Introduction:
The experiment called The Decagon House Murders
Shimada Soji
There is a particular term in the world of Japanese mystery fiction called “honkaku mystery,” or “orthodox mystery.” Honkaku refers to a form of the detective story that is not only literature but also, to a greater or lesser extent, a game. It follows the concept of “a high degree of logical reasoning,” the key prerequisite for the most exciting form of detective fiction as proposed by S.S. Van Dine, a prominent figure of the English-language Golden Age of detective fiction during the 1920s.
I shall introduce a brief history of Japanese honkaku mystery for the fans of English-language mystery fiction, focusing mainly on works that are available in English. As one of the earliest short stories, we first have Edogawa Rampo’s take on the locked room murder, The Case of the Murder on D. Hill (1925). Other stories by Rampo are The Psychological Test (1925) and Beast in the Shadows (1928).
Before World War II, honkaku mysteries mostly used the short story form, although some novel-length stories were published. Major works are, for example, Hamao Shirō’s Murderer (1932, not available in English), which was strongly influenced by Van Dine, and Aoi Yū’s The Tragedy of the Funatomi Family (1936, also not available in English), which was influenced by F.W. Crofts and Eden Phillpotts.
Almost immediately after the war, novelists like Takagi Akimitsu and Yokomizo Seishi wrote several excellent honkaku detective novels. Takagi Akimitsu made his debut, thanks to Edogawa Rampo’s recommendation, with The Tattoo Murder Case (1948). That novel, together with Yokomizo Seishi’s The Inugami Clan (1951), are the quintessential Japanese honkaku mystery novels of this period.
Rampo and Ellery Queen started exchanging letters in 1950[1]. Two years later, both Edogawa Rampo and Takagi Akimitsu became members of Mystery Writers of America,
In Japan, Prison Gate Island (1949) is considered Yokomizo Seishi’s most important work, but I mention The Inugami Clan as it is his only work available in English.
In the latter half of the 1950s, the literary world of the Japanese detective novel was shaken up by a heavy earthquake. With Matsumoto Seichō in the forefront, detective novels emphasising natural realism started being published one after another, gaining popularity and becoming mainstream practically overnight. Honkaku was thus driven away. The new style was called “the social school” in the Japanese literary world and its attention for natural realism was seen as the next evolutionary step of the detective novel. Seichō novels of this period available in English are Points and Lines (1958), Inspector Imanishi Investigates (1961) and Pro Bono (1961).
When Ellery Queen (the Frederic Dannay half) visited Japan in 1977, Matsumoto Seichō and he held a discussion session, during which Seichō declared that the most important elements of the detective novel were the motive that led to the crime and the depiction of the psychology of the criminal. While this is certainly an opinion worth listening to, his ideas differed greatly from those of Van Dine. Seichō did not consider the characteristic elements of honkaku important, such as the genius deductions of the young great detective, his occasionally theatrical behaviour when he explains it all and the closed-circle situations. In fact, Seichō openly disapproved of such elements, as he considered them unrealistic.
After Seichō’s appearance on the scene, editors stopped actively publishing good old-fashioned honkaku mystery novels—detective novels in the spirit of the Golden Age—and the climate in Japan turned to “the winter of the age of honkaku.” The criticism aimed at the social school made by one of the characters in the first chapter of The Decagon House Murders refers to this overreaction of the Japanese publishing world at the time. Among the writers who fought against this ordeal of time and who kept on writing honkaku mystery were Ayukawa Tetsuya and Tsuchiya Takao. As of today, one short story by Tsuchiya has been translated into English, but so far none of Ayukawa’s has.
What put an end to this “winter of the age of honkaku” were my own humble works: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (1981) and The Crime in the Leaning Mansion (1982, not available in English). The thick ice conjured by Seichō’s spell had started to thaw, but unfortunately more writers following in my footsteps did not readily appear.
In 1987, however, the honkaku mystery writer I had waited so long for finally arrived. He was Ayatsuji Yukito with his debut novel The Decagon House Murders. I felt this writer’s appearance to be of tremendous importance, so I wrote an introduction for the novel and supported his debut in every way I could.
While the road may have been full of twist and turns, Golden Age detective fiction is still alive and thriving in Japan today, whereas in the United Kingdom and the United States it seems to have shut up shop. This is because in Japan we have the concept of honkaku. The word refers not only to the novels themselves, which emphasise logical reasoning, but it is also a badge of pride to the authors who write honkaku, indicating they are writers from whose novels their readers can expect a certain level of intelligence. Honkaku is a word that has given all Japanese writers, prominent or otherwise, the power to keep on writing.
It is my belief that if we can introduce this concept to the field of American and British detective fiction, the Golden Age pendulum will swing back, just as The Tokyo Zodiac Murders and The Decagon House Murders managed to accomplish in Japan. Ayatsuji’s first novel is to this day remembered by many in Japan as an epoch-making event which transformed the world of Japanese mystery fiction with revolutionary new ideas.