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Review: Edogawa Ranpo - Strange Tales of Mystery & Imagination (2000)
This was a terrific set of short stories. Varied in nature, from the freaky and unexplainable horror, to detective crime. Having read some Japanese crime novels, it was pretty cool to see how they drew influence from Edogawa Ranpo's early works.
Spoilers.
Stories
The Human Chair
I had heard of this story before and basically knew the gist of it. However, as most things are, reading the synopsis and reading the actual story are different experiences.
Being that this was the first story in the book, and my first time reading Egogawa Rampo, I noted that the writing style was rather direct and to the point. There was no dragging, the story was pretty straightforward.
The author of the manuscript had a strong personality and I think that was the freakiest part about the story. He had intent, he had desires. At first, it was out of curiosity that he built the cavity in the chair for himself to sit in. I don't know that stealing was always a goal, but it kind of came as an opportunity to him to support himself.
Where things started to change was when the author began enjoying the experience of other people on him. With the people he enjoyed feeling, he called them love affairs. What's creepy is that these were entirely one-sided. The person sitting on the chairs did not know they were being felt up by a man.
The author then expressed a desire to have a love affair with a Japanese woman, and this was where things became their creepiest, because his affections were directed specifically to Yoshiko, as opposed to the man just enjoying the sensuous nature of it. He purposely moved his body to cushion her.
Of course, Yoshiko freaked out, only to receive a letter right at that moment informing her that the manuscript was just fiction. However, seeing as how the letter had arrived so suddenly, could she really believe that the man in the chair was not in her house as he said he would have been in the manuscript?
This story was very creepy, a great start to this compilation.
The Psychological Test
The set up of this short story reminded a lot of the Japanese crime and mystery novels that I've written.
The first part of the story, the crime being committed, was told entirely from Fukiya's point of view. Fukiya's motivations and methods were explored in detail. I have seen this approach in several Japanese novels, where we really get into the mindset of the criminal, who fancies himself a bit of a mastermind. There were stumbles, but ultimately Fukiya got it done and he only wishes to ride out the wave.
The second part of this novel again played out like Higashino Keigo's detective novels, in which there was a police detective on the case, but the detective had a genius friend who tended to be the one to finally crack it. In this case, Kasamori was the district attorney, and Akechi was his friend.
Kasamori had gathered some helpful information, though none of it too conclusive. Instead, the psychological test he conducted only served as a guide for which direction to look.
Then, it was up to Akechi to find the concrete evidence to get Fukiya, which in this case was his testimony that he had seen the screen two days before the crime, when it directly contradicted the truth.
I will say that that was a bit of a gotcha, as we as the readers did not know that the screen was brought to the home only one day before the crime. So I was a little disappointed that I couldn't have guessed.
The takedown of Fukiya also reminded me a bit of the Ace Attorney games, in which the breakthrough in the case hinged on a single lie, and then the culprit's story would fall apart.
The Caterpillar
This was a story about Tokiko and her disabled husband, Lieutenant Sunaga. Sunaga had been heavily injured in war. He was amputated of all of his limbs, and his face was disfigured.
Tokiko was known as a dedicated and dutiful wife, but she did grow resentful of taking care of Sunaga at times. The short story began with Old Major General Washio, who was Sunaga's former superior and their current landlord, talking about what a pity it was for Tokiko to spend her days with Sunaga. And yet, he had no further comments. For Tokiko to abandon her husband was improper, so her only option was to look after him, even if it meant having nothing else in her life. Her only form of entertainment was visiting Washio's wife and daughter.
Tokiko felt that Sunaga looked like a caterpillar at times, as he was wrapped in a bundle and only able to roll around. He was unable to speak or hear. His eyes were his only way of perceiving the world, and he communicated with Tokiko through writing on a paper with his mouth. Through it all, Tokiko tried to maintain a loving relationship with Sunaga, speaking to him lovingly and such. And yet, she could not deny that she sometimes wished she could be in the presence of someone who wasn't...quite so gruesome.
Tokiko admitted that she was sometimes cruel to Sunaga, as she was resentful of her position. In one such cruel rage, she gauged Sunaga's eyes, ridding him of his only connection to the world. Tokiko regretted it and called on the doctor. She later hugged Sunaga and apologized profusely.
Tokiko went to Washio but went she went back to the house, Sunaga had disappeared. He had left a message, "I forgive you," implying that he forgave Tokiko for her cruelties. Tokiko and Washio tried to find Sunaga, afraid that he would commit suicide. Sunaga was found crawling to the well and falling in. As he did, Tokiko thought of a caterpillar falling off of a tree branch.
I think this story was meant to explore the limits of the human body in such a situation. It reminds me a bit of locked-in syndrome. Sunaga was unable to move, his eyes being his only connection with the world. He was able to write, to some degree. But to Tokiko, he sometimes seemed just a lump of flesh. Someone who was kept alive for the sake of being alive and for nothing else.
I also thought it was really interesting how the story explored Tokiko's feelings. She tried to keep the love alive, but she couldn't help but feel trapped. The only way that Sunaga could think to make her happy was to off himself so that she wouldn't be bound to him, could find a life for herself even if it was as a widow.
The Cliff
This was a shorter story, written out as dialogue between a married couple. I thought it was odd that they were named "Girl" and "Man," despite the text specifying that the Girl was a little bit older than the Man. In any case, I'll keep with these two names.
Girl recounted her relationship with her ex-husband Saito. At first, she considered it a game that Saito wanted to kill her. Kind of a morbid game, but I guess I would consider it more like marital tension, as they were not perfectly in love. I guess it was more like roleplay to keep them on their toes. But over time, Girl realized that the intent to kill her was real.
Saito became interested in crime novels, and his plan to kill was to set up a false persona, so that the crime would be tacked onto the false persona and not himself as Saito. He also had a mistress, though that was not as important in this story.
Girl, becoming afraid, began to carry a pistol around. One night, Saito, dressed as his alter ego, had entered Girl's room with a knife, and Girl shot him in self-defense.
Throughout this time, Man had been working in the house, and he had consoled Girl. In the present day, Girl and Man had been married for 5 months, the death of Saito having been a year ago.
Girl then said that she knew Man had purposely planted all of the ideas in Saito's mind: getting him into crime novels, suggesting the dual personalities. He'd also advised Girl before, that if she had killed Saito while he tried to kill her, she would be released on account of self defense.
Man was getting nervous but Girl insisted that she didn't care, because she liked him too at that time.
However, Girl then went on to say that like Saito, Man was beginning to eye her money. She knew that he had a mistress too.
Girl and Man were seated by a cliff, and as Man tried to push Girl, she stepped to the side, and Man plunged to his death. The short story ended with Girl musing about how easy it was to kill, as she had now killed two of her ex-husbands.
This was a pretty interesting short story and I think at this part of the book, it showcased how Edogawa Rampo experimented with different ways of writing to tell a story. This time, it was short and dialogue-oriented.
The first part of the story was about committing the perfect murder, which Saito was convinced was by setting up two personas. However, this idea was whispered into his ear by Man. Girl pointed out that in fact, the perfect murder would have been one where the murderer need not lift a finger. In this case, the murder was orchestrated by Man, but put in action by Saito (the victim himself), and carried out by Girl.
However, with the way the short story ended, we're left to wonder whether Girl instead has committed the perfect murder. She has killed two of her ex-husbands, but was let off for one and will probably be let off by the second, with self-defence as her reason. Is the perfect murder one in which the murderer is acknowledged to have killed, but is still being let go of?
There is a question as to whether people will get suspicious of Girl's second murder. After all, it's become a pattern, and there are no witnesses. At the same time, I'm thinking that there is some misogyny in this society, where people don't believe that women could be the aggressors. So even though Girl has killed, people will believe that it was in self-defence because there's no way she would plan and execute a murder.
Girl said that she was ready to shoot Saito even without knowing that he had a knife in his hand. And I'm guessing she knew that Man was going to kill her. So maybe it was premeditated, and maybe Girl is the perfect murderer because she can openly murder and people will still let her off because they don't believe her responsible for her actions.
The Hell of Mirrors
This story was about Kan Tanuma, a friend of the narrators. From youth, he had been obsessed with everything related to optics - eyes, mirrors, projects, etc. Due to circumstances in his life, he was left with an inheritance from his parents and as an adult he used all of that to run a lab that would create various mirrors for his own amusement.
The narrator described some of the weird mirrors that Tanuma created, such as one with five holes for arms and limbs so that the image would look like a weird limbless, bodyless creature.
At the climax of the story, Tanuma was locked inside a sphere, where the inside was completely covered with a mirror. The narrator was only able to get Tanuma out by breaking the sphere. When released, it was apparent that he had gone mad.
The story ended with the narrator wondering what Tanuma could have seen that would have driven him mad.
The entire story reminded me a bit of Ito Junji's stories, in which there is an undescribable unspeakable undercurrent of horror. Tanuma's obsession with mirrors and optics was unfathomable. They were neat, sure, but they made Tanuma giddy beyond relief.
After the death of his parents, Tanuma was free to explore his obsession to its full extent. The lab scientists were just there to help him realize them.
The narrator mused about the mirror inside the sphere. Earlier in the story, he had talked about the day when a concave mirror had been passed around at school. The narrator hated that the mirror enlarged his pimples, and the experience left him totally scared of concave mirrors. On the other hand, Tanuma had grown really giddy, to the point that the students thought he was a little weird and laughed at him about it.
Perhaps the joy that Tanuma got from looking at the mirror was the same as what made the narrator fearful of the mirror. Inside the perfect spherical mirror, there was nowhere to turn for Tanuma, he was surrounded by that image and maybe he was so delighted that that was drove him mad. The same thing that might have driven the narrator mad with fear and disgust.
Definitely a very weird story, and the inexplicable nature of the weirdness made it that much more scary and creepy.
The Twins [A Condemned Criminals Confession to a Priest]
This story was just as the title suggested, a confession of a criminal to a priest, about twins. The confessor was the younger twin. He was identical to his older twin in every way except for the mole on his thigh. However, due to family traditions, his brother inherited much of the wealth and status, and even married the younger twin's beloved.
The younger twin was so jealous. Originally, he understood that his older brother had little to do with traditions that were in place, and the marriage was arranged by their parents. However, the younger twin was also a bit of a mess and ran into financial trouble often. He often asked his older brother for help, to the point that the older brother eventually got annoyed. I guess that exacerbated the younger twin's resentment and he put into motion his plan.
The younger twin pretended to go to Korea for job opportunities. Soon after boarding the train, he got off and took another train to Tokyo. So he would be in Tokyo but people would think he was actually elsewhere. Then, he snuck into his brother's house and murdered him. He had made sure to wear the same clothes so that he could easily assume his brother's position, owner of wealth and husband to his beloved.
The younger twin soon fell into tough financial times because he was not careful with his spending. He got an idea when seeing his older brother's fingerprint on a ledger. He would use his brother's fingerprint to commit crimes of theft and robbery. And since his brother did not exist on this world anymore, it would not be tracked to anyone (there were no computer databases back then).
So the younger twin gleefully stole, until he murdered a man, a friend of his older brother's who'd caught him in the act. The younger twin believed himself to be untraceable, and yet the police had approached him with a warrant. The fingerprint that the younger twin had seen on the ledger, and that he had used at scenes of crime, was actually the negative of his own fingerprint. So that was the reason why it didn't look like his own, and he had been using it all around town.
The younger brother had confessed this all to the priest, asking him to relay this to his wife because she had the right to know. And it would probably horrify her to know that the man she had laid with for the last while was actually her brother-in-law, though the younger twin said that he believed she would forgive him, as they had been sweethearts.
The younger brother had also confessed that he had been continually haunted by his brother. The problem was that they had the same face, so the younger brother could not even look at himself in mirrors, in reflections. His body was the same body as his brother's, which was now a corpse. The younger brother was so haunted that he looked forward to his execution.
This story was similar to the Psychological Test in that it bore more similarity to the modern Japanese detective crime novel. In this story, we had not one but two crimes (the two murders). However, the entire story was told from the point of view of the criminal, and the detective did not show up until the end to bring the criminal to justice.
The Red Chamber
This story took place at a meeting among connoisseurs of horror stories. There was a new attendee, Tanaka.
In Tanaka's story, he admitted that he was a serial murderer, who murdered only for the fun of it.
Some of his strategies were to cleverly pretend to help a victim.
This was the case where he directed the victim to the doctor who had never performed surgery. No one could blame Tanaka for not directing him to a doctor, for Tanaka had done that. In another scenario, Tanaka had advised a blind masseuse to walk left, but knowing that the blind masseuse was prideful and hated being told what to do, they walked right as expected and fell into a hole. In two other scenarios, Tanaka called out to people who were about to be in an accident, startling them, and in the process they got themselves killed. This was the situation for a woman who was about to walk on the street as a car was coming, and another victim who was about to jump off of a bridge.
Some of Tanaka's crimes were more sinister. The one he outlined in detail was when he took his friend diving. He had purposely lied to his friend that the water was deep, so that his friend, a novice diver would dive directly into jagged rock. In another case, Tanaka had purposely caught the attention of a circus performer so that she would fall to her death. And in another blatant case of lying, Tanaka had told a woman that her child was in a burning building when they were not.
Tanaka said that he had also committed mass murder by kicking a rock onto a train track that would later derail a train and cause 17 people to die. After he had kicked the rock, Tanaka had informed the authorities, but it was too late. Nonetheless, Tanaka got off scott free because it was presumed to be an accident.
Tanaka claimed that he had killed 99 people, and craved to kill one more. He said that for his 100th kill, he would kill himself. He did so by pretending to shoot a waitress (but the gun only shot a blank). The waitress playfully returned the favour, except the gun this time had a bullet. Like the previous cases, nobody would have suspected the waitress, as the gun was inspected and shown to be a fake.
However, Tanaka only pretended to be dead. He had a packet of blood in his clothes, and the waitress was in on it with him. Tanaka said that everything he had talked about up until then was just a fabrication for entertainment. After all, theirs was a club that enjoyed horror stories.
The club soon decided to disband.
I think the point of the story was that while the club members enjoyed horror stories, Tanaka took the enjoyment of horror and murder too much for their comfort. Having almost witnessed a real murder, I think the club members kind of lost their appetite for murder anymore.
Two Crippled Men
This story was another conversation between two people. Ihara was hosting a new friend he had met called Saito.
Saito had fought in war, at Tsingtao. He was the first "crippled man" in this story because of the disfiguration he had suffered through the war.
Ihara's story was quite different. As a child, he had sleptwalked, but he thought he had been cured of it. As a young man, he began to sleepwalk again. First it started with him approaching people at night without knowing, then it escalated to theft, and it culminated in a murder. All of Ihara's friends and family came to defend his character and that he could not have murdered a man in good conscience. Ihara was cleared of the crime, but it took a toll on him. He returned home and fell very ill, and thus he considered himself a crippled man in the mental sense.
After listening to his tale, Saito pointed out that there was no way Ihara could know that he had sleptwalked without someone telling him. By definition, he would not have been conscious. Saito theorized that Kimura, one of his friends, had heard about Ihara's sleepwalking as a child, and used that fact to gaslight Ihara into thinking he had begun sleepwalking again and was committing crimes. The story ended with Ihara being very angry at Kimura.
During the story, Ihara couldn't help but think that Saito felt a little bit familiar, despitet hem only having met 10 days prior. I kept wondering if Saito was someone from his past. I don't think it makes sense for Saito to have been Kimura. What would Kimura have to gain by revealing his secrets? But that was never resolved.
This story was more centred on the fact that there was a wide open opportunity for Kimura to take advantage of Ihara's past medical conditions and to trick him into thinking he had committed all of these crimes, when in fact it was probably Kimura who was committing them and pinning them on Ihara. This was a long con, which started with Ihara being made to believe that he burst into his friend's room at night to orate a speech, to Ihara having stolen a watch from the clerk's desk. This story of Ihara's sleepwalking had spread throughout the community widely enough that other people knew about the sleepwalking so that helped Kimura spread the word. And it got so far that Ihara even believed he had killed a man and it ruined his health.
Maybe Saito told Ihara because while Saito couldn't get revenge for his state of health, maybe Ihara could do something to get back at Kimura.
The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture
This was a peculiar story about our narrator taking a trip to Uotsu. He had seen an unusual mirage in the sky. Afterwards, he took a trip where he saw an old man wrap a tablet in a cloth. Despite his fear, our narrator approached the old man and heard his story.
The old man showed the narrator a rag doll picture of an old man and his lover. He then gave the narrator his magic binoculars that could only be viewed safely through one end. Through the binoculars, the rag doll picture looked incredibly lifelike.
The old man then told the story of his older brother. He had bought the binoculars, and become obsessive. Over what, the old man went to find out. He followed his brother to a location where a mirage was also seen in the sky. The brother told the old man that he had found a beautiful woman while looking through his binoculars and was trying to find her again.
The brother eventually found the woman, only to find out she was a rag doll painting in a peep show. In the picture, she was embraced by a lover.
One day, the old man accidentally looked through the wrong end of the binoculars at his brother. The brother then shrunk and floated into the sky. The old man later found him in the rag doll picture, having replaced the lover.
The old man's parents didn't believe the story, but he knew. The man in the picture now had Western clothes, and the old man also mentioned that over time, he aged while the woman who was originally a doll did not age at all.
This was a bit of a Lovecraftian story, for lack of a better term to use. The narrator began the story unsure of whether his story was a dream at all. Then there was the unexplainable mirage that was seen by both the narrator and the old man when he was younger. The magic binoculars themselves also simply had no explanation.
Originally, I had wondered whether the brother had accidentally turned the beautiful woman into a rag doll by looking through the wrong end of the binoculars, but considering that she did not age, I think it's safe for us to assume that she was always a doll.
The story did end on a bit of a sentimental note. The old man was heartened by the fact that at least his brother had found love and happiness with the beautiful woman. He would take the tablet out when passing beautiful landscapes so that his brother and the woman, whom he called sister-in-law, could enjoy it.
All a very peculiar story that the narrator still can't tell whether it happened or not, but that's not the point, just that this is a story.
Writing & Translation
The version I read was translated by James B. Harris. There was an interesting foreward so I looked him up, and apparently he was of mixed Japanese and Western descent. While Edogawa Ranpo understood English, he was not so proficient at writing, and James Harris wasn't perfectly fluent in Japanese either (I forget the details). But I thought this was a really well done translation that really drew me in.
What amazed me was the sheer range that Edogawa Ranpo covered. He wrote some stories that were really freaky and scary, some that were gruesome, but some that were regular detective fiction, so modern it wouldn't be out of place now. I can see how both crime and horror writers took inspiration from Ranpo.
I also think the benefit of writing short stories was that Ranpo had the capacity to explore these different styles and themes. This is a trait I have found in other short story writers too, that their works tend to be quite varied as they get a lot of practice, and they're able to use the entirety of a story to make a statement, as the story itself is not too long.
Overall
I really loved this collection. I would be interested in checking out more translated works of Edogawa Ranpo.
Spoilers.
Stories
The Human Chair
I had heard of this story before and basically knew the gist of it. However, as most things are, reading the synopsis and reading the actual story are different experiences.
Being that this was the first story in the book, and my first time reading Egogawa Rampo, I noted that the writing style was rather direct and to the point. There was no dragging, the story was pretty straightforward.
The author of the manuscript had a strong personality and I think that was the freakiest part about the story. He had intent, he had desires. At first, it was out of curiosity that he built the cavity in the chair for himself to sit in. I don't know that stealing was always a goal, but it kind of came as an opportunity to him to support himself.
Where things started to change was when the author began enjoying the experience of other people on him. With the people he enjoyed feeling, he called them love affairs. What's creepy is that these were entirely one-sided. The person sitting on the chairs did not know they were being felt up by a man.
The author then expressed a desire to have a love affair with a Japanese woman, and this was where things became their creepiest, because his affections were directed specifically to Yoshiko, as opposed to the man just enjoying the sensuous nature of it. He purposely moved his body to cushion her.
Of course, Yoshiko freaked out, only to receive a letter right at that moment informing her that the manuscript was just fiction. However, seeing as how the letter had arrived so suddenly, could she really believe that the man in the chair was not in her house as he said he would have been in the manuscript?
This story was very creepy, a great start to this compilation.
The Psychological Test
The set up of this short story reminded a lot of the Japanese crime and mystery novels that I've written.
The first part of the story, the crime being committed, was told entirely from Fukiya's point of view. Fukiya's motivations and methods were explored in detail. I have seen this approach in several Japanese novels, where we really get into the mindset of the criminal, who fancies himself a bit of a mastermind. There were stumbles, but ultimately Fukiya got it done and he only wishes to ride out the wave.
The second part of this novel again played out like Higashino Keigo's detective novels, in which there was a police detective on the case, but the detective had a genius friend who tended to be the one to finally crack it. In this case, Kasamori was the district attorney, and Akechi was his friend.
Kasamori had gathered some helpful information, though none of it too conclusive. Instead, the psychological test he conducted only served as a guide for which direction to look.
Then, it was up to Akechi to find the concrete evidence to get Fukiya, which in this case was his testimony that he had seen the screen two days before the crime, when it directly contradicted the truth.
I will say that that was a bit of a gotcha, as we as the readers did not know that the screen was brought to the home only one day before the crime. So I was a little disappointed that I couldn't have guessed.
The takedown of Fukiya also reminded me a bit of the Ace Attorney games, in which the breakthrough in the case hinged on a single lie, and then the culprit's story would fall apart.
The Caterpillar
This was a story about Tokiko and her disabled husband, Lieutenant Sunaga. Sunaga had been heavily injured in war. He was amputated of all of his limbs, and his face was disfigured.
Tokiko was known as a dedicated and dutiful wife, but she did grow resentful of taking care of Sunaga at times. The short story began with Old Major General Washio, who was Sunaga's former superior and their current landlord, talking about what a pity it was for Tokiko to spend her days with Sunaga. And yet, he had no further comments. For Tokiko to abandon her husband was improper, so her only option was to look after him, even if it meant having nothing else in her life. Her only form of entertainment was visiting Washio's wife and daughter.
Tokiko felt that Sunaga looked like a caterpillar at times, as he was wrapped in a bundle and only able to roll around. He was unable to speak or hear. His eyes were his only way of perceiving the world, and he communicated with Tokiko through writing on a paper with his mouth. Through it all, Tokiko tried to maintain a loving relationship with Sunaga, speaking to him lovingly and such. And yet, she could not deny that she sometimes wished she could be in the presence of someone who wasn't...quite so gruesome.
Tokiko admitted that she was sometimes cruel to Sunaga, as she was resentful of her position. In one such cruel rage, she gauged Sunaga's eyes, ridding him of his only connection to the world. Tokiko regretted it and called on the doctor. She later hugged Sunaga and apologized profusely.
Tokiko went to Washio but went she went back to the house, Sunaga had disappeared. He had left a message, "I forgive you," implying that he forgave Tokiko for her cruelties. Tokiko and Washio tried to find Sunaga, afraid that he would commit suicide. Sunaga was found crawling to the well and falling in. As he did, Tokiko thought of a caterpillar falling off of a tree branch.
I think this story was meant to explore the limits of the human body in such a situation. It reminds me a bit of locked-in syndrome. Sunaga was unable to move, his eyes being his only connection with the world. He was able to write, to some degree. But to Tokiko, he sometimes seemed just a lump of flesh. Someone who was kept alive for the sake of being alive and for nothing else.
I also thought it was really interesting how the story explored Tokiko's feelings. She tried to keep the love alive, but she couldn't help but feel trapped. The only way that Sunaga could think to make her happy was to off himself so that she wouldn't be bound to him, could find a life for herself even if it was as a widow.
The Cliff
This was a shorter story, written out as dialogue between a married couple. I thought it was odd that they were named "Girl" and "Man," despite the text specifying that the Girl was a little bit older than the Man. In any case, I'll keep with these two names.
Girl recounted her relationship with her ex-husband Saito. At first, she considered it a game that Saito wanted to kill her. Kind of a morbid game, but I guess I would consider it more like marital tension, as they were not perfectly in love. I guess it was more like roleplay to keep them on their toes. But over time, Girl realized that the intent to kill her was real.
Saito became interested in crime novels, and his plan to kill was to set up a false persona, so that the crime would be tacked onto the false persona and not himself as Saito. He also had a mistress, though that was not as important in this story.
Girl, becoming afraid, began to carry a pistol around. One night, Saito, dressed as his alter ego, had entered Girl's room with a knife, and Girl shot him in self-defense.
Throughout this time, Man had been working in the house, and he had consoled Girl. In the present day, Girl and Man had been married for 5 months, the death of Saito having been a year ago.
Girl then said that she knew Man had purposely planted all of the ideas in Saito's mind: getting him into crime novels, suggesting the dual personalities. He'd also advised Girl before, that if she had killed Saito while he tried to kill her, she would be released on account of self defense.
Man was getting nervous but Girl insisted that she didn't care, because she liked him too at that time.
However, Girl then went on to say that like Saito, Man was beginning to eye her money. She knew that he had a mistress too.
Girl and Man were seated by a cliff, and as Man tried to push Girl, she stepped to the side, and Man plunged to his death. The short story ended with Girl musing about how easy it was to kill, as she had now killed two of her ex-husbands.
This was a pretty interesting short story and I think at this part of the book, it showcased how Edogawa Rampo experimented with different ways of writing to tell a story. This time, it was short and dialogue-oriented.
The first part of the story was about committing the perfect murder, which Saito was convinced was by setting up two personas. However, this idea was whispered into his ear by Man. Girl pointed out that in fact, the perfect murder would have been one where the murderer need not lift a finger. In this case, the murder was orchestrated by Man, but put in action by Saito (the victim himself), and carried out by Girl.
However, with the way the short story ended, we're left to wonder whether Girl instead has committed the perfect murder. She has killed two of her ex-husbands, but was let off for one and will probably be let off by the second, with self-defence as her reason. Is the perfect murder one in which the murderer is acknowledged to have killed, but is still being let go of?
There is a question as to whether people will get suspicious of Girl's second murder. After all, it's become a pattern, and there are no witnesses. At the same time, I'm thinking that there is some misogyny in this society, where people don't believe that women could be the aggressors. So even though Girl has killed, people will believe that it was in self-defence because there's no way she would plan and execute a murder.
Girl said that she was ready to shoot Saito even without knowing that he had a knife in his hand. And I'm guessing she knew that Man was going to kill her. So maybe it was premeditated, and maybe Girl is the perfect murderer because she can openly murder and people will still let her off because they don't believe her responsible for her actions.
The Hell of Mirrors
This story was about Kan Tanuma, a friend of the narrators. From youth, he had been obsessed with everything related to optics - eyes, mirrors, projects, etc. Due to circumstances in his life, he was left with an inheritance from his parents and as an adult he used all of that to run a lab that would create various mirrors for his own amusement.
The narrator described some of the weird mirrors that Tanuma created, such as one with five holes for arms and limbs so that the image would look like a weird limbless, bodyless creature.
At the climax of the story, Tanuma was locked inside a sphere, where the inside was completely covered with a mirror. The narrator was only able to get Tanuma out by breaking the sphere. When released, it was apparent that he had gone mad.
The story ended with the narrator wondering what Tanuma could have seen that would have driven him mad.
The entire story reminded me a bit of Ito Junji's stories, in which there is an undescribable unspeakable undercurrent of horror. Tanuma's obsession with mirrors and optics was unfathomable. They were neat, sure, but they made Tanuma giddy beyond relief.
After the death of his parents, Tanuma was free to explore his obsession to its full extent. The lab scientists were just there to help him realize them.
The narrator mused about the mirror inside the sphere. Earlier in the story, he had talked about the day when a concave mirror had been passed around at school. The narrator hated that the mirror enlarged his pimples, and the experience left him totally scared of concave mirrors. On the other hand, Tanuma had grown really giddy, to the point that the students thought he was a little weird and laughed at him about it.
Perhaps the joy that Tanuma got from looking at the mirror was the same as what made the narrator fearful of the mirror. Inside the perfect spherical mirror, there was nowhere to turn for Tanuma, he was surrounded by that image and maybe he was so delighted that that was drove him mad. The same thing that might have driven the narrator mad with fear and disgust.
Definitely a very weird story, and the inexplicable nature of the weirdness made it that much more scary and creepy.
The Twins [A Condemned Criminals Confession to a Priest]
This story was just as the title suggested, a confession of a criminal to a priest, about twins. The confessor was the younger twin. He was identical to his older twin in every way except for the mole on his thigh. However, due to family traditions, his brother inherited much of the wealth and status, and even married the younger twin's beloved.
The younger twin was so jealous. Originally, he understood that his older brother had little to do with traditions that were in place, and the marriage was arranged by their parents. However, the younger twin was also a bit of a mess and ran into financial trouble often. He often asked his older brother for help, to the point that the older brother eventually got annoyed. I guess that exacerbated the younger twin's resentment and he put into motion his plan.
The younger twin pretended to go to Korea for job opportunities. Soon after boarding the train, he got off and took another train to Tokyo. So he would be in Tokyo but people would think he was actually elsewhere. Then, he snuck into his brother's house and murdered him. He had made sure to wear the same clothes so that he could easily assume his brother's position, owner of wealth and husband to his beloved.
The younger twin soon fell into tough financial times because he was not careful with his spending. He got an idea when seeing his older brother's fingerprint on a ledger. He would use his brother's fingerprint to commit crimes of theft and robbery. And since his brother did not exist on this world anymore, it would not be tracked to anyone (there were no computer databases back then).
So the younger twin gleefully stole, until he murdered a man, a friend of his older brother's who'd caught him in the act. The younger twin believed himself to be untraceable, and yet the police had approached him with a warrant. The fingerprint that the younger twin had seen on the ledger, and that he had used at scenes of crime, was actually the negative of his own fingerprint. So that was the reason why it didn't look like his own, and he had been using it all around town.
The younger brother had confessed this all to the priest, asking him to relay this to his wife because she had the right to know. And it would probably horrify her to know that the man she had laid with for the last while was actually her brother-in-law, though the younger twin said that he believed she would forgive him, as they had been sweethearts.
The younger brother had also confessed that he had been continually haunted by his brother. The problem was that they had the same face, so the younger brother could not even look at himself in mirrors, in reflections. His body was the same body as his brother's, which was now a corpse. The younger brother was so haunted that he looked forward to his execution.
This story was similar to the Psychological Test in that it bore more similarity to the modern Japanese detective crime novel. In this story, we had not one but two crimes (the two murders). However, the entire story was told from the point of view of the criminal, and the detective did not show up until the end to bring the criminal to justice.
The Red Chamber
This story took place at a meeting among connoisseurs of horror stories. There was a new attendee, Tanaka.
In Tanaka's story, he admitted that he was a serial murderer, who murdered only for the fun of it.
Some of his strategies were to cleverly pretend to help a victim.
This was the case where he directed the victim to the doctor who had never performed surgery. No one could blame Tanaka for not directing him to a doctor, for Tanaka had done that. In another scenario, Tanaka had advised a blind masseuse to walk left, but knowing that the blind masseuse was prideful and hated being told what to do, they walked right as expected and fell into a hole. In two other scenarios, Tanaka called out to people who were about to be in an accident, startling them, and in the process they got themselves killed. This was the situation for a woman who was about to walk on the street as a car was coming, and another victim who was about to jump off of a bridge.
Some of Tanaka's crimes were more sinister. The one he outlined in detail was when he took his friend diving. He had purposely lied to his friend that the water was deep, so that his friend, a novice diver would dive directly into jagged rock. In another case, Tanaka had purposely caught the attention of a circus performer so that she would fall to her death. And in another blatant case of lying, Tanaka had told a woman that her child was in a burning building when they were not.
Tanaka said that he had also committed mass murder by kicking a rock onto a train track that would later derail a train and cause 17 people to die. After he had kicked the rock, Tanaka had informed the authorities, but it was too late. Nonetheless, Tanaka got off scott free because it was presumed to be an accident.
Tanaka claimed that he had killed 99 people, and craved to kill one more. He said that for his 100th kill, he would kill himself. He did so by pretending to shoot a waitress (but the gun only shot a blank). The waitress playfully returned the favour, except the gun this time had a bullet. Like the previous cases, nobody would have suspected the waitress, as the gun was inspected and shown to be a fake.
However, Tanaka only pretended to be dead. He had a packet of blood in his clothes, and the waitress was in on it with him. Tanaka said that everything he had talked about up until then was just a fabrication for entertainment. After all, theirs was a club that enjoyed horror stories.
The club soon decided to disband.
I think the point of the story was that while the club members enjoyed horror stories, Tanaka took the enjoyment of horror and murder too much for their comfort. Having almost witnessed a real murder, I think the club members kind of lost their appetite for murder anymore.
Two Crippled Men
This story was another conversation between two people. Ihara was hosting a new friend he had met called Saito.
Saito had fought in war, at Tsingtao. He was the first "crippled man" in this story because of the disfiguration he had suffered through the war.
Ihara's story was quite different. As a child, he had sleptwalked, but he thought he had been cured of it. As a young man, he began to sleepwalk again. First it started with him approaching people at night without knowing, then it escalated to theft, and it culminated in a murder. All of Ihara's friends and family came to defend his character and that he could not have murdered a man in good conscience. Ihara was cleared of the crime, but it took a toll on him. He returned home and fell very ill, and thus he considered himself a crippled man in the mental sense.
After listening to his tale, Saito pointed out that there was no way Ihara could know that he had sleptwalked without someone telling him. By definition, he would not have been conscious. Saito theorized that Kimura, one of his friends, had heard about Ihara's sleepwalking as a child, and used that fact to gaslight Ihara into thinking he had begun sleepwalking again and was committing crimes. The story ended with Ihara being very angry at Kimura.
During the story, Ihara couldn't help but think that Saito felt a little bit familiar, despitet hem only having met 10 days prior. I kept wondering if Saito was someone from his past. I don't think it makes sense for Saito to have been Kimura. What would Kimura have to gain by revealing his secrets? But that was never resolved.
This story was more centred on the fact that there was a wide open opportunity for Kimura to take advantage of Ihara's past medical conditions and to trick him into thinking he had committed all of these crimes, when in fact it was probably Kimura who was committing them and pinning them on Ihara. This was a long con, which started with Ihara being made to believe that he burst into his friend's room at night to orate a speech, to Ihara having stolen a watch from the clerk's desk. This story of Ihara's sleepwalking had spread throughout the community widely enough that other people knew about the sleepwalking so that helped Kimura spread the word. And it got so far that Ihara even believed he had killed a man and it ruined his health.
Maybe Saito told Ihara because while Saito couldn't get revenge for his state of health, maybe Ihara could do something to get back at Kimura.
The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture
This was a peculiar story about our narrator taking a trip to Uotsu. He had seen an unusual mirage in the sky. Afterwards, he took a trip where he saw an old man wrap a tablet in a cloth. Despite his fear, our narrator approached the old man and heard his story.
The old man showed the narrator a rag doll picture of an old man and his lover. He then gave the narrator his magic binoculars that could only be viewed safely through one end. Through the binoculars, the rag doll picture looked incredibly lifelike.
The old man then told the story of his older brother. He had bought the binoculars, and become obsessive. Over what, the old man went to find out. He followed his brother to a location where a mirage was also seen in the sky. The brother told the old man that he had found a beautiful woman while looking through his binoculars and was trying to find her again.
The brother eventually found the woman, only to find out she was a rag doll painting in a peep show. In the picture, she was embraced by a lover.
One day, the old man accidentally looked through the wrong end of the binoculars at his brother. The brother then shrunk and floated into the sky. The old man later found him in the rag doll picture, having replaced the lover.
The old man's parents didn't believe the story, but he knew. The man in the picture now had Western clothes, and the old man also mentioned that over time, he aged while the woman who was originally a doll did not age at all.
This was a bit of a Lovecraftian story, for lack of a better term to use. The narrator began the story unsure of whether his story was a dream at all. Then there was the unexplainable mirage that was seen by both the narrator and the old man when he was younger. The magic binoculars themselves also simply had no explanation.
Originally, I had wondered whether the brother had accidentally turned the beautiful woman into a rag doll by looking through the wrong end of the binoculars, but considering that she did not age, I think it's safe for us to assume that she was always a doll.
The story did end on a bit of a sentimental note. The old man was heartened by the fact that at least his brother had found love and happiness with the beautiful woman. He would take the tablet out when passing beautiful landscapes so that his brother and the woman, whom he called sister-in-law, could enjoy it.
All a very peculiar story that the narrator still can't tell whether it happened or not, but that's not the point, just that this is a story.
Writing & Translation
The version I read was translated by James B. Harris. There was an interesting foreward so I looked him up, and apparently he was of mixed Japanese and Western descent. While Edogawa Ranpo understood English, he was not so proficient at writing, and James Harris wasn't perfectly fluent in Japanese either (I forget the details). But I thought this was a really well done translation that really drew me in.
What amazed me was the sheer range that Edogawa Ranpo covered. He wrote some stories that were really freaky and scary, some that were gruesome, but some that were regular detective fiction, so modern it wouldn't be out of place now. I can see how both crime and horror writers took inspiration from Ranpo.
I also think the benefit of writing short stories was that Ranpo had the capacity to explore these different styles and themes. This is a trait I have found in other short story writers too, that their works tend to be quite varied as they get a lot of practice, and they're able to use the entirety of a story to make a statement, as the story itself is not too long.
Overall
I really loved this collection. I would be interested in checking out more translated works of Edogawa Ranpo.