Blog Tour: Point Zero – Seicho Matsumoto, translated by Louise Heal Kawai

Tokyo, 1958. Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by a go-between. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Teiko travels to the coastal and
snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance. When Kenichi’s brother comes to help her, he is murdered, poisoned in his hotel room.

Soon, Teiko discovers that her husband’s disappearance is tied up with the so-called “pan-pan girls”, women who worked as prostitutes catering to American GIs after the war. Now, ten years later, as the country is recovering, there are those who are willing to take extreme measures to hide that past.

A triumph by Seicho Matsumoto, the master of Japanese mystery writing. A beautifully written crime novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation.

First published in Japanese in 1959, the novel abandoned the template of closed-room mysteries so popular in pre-war Japan to embrace social criticism.

In a radical departure from tradition, the novel has a female protagonist, a housewife seeking to find her missing husband. Respectful of the proprieties expected of a Japanese woman of the time, but stubborn, intrepid and a naturally intuitive sleuth.

Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1982) was Japan’s most successful mystery writer. His first detective novel, Points and Lines, sold over a million copies in Japan. Vessel of Sand, published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates in 1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit.

Louise Heal Kawai is a translator of Japanese literature based in Yokohama. She previously translated Seicho Matsumoto’s A Quiet Place for Bitter
Lemon Press. She is the translator of other works in the mystery genre, including
Seishi Yokomizo’s The Honjin Murders and Death on Gokumon Island, and
Seventeen and The North Light by Hideo Yokoyama.

My thoughts: this was an excellent read, translated from the original Japanese, it brings to life the 1950s post-war country, recovering its identity and economy after being occupied by the US.

Teiko agrees to a marriage arranged through a match maker, but after her husband goes missing she realises she knows next to nothing about the man she married. As she investigates his disappearance, and his brother also goes missing, she uncovers a terrible truth that dates back to the war and someone who will go to any lengths to keep it hidden.

Teiko is doing the work the police seem to be unbothered by, they don’t put much effort into the search for Kenichi, so she and Kenichi’s colleague Honda are the ones doing all the digging. When Honda becomes another victim of the killer, Teiko starts to put the pieces together – and solves the case.

Clever and with enough twists to keep people hooked, this is exceptional crime writing that lingers. Japanese crime fiction had its own golden age, and we’re finally seeing some excellent translations, like this one, reach the English readership.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.