Matsumoto Seichō (1909–1992)

This is my idea of Japanese noir. Slow pace with lots of daily mundanities, lots of potential leads that don't pan out, lots of thinking and reading the newspapers or magazines. Time passes very suddenly in the space of a line. Sometimes the psychology of the crime can be very raw and extra messed up, but the dimly-lit homey public spaces (like Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows) and countryside farmhouses (like in Old Enough!) ground me enough. I can read a few more books of Imanishi just reading magazines for clues and travelling on trains to explore wild leads.… (more)

Near the end I looked at some of the Amazon reviews to see if I was the only one who thought it was a badly written book. There I found some people who talked about how much they enjoyed being introduced to some descriptions of post-war life in Japan and some elements of Japanese culture. This made me reevaluate my opinion.

I don't recall anyone talking about the language. Is this a good translation of the Japanese? The writing reminds me a little of the short staccato sentences of Hemingway, but done by a teenager, not too adept at writing. The short sentences went something like this: "He was at the bar." "Was he at the bar?" "He was at the bar." Is this how Japanese people speak?

The story begins with a murder in a rail yard in Tokyo. The victim's face has been bashed to a pulp, making him unrecognizable. Soon after we find that the Tokyo police have sent off a photo of the victim to a police station in another town as part of their investigation, asking if anyone there can identify him. What the heck?

There were many incongruities and far, far too many names and places for me to keep track of. Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy the book as much as others did -- I was lost.… (more)