A Game of Cat and Killer

This curious Japanese mystery novel is of the ‘locked room’ or ‘impossible crime’ subgenre, and could also fall under the ‘cat mystery’ classification. Written in a beguiling ‘cozy’ golden-age crime fiction style, it has a darker undercurrent which at times borders on the grotesque. Originally published in Japan in the 1970s - it is the first of the casebooks of Mikeneko Holmes now finally available in an English translation.

The novel is based around nefarious machinations occurring on the campus of Hagoromo Woman’s University (a small residential college). There are less than 500 female students housed onsite in either the dormitory or flats, together with an all-male academic [and support] staff who also reside on University grounds.

A suspected serial killer is operating on the campus, targeting a group of students who have been working afterhours as prostitutes to augment their finances. The serial killer poses as a customer, in the attire of a middle-aged ‘salaryman’ seeking consensual [no-strings] sex in exchange for money.

After the first body turns up [student prostitute Yumiko Kurihura], slashed viciously in her friend Hiroko Misaki’s blood-soaked flat; Chief Inspector Shigera Mitamura of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, assigns Detective Yoshitaro [‘Yoshi’] Katayama to investigate. Detective ‘Yoshi’ is a timid policeman, finding it hard to cope with female company, and with a fear of blood. He is an odd choice to be assigned the case. The older policeman [Chief Mitamura] has an obligation to look after the young Yoshi Katayama. Mitamura was the former partner of Katayama’s father, a legendary cop nicknamed ‘The Demon Detective’ who tragically died on the job during what seemed to be a routine burglary investigation. Yoshi was forced to help bring up his younger sister Harumi [as their mother had passed away earlier]. Mitamura, felt an obligation to his former partner, to take the young policeman Yoshi Katayama [and Harumi] under his wing.

Apart from the murder-mystery angle, there is insight into aspects of Japanese culture that may sit awkwardly in the minds of [some] Western readers. This novel was first published in Japan in 1978, so readers should place the publication date in contextual perspective to its content. There appears a tacit understanding [even acceptability] of sexual relations at the Hagoromo Woman’s University between older male teaching academics and their younger students. I found this very uncomfortable reading, especially when a serial killer is stalking the campus with a razor, butchering female students.

Yoshi Katayama’s first port of call is to visit the Dean of the University, Tomoo Morisaki because he was the official who contacted the Chief of Police, Shigera Mitamura about the suspected prostitution ring on campus. Morisaki, the Dean’s calico cat, curiously named Holmes takes a shine toward the awkwardly shy detective Yoshi, following him around the campus grounds as he explores the University looking for clues. Though the author paints dark and unpleasant undercurrents to the investigation, but his narrative is aligned to a playful sense of absurdity, which acts as a contrast as well as much needed distraction from the deepening sense of foreboding.

There seems to be a link to the students involved in the sexual activity and the serial killings. However, Yoshi soon discovers that the Dean had received an anonymously printed warning letter, and that it appears common knowledge that the Dean is sexual involved with an attractively precocious student – Yuriko Yoshiuka.

Yoshi is assigned a night time stake-out in the repurposed campus cafeteria so he can keep watch on the student dormitory for the serial killer. While on surveillance detail, he discovers that the Dean is not the only academic with eyes for Yuriko Yoshiuka. A second student victim Kazumi Susuki is discovered murdered, her corpse covered in deep and frenzied razor slashes, with blood covering the dormitory floor. Yoshi is assigned a partner, the reliable Detective Hayashi – a family man to help with the case, due to Yoshi’s phobia for blood.

The University enters lockdown when another body is discovered in the repurposed campus cafeteria. The cause of death, is not razor slashes, but blunt force trauma about the head and neck – and curiously, the body was locked inside the cafeteria [where Yoshi previously conducted his vigil of the student dormitory]. No murder weapon or suspect is discovered when the cafeteria door has to be kicked in to retrieve the body.

Yoshi and Hayashi, have to interview and speak with an array of strange characters, such as the PE Teacher Tomita and his sinister wife Asako; the Professor of Chemistry and Physics Akiyosh with his interest in pyrotechnics; the sleazy English Professor Kenchi Ohnka; and worryingly, the pompous University President Shunzoh Abe who is also the chairman of the University Board.

All the while, Yoshi is followed around the University grounds by the Dean’s cat Holmes, who seems to know more than an animal should, and she is joined in seeking Yoshi’s affections by the Dean’s lover Yuriko Yoshiuka.

Contrasting the overt sexual tensions at the University, and female advances on Detective Yoshi - we have the prim and proper matchmaking efforts of Yoshi’s aunt, Mitsue Kojima who is trying to find a ‘homely wife’ for our detective.

Do not be fooled by what appears to be a gentle ‘golden age’ cat mystery, with an impossible crime at its centre. Beneath the veneer lurks a darker reality, one with sexual violence and deviancy, where murder, suicide, corruption and a sense of duty and sorrow vie for the reader’s attention in 1970s Japan.

After the events of A Game of Cat and Killer, the shy and unassuming Yoshitaro [‘Yoshi’] Katayama is a changed man, and he now has Holmes the Cat as his aide.

This is my first exploration of a cat mystery, and it won’t be my last as MacLehose Press / Quercus Imprint is publishing further volumes of Jiro Akagawa’s The Casebooks of Mikeneko Holmes with A Copycat Killing [March 2027] and The Cat Mansion Murders [November 2027].

Despite featuring supporting characters that are less than memorable, and bizarre plot contrivances - the dark machinations embedded in the narrative make up for these shortcomings as the novel reveals extremely unpleasant facets of humanity in an outwardly hospitable country, one that is a nation of Cat lovers.

Translated by Hayden Trowel

Jiro Akagawa is one of Japan’s most prolific and celebrated mystery writers. In a career that spans several decades, he has written over 650 books and sold more than 330 million copies. Working as a salaried employee for twelve years after graduating high school, he won the All Yomimono New Mystery Writers’ Prize for a short novel titled Ghost Train while working a full-time job. In 1978, he became a bestselling novelist with the Mikeneko Holmes no Suiri which recounts the adventures of a detective and his adopted cat; the beloved series continues today with over fifty-five novels, seventy including short stories. It was only then that he quit his corporate job and turned his full attention to writing. He won the Kadokawa Novel Prize in 1980 with Requiem for an Evil Wife, the Japan Mystery Literature Award in 2005, and the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature in 2016 with Tokyo Year Zero. Many of his hit titles have been adapted for the screen and stage, including award-winning films such as Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981), Detective Story (1983), Early Spring Story (1985), Who Do I Choose? (1989), and Chizuko’s Younger Sister (1991). The first Mikeneko Holmes book has also been made into a film and two television series that aired from 1979 to 1984, as well as in 2012.