Reading the 20th Century discussion

Welcome to our Moderators Choice for our August 2020 1940s themed read....


The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

Detective Kosuke Kindaichi book #1

We now how much enthusiasm there is for Japanese fiction round these parts so concluded this would make a perfect book to accompany poll winner Table Two

Despite being a modest 192 pages it, apparently, packs a lot in. This spoiler free review is full of praise....

https://booksandbao.com/review-the-ho...

More about The Honjin Murders...

One of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time.

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.

Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music. Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house. Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime?

Who plans to read The Honjin Murders?


I am underway with it and enjoying the interesting insight into Japanese society in the immediate pre-war era

I have read it and enjoyed it - I found it extremely readable, with a humorous edge to the writing at times, and agree that the insight into Japanese society is very interesting.

I'm planning on making a start today - it looks intriguing!

I have finished this one and enjoyed it. I like Japanese fiction, but it is very different and I think the translation is important.

Susan wrote:


"...I think the translation is important."

What did you think of the translation? Are you suggesting it could have been better?

There's certainly a lot of characters to keep track of. There's a list at the beginning but that's harder to navigate to and from on a Kindle (or maybe it isn't and I've never worked out how to do it easily. I can find it easily but it's a faff to get back to my place)

It wasn't the characters I had trouble with,although some of the names seemed similar, it was the method of the murder I had trouble with. I was glad it was explained in detail at the end.

I'll look out for that Jill - thanks

Nigeyb wrote: "There's a list at the beginning but that's harder to navigate to and from on a Kindle (or maybe it isn't and I've never worked out how to do it easily. I can find it easily but it's a faff to get back to my place)"

You can do that page-flip thing where you bookmark the character list and then can open it as a mini-window without leaving your reading page. Or does that function depend on which Kindle you have?

My Kindle is quite cheap and I am pretty sure it can’t do anything that fancy 🤠

It doesn't come out here until the 4th. I'm expecting delivery on the 6th.

I will have to see if my kindle does that, RC. I am rubbish at exploring such possibilities, but I do use the translation option a lot when reading. Very handy in my recent read of Diana Cooper's biography, where there was lots of French and German thrown in!

It's really easy: from the reading page, just tap to bring up the page menu, and next to 'go to' you'll see a multiple bookmark icon, tap that and it will show you pages you've previously bookmarked and an option to add the page you're on. If you tap one you've bookmarked earlier (e.g. character list) it opens up a small window which you can read and also scroll through without leaving your reading page. When done, just tap back on your reading page and the window closes.

Nigeyb, if you don't have that, easiest way of getting back to your reading page after checking the bookmarked character page is just to press the back button and you should get straight back to where you were.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Nigeyb, if you don't have that, easiest way of getting back to your reading page after checking the bookmarked character page is just to press the back button and you should get straight back to where you were"

Hurrah

Yes that works

Thank you

Jill wrote: "... it was the method of the murder I had trouble with."

That was *outrageous* in terms of bizarre artifice! But amusing :)

Nigeyb wrote: "Roman Clodia wrote: "Nigeyb, if you don't have that, easiest way of getting back to your reading page after checking the bookmarked character page is just to press the back button and you should ge..."

Kindles are fab, aren't they? The only electronic item I use comfortably, to be honest, and the only one I have ever managed to set up myself as it is so easy.

I've now finished The Honjin Murders and must confess I found much of it tedious and, when it finally arrived, the denouement to be ridiculous.

I'm not the biggest fan of this type of book so perhaps not best placed to assess its merits.

For those who love the classic whodunnit, how do you think The Honjin Murders compares with the best of Christie, Sayers etc?

Here’s my review

I personally wouldn't compare it to either Christie or Sayers both of whom I adore. It's interesting that the narrator cites his favourite detective writer as A.A. Milne and name-checks The Red House Mystery (which I have read in the past but don't remember in any detail).

I agree that the 'method' is utterly ridiculous but I read it as pushing the conventions to the limits of absurdity. I haven't read the locked-room genre in any depth but he mentions (view spoiler)[the regular use of mechanical tricks (hide spoiler)] and so I thought this was a kind of amiable satire/spoof - though I could well be wrong!

3-stars from me as a quick, fun read - but if it had been any longer, it might well have dropped.

I agree about the method being bonkers but I also thought this was a spoof. It didn't remind me of Christie or Sayers either, except for the extended family, which tends to be a popular set-up in British Golden Age mysteries.

Interesting that there are so many mentions of Western detective stories, and yet the novel has only been recently translated into English.

I did like the Japanese-ness of it: the descriptions of kimonos, the musical instrument, the tatami rooms - and that gasp-aloud moment at the end (view spoiler)[when we learn that a character went to Hiroshima the day the bomb dropped (hide spoiler)].

That's interesting and helpful. Thanks RC, thanks Judy.


I also like the Japanese-ness of it. The entrenched attitudes of the old families, and the sense of personal honour, were still very apparent in the conduct of many Japanese soldiers during WW2.

I really hadn't considered that it might have been written as a spoof or parody. It doesn't change my mind about the book but does explain aspects that I found absurd or ridiculous. It's curious that the publishers don't make this apparent. I would have approached it with a different mindset if I'd realised this. With that in mind, do you think it's intended to be comedic?

Judy and Susan are far more aficionados of GA detective fiction than me but I think the whole genre is knowingly full of artifice and so is often humorously self-aware of its own conventions. Agatha Christie even creates a female crime novelist who hates her 'foreign' detective thus poking fun at herself and Poirot!

I did think that Honjin is winking at readers when the detective is introduced with his Holmes characteristics or when he points at his head to mimic Poirot's 'little grey cells'. And, of course, in that long explanation of howdunnit and the way it draws on previous fiction. Maybe spoof is too strong a word?

Thanks RC. That makes more sense - knowing rather than comedic then?


So it might follow that readers who love the Golden Age genre, and are very familiar with its conventions, would see this as a knowing homage, and thereby derive added pleasure from it?

I seem to recall that The Red House Mystery also had a pretty bonkers ending, but it was a fun read. I thought it was less a spoof than a homage, to be fair. I liked the idea of the library of detective novels and it would be interesting to know how popular crime fiction was when this was published.

Yes, I think homage is probably a better word for it than spoof, but I definitely thought the writer enjoys playing with the conventions and putting a spin on things like finding clues in surprising places!

I felt we were getting a cheap commercial for golden age authors. He did a spoiler of only one, thank goodness.

I started this last night. It's a fun read, if a little simple, (that could be to do with the translation, at least in part). I like the way it references other locked room mysteries, I don't think I've read any of them yet but perhaps I'll try to get to one or more soon.
I'm also enjoying the Japanese-ness of it, a bit like a country house mystery transposed to a Japanese village.

My copy came yesterday. Haven't started yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Exciting new perspectives. Looking forward to your musings.

I do think homage rather than spoof, as well. I did like it, but I also started to get a bit bored by the long, drawn out conclusion, perhaps partly because I struggled to visualise it. It was fun, I have the other one of his that has been translated, so I'll get to that at some point, but no hurry.

Thanks Tania - I agree that denouement is somewhat convuluted

It certainly is a bizarre, and difficult to visualise, conclusion. I think that one of the issues I had with this book was that it was difficult to really have any empathy with the characters. This was, very much, a 'puzzle,' mystery, in the old fashioned sense.

Thanks RC - not what I was expecting either. I had a lute type instrument in my mind's eye too

I accidentally deleted your post RC - so sorry!

In the meantime here's a photo of a Koto (sadly nowhere near as lovely as RC's illustration which I hope she'll repost)....




Sorry once again. I was trying to delete my own post

Haha, not to worry - luckily I still had the Google page open:

Phew. Sanity and order are restored.

Ooh that is beautiful. I think I saw them being played once, (or similar). I once went during the Cherry Blossom festival, so we went to see one of the Geisha shows in Gion. Stunning.

Thank you, Nigeyb and RC, for the illustrations of the Koto - great to know what it looks like.

A good review here of the novel which points out how much it says about life in Japanese villages at this time and the the hierarchical system.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...

Thanks for posting, Judy. So interesting to see the illustrations of the Koto. Not really how I imagined it, so very illuminating.

Yes, because the koto is far larger than I expected, the thing about its strings being long and strong make a bit more sense now - though that whole mechanical device still escapes me!

Me too, it was the actual set-up of the wired that I couldn't visualise.
That's a great article Judy, thanks for posting it.

Thanks Tania and Susan, glad you liked the article - I did think the whole hierarchical set-up in the village was interesting, including the way that families' historical status apparently counted for so much more within village society than current wealth and position.

Yes, it's not that dissimilar to the 'impoverished' families in Christie, whose families owned the 'big house' but which they're finding increasingly hard to keep up.

That was a quick read!

I'm thinking of heading my review with a warning - reading detective fiction makes you commit murder in an excessively elaborate manner.

I have seen and heard a koto played at WOMAD. This is not the same performance, but it is the same artist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0FaI...

I did not see it as a spoof while reading it, although it is an homage to the genre. It makes sense that it is a bit of both.

Val wrote: "I have seen and heard a koto played at WOMAD. This is not the same performance, but it is the same artist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0FaI..."

Thanks for that Val, must have been really interesting to watch. I must say, I really missed Womad this year, and kept getting those facebook memory thingumies about it, just to tease me. So many interesting things to see there.

Tania wrote: "I really missed Womad this year."
Yes, me too. Although I don't go every year, the fact that I couldn't this year made me miss it more than the years it is my decision.