The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo

Pushkin Vertigo, 320 pages, $14.95 (c2020)

I think it’s a revelation to read books written by foreign authors. For some (most?) books there are nuances we may not fully understand from the viewpoint of our own culture without annotations or cultural treatises, but with the help of a good translation, we will get the gist of the story and appreciate the culture. (I should add that sometimes I don’t fully understand the culture of an American book with a strong regional flavor! I remember when I first had to figure out what a "moon pie" was!)

Seishi Yokomizo, a writer treasured by the Japanese, wrote many mystery books. He was a great fan of Sherlock Holmes. That influence, with the exception of an Inverness cape that makes a brief appearance in the story and the classic mystery book structure of many suspects and deaths, doesn’t affect what appears to be a very Japanese story in “The Inugami Case.” So far, four of his books have been translated into English over the last few years. (As an aside, the covers for these books are stunning.) Can he become a hit in the United States forty years after his death?

“The Inugami Curse” was written in 1950, and it is set just after the end of WWII. A few of the characters refer to their own release from the military and eventual repatriation into Japanese society. It is not a political novel, however; there is no real reference to Japan’s loss or Allied prominence in Japan’s governance. Instead, it is a Japanese tale told in a melodramatic way, with much sweating and hair-tearing, glaring and snarky eyerolls. There are daring references to the breaking of societal mores. And there is an abundance of human anguish, regret, sacrifice, and feelings of entitlement. It could be an American 1970s nighttime soap opera transported across the sea.

“The Injugami Curse” is also known as “The Inugami Clan.” That perhaps is more descriptive. The deaths, torments, and mental pain are contained within the Inugami family compound.

Let me spill the beans a little. You won’t gain the following knowledge until a bit into the book, but I see no harm in listing the family characters and the contents of Sahei’s will.

Rich old man Sahei Inugami has died, leaving three daughters, who are half-sisters because their mothers were Sahei’s mistressees. There is also Tamayo, the granddaughter of Sahei’s best friend, the priest of the local Shinto shrine. After Tamayo was orphaned, Sahei chose to raise her as a family member. She is roughly the same age as Sahei’s three grandsons by his daughters.

This is where I am going to plant a spoiler alert. If you do not want to know the contents of Sahei’s will — and there’s a lot of family melodrama before the actual reading of the will — then scroll on by.

SPOILER ALERT

Naturally, the grandsons, especially the eldest, Kiyo, are expected to inherit Sahei’s empire. The in-fighting among the half-sisters is vicious and sly. It gets worse because old man Inugami pulled a fast one on everyone. According to the will, the empire goes to Tamayo but only if she marries one of his grandsons. If all the grandsons die within three months from the reading of the will, Tamayo is free to marry whom she wants. If Tamayo dies, Kiyo gets to run the business, the rest of the estate is divided into five parts, two of which will go to a mystery man, Shizuma Oanuma. Can you say, everyone is now ripe for killing or being killed?

END SPOILER

Renowned private detective Kosuke Kindaichi was called before the reading of the will to investigate some hanky-panky the estate lawyer suspected was happening. Then the lawyer was murdered. Good thing Kindaichi was on-site. He witnesses the reading of the will. Yes, he thinks, there’s a lot going on and there’s bound to be some resulting chaos.

Indeed.

There is the first murder, then the second. Will there be a third, and a fourth? Haha! You will have to read the book. I will say that the murders are bizarre and the display of the bodies ritualistic.

Kindaichi is a very excitable detective. Like the hound of the Baskervilles baying in the dark signaled a death, Kindaichi signals his presence by viciously scratching and shaking his head when he has an aha! moment. (I don’t know, is this a cultural thing? Do a lot of Japanese do this? Japanese of a certain age? Or is it a tic, like Columbo and his, “Ah, one more thing,” and has nothing to do with Japanese culture?) It’s hard not to get waylaid by the odd-to-Western-understanding gestures, grimaces, tremblings, side-eyed venomous glances. It all adds to the color and exotic nature of the story, and once I got used to and accepted the accentuated reactions, the story flowed more easily.

In Japan, Yokomizo has received many accolades and several books were made into movies. I don’t know what Wikimedia’s attribution is, but his page says he is referred to as “ the Japanese John Dickson Carr.” In the case of "The Inugami Curse," Yokomizo has truly developed a unique mystery within the classic whodunnit framework.