, the addition of these details place you right in the novel's setting. Although a story of murder, the story is more character study than police procedure, and the relationship between Mitsuyo and Yuichi grows in intensity after his confession, Mitsuyo haunted by an apparition of her loneliness can't stand to leave Yuichi, the two know their time together will not last but still head for refuge in a deserted light house, a light house also figures in his relationship with his mother. As the net begins to tighten around them, were left with a slight enigma with Yuichi, is he at heart a good man, who's loneliness has pushed him to the limits where his actions slip momentarily out of his control?.

 

Villain is published by Harvill/Secker in the U.K and Pantheon in the U.S., in Japan a film adaption of Villain/Akunin directed by Sang-il Lee, (Scrap Heaven, 69), will appear in September 2010.

Eri Fukatsu recently won best actress at Montreal Film Festival for her role in Akunin.

Points and Lines

 

Points and Lines/Ten to sen was first published in Japan in 1958, Tsuneo Kobayashi adapted it for a film in the same year, and it was later filmed again as a tv series starring Kitano Takeshi. Many of Matsumoto's books have been adapted to film and television, another notable one being The Castle of Sand/Suna no utsuwa, directed by Yoshitaro Nomura with Tetsuro Tanba as Matsumoto's famous detective Imanishi, Castle of Sand appears in Imanishi Investigates translated by Beth Cary published by Soho Crime, Points and Lines is the book that produced a 'Matsumoto boom' after it's publication, it seems it's influence extended beyond the detective genre, as Dennis Washburn notes in his afterword to Tsutomu Mizukami's Temple of the Wild Geese that after reading Points and Lines Mizukami returned to writing after a ten year hiatus with the novel Fog and Shadow /Kiri to kage. Points and Lines opens with the discovery of what appears as a double love suicide, two lovers are found dead on a beach, the lovers, Otoki and Kenichi Sayama had taken Potassium Cyanide, at first it looks like an open shut case, but with the discovery of a dining ticket for one found in Kenichi's pocket,Torigai, a detective for the local police force begins to suspect that something doesn't quite add up. When the relatives of the deceased come to collect the bodies, a work colleague of Otoki, (who used to work as a waitress in a local restaurant), comes with her mother,she informs the police that she had seen Otoki leave with a man on a train, she had been at the station to see off one of her customers,who had insisted that she see him off at the train station.

It transpires that Kenichi Sayama had worked for a ministry that is under investigation for fraud, and Kiichi Mihara of the Metropolitan police force is sent to investigate the apparent suicides. Torigai passes on what he has learned about the case and Mihara agrees with Torigai that this may not be the simple case that was first presumed. Interviewing Tatsuo Yasuda the customer of Otoki's colleague who had seen Otoki and Kenichi leave on the train, the fact that maybe Yasuda had prearranged this meeting to use it as an alibi begins to form in Mihara's mind, Yasuda goes on to tell Mihara that he was away on business in Hokkaido during the time the suicides occurred. Thus unfolds the mystery Mihara has to begin to unwind, scrupulously studying train timetables, cross checking statements until, piece by piece, painstakingly he begins to dismantle Yasuda's alibi in a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Seicho Matsumoto began his prolific career when he was forty, he won many awards in Japan including the Akutagawa award in 1952 for his historical story Story of the Kokura Journal/Aru kokura nikki den. The short story The Face/Kao won the Japan Detective Story Writers Prize and can be found in the collection The Voice and other Stories. The translator James Kirkup wote in his obituary of him that he was a 'Japanese immortal'. Points and Lines was first published in English by Kodansha in 1970 translated by Mariko Yamamoto and Paul C.Blum, for more, read Dorothy Dodge Robbin's excellent piece on Matsumoto at Salem Press.