The Ginza Ghost by Keikichi ŌsakaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Keikichi Osaka (1912-1945) was born too late. He wrote his first detective story in 1932 (published thanks to the help of established detective author Koga Saburo), but in 1937 Japan entered the war and society started frowning upon Western-style detective stories as undesirable. Osaka had to switch to spy stories and comical stuff, and was unable to write anything of value. On top of that, he was drafted in 1943 and sent to the Philippines where he succumbed to disease under harsh circumstances (for an impression of those circumstances, just read Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka). So he only wrote detective stories for a short five years and was forgotten after his death. Happily, we now see a re-appreciation of his work which foreshadows the puzzle mystery boom from just after the war. We even have a volume of his stories in English, for which translator Ho-Ling Wong is to be applauded.
The book contains 12 stories, in a representative selection (modern Japanese editions contain together about 30 stories, which is probably all there is). When you have seen other reviews by me about Japanese detective stories (such as Murder in the Crooked House), you know already I am not a great fan of pure puzzle mysteries, but happily Osaka rises above that limitation.
The earliest story in the collection - and the first one published by Osaka - is "The Hangman of the Department Store," and there we still find the kind unrealistic solution that is typical of so many puzzle stories. But all other stories are better, with the sole exception of "The Hungry Letter-Box," which is one of the comical spy stories written in the late 1930s, and indeed negligible. The title story, by the way, rests also on a trick (of the way of looking at things in a different manner) and is not as strong as the following stories which are my favorites:
By far the best story in the book is "The Mourning Locomotive," a story which has nothing to do with puzzles or "honkaku." It is a sad and tragic tale, without a crime, but it contains a mystery behind which we find deep human feelings. The story is set in a railway depot, where the workers have to clean up the trains after deadly accidents have happened by running over suicidal people. They are surprised when at a given time the trains start running over pigs, always at the same location, and with the same driver. Their search leads them to a shop selling funeral wreaths and a mysterious girl peeping through the doors at the back of the shop...
Very good is also "The Three Madmen", seemingly a traditional whodunit, but which by playing with notions of sanity and insanity leads to a great surprise at the end.
I also liked Osaka's final story "The Demon in the Mine," set inside a coal mine with very harsh working conditions. When one miner is sacrificed in the name of safety for the others, it seems as if his ghost is killing those who have sealed him up inside a tunnel...
Impressive is also "The Monster of the Lighthouse," in which a series of baffling happenings seems to point at something supernatural, but there is of course a logical explanation. Although this one is rather unrealistic, the story thrilled me because of the painful human drama.
Another eerie take is "A Cold Night's Clearing," set on a snowy night. The ski tracks leading away from the house where a murder has happened, gradually disappear, as if the murderer had flown up to the sky. The fate of the child in the story is heartbreaking...
The best of Osaka Keikichi's stories have an unusual atmosphere and even hallucinatory quality, but the strong point - in marked contrast to much (Shin) Honkaku fiction - is that he doesn't need any weird-shaped mansions or desert islands, but sets his stories in our unremarkable, daily-life world where his imagination finds weirdness behind the veil.
There is a good introduction by Taku Ashibe (writer of Murder in the Red Chamber).
An excellent book which fully deserves four stars.
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