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WORK TITLE: A Quiet Place
WORK NOTES: trans by Louise Heal Kawai
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1909-1992
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Japanese
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born December 21, 1909; died August 4, 1992; married; children.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Chaired the president of Mystery Writers of Japan from 1963 to 1971.
AWARDS:Akutagawa Prize, 1952; Mystery Writers of Japan Award, 1957; Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature, 1967; Kikuchi Kan Prize, 1970; Asahi Prize, 1990.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Internet Bookwatch, September, 2016, review of A Quiet Place.
Publishers Weekly June 20, 2016, review of A Quiet Place. p. 136.
ONLINE
Criminalelement.com, http://www.criminalelement.com (February 25, 2017), review of A Quiet Place
Japan Society Web site, http://www.japansociety.org.uk (February 25, 2017), review of A Quiet Place
London Independent Online, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (August 11, 1992), James Kirkup, “Obituary: Seicho Matsumoto.”
LC control no.: n 80026097
Descriptive conventions:
rda
LC classification: PL856.A8
Personal name heading:
Matsumoto, Seichō, 1909-1992
Variant(s): Matï¸ s︡umoto, Sėĭte, 1909-1992
Matsumoto, Kiyoharu, 1909-1992
Songben, Qingzhang, 1909-1992
Sung-pen, Chʻing-chang, 1909-1992
æ¾æœ¬æ¸…å¼µ, 1909-1992
æ¾æœ¬æ·¸å¼µ, 1909-1992
Birth date: 19091221
Death date: 19920808
Special note: Machine-derived non-Latin script reference project.
Non-Latin script references not evaluated.
Found in: His Mushuku nimbetsuchō, 1958.
Nihon shi nanatsu no nazo, 1992: t.p. (Matsumoto Seichō)
p. 234 (d. 8/1992)
Metcha search, Feb. 4, 2008 (Matsumoto Seichō: b. Dec.
21, 1909; d. Aug. 8,1992)
Associated language:
jpn
Invalid LCCN: n 2008008472
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Seichō Matsumoto
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Seichō Matsumoto
Seichō Matsumoto (1955, 46 years old).jpg
Seichō Matsumoto in 1955
Born Kiyoharu Matsumoto
December 21, 1909
Fukuoka, Japan
Died August 4, 1992 (aged 82)
Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital
Occupation Writer
Nationality Japanese
Genre Detective fiction
non-fiction
Ancient history
In this Japanese name, the family name is Matsumoto.
Seichō Matsumoto (松本 清張 Matsumoto Seichō?, December 21, 1909 – August 4, 1992) was a Japanese writer.
Seichō's works created a new tradition of Japanese crime fiction. Dispensing with formulaic plot devices such as puzzles, Seichō incorporated elements of human psychology and ordinary life. In particular, his works often reflect a wider social context and postwar nihilism that expanded the scope and further darkened the atmosphere of the genre. His exposé of corruption among police officials as well as criminals was a new addition to the field. The subject of investigation was not just the crime but also the society in which the crime was committed.[citation needed]
The self-educated Seichō did not see his first book in print until he was in his forties. He was a prolific author, he wrote until his death in 1992, producing in four decades more than 450 works. Seichō's mystery and detective fiction solidified his reputation as a writer at home and abroad. He wrote historical novels and nonfiction in addition to mystery/detective fiction.
He was awarded the Akutagawa Prize in 1952 and the Kikuchi Kan Prize in 1970, as well as the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1957. He chaired the president of Mystery Writers of Japan from 1963 to 1971.
Credited with popularizing the genre among readers in his country, Seichō became his nation's best-selling and highest earning author in the 1960s. His most acclaimed detective novels, including Ten to sen (1958; Points and Lines, 1970); Suna no utsuwa (1961; Inspector Imanishi Investigates, 1989) and Kiri no hata (1961; Pro Bono, 2012), have been translated into a number of languages, including English.
He collaborated with film director Yoshitarō Nomura on adaptations of eight of his novels to film, including Castle of Sand.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Works in English translation
3 Awards
4 Major works
4.1 Novels
4.2 Short stories
4.3 Japanese Modern history
4.4 Ancient history
5 Film Adaptations
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Biography
Seichō Matsumoto memorial museum (Kokura)
Seichō was born in the city of Kokura, now Kokura Kita ward, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka prefecture, on the island of Kyushu in Japan in 1909. His real name was Kiyoharu Matsumoto, he later adopted the pen name of Seichō Matsumoto; "Seichō" is the Sino-Japanese reading of the characters of his given name. A product of humble origins, he was his parents' only child. Following his graduation from elementary school, Seichō found employment at a utility company. As an adult he designed layouts for the Asahi Shinbun in Kyushu. His work in the advertising department was interrupted by service in World War II. A medical corpsman, Seichō spent much of the war in Korea. He resumed work at the Asahi Shinbun after the war, transferring to the Tokyo office in 1950.
Though Seichō attended neither secondary school nor university, he was well read. As a rebellious teenager, he read banned revolutionary texts as part of a political protest. This act so enraged Seichō's father that he destroyed his son's collection of literature. Undeterred, the young Seichō sought award-winning works of fiction and studied them intently. His official foray into literature occurred in 1950 when Shukan Asahi magazine hosted a fiction contest. He submitted his short story "Saigō satsu" (Saigō's Currency) and placed third in the competition. With three generations dependent on him (he supported his parents as well as his wife and children), Seichō welcomed the prize money. His modest success and the encouragement of fellow writers fueled his efforts. Within six years he had retired from his post at the newspaper to pursue a full-time career as a writer.
Renowned for his work ethic, Seichō wrote short fiction while simultaneously producing multiple novels, at one point as many as five concurrently, in the form of magazine serials. Many of Seichō's crime stories debuted in periodicals, among them the acclaimed "Harikomi" (The Chase), in which a woman reunites with her fugitive lover while police close in on her home. As is true of much of Seichō's fiction, this psychological portrait reveals more about the characters than the crime.
For his literary accomplishments, Seichō received the Mystery Writers of Japan Prize, Kikuchi Kan Prize, the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature, all awards bestowed on writers of popular fiction. In 1952 he was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for "Aru 'Kokura-nikki' den" (The Legend of the Kokura-Diary). Considered Seichō's best story, it features a disabled but diligent protagonist who seeks entries that are missing from the diary of author and army medical physician Mori Ōgai.
A lifelong activist, Seichō voiced anti-American sentiment in some of his writings, but he was equally critical of his own society. Many of his works of fiction and nonfiction reveal corruption in the Japanese system. A political radical despite (or perhaps in reaction to) growing up in a conformist society, Seichō associated with like-minded individuals. In 1968 he traveled to communist Cuba as a delegate of the World Cultural Congress and later that same year ventured to North Vietnam to meet with its president. Though he continued to write works of mystery and detective fiction in the 1970s and 1980s, at the same time the author was also interested in political topics.
He was also interested in archeology and Ancient history. He made his ideas public in his fiction and in many essays. His interest extended to Northeast Asia, Western Regions, and the Celts.
In 1977, Seichō met Ellery Queen when he visited Japan. In 1987, he was invited by French mystery writers to talk about his sense of mystery at Grenoble. Since then, his fiction has been compared with that of Georges Simenon.[citation needed]
Since his death from cancer at the age of eighty-three, Seichō's popularity has grown internationally[citation needed], and he has achieved iconic status in Japanese culture.
Works in English translation
Novels
Points and Lines (original title: Ten to Sen)
Inspector Imanishi Investigates (original title: Suna no Utsuwa)
Pro Bono (original title: Kiri no Hata), trans. Andrew Clare (Vertical, 2012)
A Quiet Place (original title: Kikanakatta Basho), trans. Louise Heal Kawai (Bitter Lemon Press, 2016)
Short story collection
The Voice and Other Stories
"The Accomplice" (original title: Kyōhansha)
"The Face" (original title: Kao)
"The Serial" (original title: Chihōshi o Kau Onna)
"Beyond All Suspicion" (original title: Sōsa Kengai no Jōken)
"The Voice" (original title: Koe)
"The Woman Who Wrote Haiku" (original title: Kantō-ku no Onna)
Short Stories
"The Cooperative Defendant" (original title: Kimyō na Hikoku)
Ellery Queen's Japanese Golden Dozen: The Detective Story World in Japan (Edited by Ellery Queen. Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1978)
Classic Short Stories of Crime and Detection (Garland, 1983)
The Oxford Book of Detective Stories (Oxford University Press, 2000)
"The Woman Who Took the Local Paper" (original title: Chihōshi o Kau Onna)
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, June 1979
Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World: 26 Stories from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (Dial Press, 1981)
Murder in Japan: Japanese Stories of Crime and Detection (Dembner Books, 1987)
"The Secret Alibi" (original title: Shōgen)
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, November 1980
Murder in Japan: Japanese Stories of Crime and Detection (Dembner Books, 1987)
"The Humble Coin"
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1982
"Just Eighteen Months" (aka "Wait a Year and a Half") (original title: Ichi Nen Han Mate)
"Just Eighteen Months": Ellery Queen's Prime Crimes (Davis Publications, 1983)
"Wait a Year and a Half": The Mother of Dreams and Other Short Stories (Kodansha America, 1986)
"Wait a Year and a Half": Japanese Short Stories (Folio Society, 2000)
"Beyond All Suspicion" (original title: Sōsa Kengai no Jōken)
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January 1991
"The Stakeout" (original title: Harikomi)
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: Volume 2: From 1945 to the Present (Columbia University Press, 2007)
Awards
1953 – Akutagawa Prize: Aru 'Kokura-nikki' den (The Legend of the Kokura-Diary)
1957 – Mystery Writers of Japan Award: Kao (The Face) (Short story collection)
1967 – Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature
1970 – Kikuchi Kan Prize
1990 – Asahi Prize
Major works
Novels
Points and Lines (ja:点と線,Ten to Sen,1958)
Walls of Eyes (ja:眼の壁,Me no Kabe,1958)
Zero Focus (ja:ゼロの焦点,Zero no Shōten,1959)
Tower of Wave (ja:波の塔,Nami no Tou,1960)
Pro Bono (ja:霧の旗,Kiri no Hata,1961) Published in English (Vertical, Inc., 2012)
Inspector Imanishi Investigates (ja:砂の器,Suna no Utsuwa,1961), Published in English (Soho Crime press 2003), ISBN 978-1-56947-019-0
Bad Sorts (ja:わるいやつら,Warui Yatsura,1961)
Black Gospel (ja:黒い福音,Kuroi Fukuin,1961)
The Globular Wilderness (ja:球形の荒野,Kyūkei no Kōya,1962)
Manners and Customs at time (ja:時間の習俗,Jikan no Shūzoku,1962)
Beast Alley (ja:けものみち,Kemono-Miti,1964)
The Complex of D (ja:Dの複合,D no Fukugō,1968)
Central Saru (ja:中央流沙,Chūō Ryūsa,1968)
Far Approach (ja:遠い接近,Tōi Sekkin,1972)
Fire Street between Ancient Persia and Japan (ja:火の路,Hi no Miti,1975)
Castle of Glass (ja:ガラスの城,Garasu no Shiro,1976)
The Passed Scene (ja:渡された場面,Watasareta Bamen,1976)
Vortex (ja:渦,Uzu,1977)
A Talented Female Painter (ja:天才画の女,Tensaiga no Onna,1979)
Pocketbook of Black Leather (ja:黒革の手帖,Kurokawa no Techō,1980)
The Magician in Nara Period (ja:眩人,Genjin,1980)
Stairs that shine at Night (ja:夜光の階段,Yakou no Kaidan,1981)
Street of Desire (ja:彩り河,Irodorigawa,1983)
Straying Map (ja:迷走地図,Meisou Tizu,1983)
Hot Silk (ja:熱い絹,Atsui Kinu,1985)
Array of Sage and Beast (ja:聖獣配列,Seijū Hairetsu,1986)
Foggy Conference (ja:霧の会議,Kiri no Kaigi,1987)
Black Sky (ja:黒い空,Kuroi Sora,1988)
Red Glacial Epoch (ja:赤い氷河期,Akai Hyōgaki,1989)
Madness of gods (ja:神々の乱心,Kamigami no Ranshin,1997)
Black Sea of Trees(Kuroi Juka, attributed as why people go to Suicide Forest)
Short stories
Saigō's Currency (ja:西郷札,Saigō satsu,1951)
The Legend of the Kokura-Diary (ja:或る「小倉日記」伝,Aru 'Kokura-nikki' den,1952)
The Face (ja:顔,Kao,1955)
The Voice (ja:声,Koe,1955)
The Stakeout (ja:張込み,Harikomi,1955)
The Woman who Took the Local Paper [aka The Serial] (ja:地方紙を買う女,Tihōshi wo Kau Onna,1957)
Wait a Year and a Half [aka Just Eighteen Months] (ja:一年半待て,Itinenhan Mate,1957)
The Demon (ja:鬼畜,Kitiku,1958)
Amagi-Pass (ja:天城越え,Amagi Goe,1958)
The Finger (ja:指,Yubi,1969)
Suspicion (ja:疑惑,Giwaku,1982)
Japanese Modern history
Black Fog over Japan (日本の黒い霧,Nihon-no Kuroi Kiri,1960)
Unearthing the Shōwa Period (ja:昭和史発掘,Shōwa-shi Hakkutu,1965–1972)
Essay of Ikki Kita (北一輝論,Kita Ikki Ron,1976)
February 26 Incident (二・二六事件,Ni-niroku Jiken,1986–1993)
Ancient history
Essay of Yamataikoku (ja:古代史疑,Kodai-shi-gi,1968)
Japanese Ancient History by Seichō (ja:清張通史,Seichō Tsūshi,1976–1983)
From Persepolis to Asuka,Yamato (ja:ペルセポリスから飛鳥へ,Persepolis kara Asuka he,1979)
Film Adaptations
Point and Line (1958) directed by Tsuneo Kobayashi http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164194/
Voice Without a Shadow (1958) directed by Seijun Suzuki
Zero Focus (1961) directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
The Shadow Within (1970) directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
Castle of Sand (1974) directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
The Demon (1978) directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
Suspicion (1982) directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
Obituary: Seicho Matsumoto
James Kirkup
Tuesday 11 August 1992 23:02 BST
4
Click to follow
The Independent Online
Seicho Matsumoto, writer, born Fukuoka Japan 1909, died Tokyo 4 August 1992.
DURING the Second World War, Japanese government censors banned detective novels, declaring they were unpatriotic, decadent and counter-productive to the war effort. So it is not surprising that Japan's most successful thriller writer, Seicho Matsumoto, was a late starter. Before him, the best-known detective-story author had been Edogawa Ranpo, who paid homage to his master Edgar Allan Poe by adopting this Japanised form of the name as a pseudonym.
Matsumoto was born into a poor working-class family in the Kokura district of Fukuoka, Kyushu, in 1909, and received only a primary school education. He had to go to work at an early age as a labourer. But a knowledge of printing got him a job at the Asahi Shimbun, where he also worked as a journalist and editor.
When he was 40, Matsumoto began writing, and in 1952 he won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for his autobiographical Aru Kokura nikki-den ('Story of the Kokura Journal'). Me no kabe ('Wall of Eyes') appeared in 1957. His first full-length detective fiction, Ten to sen ('Points and Lines'), after running as a newspaper serial from 1957 to 1958, was a big hit as a book in 1958, selling over a million and a quarter copies. In 1961, Suna do utsuwa ('Vessel of Sand', 1961, published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates, 1989) sold four and a half million copies and became a movie box-office hit.
Matsumoto pushed the art of the detective story in Japan to new dimensions. He is credited with renovating the genre by introducing the 'social detective story' describing in precise detail police procedurals and depicting Japanese society with unprecedented realism - though it is a realism that to Western eyes accustomed to the masterpieces of Raymond Chandler seems very mild.
Matsumoto's Inspector Imanishi is often compared to Simenon's Maigret. He is a typical Simenon anti-hero, but otherwise the comparison does not hold up. Though he is indeed in the great line of Martin Beck and Van der Valk, he most resembles PD James's Adam Dalgliesh. Imanishi is a modest family man, with an unobtrusive and devoted wife. He likes gardening, chain-smokes Peace cigarettes, cultivates bonsai and above all writes haiku. The deceptively simple-looking art and craft of haiku composition keeps appearing in Matsumoto's work. In a short story, 'Kanto-ku no onna' (1960, appearing as 'The Woman Who Wrote Haiku' in his collection The Voice, 1989), a haiku poet's death is analysed by the editorial committee of a magazine where her best poems appear in the place of honour on the first page. When the mystery is solved, the editor writes, not her obituary, but her poetic eulogy. In a land where almost everyone writes haiku, this is a popular theme.
Almost everyone in Japan is also obsessed by her fine, efficient railway system, which forms a central motif in some of Matsumoto's best stories. He employed researchers to check every last detail of railway lore, for there was a huge public of rail maniacs scouring his works for possible slips - timetable improbabilities, wrong lines, technical rolling-stock details, local geography, dialects and trades. At the end of Ten to sen, readers are told that the times of trains come from a 1957 timetable.
But Matsumoto was a very complex and curiously learned man. He was not just a crime writer. He wrote popular speculative works on ancient and contemporary history. The latter are often about government, police and financial scandals, like Nihon no shiro ('Empty Castle', 1978), dishing the dirt about the bankruptcy of the Ataka Trading Company, and Meiso ohizu ('A Confused Map', serialised 1982-83), where he lays bare all the inner workings of Japanese politics by depicting the secret activities of the influential male secretaries of Diet members. It was common knowledge that Matsumoto had inside information. Showashi hakkutsu ('New Researches into the History of the Showa Era', serialised 1964-71) delves into some of the mysterious events in the late Emperor's reign.
He also covered a wide range of international themes: Beiruto joho ('Beirut Information', 1976) and Shiro to kuro no kakumei ('Revolution in Black and White', 1979), which is a searching analysis of the revolution in Iran. Matsumoto also campaigned against the Vietnam War: he was a strongly left- wing socialist who had deep concerns for the less fortunate of his fellow human beings.
In other scrupulously researched, well-written works like Kodaishi-gi ('New Questions Concerning the Ancient Past', serialised 1966-67) he advanced original views on ancient Asian history and archaeology. In Genjin ('Genbo the Magician', serialised 1977-80), he paints a convincing portrait of the ambitious eighth- century monk Genbo. All these serials sold in their millions in book-form, but it was not until the 1970s that Matsumoto's work began to be widely translated, mainly into Chinese, Korean and Russian. French translations of Suna no utsuwa and Ten to sen appeared in 1987 and 1989.
Reading these works in English is rather hard-going, even though (or perhaps because) the drastically condensed Inspector Imanishi Investigates is re-edited, re-arranged and sharply condensed from the 766 pages of the original paperback to 300 large-print pages of American English. The fiction serial tradition in Japan is largely to blame, because it forces authors to overwrite. So plots are over-contrived, characters too many and too wooden; too many coincidences and rigid plot-structure leave no room for inspired shock endings or psychological subtlety, while the jog-trot dialogue is often just desultory Japanese-style conversation saying nothing and leading nowhere.
In the autumn of 1987, we had the pleasure of welcoming this marvellous human being to the first Festival du Roman Policier in Grenoble. He was easily the most popular of all the famous participants. He was at pains to make clear that he was not a haado-boirudo (hard-boiled) writer, but more in the line of Chesterton or Gaston Leroux. But the great surprise came when he declared his passionate admiration of an unjustly forgotten crime writer, Freeman Wills Crofts, who also wrote about railways. Matsumoto belonged to that distinguished tribe of self-taught writers like George Gissing, Jack London and Louis L'Amour. His collected works from the Bungei Shunju Publishing Co already amount to over 50 volumes. He is a Japanese immortal.
A Quiet Place
263.25 (June 20, 2016): p136.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* A Quiet Place
Seicho Matsumoto, trans. from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai. Bitter Lemon, $14.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-908524-63-8
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Why would a woman with a serious heart condition risk her health by climbing a steep hill in an area where she knew no one? That conundrum obsesses Japanese bureaucrat Tsuneo Asai, the hero of this stellar psychological thriller from Matsumoto (Inspector Imanishi Investigates). Asai, a section chief in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, is on a business trip with his boss when word reaches him that his wife, Eiko, who had a heart condition, has died suddenly in Tokyo. Despite the emotional distance in their relationship, the tragedy is a shock to Asai, though not enough to make him put aside his professional obligations before he arranges travel home. Asai questions the official version of her death--that she suffered a heart attack in the street, and collapsed inside a nearby cosmetics store--and figures out that her fatal collapse was triggered by Eiko overexerting herself elsewhere. His pursuit of the truth becomes all-consuming, building to a surprising and immensely satisfying resolution that flows naturally from the book's complex characterizations. Readers will agree that Matsumoto (1909-1992) deserves his reputation as Japan's Georges Simenon. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Quiet Place." Publishers Weekly, 20 June 2016, p. 136. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456344734&it=r&asid=4341f43e3fc6d3235be12cf1042c0fda. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456344734
A Quiet Place
(Sept. 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
A Quiet Place
Seicho Matsumoto
Bitter Lemon Press
37 Arundel Gardens, London, W11 2LW, United Kingdom
www.bitterlemonpress.com
9781908524638, $14.95, PB, 224pp, www.amazon.com
While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wife (who was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetings) ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood? When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife's death he discovers the villa Tachibana near by, a house known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life! The late Seicho Matsumoto was Japan's most successful thriller writer. Now ably translated into English for an appreciative American readership, "A Quiet Place" is a deftly crafted novel that is unreservedly recommended for community library Mystery/Suspense collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of dedicated crime thriller enthusiasts that "A Quiet Place" is also available in a Kindle format ($9.40).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Quiet Place." Internet Bookwatch, Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465810284&it=r&asid=818f4d097faf7f12b06aceb6d47ae6dc. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465810284
A Quiet Place
by Matsumoto Seicho
Bitter Lemon Press (2016)
ISBN-10: 1908524634
Review by Harry Martin
Only a handful of Matsumoto Seicho’s works have yet made it into English, and yet fledgling entrants to the world of Japanese crime fiction will soon come to realise that prior to discovering his prolific output they have been paddling only within the smaller tributaries of the genre, oblivious to this great river which flows with powerful currents of national sentiment and a cult following. I have been shamed by Japanese friends and colleagues for allowing this revered author to remain so long outside my consciousness. A Quiet Place (Kikanakatta Basho) was the last of Matsumoto’s novels to be published and at 228 pages is by no means a lengthy or arduous undertaking.
The story begins with a hardworking and dedicated government official receiving the news of his wife’s untimely death while he is away on a business trip in Kobe. This is followed by the proceeding twists and turns of the grieving husband’s own investigation and pursuit of the truth. Spurred on largely by the protagonist’s paranoid and obsessive nature, the reader is led through a somewhat formulaic process of conspiracy, intrigue and discovery, typical of the crime fiction genre; a cast of mysterious and stimulating characters and cryptic undertones make for an enjoyable journey.
However, what I found interesting about Matsumoto’s writing is that he does not focus the attention of the narrative on police or judicial investigatory procedures. Rather the narrative centres on the wider context of Japanese society and social psychology, with Matsumoto scrutinising social norms and day-to-day interactions and relationships in routine life.
The story provides an insight into the layers of duty and social obligation (giri) found in many aspects of Japanese society, from spousal relationships to interactions with corporate and government organisations. Matsumoto presents a bountiful array of examples amplifying the complexities and intricacies of this social phenomenon. For example, at the opening of the story the bereaved husband, moments after hearing of his wife’s death, seems to concern himself only with resolving the embarrassment and inconvenience caused to his superiors. This extreme example of giri really opened my eyes to the sometimes crippling nature of this sense of obligation.
The theme of giri plays a recurring and important function in the writing, dominating multiple interactions among the characters and essentially driving the story forward at every turn. The often extreme and hyperbolic nature of the main character’s moral conflicts are, at times, comical and make me feel a possibly nihilistic scepticism at play in Matsumoto’s critique of social norms.
Overall this is a compelling crime thriller with a captivating storyline and interesting characters, providing an enjoyable and effortless read, offering an insight into Japanese social-politics. I feel this book has a lot to offer all crime fiction aficionados, but for me it opened a door into a world of revered Japanese fiction written by an extraordinary author and personality, which should be on the radar of any fan of Japanese literature.
Review: A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto
Brian Greene
A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto is a Japanese psychological thriller that dissects Japanese society (Available in English translation August 16, 2016).
Originally published in Japanese in 1975 and now being released in a new English translation, Seicho Matsumoto’s suspense novel follows the life of Tsuneo Asai, a 42-year-old middle-management civil servant who lives in Tokyo. Asai is a quietly efficient, unassuming man, who is good at his work and seems to have little need for passion and interest in things outside of the ministry department in which he is employed.
At the beginning of the story, Asai is in his second marriage—both of his wedded unions childless. His current wife is in her mid-30s. Their marriage was set up by a matchmaker. There isn’t much romance or sexual fire between Asai and his wife, and she appears to him to be a shy, withdrawn kind of woman, but he is content with her and their relations. When she suffers a heart attack and tells him that their already unremarkable sex life will have to come to a near standstill so that she won’t have to risk another coronary, he accepts this.
While Asai is out of town on a business trip, he learns that his wife has died suddenly. She had a second heart attack, and this one killed her. The news of the cardiac arrest is not shocking to Asai, despite his wife’s young age, because of her previous attack. But, what is strange to him is the fact that she had this coronary and died while in a neighborhood that is unfamiliar to him and that he didn’t know she ever visited.
Asai starts to look into what his spouse was doing in the area on the day of her death. What begins as a mild curiosity becomes an obsession, as he gradually comes to realize that his wife had been leading a double life unknown to him—these activities had everything to do with why she was in that particular part of the city on the day of her death. Moreover, it seems quite possible that her clandestine doings might have directly caused her passing.
Asai’s investigation, along with details he learns from a private detective he hires, leads him to focus squarely on two people who might have had some role in his wife’s secret existence and death: a woman who runs a high-end cosmetics shop in the neighborhood, this store being the place Asai’s wife allegedly stumbled into while suffering the heart attack; and a man who lives in the area and has business, and possibly personal, relations with the shopkeeper. Asai becomes convinced that these two people were players in his wife’s private life and that they may have played roles in her death—or they at least know more about all of this than they are telling. He begins investigating them closely, to the point of stalking them.
The novel is written in a subdued way. There’s a kind of plodding rhythm and monotonous tone to it, at least in the early chapters. Yet, the dull feel of the first parts of the book is intriguing, as it comes across that Matsumoto wrote it that way deliberately. The unexciting aura of the first chapters capture the personality and lifestyle of Asai, who is an unexciting man. When the tale begins to turn as Asai learns more and more about his wife’s covert doings and these people who seemed to have been part of that, the tension builds in an effective way and nicely offsets the less suspenseful parts of the book. It’s a slow burn read, one that quietly inches its way in the direction of a dangerous climax, as the modest government employee becomes fixated on learning about his wife’s second life and the truth behind the events that led to her untimely death.
The book’s first two paragraphs illustrate its dry tone:
Tsuneo Asai was on a business trip to the Kansai region when he heard the news.
Around 8:30 in the evening, he was having dinner and drinks in the banquet room of a high-class restaurant with businessmen from the food processing industry. Asai was a section chief in the Staple Food Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. He’d arrived in Kobe the day before, accompanying the ministry’s brand-new director general on a tour of inspection. It had only been a month since Director-General Shiraishi had been promoted from a different department, and he wasn’t very familiar with the practicalities of the job as yet. For the past couple of days, he and Asai had been visiting canning facilities and ham-processing plants in the Osaka-Kobe area, and were off to Hiroshima the next day. This evening they were enjoying the hospitality of some of the local business owners.
The drabness of Asai’s life is driven home further when we see his reaction to getting a phone call informing him of his wife’s sudden death back in Tokyo. He initially seems more concerned with how he can have his business trip duties covered if he goes back home immediately than he is about the news of his wife’s passing.
Later, when Asai has started to learn about his wife’s second life, Matsumoto’s omniscient narrator nicely captures Asai’s mindset during his investigations with this passage, which focuses on Asai’s attempt to understand if his wife had been having an affair:
He tried to see her in this new light, but as she’d always been at home when he came back from work, it was impossible to imagine. His personal experience of living with his wife was in total contrast to the unsavory image in his head.
Was it his attempt to see things in a positive light? Or just the bravado of a man who didn’t want to play the role of cuckolded husband?
Matsumoto (1909-92), a popular writer in Japan if not a household name in other parts of the world, reached for much more than whodunit intrigue in his suspense novels. Like a Japanese Balzac, he sought to capture a whole panorama of the society around him in these stories. In A Quiet Place, he uses the mystery of Asai’s wife’s death as a means of exploring things like: the kind of relationship that can happen between a couple whose marriage was set up by a matchmaker; the friction between a civil servant’s career aspirations and personal life when there is some upheaval in the latter; and the prevailing temperaments and attitudes of various people from his country.
Although we never encounter her in the present, the character of Asai’s deceased wife is a rich one—she was a seemingly humble, dispassionate woman who Asai realizes too late actually had strong desires and talents. She practiced the writing of haiku and, while Asai assumed this was just something for a housewife to engage in as a pastime, he learns after her death that she was a talented poet who was envied by other haiku artists who knew her work. People who knew her remark to Asai how beautiful and desirable she was becoming as she reached her mid-30s, when he always thought of her as average looking. And then, there’s the fact that she was having a whole lifestyle unknown to him, involving the two mystifying people from the strange neighborhood and possibly a secret romance.
Another plus in the novel is Matsumoto’s depiction of Asai. The story’s protagonist comes off as neither sympathetic nor loathe-worthy, just average. This makes him believable. He never set out to bother the lives of others. He could have been content to just go on doing his government work and leading his humble lifestyle, if not for the great disruption that comes into his life in the wake of his wife’s death.
But, when his routines are shaken up and he has to face the fact that his spouse had been deceiving him, he suddenly begins losing control of himself and is no longer the steady, reliable man he’s always been. As Matsumoto zeroes in on the ways that Asai’s current situation is affecting his government work, the tension becomes nearly unbearable.
Also, in the relationship Matsumoto shows Asai to have had with his wife, coupled with what he learns about her after her death, he brings out a universal truth key to many human alliances: that the people we know, even those closest to us in our everyday lives, might be leading double lives unknown to us.
If the book has a flaw, it’s that there’s too much observation from the narrator. The teller of the story not only explains too much of what’s happening, but often repeats bits and pieces we have already learned. Matsumoto could have cut about a fifth of the narration out and the reader would have still understood everything that happened, resulting in a tighter story with better movement. Nonetheless, overall, A Quiet Place is a book that works well, both as a page turner suspense story and an enlightening social literary novel.