Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton's Murder

by Don Mitchell

In Japanese culture, shibai means "drama," or "play," but in Hawaiian slang it means "smokescreen," "bullshit," "gaslighting." In this uncategorizable work, Don Mitchell weaves together the brutal 1969 murder of his friend, Harvard graduate student Jane Britton, with harassment by law enforcement and the media, the language and culture of the Nagovisi people of Bougainville, the Big Island of Hawai'i and the high barrens of its dormant volcano Mauna Kea, ultra running and walking, and the New York milieus of Buffalo and Ithaca. The unforgettable Jane Britton threads through the book, along with one of the suspects, the State Police detective who eventually solved the case, and Becky Cooper, an investigative journalist in whose book about Jane's murder Mitchell is a continuing presence. Addressing himself in the second person, Mitchell explores how memory and meaning shapeshift, the way facts can shatter long-held perceptions about one’s self and others, and how love and connection transcend time and culture. Mitchell creates a fascinating meld of fiction and nonfiction, past and present, speculation and discovery that excavates layers of truth, of error . . . and of shibai.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

191 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 25, 2020

About the author

I'm an ecological anthropologist, writer, and photographer who lived among the Nagovisi people of Bougainville for several years in the 1960s and 1970s, and returned in 2001 after Bougainville’s war of secession.

I grew up in Hilo, on the island of Hawai’i, and graduated from Hilo High. I studied anthropology and creative writing at Stanford and earned a PhD in anthropology from Harvard.

For many years I was a professor at Buffalo State in western New York, as well as a marathon and ultra-marathon runner and a successful road race timer (Runtime Services). I lived in Buffalo and later in Colden.

I published an academic book and articles about Nagovisi, but in the early 1990s I returned to what I had wanted to do when I was 20 -- creative writing.

I've written mostly about the Nagovisi, and my poems and stories have been nominated for Pushcart (by Green Mountains Review) and won awards from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. My non-ethnographic fiction has been published in New Millennium Writings (fiction prize runner-up 2007), El Portal, and other journals. I still do a little academic work, and in 2011 I co-authored a paper published in Evolutionary Psychology (I was the junior author).

I returned to Hilo, Hawai’i in 2013, but in 2020 left again for the mainland. I now live in Ithaca, NY.

In 2020 I published a memoir about a nearly half-century old murder: "Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton's Murder." It's reviewed here on Goodreads.

Right now I'm at work on a novel in which a murder resembling Jane's is a crucial plot element.

Reviews

[Crystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Profiting on murder

This isn’t the story of Jane. It’s the story of Paul. He wanted to write a book about his accomplishments but knew it wouldn’t sell. So, he used someone else’s murder to try and lure people into buying this book.

#GoodreadsGiveaway

[Gillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book - so rich and deep. It is ostensibly about a cold case: the murder of a close friend of Don Mitchell, the author. The investigation into the murder is re-opened fifty years later and sparks concern in Mitchell as to what he remembers or doesn’t although the memory of his friend has never left him. He had earlier started a novel based around the events as he knew them which play out through the book.

Woven into the book are many threads including his life in a village in Bougainville: what life lessons that brought: his fears; his knowledge of Hilo where he grew up and has returned to live and its stories: writing, love and friendship. It is rare to have so many interesting threads to draw on and then to be able to weave them into such a strong yet delicate basket.

Mitchell refers constantly to a fellow writer, Becky Cooper, who is writing a book about the case at the same time as he and who Mitchell credits for re-starting the investigation.

It is so much more than all of this though. It is never too earnest and is at times ‘playful even when speaking of serious subjects. I recommend it unreservedly and am looking forward to reading Cooper’s version.

[Wendy Bousfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll say, up front, that I intensely disliked the book. I finished it only because I adored Becky Cooper's WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE and wanted greater insight into a murder victim Cooper described so compellingly. I came away with NO greater insight into Jane Britton. The book is about an intensely self-absorbed individual, traumatized by having been wrongly suspected of murder. How egotistic to believe that other human beings would wish to be privy to his ongoing dialogue with himself! To quote Hamlet, Mitchell "is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought."

Reading the book was a bit like going behind a stage set and contemplating the wheels, levers, and other stage machinery. Mitchell has no filters at all. He assumes that every twist, turn, and nuance of thought is fascinating! In contrast, though Cooper puts a great deal of herself into WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE, she has the good sense to keep her focus on Jane and her Harvard milieu.

If Mitchell were not so self-involved, SHIBAI could be a fascinating book. His professional socialization as an anthropologist, and experiences immersing himself in the Nagovisi culture, has shaped him in really interesting ways. I was intrigued by his insights about living in a "post-truth world." Also, as a hunter, Mitchell talks about what taking the life of a sentient being means.

I shall watch for future books from Becky Cooper. One thing that emerges clearly in SHIBAI is that Cooper has made Mitchell, a stranger whose only bond is engagement the same murder case, trust and open up to her!

[Kathryn Winograd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don's book is a dizzying descent into the vagrancies of memory, the weight of loss and fear, and the mercilessness of the unknown. For most of his life, the author has carried the shadow of a young murdered woman, a friend and Harvard colleague, who was brutally raped and murdered. The circle of this woman's acquaintances tacitly consider the murderer to be someone among them, the author himself accused of murder by friends. The murder is never solved. Almost a half-century later the murder investigation is revived, spurred by a young writer, Becky Cooper, who becomes friends with Don as she writes her book and Don writes his book. What becomes especially poignant in Shibai, is the use of the 2nd person as Don relives the murder and subsequent years through memory, written record, and the current investigation, which triggers within Don old fears and guilt. Don puzzles through the gaps of memory as we are given the riveting opportunity to hear the story from the side of a suspect, past, and as Don fears, current.

[Tania Pryputniewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don Mitchell’s Shibai makes brilliant use of the second person in a gripping account of the solving of a murder mystery—over a fifty year span—for which he himself is an accused party. Mitchell’s “you” address is intimate, disarming, and bold. The pacing of the story and the spare prose reveals the wages of gaps in information and the toll of sorrow and confusion’s accretion over time. Mitchell documents the mental, emotional, and psychological cost of things we tell ourselves about ourselves and others when we try to make sense of love and violence. Mitchell takes us inside the reckoning that occurs when he is forced to reconcile errors in assumption—long-trusted intuitions—about the people in his orbit, about the friend he lost, and about himself once the final facts are bared. Beautifully written and engaging.

[Ronlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fifty years, Don Mitchell lived with the memory of finding his friend and fellow anthropology classmate, Jane Britton, murdered in her apartment. Questioned then about his potential involvement, Mitchell struggled for decades with a lack of answers about her death. In his book, he explores how memory and meaning shapeshift, the way facts can shatter long-held perceptions about one's self and others, and how love and connection transcend time and culture. Mitchell's bare, poignant memoir about his life as an anthropologist, writer, and photographer circles again and again back to Jane and ends with a shocking resolution. (From my blurb for this book.)

[Marcia Meier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part memoir, part mystery, part police procedural, Don Mitchell’s Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton’s Murder, is a deeply satisfying story of the murder of one of Mitchell’s best friends while they were students at Harvard, and the subsequent nearly six-decade search for the woman’s murderer. Mitchell, who at one time was considered a suspect, takes readers on an exploration of his own feelings and fears, prompted by the reopening of the case and his growing friendship with the author of another book about Jane Britton’s murder, We Keep the Dead Close, which was published in 2020 as well. Written in second person, this memoir is both experimental and engrossing, a story not soon forgotten.

[Ruth Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most unusual memoir I have ever read. The life of a complex and multitalented man as he looks back in age. Quiet but beautifully written and carries you along. This is not a true crime book, it’s about how the murder of his friend when they were in graduate school has ramified through his life. The book is not like anything else. I loved it and will read it again.

[Kathy Zahler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lovely book melds a real-life cold case with musings on the peril and pleasures of memory, time, aging, and human interaction. Set mostly in Hilo, with side trips to Cambridge, upstate NY, and Papua New Guinea, the book also explores our connection to place and the way that affects our perception. Touching, personal, and hopeful, wrapped in gorgeous prose.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much a self-examination as a memoir. Remembering JB's murder is the thread that holds throughout. The self-exploration is the main thrust.
Interestingly, a memoir written in the second person. I found that style choice created distance from the narrator.