Futaro Yamada, discovered by the hugely influential mystery writer Edogawa Rampo, was hugely prolific in his lifetime, with many of his stories being adapted to film, such as Nagisa Ōshima’s thriller Pleasures of the Flesh (1965) and Samurai Reincarnation (Kinji Fukusaku, 1981). If Yamada’s name is known in the Anglophone world, however, it is usually for the manga and anime adaptations of his series The Kouga Ninja Scrolls. This newly translated edition of his 1979 novel The Meiji Guillotine Murders is an opportunity to experience his work more directly. Though published by Pushkin Press’s Vertigo imprint, which publishes detective fiction from around the world, The Meiji Guillotine Murders is a historical fiction. It has neither the narrative nor the feel of a traditional detective story, exemplified by the work of fellow Vertigo-published authors Seishi Yokomizo and Yukito Ayatsuji.
The Meiji Guillotine Murders deliberately intertwines fact and fiction to create an origin story of the Japanese police force, which came into being in the Meiji restoration’s first years. The book centers on Toshiyoshi Kawaji and Keishirō Kazuki, two inspectors of the Imperial Prosecuting Office, an organization that seeks to expose corruption in all areas of government. Their particular target is the rasotsu, a newly-formed police force who are taking advantage of the newly formed society and operating as a “roving band of gangsters”. Toshiyoshi Kawaji was a real person, the founder of the modern Japanese police force, while Kazuki is a creation of Yamada’s.
Other historical figures featured in the book have a profile in the West, such as James Curtis Hepburn, who created a Romanization system for Japanese. Others, such as Sawamura Tanosuke, an actor who specialized in female roles, are historical footnotes even in Japan. Yamada intertwines real incidents with fictional ones, such as when Kazuki misconstrues Hepburn’s amputation of Tanosuke’s legs (a real incident) as a murder, and sets out to investigate. Influential figures of the era are also quoted, such as Yukichi Fukuzawa (the hugely influential education reformer) and Samuel Mossman (an Australian botanist and travel writer), both brought in to bolster the author’s picture of Meiji-era Tokyo as a chaotic and turbulent time.
The book’s first two chapters introduce the two inspectors, and the guillotine, which is not the murder weapon as the book’s title seems to suggest, but is imported to Japan from France as part of the modernization drive. Another important character is also introduced: Esmerelda, the daughter of the French executioner who is now operating in the unlikely role of a miko; a shrine maiden. The subsequent five chapters each deal with a separate mysterious murder case, and the final chapter brings the various narrative threads together in an impressive but convoluted denouement.
The guillotine itself provides one of the novel’s main themes: the guillotine is brought to Japan as part of the modernization drive, purportedly as a more humane method of execution. However, it does not offer peace or order, just a more efficient and clinical way of enacting violence. The values of the Enlightenment are thus fascinating and puzzling to the inspectors.
In addition to the guillotine, other modern technology—such as a pair of binoculars—is contrasted with tradition and with a pre-rational supernatural worldview. It is while peering through binoculars that Kazuki misinterprets a surgical procedure as a gruesome act of violence. Rather than offering clarity, this modern technology creates confusion. Esmerelda’s pivotal role in the book provides a contrast: revelations from Esmerelda, who speaks with the voices of the deceased, rather than rational deduction or modern technology, provides much of the narrative impetus.
Along with the more well-worn themes of modernization and Japan’s relationship to the West, the novel also explores the possibility of a just government. Kazuki believes in a just government, and that the government should use its power to enforce this conception of goodness. Kawaji feels this is dangerous and will lead to yet more corruption. This begins as a friendly rivalry but of course this is not an abstract theoretical point of view, but a way of doing things. Their conflicting approach is what brings the narrative to a climax.
The book begins with a brief historical note, and Yamada’s narrator sometimes digresses to situate the events of the narrative in the Meiji time period, as if to deliberately ask the reader to ponder similarities and differences between then and now. However, the general reader would have benefited from some footnotes separating fact from fiction or providing other contextual information.
In its wealth of historical detail and constant presentation of new and intriguing twists and turns, The Meiji Guillotine Murders can be taken as a historical thriller . But in its exploration of themes such as modernization, corruption, and the possibility of a just government, the book is far more than a typical detective story, providing an accessible way of thinking about the time period and its issues.