紅蓮館の殺人 (Gurenkan No Satsujin)
8 1月 2024
Whenever I read a highly acclaimed mystery work by an up-and-coming author, it always feels like they're attacking my sensibilities as a mystery reader.
Established authors with books under their belt are easy to figure out; even if they're part of groundbreaking movements that are dismantling the trappings of the genre, they're part of the status quo and I can reasonably guess what they're up to regardless of my familiarity with them: “Ah, this writer has quibbles with this aspect of Christie mysteries,” “Interesting critique of the artificiality of mysteries," etc. Their critiques seem to be set in stone and are more like the necessary and logical next steps in the development of the genre.
But books written by a new generation of writers come at me with this raw energy and make me question the very concept of mysteries. The fact that they have no place in the mystery canon yet makes their critique extremely radical; their insensitivity to what audiences want lends force to their charges against the genre.
Gurenkan no Satsujin is one such work: written by Atsukawa Tatsumi, a then 25-year-old graduate of Tokyo University, this 2019 book has won some prestigious awards that any mystery writer would die for. It sold so well that my copy says it is part of the 17th reprint (2022). However, Amazon Japan — home to the greatest thinkers — shows that many people either love it or hate it (3.7 stars from 343 total reviews). A cursory glance reveals how polarizing the book is: some people take umbrage at the book because it is not at all close to the highly polished mansion mysteries of yesteryear; others claim that it is an exciting work that needs to be read by a wider audience. This is the kind of reception that interests someone like me more than any epic literary award.
I'm going to spoil my thoughts on this book up front: I'm between the two camps because I see merit in both. The strengths and flaws of the book counterbalance each other in very interesting ways and it’s probably why I think it’ll be a memorable book for me — if it was just a good or bad work, I wouldn’t probably have started this newsletter.
As the cover image suggests, this book takes place in a mansion built by a legendary mystery writer named Takarada Yuuzan in a burning forest. The cast is basically a bunch of people stuck in a mansion full of traps and passageways: we have the Takarada family taking care of the old man, a biker-looking lady who obviously has never hiked before, a shy and timid man, an insurance office worker with a mysterious past, and finally our high school Sherlock Holmes and Watson stand-ins. Oh yeah, there’s an unpublished book written by Yuuzan worth millions and locked in a safe. With conditions like this, someone is clearly going to be murdered.
Katsuragi, our Detective Conan of the week, is a rich high schooler who’s so smart cops have requested his help to solve cases. He believes that his raison d’etre is to discover The Truth at all costs. The very idea of deception and falsity sickens him. Meanwhile, Tadokoro serves as our narrator, admiring his friend for always thinking ten steps ahead of everyone else. A character later describes the dynamic as a quasi-ideal of the Holmes and Watson dynamic: Tadokoro will come up with hypotheses only to have Katsuragi shoot them down for being implausible — in other words, a cycle of rejection and refinement.
It’s the kind of teamwork that’s taken for granted in many mystery works, so I find it strange that the book makes this apparent to readers. I immediately wondered if it’s setting this relationship up for criticism, but I wasn’t sure: the novel likes to indulge in unnecessary detail and hide important contexts in order to overwhelm mystery readers. Still, the relationship feels so bland and archetypal that any mention of it would make anyone wonder why the narration would want to emphasize it. Wouldn’t it be better to do what other mystery books do: just treat it as a tool and nothing more? I put that in the back of my mind as I read more of the work and learn more about the other characters.
123 pages in, tragedy strikes: someone was crushed by a false ceiling. Katsuragi's brain starts cooking up hypotheses and claims that this was a murder. And then the insurance worker, Asuka, shoots down his ideas and claims that it was an accidental death.
It is revealed that she was once a great detective whom Tadokoro admired when he was younger. Asuka was the Katsuragi of the old days; she and her own Watson had a very gay relationship and solved many murder cases. However, a serial killer went after her girlfriend and she became so distraught over the case that she gave up mysteries altogether and became just another office worker in late capitalist Japan.
That’s when I realized this book was going to be something special: a battle of wits between zoomers and boomers.
Much of what makes this work so compelling is this generational conflict. Katsuragi cannot make sense of Asuka’s actions and why she’s given up on the path of detective work. He criticizes her lack of curiosity while she mocks him for being a childish high school student. Tadokoro is caught between these two ideologues, and all he can do is count the hours and minutes before the mansion[^1] burns down along with the forest.
The younger me would’ve rooted for Katsuragi. Even if the truth sucked to hear, it’s important to get the word out there. But nowadays, I found myself more sympathetic to Asuka’s views: it’s not like solving mysteries will stop crime and instead it might perpetuate more violence, symbolic and real. While I enjoy reading mystery works and playing games, I’m probably too aware of the actual reality that cold cases exist, forensics is a fake science, and the police always goes for the wrong people in the end. The mystery genre has a hard time dealing with the fact that solving mysteries may not be satisfying to anyone but the detective and the reader.
This egoistic desire for the truth is the central conflict of the narrative. Asuka talks down Katsuragi, even when he approaches some truths that Asuka can’t deny. She reminds him that truth by itself is meaningless and even false. Indeed, what if the murderer wants the truth to come out? What if they want to be recognized for their actions? If G.K. Chesterton is right that “the criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic”, then rejecting the conceit of mysteries may be the way out.
Every scene with Asuka is a joy to read, especially since the book is riddled with sloppy descriptions and weak character voices. Asuka stands out in this cacophony of droning voices as someone who is fully realized; she embraces her philosophical contradictions as an ex-detective and is willing to challenge the way people think about the “neutral” role of detectives and Watson figures.
Without Asuka, this book would be yet another attempt to debunk what people value in mysteries. The writing is, to put it mildly, unpolished: there is no cadence to the sentences; they seem to stop and start without any concern for rhythm. Aside from some very funny revelations, the characters have no distinctive voices and can only be parsed by the reader through the pronouns they use to refer to themselves. I also don’t like how convoluted the explanation for the murder is, and the constant psychologizing of the killer is condescending and ableist. Finding elegance in this text is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
All that said, I can excuse the rough prose because it remains a thrilling read. Katsuragi’s detective charades are riveting performances: not only is he a charismatic figure when given the chance but the motivations and tricks are so highly implausible and coincidental they become awesome. There’s so much bullshit logic that I read through the second half of the book at one go. The novel feels enlivened when it's able to break free of the setup and just spit out the most ridiculous and outlandish solutions. It's nice to see how the book also pulls seemingly innocent lines of dialogue from previous chapters, only to infuse them with ironic truth. I live for this shit and I’m here for it. [^2]
The reading experience is therefore quite rocky and not for everyone. People who want a sophisticated puzzle box with great writing and insights will find this book lacking at times. Those who want rollercoaster rides will be disappointed by the abrupt pacing. It's hard for me to recommend this book to anyone, even though I enjoyed devouring it in the end.
But what ultimately led me to choose this book as the first post for this newsletter is the epilogue. Much of the mystery has been solved, but there are still a few details that need to be ironed out. We have one last showdown between Katsuragi and Asuka about the role of detectives in mysteries.
Katsuragi repeats his motto once more and Asuka responds for the first time with sympathy: he’s just like her, lost and confused. All this time, Katsuragi, Tadokoro, and Asuka have no agency in their lives as long as they follow the mystery playbook. They are socialized into their roles as the Holmes and Watsons, but they are not the geniuses mystery works want us to believe in. The role of the detective is an empty concept, devoid of content; it is based on abstract principles and guidelines that don't respect lived experiences. This argument leaves Katsuragi and Tadokoro speechless while Asuka leaves the world of Gurenkan no Satsujin as an ex-detective and insurance worker who is sure of her own identity and place in the world.
There are no consolations that can heal the existentialist anguish of these high school detectives. A weak Katsuragi has the last word but remains defeated. The truth behind the mechanics of the mystery is out there, but the epilogue left me feeling livid — in a good way.
The overarching mystery works because we believe the behaviors of detectives don’t implicate them in the crime. Everyone knows the neutrality is artificial and many mystery books will point that out; however, this angry epilogue shows how we aren’t fully aware of what this means: these characters are coerced into their respective roles to entertain the reader. Not only do people dehumanize people like Katsuragi by praising their “genius” but this self-deception can lead to a reckless disregard for their individuality. They don’t care about themselves; they care about living up to the expectation that they are the Holmes and Watson of this story.
How do you analyze and respond to a mystery work like this? I’m not sure: I can see the false starts in trying to reconcile this problematic and they are bound to be disingenuous at best and miss the point at worst.
Perhaps it is best to track the fragmentation and how it clashes with our preconceived notions of mysteries and narrative fiction — and leave it at that.
While I write reviews and criticism primarily for the lofty goals of alleviating boredom and getting nagging thoughts out of my head, I also like to think that my writing (especially about untranslated media that many people will never encounter) provides some consolation to readers who want to experience the work in a different way. The “joke” about the title of this newsletter is that it’s a portmanteau of the Japanese word for reviews (kansou/感想) and consolation.
But they are not substitutes for the actual work. To suggest that they are anything other than the unwise ramblings of a thirty-year-old grad student and wannabe game developer would be sacrilege. And besides, Twitter Marxists who have definitely read Marx and Hegel would say it's undialectical and a distortion of the critical project — and I would never dare fall from the grace of those intellectuals!
Instead, I am more content to discuss my experience of encountering works on their own terms, grasping the development of the narrative as my experience of the work becomes more realized and concrete, and observing my own thoughts in response to this evolving totality. I’ve more or less done this in Minidoshima, the actual Kastel newsletter, but it is far more subdued and I’m just not that interested in putting myself out there.
But I think that books, by their very nature, require criticism that reveals the presence of the reader's predilections. Unlike audiovisual media, books take my knowledge of the world as building blocks for the experiences they want to construct within me. More than any other medium, my own personal experiences dictate how I collaborate with the author in creating this fictional world.[^3]
That's probably why I'm serious and even harsh about reconciliatory and laudatory approaches to this text: not only are people not serious about engaging with the book, they're not serious about their own readings of it. They aren’t taking in the contradictions the writer has intentionally put in to disrupt our worldview. While I don't think the book is anywhere near artful, it does make some very serious and interesting charges against the mystery genre. It would be a shame if it were willfully ignored.
I want my analysis to respect the work and meet its demands as best it can. I want to catch up to its position and understand why my sensibilities as a mystery reader are so wounded. I want to understand why this sometimes middling book affected me so much. This will always be an impossible project that will result in many grumblings from me and readers.
All is to say I cannot provide substantive consolations to people in the form of reviews. The only consolation I can provide is that I have none, but this negativity — this abrasive emptiness that desires to be satisfied — is potent and waiting to be negated for something more concrete.
This is how I interpreted the epilogue: it is a demand for mysteries to take themselves seriously and think for themselves what they want to do. Instead of complaining bitterly about how outdated they are, they should be struggling, questioning, and revaluing what they all stand for. They may end up in awkward positions like the one this book takes, but they provoke people to actually think about how mysteries develop as narrative experiences. A void that threatens the boring heuristics we use is far more interesting than a story that feels complete and nothing else.
Hopefully, my future kansoulations will be as intellectually stimulating as this void has been to me. I’m now going to watch Rabi-Ribi speedruns, bye.
[^1]: Interestingly, the title does not refer to the actual mansion. The mansion is called 落日館, which can be translated to the Sunset Mansion. It refers to a claim by the owner of the mansion that the mystery genre is receding like a sunset. As for the title of the book, red lotuses refer to a specific Buddhist hell realm and make for great imagery for a fucking forest fire.
[^2]: This is why many Amazon and Bookmeter reviews are so critical, claiming this reads like a "light novel": they believe they have been duped by the marketing, which claims this is the next step in fair and logically constructed mysteries. I sorta understand this position since the book has a map of the mansion (a tradition of the genre), but the geography is extremely irrelevant except for one minor clue and the actually important detail is hidden from view. That said, I think it's less a "light novel" and more in the tradition of mystery adventure games like Ace Attorney and especially Professor Layton where spectacle, not logic, is king — hide important clues and only reveal them in the theatrical stage of detective exposition to maximize entertainment value.
[^3]: If you’re interested in this line of thinking, I recommend reading Wolfgang Iser’s The Implied Reader and Act of Reading. If you’re strapped for time, his last essay in the former book “The Reading Process” sums up how I think reading is a self-conscious activity. He also remarks that “the prime usefulness of literary criticism” may be related to how “it helps to make conscious those aspects of the text which would otherwise remain concealed in the subconscious; it satisfies (or helps to satisfy) our desire to talk about what we have read.”