3.5 Stars
This unconventional Japanese psychological thriller was published in
2005 but not translated into English until this year. The author has won several Japanese writing
awards and I certainly hope more of her books will be translated.
The novel is set 30 years after the murder of 17 people in an unnamed seaside city in 1973 during a family celebration. Drinks, delivered as a gift, prove to be poisoned. The only survivors are the housekeeper, who sipped only a little bit of a poisoned drink but suffers ill-effects for a long time afterwards, and Hisako, the beautiful, enigmatic, and blind daughter of the Aosawa family who was present at the party but did not have a drink. The case is considered solved when a man commits suicide and leaves a note admitting his guilt. There is, however, no explanation of motive so some people suspect that the mastermind of the murder plot has not been caught. Makiko Saiga, a neighbour of the Aosawa family, wrote a book about the tragedy a decade later, but she offered no conclusion.
The book has a non-traditional structure. The narrative unfolds through one-sided interviews (really monologues), letters, and diaries offering the perspective of various people. We hear from Saiga, her brothers, her assistant, her editor, the housekeeper’s daughter, the chief detective investigating the case, a shopkeeper, and others. Each sheds more light on the tragic event.
A theme is that truth is entirely subjective. This idea is introduced early on: “Each person has their own idiosyncratic biases, visual impressions and tricks of memory that shape their perception, and when one also takes into consideration the individual knowledge, education and personality that influence each single viewpoint, one can see how infinite possibilities are. Hence, when hearing about the same event from a number of people, one starts to notice that all the accounts are, without exception, slightly different. . . . it’s impossible to ever really know the truth behind events. Once one accepts this, it follows that everything written in newspapers or textbooks as ‘history’ is actually an amalgam of the greatest common factors from all the information available. . . . Only an all-seeing god – if there is such a thing – could ever possibly know the real truth (48 – 49). This idea is then repeated again and again: “truth is nothing more than one view of a subject seen from a particular perspective” (59) and “the truth is nothing more than a subject seen from a certain perspective” (69) and “What is the truth, really” (236)? Even in writing, “the notion of non-fiction is an illusion. All that can exist is fiction visible to the eye. And what is visible can also lie. The same applies to that which we hear and touch” (21).
More than one person suspects Hisako: “it’s a very simple story. If there are ten people in a house and nine die, who is the culprit? It’s not a whodunit. The answer’s easy – it’s the survivor, of course” (43). Several people believe that a woman was an accomplice, and one of the detectives feels strongly that Hisako arranged the mass murder. There is, however, no evidence linking Hisako to the poisonings. In interrogations, she remembers only being outside a blue room with a white crepe myrtle flower.
In a novel that argues it is probably impossible to ever really know the truth, the reader should not expect a tidy ending in which everything is resolved. A motive is suggested but not fully explained. Saiga’s book is described as follows: “The book was about the murders but wasn’t written as a mystery and didn’t have any kind of conclusion” (251). This description also fits this novel quite well.
This novel will not be to everyone’s liking, but I found it an intriguing read. It is cleverly constructed and actually requires re-reading to find the details that are missed on first reading.
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