Translated by Jesse Kirkwood

My 20 Books of Summer reading is off to a good start with this 1949 Japanese locked room mystery, now available from Pushkin Press in a new English translation. Thanks to Pushkin, I’ve been able to try several Japanese classic crime authors over the last few years, including Seishi Yokomizo, Yukito Ayatsuji and Soji Shimada. The Noh Mask Murder is the first book I’ve read by Akimitsu Takagi and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The novel opens with a discussion between Koichi Yanagi, a chemist who has recently returned to Japan after serving in Burma during the war, and his old school friend, Akimitsu Takagi (yes, the author himself, who appears as a character in his own novel – just like Anthony Horowitz in his Horowitz and Hawthorne series). Akimitsu explains to Koichi that he wants to write a new kind of detective novel, one based on a mystery he has solved for himself in real life:

‘I’d tackle some fiendish real-life mystery, then set down precisely how I solved it in the form of a novel. My readers would be provided with the exact same evidence as the author. They’d be able to follow the detective-narrator’s train of thought, assess the appropriateness of his actions – and even come up with their own alternatives. But I don’t imagine an opportunity like that will ever present itself…’

His opportunity comes sooner than he had imagined when Koichi stumbles upon a mystery at the Chizui family mansion, where he has been staying since returning from the war. The head of the household, Professor Chizui, who was once a friend of Koichi’s, died ten years earlier and the house is now inhabited by his two children and the family of his younger brother, Tajiro. The first sign that something is wrong within the Chizui mansion comes when an eerie figure wearing a sinister Noh mask is seen at one of the windows. Soon after this, Tajiro is found dead inside a locked room, with a smell of jasmine in the air and a Noh mask lying on the floor beside him. Akimitsu Takagi joins Koichi at the house to investigate the murder, but when they discover that someone has called the undertaker to order three coffins, it seems that there’s going to be more than just one murder to investigate!

The mystery is a fascinating one and although some time is spent discussing the mechanisms of how the locked room murder took place, the story never becomes too bogged down by the puzzle aspect; the focus is on the characters, their relationships and their motives. I did find the structure slightly confusing at times as we know we’re reading a book within a book written by Akimitsu Takagi (as both character and author), but within that there’s a journal written by Koichi and a long letter written by Hiroyuki Ishikari, the public prosecutor, so the narrative is sometimes three layers deep. There are some clever twists towards the end, however, which might not have worked if it had been structured differently.

Apart from the mystery, I found it interesting to learn about the different types of mask used in Japanese theatre and how although the Noh mask, which represents a demon, cannot change expression the actors can still use it to show various emotions by tilting the mask up and down and by the clever use of lighting. With the story being set in the post-war period, it’s also interesting to hear the characters reflect on the irony of being so concerned with the death of one person after living through a war in which millions died. If you kill a man in peacetime you’re considered a murderer, says Tajiro’s son, Rintaro, but if you kill a man on the battlefield you’re given a medal.

I really enjoyed The Noh Mask Murder, then, but be warned – in the prologue, where Takagi is discussing his plans for a detective novel, he casually spoils the solution of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Not a problem for me as I’ve already read it, but I wish authors wouldn’t do that!

Thanks to Pushkin Vertigo for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 1/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.