Zelse

Fair warning: Review contains discussion/mention of sexual assault, as does the book. I've spoilered anything that I think might ruin part of the book, but I don't consider mentioning something that happens in the first chapter to be a spoiler, so YMMV.

At first, I was going to say that I thought Akimitsu Takagi was a worse author than Seishi Yokomizo, but I realized that's not fair; I don't think he's any less talented, just different - and that's not a bad thing. "The Noh Mask Murder" is a 1949 locked room mystery novel set (as so many of them are) in a seaside mansion in Japan immediately after WW2. It plays fair - the clues are there for you to solve much of it - and at 200-odd pages, it is exactly the right length for the story.

To start with the bad: like so many of these mysteries, the women are insane, and when a woman is insane in one of these stories, you can bet sex abuse/rape or incest are not too far behind. For the time this was an acceptable plot device, but to modern audiences, even ignoring the ick factor, it often feels lazy and like a substitute for giving women characters deeper motivations. In addition, many of the characters feel very stock, and unlike Yokomizo, there's no real attempt to let us get to know the non-detective characters for the most part. There are other stock characters too, including "noble child dying of an incurable disease" and secret lovechild (these authors all love secret lovechildren.)

That said, the author does subvert expectations in a few places too: the main POV character has an interesting sort of frenemy-esque relationship with the other detective, and their bickering and mixture of bickering and affection with disdain felt very real to me, and at times led to some genuinely funny internal monologuing. Most of us, I think, have known someone where we clearly get something out of spending time with them - we feel sad when they leave - but in the heat of the moment wonder what we ever did see in them. I was also surprised to find that the mentions of WW2 and wartime Japan (especially considering this was written in the 1940s) were surprisingly critical - one character remarks on how the war-crime tribunals which Japan is included in are proof that mankind and justice can better themselves, and another comments that Japan bears fault for being taken in by fascists and madmen within the country. Even by modern standards that is a fairly shocking thing to read in a Japanese text, given Japan's general unwillingness to this day to fully "deal with" their part in the War. The plot also incorporated a brief but surprisingly compassionate discussion about the misuse of asylums and the rights of the mentally ill, and the misuse of wartime education alongside the importance of atoning for past mistakes to avoid repeating them. I appreciated these digressions on ethics inside the larger story.

The ending's not half bad either, playing some bits true to form but throwing in a genuine surprise or two.