“Point Zero” by Seicho Matsumoto

Point Zero, Seicho Matsumoto, Louise Heal Kawai (trans) (Bitter Lemon Press, February 2024)

Seicho Matsumoto was one of Japan’s most celebrated mystery writers —with two dozen novels to his name from the late 1950s, at a time when Japan was rebuilding after the war until just before his death in 1992—but only in recent years his work has been translated into English. Point Zero, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, is one of his early novels. The story, set in 1958 and the first part of 1959, takes place mainly in Tokyo and the western port city of Kanazawa and is defined by both the hope of the new era and the agonies of war.  

Unlike most noir stories of that time, Point Zero is sympathetic when it comes to women, who are not accessories in this book, but rather the heroes of the story. Teiko Itane is a young newlywed in an arranged marriage. Her husband, Kenichi Uhara, at first seems a bit controlling; he won’t agree to Teiko’s suggestion that they honeymoon in Kanazawa, along Japan’s western coast, insisting instead they spend a short honeymoon in the mountains in Yamanishi prefecture, not too far from their home in Tokyo.

 

Matsumoto’s writing, with Kawai’s skill as translator, consistently includes a feeling of foreboding doom, in this case when the couple arrives at their honeymoon destination.

 

Night had fallen by the time they arrived in Kofu. At the station, they were greeted by the manager of the ryokan inn they had reserved, a paper lantern in his hand. He ushered them into a waiting car and closed the door behind them, bowing. Teiko was seized by the feeling that she was at a crossroads in her life and was being pushed in a particular direction.

 

Yet the honeymoon turns out to be the happiest part of Teiko’s marriage. She feels as if she and Kenichi have developed a special bond so much so that when they return to Tokyo and he has to travel to the opposite coast to Kanazawa to wrap up his business there, she feels reluctant to let him go. This is where the mystery begins. Kenichi doesn’t return from Kanazawa, even after he sends Teiko a postcard informing her of his return date.

When Teiko goes to the police and fills out paperwork to start the search for Kenichi, she still doesn’t know her husband well.

 

Teiko described her husband’s facial features, noted his height, weight, clothing, the possessions he had likely had with him, the areas he could have visited, each in a separate column. As she wrote, she reflected on how it felt as if she were describing a total stranger…

 

She is not aware of it at that time, but Teiko will end up being the main investigator of her husband’s disappearance. The book takes on a Hitchcockian tone, with Teiko enlisting the help of her mother in her investigation. And many other people who try to help Teiko end up being murdered along the way.

In her search, Teiko uncovers some of the pan-pan girls, or women who worked as prostitutes during the US occupation after the war. Matsumoto is sympathetic towards the pan-pan girls, which one can’t imagine was typical when he wrote this book in the late 1950s. He has a radio show commentator say:

 

With the exception of those who got married right out of the profession, I think most of them washed their hands of it, got themselves a decent job once the economy  allowed it, married a man they met there and never spoke of it again. And I think that is all perfectly reasonable and shouldn’t be censured.

 

The final chapter is titled “Point Zero” and leads Teiko to the answers she’s been searching for. The novel and the rural setting of Kanazawa hold up well after all of this time. Despite the slow train travel and the absence of mobile phones, the story often reads as if it could be set today.


Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong and When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League.