絡新婦の理 [Jorōgumo no kotowari]

百鬼夜行 #5

by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

rtdg50

Genres: Mystery, Horror, Fiction

1389 pages, 文庫

First published November 1, 1996

About the author

Natsuhiko Kyogoku ( 京極 夏彦 Kyōgoku Natsuhiko, born March 26, 1963) is a Japanese mystery writer, who is a member of Ōsawa Office. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of Japan and the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan.

Three of his novels have been turned into feature films; Mōryō no Hako, which won the 1996 Mystery Writers of Japan Award, was also made into an anime TV series, as was Kosetsu Hyaku Monogatari, and his book Loups=Garous was adapted into an anime feature film. Vertical have published his debut novel as The Summer of the Ubume.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Vel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I shall cry no more. If I kept crying, I could never move forward. Things may have played out like this, but I shall look for my place once more. I won't lose. I won't let myself lose. I'll live stronger than you, stronger than anyone else. As a descendant of Iwanaga-hime, I have no choice but to smile. No matter how sad it gets. No matter how hard it gets. After all...

...such is the Jorōgumo's principle, no?

Spiders, webs, women, a persistent gaze, a dab of pink in a world of black and white - these are the most persistent motifs in Kyōgoku Natsuhiko's Jorōgumo no Kotowari (The Jorōgumo's Principle).
Jorōgumo intertwines two criminal cases - a series of eye-gouging murders which always target women, and a series of strangulation murders - into a complex web woven by the ambition of a single individual known simply as The Spider - a mysterious woman whose shadow looms over the entire mystery. The locales the book takes the reader through include cheap brothels, underground bars, gloomy port towns, an imposing Catholic boarding school for girls (where demon worship may or may not be taking place!) and a beautiful pitch-black estate known by the locals as the Spiderweb Manor.

Having a single mastermind orchestrating the entire plot, a "final boss" who's pulling the strings behind the curtain, is something I usually really wouldn't like in a complex murder mystery story like this. I very much prefer the kind of Kyōgoku novel where several unrelated elements are brought together by fate and culminate in one grand, bafflingly complex and well-put together narrative, but Jorōgumo escapes many of the trappings of its own format. Each individual aspect of the Web moves almost entirely out of their own accord - the pieces in this grand game possess free will, think and act for themselves, believe that what they're doing is right (or are exulted by the prospect of doing the wrong thing). Each character is a living and breathing person and not a simple marionette, despite the role assigned to them by The Spider. This makes for a compelling and thoroughly human narrative which only gets better the more you unveil the truths every individual piece on the board carries with themselves.

Some of the main themes of this book are free will, which is discussed through the aforementioned Web and the way it functions, and feminism (with the examinations of both of these elements tying into the overarching thematic umbrella of "systems," 理）. The feminist angle in Jorōgumo is very prevalent throughout the entire story, and, for the most part, very well-written. The book interrogates the gender dynamics in post-war Japan very thoroughly and examines the way oppressive patriarchal models have shaped even the very language we speak. It's written in a sensitive, nuanced way and isn't afraid to call out seemingly innocuous ways of thinking which could still ultimately be harmful. The plot may be set in the 1950s and that limits the discussion's boundaries to a degree, but even then, there's a lot of interesting musings about the gender dynamics not only in modern society, but in folkloric and historic phenomena as well. I was aware of this aspect of the book well before I started reading it and I was very much afraid I'd come out of it thinking "well this sure was a book written by a man 30 years ago," but I was very pleasantly surprised in a lot of ways by the end of it. I found the commentary on how some regional Japanese societies used to function based on models which are somewhat matriarchal in nature particularly interesting.

Sadly, the mystery in itself didn't click with me as well as what was present in Mōryō no Hako (which remains my favorite book by Kyōgoku and one of my favorite reads ever) and Kyōkotsu no Yume (which I've also grown to appreciate a lot), which means that I was slogging through some of the earlier parts and wasn't as on-board with them. However, the entire last 400 pages of the book are dedicated almost entirely to explaining why what's happening is happening, and those raised my appreciation for the book as a whole a lot. I feel like this time the actual mastermind could have used more, er, page-time and a more detailed examination of the person they are, but the individual elements of the case are stellar so I can probably live this down. I'll say that the culprit's presentation and the way the book deals with them is fairly unique within this series and I appreciate them in this light.

All in all, a really nice read. I'm still digesting it and as such can't say I've managed to fully grasp the bigger picture on an emotional level, but I'll definitely be thinking about it for a while.

[singingdalong · Rating 4 out of 5]

上권 첫 장은 만개한 벚꽃 나무 아래서 펼쳐지는 교고쿠도와 거미와의 대화로 시작된다. 그리고 이 대화에서 알 듯 모를 듯한 ‘무당거미의 이치’가 설명된다. 처음 읽었을 땐 이 두 사람이 도통 무슨 이야기를 하는 것인지 알 수 없지만, 세 권을 다 읽고 나면 누군가를 이해시킬 정도로 도통하지는 못하더라도 ‘아하~’하는 짧은 감탄사 정도는 내뱉을 수 있을 정도로 머리를 순식간에 강타하고 지나가는 뭔가는 느끼기 마련이다. 이쯤 되면 만개한 벚꽃 나무 아래서 펼쳐진 교고쿠도와 거미와의 대화가 매우 의미심장했다는 것을, 다시 눈앞에 펼친 上권을 읽으면서 무한한 감개와 더불어 깨닫지 않을 수 없다. 결국, 만개한 벚꽃 나무 아래서 펼쳐진 교고쿠도와 거미와의 대화를 제외한 나머지 부분은 이 대화에서 짤막하게 언급된 ‘무당거미의 이치’를 부연 설명하는 부록 같은 것이다. 한마디로 대단하고 대범한 소설이다.

https://singingdalong.blogspot.com/20...

[F Gato · Rating 3 out of 5]

归根结底孩子是他妈的还是他爸的问题。

[至芳 岡村 · Rating 4 out of 5]

あなたが蜘蛛だったのですね。

[Mastugae Kiyoaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

God takes his hand.

[E H · Rating 4 out of 5]

「犯人は誰か」から「犯人とは何か」の疑問へ導く話。
キーワードは「目」。
本書は近所、家族、学校の話ですが、文化大革命などの国家規模の出来事についても考えが広がりました。

また多数の女性が登場しますが、京極夏彦は女性をステレオタイプに書かない数少ない男性作家の一人だと思います。