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nookatdusk's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide
shelfofunread's review
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Having read and enjoyed several of the Japanese crime classics that have been translated and published in English in recent years (see my reviews of The Decagon House Murders and The Aosawa Murders), Seichō Matsumoto’s Point Zero, newly translated by Louise Heal Kawai and published by Bitter Lemon Press, was immediately appealing.
Matsumoto is acknowledged as one of Japan’s most celebrated mystery novelists and is credited with moving Japanese crime fiction away from formulaic plot devices and into a more psychological, social realist mode. This is certainly apparent in Point Zero, which focuses upon twenty-six-year-old Teiko whose arranged marriage to Kenichi – an advertising man ten years her senior – is plunged into uncertainty when he fails to return from a business trip to the coastal city of Kanazawa.
Travelling to Kanazawa in the hope of finding Kenichi, Teiko soon discovers that there may be more to her new husband than his reserved demeanour would suggest. Why do none of Kenichi’s colleagues seem to know where he was staying? Why was he hiding a photograph of a local dwelling in the back of one of his books? And why was he trying to keep Teiko away from Kanazawa and the Hokuriku region?
Discovering questions rather than answer, Teiko turns to her brother-in-law Sotaru for help, only to find herself embroiled in yet another mystery when he is murdered, poisoned in his hotel room. Who would want to poison Sotaru and what connection does his death have to Kenichi’s disappearance? And what business could either brother have with Japan’s wartime past, and with the ‘pan-pan girls’ who catered to American GIs after the war?
There is something of the noir tradition in Heal Kawai’s crisp translation, which beautifully conveys the tensions that lie beneath the polite surface of both Teiko’s marriage and post-war Japanese society more widely. First published in 1959 and set in 1958, the novel teases apart the faultlines of social class, gender, and tradition to carefully explore the legacies of war and the pressures those place upon a nation trying desperately to recover and move on from the past.
It was both fascinating and heart-breaking to learn more about the ‘pan-pan girls’: women who provided sexual services for foreign soldiers in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Initially employed by the Japanese government – ostensibly to protect more ‘respectable’ women from the threat of sexual violence – the ‘pan-pan girls’ were later ostracised, forced into operating as either private or illegal prostitutes and becoming inexorably linked with occupation, victimisation, humiliation, and national trauma [side note: for anyone interested in finding out more about this history and its representation in post-war Japanese fiction, there’s a fascinating open-access journal article by Dr Rumi Sakamoto of the University of Auckland that you can download here].
I also found myself really engaged with Teiko and her quest to find out more about the near-total stranger she has married. Having agreed to an arranged marriage, Teiko is initially torn between the tradition of accepting your spouse on the basis of their present life and her natural curiosity to find out more about Kenichi’s past. I really felt for her in the opening chapters of the novel when she comes to the realisation that, for all that she is Kenichi’s wife, she has little to offer to the police or to his colleagues by way of information about the man she has married. And I admired her determination to pursue Kenichi and his secrets, even as the dangers of doing so – both physically and reputationally – became more and more apparent.
As I said at the top of this review, Point Zero definitely has something of the noir tradition about it. Whilst the mystery of Kenichi’s disappearance – and Sotoro’s subsequent murder – does propel the plot along, the novel is as much about the subtleties of the relationships between the various characters as it is about the mystery elements. As such, the novel is a surprisingly thoughtful examination of interpersonal relationships, cultural stigma, and generational trauma, as well as a neatly-written mystery novel.
If you enjoy a good mystery that explores societal tensions and psychological impetus as much as it does the twists and turns of an investigation, then Point Zero should definitely be on your reading radar. I shall certainly be looking out for more of Seichō Matsumoto’s work and am delighted to learn that another of his novels – A Quiet Place – is already available (and in a translation by Louise Heal Kawai) from Bitter Lemon Press.
NB: This review also appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpress.com as part of the blog tour for the book. My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy in return for an honest and unbiased review.
Matsumoto is acknowledged as one of Japan’s most celebrated mystery novelists and is credited with moving Japanese crime fiction away from formulaic plot devices and into a more psychological, social realist mode. This is certainly apparent in Point Zero, which focuses upon twenty-six-year-old Teiko whose arranged marriage to Kenichi – an advertising man ten years her senior – is plunged into uncertainty when he fails to return from a business trip to the coastal city of Kanazawa.
Travelling to Kanazawa in the hope of finding Kenichi, Teiko soon discovers that there may be more to her new husband than his reserved demeanour would suggest. Why do none of Kenichi’s colleagues seem to know where he was staying? Why was he hiding a photograph of a local dwelling in the back of one of his books? And why was he trying to keep Teiko away from Kanazawa and the Hokuriku region?
Discovering questions rather than answer, Teiko turns to her brother-in-law Sotaru for help, only to find herself embroiled in yet another mystery when he is murdered, poisoned in his hotel room. Who would want to poison Sotaru and what connection does his death have to Kenichi’s disappearance? And what business could either brother have with Japan’s wartime past, and with the ‘pan-pan girls’ who catered to American GIs after the war?
There is something of the noir tradition in Heal Kawai’s crisp translation, which beautifully conveys the tensions that lie beneath the polite surface of both Teiko’s marriage and post-war Japanese society more widely. First published in 1959 and set in 1958, the novel teases apart the faultlines of social class, gender, and tradition to carefully explore the legacies of war and the pressures those place upon a nation trying desperately to recover and move on from the past.
It was both fascinating and heart-breaking to learn more about the ‘pan-pan girls’: women who provided sexual services for foreign soldiers in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Initially employed by the Japanese government – ostensibly to protect more ‘respectable’ women from the threat of sexual violence – the ‘pan-pan girls’ were later ostracised, forced into operating as either private or illegal prostitutes and becoming inexorably linked with occupation, victimisation, humiliation, and national trauma [side note: for anyone interested in finding out more about this history and its representation in post-war Japanese fiction, there’s a fascinating open-access journal article by Dr Rumi Sakamoto of the University of Auckland that you can download here].
I also found myself really engaged with Teiko and her quest to find out more about the near-total stranger she has married. Having agreed to an arranged marriage, Teiko is initially torn between the tradition of accepting your spouse on the basis of their present life and her natural curiosity to find out more about Kenichi’s past. I really felt for her in the opening chapters of the novel when she comes to the realisation that, for all that she is Kenichi’s wife, she has little to offer to the police or to his colleagues by way of information about the man she has married. And I admired her determination to pursue Kenichi and his secrets, even as the dangers of doing so – both physically and reputationally – became more and more apparent.
As I said at the top of this review, Point Zero definitely has something of the noir tradition about it. Whilst the mystery of Kenichi’s disappearance – and Sotoro’s subsequent murder – does propel the plot along, the novel is as much about the subtleties of the relationships between the various characters as it is about the mystery elements. As such, the novel is a surprisingly thoughtful examination of interpersonal relationships, cultural stigma, and generational trauma, as well as a neatly-written mystery novel.
If you enjoy a good mystery that explores societal tensions and psychological impetus as much as it does the twists and turns of an investigation, then Point Zero should definitely be on your reading radar. I shall certainly be looking out for more of Seichō Matsumoto’s work and am delighted to learn that another of his novels – A Quiet Place – is already available (and in a translation by Louise Heal Kawai) from Bitter Lemon Press.
NB: This review also appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpress.com as part of the blog tour for the book. My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy in return for an honest and unbiased review.
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