The Golden Age of Murder in Japan - and classic crime in China

I've just received my copy of the new Japanese edition of The Golden Age of Murder. And a handsome hardback volume it is. Of course, I can't read a word of it, since I don't speak or read Japanese, but seeing a book that one laboured over for so many years translated in this way is truly gratifying. I'm very grateful to the publishers and the hard-working translators who are, I'm assured by a Japanese friend, highly skilled.

I've never visited Japan (or at least I haven't so far; one never knows what the future may bring) but it's a country that I find increasingly fascinating. This is partly as a result of reading more Japanese detective fiction, partly as a result of having more contact with people from Japan. A couple of years ago, I was flown down to London to take part in a documentary for Japanese TV about classic detective fiction, and there's clearly a great appetite for the genre in Japan.

I wrote about The Tokyo Zodiac Murders the other day, and it's one of a number of ingenious detective novels from Japan which have been translated into English. Pushkin Vertigo have, for instance, published a couple of books by that fascinating character Masako Togawa. I've also enjoyed the work of Alice Arisugawa, whose non-fiction book about locked room mysteries is delightful to leaf through, even if one doesn't know the language, because of the gorgeous illustrations. Japanese culture seems very different to someone like me, raised in conventional fashion in the west. But it's enormously interesting, and Japanese crime fiction certainly appeals to me much at least as much as Nordic Noir. 

I'm delighted to say that there will also be a Chinese translation of The Golden Age of Murder, though that won't be published for another twelve months. In the meantime, I've just received a book from China that I'm really thrilled to see. It's primarily a collection of signatures and inscriptions from classic crime writers, British and American, and again the emphasis on images means that even if, like me, you speak no Chinese, it's still fascinating to look at. I supplied some images of inscribed books from my collection to the two editors, and my congratulations go to Eliot Han and his colleague for producing a splendid and (as far as I know) unique volume. Great stuff!

Forgotten Book - The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

Today's Forgotten Book, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada, dates back to 1981, but more than thirty years elapsed before the novel was published in English by those splendid publishers Pushkin Vertigo. The translation was undertaken by the equally splendid John Pugmire, whose own imprint, Locked Room International, has been responsible for bringing to to English language readers some truly fascinating locked room mysteries.

Shimada's book caused quite a sensation in Japan on its original release, in that it represented a striking move away from a focus on gritty realism. The story has many elements (such as floor plans and footprints in the snow) that are pure Golden Age, and Shimada is a long-time admirer of classic detective fiction from Britain and America, but it is also modern, dealing with some subjects in a degree of gruesome detail that you would never find in, say, the work of John Dickson Carr or Anthony Wynne.

The story deals with a sequence of murders (and dismemberments) that took place in 1936, and their reinvestigation in 1979. The new inquiry is undertaken by a sort of Holmes-Watson duo, the brilliant young astrologer Kyoshi Mitarai and his friend, the narrator (of most but not all of the book), an illustrator called Takeshi Yoshiki. So it's a cold case mystery, and a very complicated one too. But there are some nice touches of humour, as in Kyoshi's witty debunking of some of the most famous Sherlock Holmes stories - rather as Holmes affected to disdain Gaboriau's stories about Lecoq.

I've never visited Japan, but in recent years I've become increasingly interested in the country's detective fiction, and it was a great thrill for me when The Golden Age of Murder was bought by a Japanese publisher. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders paved the way for a new generation of writers such as Alice Arisugawa who have made intriguing use of classic tropes in their fiction, combining elements familiar from Carr and company with a Japanese sensibility that I find intriguing. I gather that Pushkin Vertigo are planning to publish more crime fiction from Japan, and I look forward to reading it.

The Moai Island Puzzle

The Moai Island Puzzle by Alice Arisugawa is a Japanese mystery in the classic Golden Age vein which has recently been translated by Ho-Ling Wong into English and published by John Pugmire's excellent imprint Locked Room International. This edition benefits from an extremely interesting foreword by a leading exponent of the classic Japanese mystery, Soji Shimada.

The story is told by Alice Arisugawa, who is a university student and detective fiction enthusiast. He (yep, Alice is male) is a member of a small Mystery Club - and Ellery Queen and The Nine Tailors are referenced on the second page of the prologue, making it clear that the reader who is a Golden Age fan is in for a treat - a homage to the twisty murder mystery of days gone by.

The set-up is itself classical. Alice and his friend Maria make up a small party who travel to a tiny island off the coast of Japan in search of hidden treasure. The island is fictitious, but as the book's title makes clear, it is populated by a large number of moai, whose construction was influenced by the moai of Easter Island. And soon the moai themselves become clues to the puzzle.

Death has occurred on the island in the recent past, and soon crime returns. We are presented with a dizzying confection of cipher, locked room puzzle, and dying message clues as Alice and Maria try to work out what is going on. It's a well-constructed story with a satisfying pay-off, and there's even a mini-lecture on Dying Message Clues (in the tradition of Dr Fell's Locked Room Lecture). Great fun.

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