Japanese Crime Fiction across the Centuries

As an ancient culture, Japan has plenty of scope for the imagination when it comes to crime writing. You can pick and choose among tales told from times spanning a thousand years. My forays into Japanese crime fiction began in the very recent past. I started with I. J. Parker's Sugawara Akitada mysteries. The Japanese custom is to place the surname first because it honors the family rather than the individual.

Akitada was 25 years old and a junior clerk in the Imperial Ministry of Justice. He had won this position because he was an excellent student and had come in first in the university examinations. While he was a nobleman of the famous Sugawara clan, times were tough and he was excited to be given this job.

The series begins with The Dragon Scroll, which takes place in the year 1014. Akitada's first mission was to investigate missing tax shipments from cousins in a distant province. This excited him, because this was his first journey away from the capital, Heian-kyō, modern Kyoto.

He was also fortunate to be traveling with an old family retainer, Seimei. This elderly man was Akitada's mentor and he was skilled at many things, including herbal medicines, and had deep knowledge of Confucian teachings. Traveling the Imperial Highway was unsafe at the best of times, and it wasn't long before Akitada was attacked by a couple of thugs. It was his good fortune to be rescued by Tora, an ex-thug himself, who became a permanent part of his entourage.

Akitada was never ambitious enough for his mother, but he had a knack for solving crimes and the authorities, from the emperor on down, appreciated his skill. There are 13 books in this series. Akitada is inquisitive and intelligent, and his skills are in constant use as he unravels mysteries found in peasant hovels as well as the rarefied atmosphere of the Imperial Palace. He is a decent and honest man and he maintains adherence to the strict social codes of ancient Japan.

Naturally, all of the events in the series are imaginary or fictional, but the system of law enforcement, the educational methods and the customs and tastes of 11th-century Japan bring authenticity to the stories. These books are sprinkled with beautiful illustrations that resemble Japanese woodcuts. As an extra fillip, there is at the end of each book a brief historical endnote that enlightens the reader about pertinent aspects of life at this time.

I. J. Parker is a retired professor of English and foreign languages and won the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) Shamus Award for Best P. I. Short Story in 2000 for "Akitada's First Case."

On my TBR and not too dusty is a Laura Joh Rowland series that features Sana Ichiro, a samurai who investigates matters for the shogun. It gives a taste of what life was like for the Japanese in the 1600s.

The first book, Shinju, takes place in Edo, a city destined to become Tokyo in later years. It begins with a double death involving a commoner and a beautiful noblewoman. Is it a typical shinju, a ritual suicide, or something more? Ichiro is a reluctant investigator. He prefers teaching, but he can't let the case be hushed up.

Another reluctant sleuth who would rather be teaching is Kyosuke Kamizu, nicknamed "boy genius," an assistant professor at Tokyo University. He makes his debut in Takagi Akimitsu's The Tattoo Murder Case. This case takes place almost a century into the future, during the American Occupation in the late 1940s.

All that is found are severed limbs in a locked room. Miss Kinue Nomura survived World War II, only to be murdered in Tokyo, her severed limbs left behind. What is gone is that part of her that bore one of the most beautiful full-body tattoos created by her late father.

Kamizu doesn't wear a deerstalker hat, but his approach to solving this crime is very Sherlockian. Just as interesting about the unusual case is the description of the culture that revolved around art tattoos. Despite the fact that Japan was occupied by US troops at the time, there was only one small mention of the military, as if it didn't really impinge on the routines of the ordinary folk.

The Tattoo Murder Case was originally published in 1948, and Takagi Akimitsu followed this by many books, most of which remain untranslated. Even though Kamizu was well liked, most of the books usually feature prosecutors or police detectives.

Seicho Matsumoto wrote his series in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As in his Inspector Imanishi Investigates, the plots focus on human psychology and ordinary life rather than intricate puzzles. The central character is Inspector Imanishi Eitaro, a more typically Japanese detective, fond of gardening and haiku. A corpse felt to be from the provinces is found under the rails of a train in Tokyo Station. The subject of Imanishi's investigation is not only the crime, but also the society in which the crime was committed. Matsumoto brings up the subject of police corruption, which was a new feature of Japanese crime fiction.

James Melville's books feature Tetsuo Otani, the superintendent of the Hyōgo Prefectural Police. Otani frequently runs into people who are afraid of the police because of their history of strong-arm tactics over the previous decades. He is constantly reassuring everyone that the police are not what they were, but it's a struggle to get cooperation from the general populace in solving crimes. For the most part, these books take place in the 1970s and '80s, when murder was uncommon in Japan and was usually related to gang warfare or domestic violence.

In the first series book, The Wages of Zen, Otani is called to a murder case while he is attending a Rotary dinner. This is but one example of the western influences during these years. A body has been found in a local temple, which is apparently also a foundation for East-West understanding. This is an unusual case, where all the suspects, as well as the victim, are foreigners who had come to spend time at a local Zen Buddhist temple. Otani joined Hyogo police during the postwar American occupation, and he was aware that policing had changed more than many other things In Japan. It is amusing to read about the convoluted ceremonial courtesies governing most interactions.

Melville depicts everyday Japanese life nicely, and he describes Japanese society morphing from strict traditionalism to a relentless drive to modernization. Otani has a team of colorful and streetwise detectives who spend most of their time confronting organized crime and political duplicity. Otani himself does not speak English, and he depends on his team to help him understand the foreigners among whom there is a killer.

In Sujata Massey's series, we meet Rei Shimura, an underpaid English teacher in Tokyo in the late 1990s who wishes she was doing something better with her life. You can read about her here, here and here.

Arimasa Osawa writes another series that is very popular in Japan. These books were written in the '90s as well, but although Shinjuku Shark, the first of many, won several prizes, it wasn't translated into English until 2008.

The central character in these mysteries is a complete turnabout from the traditional detectives I've just mentioned. He is Samejima, who goes by the nickname "the Shinjuku Shark." He is a maverick detective who has no friends in the police or the main Japanese bad guys, the Yakuza (organized crime syndicates), because he refuses to turn a blind eye to corruption. This leads to increasing isolation from the police force and he usually works alone.

Osawa describes an uneasy peace between the Yakuza and the police. The Police Organized Crime Department is known as the Marubo, and it kept a close watch on the Yakuza clans. The Yakuza usually didn't go out of its way to become involved in small disputes. It is all bound up with the concept of honor among men and the result of returning favors and a give-and-take granting the other face-saving concessions.

Shinjuku District

Samejima detests the Yakuza and he dislikes the way police officers fraternize with them, so he keeps making a nuisance of himself by going after any punk, regardless of his ties. It is no surprise that Samejima's career is stalled and he is relegated to the crime-ridden streets of the Shinjuku district. His street name came from his reputation that once he gets his teeth into somebody he doesn't let go.

When an elusive sniper begins targeting police officers in his district, Samejima sets out on his own to find the man responsible, no matter who he is. This is a rapidly paced noir entry that is gritty and realistic, although it is somewhat surprising that as much as Samejima is detested, he escapes the sniper's crosshairs. Samejima is still solving crimes and chasing the Yakuza in Osawa's most recent book translated into English, The Poison Ape.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino is a more recent Japanese crime sensation and is mentioned here.

So pour yourself some sake or grab a bottle of Ramune (a carbonated beverage of exotic flavors that comes in a tricky bottle that uses a marble as a stopper) and settle in for a trip through time. Or flip that remote to Ninja Turtles reruns and be very grateful if your children or grandchildren aren't using them as role models.

Konnichiwa (Hello)

The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC is a celebration of early spring, commemorating the March 27, 1912 gift of Japanese cherry trees from the mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, to the city of Washington. The purpose of the gift was to promote the growing friendship between two countries on opposite sides of the world. For 24 years, Eliza Scidmore, the first female board member of the National Geographic Society, had been urging the planting of cherry blossom trees along the Potomac. She must have really regretted young George Washington's ax-ident. But, finally, she got her point of view across.  The arboreal gift was initially planted ceremonially by First Lady Helen Taft and Viscountess Chinda, the wife of the Japanese Ambassador, on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park.

I have had the pleasure of seeing the cherry trees many times along the Mall and the Reflecting Pool behind the Capitol building and it is an incomparable sight. This year, as we have been enjoying a warmer spring than usual, it should be an excellent experience to walk under the trees and appreciate the wonders of nature.

For my reading at this centennial of the cherry blossoms, I headed toward Naomi Hirahara's small gem of a series featuring Japanese-American gardener Masao ("Mas") Arai. The story begins with Summer of the Big Bachi. Arai is in his seventies and his life is a wreck. His wife has recently died of cancer, he is becoming estranged from his only daughter and, finally, his job of landscape gardening in Los Angeles is threatened by young illegals from the south.

Japanese-Americans are a unique group. As far as I know, they are the only people who have names for the different generations within their group.

The SOB (straight off the boat) are the Issei; their children, the second generation, are the Nisei; and their grandchildren, or third generation, are the Sansei. There is a subgroup, the Kibei Nisei, who were born in America and raised in Japan. Mas Arai is one of these young men. He was a youngster of school age when he and his buddies were playing hooky in 1945 Hiroshima in an underground train station when an atomic bomb was dropped on the naval base. He was knocked unconscious and when he came to, he emerged from the station to see sights so horrific they were burnt into his memory forever. Slightly less than half of the population was killed. Of the survivors, more than 500 eventually returned to their birthplace––the USA. Most of Arai's group of friends also survived, and it is about them that this first mystery revolves. Bachi basically means what goes around comes around, and Mas Arai's past has come to the present and he is equipped to deal with it. Summer of the Big Bachi was a finalist for the 2005 Macavity Award for Best First Novel.

Mas Arai's personality and history are explored more deeply in Gasa-Gasa Girl. Mari Arai was always known to her parents as being gasa-gasa, an into-everything kind of girl; just the opposite of laid back. Mas Arai, her dad, tells her she takes after her mother. Mari retorts that her mother claimed it was a trait taken from her father. This may be the closer to the truth. Mas Arai had dreams of becoming an engineer, but his life took another path. Established in his routines, Mas Arai knows that retirement is not a word for him, but he is willing to take time out for a trip to New York because Mari, his daughter, has called for help.

He is just getting his feet accustomed to concrete sidewalks when he discovers the dead body of his son-in-law Lloyd's boss in a koi pond. The victim was Kazzy Ouchi, a magnate in the silk garment industry and the son of a humble gardener at a big New York City estate. He was planning the development of a new Japanese garden in Brooklyn. Mas becomes enmeshed in the complex affair because Mari and Lloyd are in the middle of this imbroglio and both are suspected of being the killer. Mas investigates so that he can exonerate them. In this story, Mas is revealed as a taciturn man who may appear to be a grumpy old man, but that is just a facade for a quiet philosopher who suffers fools badly. It is amusing to read about Arai's views on how East Coast and West Coast Nisei are different.

In Snakeskin Shamisen, Mas Arai is still a part-time gardener, now getting a reputation for solving murders. In this story, he gets involved in the death of a recent lottery winner. The situation is complex and reaches back to Okinawa and World War II, as well as to the Red Scare in the 1950s, and highlights some of the bad things men do for what they think are good reasons.

Shamisen

There are a lot of characters to keep straight in this story, and convoluted motives, but you won't regret reading this book, both for the history and the mystery. Japanese-Americans are resilient people who suffered great indignities and hardships in the course of their history in the Western Hemisphere. It was not until the 1950s that they were allowed to become naturalized American citizens. Despite being interned during the war, losing their property and more, they elected to look to the future rather than to the past.

The tidbit I took home concerns the history of the Japanese in Peru.  Peru recruited Japanese laborers beginning at the end of the 19th century but, over time, resentments grew against Japanese residents, similar to the resentments against Asian immigrants to the United States. After World War II broke out and the US began interning its own Japanese residents, the US government also sought to take control over the Japanese in Latin American countries.  In part, this was a security effort, but there was also a plan to trade these Japanese for US prisoners of war held in Japan; the idea being that it might be too controversial to use the US's own Japanese residents for this purpose. Peru sold their Japanese citizens to the US in effect, because they received large loans from the US for agreeing to round up their Japanese and send them to the US. Thousands of Japanese from Peru were imprisoned in internment camps in Texas and New Mexico. At the end of the war, only a few dozen returned to Peru, because Peru refused to take most back. Those who did manage to return found that their assets and properties had been confiscated. Many of the internees were sent to Japan after the war, but several hundred languished in an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas, for two years after the war while they fought an eventually successful battle to stay in the US.

The last in the Mas Arai series is Blood Hina, published in 2010. I am really looking forward to reading this book. I ordered it two weeks ago but it is coming to me via slow boat from Japan.

I have several other favorite authors who have books based in Japan or are written by by a native of Japan. I. J. Parker writes about 11th century Japanese life and she chronicles the adventures of Sugawara Akitada, a nobleman/detective. This series is engrossing. The later books in the series are hard to find, except on Kindle, but at least they are finally reaching their fans.

Akimitsu Takagi's The Tattoo Murder Case is an interesting mystery that takes place in 1947 Tokyo and was originally written at that time and in that terrible immediate postwar period. It is an interesting bird's-eye view into the recovering Japan. Akimitsu Takagi, who died in 2005, was a popular and prolific writer in Japan, but has only two other books published in English. In fact, it took nearly 50 years for The Tattoo Murder Case to be translated. I have also enjoyed Sujata Massey and Laura Joh Rowland. John P. Marquand's Mr. Moto books are new to me, but I did enjoy the first, Your Turn, Mr. Moto.

Cherry Blossoms