Inspector Imanishi Investigates – A Whodunit with Interesting Social Context

Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992) was one of Japan’s best-selling and most prolific crime novel writers. He has written hundreds of detective and mystery novels, but only a handful of them have been translated into English. Unlike the works of his contemporary Edogawa Rampo (pseudonym of popular mystery fiction author Taro Hirai) Mr. Matsumoto’s stories focused on the social themes of the era, especially the bleaker aspects of postwar Japanese society. Matsumoto’s sleuths aren’t geniuses, but they solve the crimes through dogged perseverance. Another fascinating aspect of the author’s work is the way he instills the sense of place, providing us an armchair tourism of Japanese cities’ culture in that particular era. The central mystery I feel is secondary in Matsumoto’s novels since the focus largely falls upon characters, local culture, postwar devastation, etc.

Matsumoto’s Inspector Imanishi Investigates was first published in 1961 and translated to English by Beth Cary in 2003. The eponymous detective’s work ethics, his formal relationship with his wife, his idiosyncrasies (love for bonsai and haiku) the determination with which pursues each and every little lead reminded me of Martin Beck, a fictional Swedish police detective who featured in ten novels by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, written between 1965 and 1975. The plot kicks off with the discovery of a corpse under the tracks of a stationary train at a Tokyo station in the early morning hours. The victim isn’t killed by the train. He was strangled, his face bashed to an extent that makes identification nearly impossible.

Detective Eitaro Imanishi of the Homicide Division of Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrives at the scene, and the ensuing investigation bestows him with a single clue: according to witnesses in a bar the previous night, the victim spoke with a northern dialect, and the word ‘Kameda’ is overheard in the conversation between the victim and his companion/alleged murderer. The investigation proceeds very slowly but progresses steadily, thanks to the detective’s tenacious nature. He takes day-long train trips to rural areas, writes formal letters to inquire different precinct police departments. Some of the people supposedly connected to the investigation mysteriously die even though it’s closed off as natural death. The destruction of records at the end of World War II also impedes his inquiries. Nevertheless, Imanishi figures out that the crimes are somehow connected to a member of Nouveau Group, nihilistic Westernized artists gaining prominence in the early 1960s.

Matsumoto’s novel offers a dissection of a society, where gender roles are clearly delineated. Like any classic detective fiction, the woman in Inspector Imanishi Investigates remain dependent, vulnerable, quiet, and often confined to peripheral portions in the action. It’s a typical portrayal of 1960s household in Japan, and the women (Rieko and Emiko) who don’t confirm to their social roles are met with bleak ending. Such dated character sketches makes the work a bit unexciting. But Matsumoto excels in constructing a tightly-woven mystery. While early 1960s were generally known for Japan’s astounding post-war economic recovery, the author paints an unsavory portrait of a divided Japanese society, where war’s impacts are still felt.  Overall, Inspector Imanishi Investigates offers fine crime fiction tourism with nice social and cultural references pertaining to a particular era in Japan.