When the murdered body of an unidentified man is found under a train in Tokyo, the police have little to go on in identifying him – only the man’s accent, and a snatch of conversation from his drinking companion. Though the police follow up every lead, they find nothing. But after a relative of the dead man comes forward, slowly and steadily, through a chain of hunches, Inspector Imanishi begins to uncover the victim’s movements over his last week, and a series of encounters with the Nouveau Group of artists and thinkers points him to some possible suspects.
I’ve never read a mystery that is simulataneously so bonkers and so down-to-earth at the same time. Inspector Imanishi displays Croftsian doggedness and thoroughness, but his choices of what to investigate are due to the wildest hunches (not to mention the dubious science which gets mixed in towards the end). After finishing the book, I realised that what his hunches reminded me of most are the flights of fancy in Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Yes, Inspector Imanishi could be a Holistic Detective. His hunches only make sense if he believes in the Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things, and his results only make sense if he’s right.
This contrasts with Matsumoto’s excellent use of details (such as the early moment when the railway workers refer to the body as a “tuna”) and character moments to ground the book, and with the convincing way that nothing is ever quite straightforward when Imanishi comes to investigate it. The Nouveau Group of highbrow-leaning early 60’s influencers are convincingly drawn, with their politics, ambitions, and petty rivalries. So too is Imanishi and his younger colleague and sort-of partner Yoshimura.
“Imanishi-san, this may sound strange, but I wonder how you feel about it,” Yoshimura said, wolfing down his tempura over rice. “We go on various business trips like this. And afterward, rather than the scenery or problems I might have encountered, what I remember is the food. Our expense allowance is so small we can only afford rice with curry, or some meat on top of a bowl of rice, food you can get anywhere. Yet the flavouring is always different. It’s the taste of each location that I remember first.”
“Is that so?” Imanishi said, sipping his noodles. “After all, you’re young. I prefer to remember the scenery.”
The women get shorter shrift, unfortunately, aside from maybe Imanishi’s sister Oyuki – Imanishi’s wife has clearly put up with his married-to-the-job mentality and remained devoted, and two other important younger women are also defined by their devotion to no-good boyfriends.
The world Matsumoto depicts in Inspector Imanishi Investigates is one on the cusp of change, with a bustling cultural scene and technological innovations emerging from the calamitous shadow of WW2. Old traditions – Imanishi’s love of bonsai and haiku, and a secondary character who runs a business crafting abacuses – also play a part. You could say there’s a light theme of tradition versus the brash innovation (and Matsumoto seems to suggest, hypocrisy) of youth, though it’s not highlighted until the conclusion of the book.
On a moment-to-moment basis, the writing (and translation) is excellent. It’s just that the set-up for the moment after that is often hugely, obviously forced. Not that this affected my enjoyment of the book! In fact I often found those moments fun, in an exasperating way, such as the moment when two separate secretive and important characters move into apartments connected to Imanishi completely by chance. Perhaps it’s part of some philosophical approach showing that killers will inevitably be caught, but I often just found it funny…
This does lead on, in a way, to the structure of the book, which I found intriguing. As well as showing scenes from the investigators’ point of view, Matsumoto also follows several disparate characters connected with the Nouveau Group. These scenes – particularly when the identity of the corpse is unknown, and even after then – almost felt like they were daring the reader to form a connection between the two seemingly unconnected aspects. “Am I showing you an inverted mystery?”, Matsumoto seems to be asking. Are these scenes from the killer’s thoughts, or could it be a double bluff? How is this random person connected with the crime, since via the Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Book Scenes, we know they must be. Vignettes like these are something I found distinctive about Testuya Ayukawa’s contemporaneous The Black Swan Mystery as well, though they’re more centred on plotline-relevant characters here. I wonder if this approach was a common one in Japanese detective fiction of the era.
This method of presenting scenes and asking us to make sense of them also keeps the book interesting, since if it were just showing us the investigation, then there would be a lot of dead ends to get stuck in and become frustrated by, which I felt was a problem in the earlier Tokyo Express. Here, there’s also a separate build of suspense in the scenes from the Nouveau Group characters.
Unfortunately, just after the tension breaks there, things started to fall apart in the investigation, bringing the dubious science to the fore (and more of Imanishi’s Holistic Hunches). Though thematically the book ends strongly, the results of Imanishi’s dogged investigation, which he recounts at length, are not the most convincing.
Fortunately, those little details that grounded the book earler on do keep coming and keep the whole thing just about held together, and overall I had a great time reading the book and becoming immersed in its strange world (strange in that it’s a fresh and compelling time and place for me to read about, and strange in that it has so many coincidences…). It’s not often I have such divided opinions when comparing different aspects of a book, yet come away enjoying it, so I’m glad I read it.
Other opinions:
Literary Potpourri
Mysteries Ahoy!
Death of the Reader Podcast (Contains spoilers!): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3