Stranger things
Wife investigates husband's murder to find a man she barely knew

Seicho Matsumoto (1909-92) is considered to have written the best Japanese mystery novels of the 20th century. He is often referred to as the Japanese Georges Simenon, referring to the great Belgian crime writer most famous for his fictional Detective Jules Maigret, selling more than 500 million copies worldwide.

Matsumoto did not produce the volume of published works of Simenon. But Matsumoto – unlike Simenon and other crime fiction luminaries of the 20th century – undergirded his narratives in a wider social context that included postwar nihilism that expanded the scope of the genre. 

I have emphasized numerous times that perhaps the best literary crime fiction has and continues to come from offshore. Matsumoto put the Asian imprint on literary crime fiction, exposing corruption among police and political leaders, as well as motives of the criminals we’re used to seeing hunted, exposed and excessively punished. He wrote not just about lawbreakers but also about the society affected by lawlessness and the lazy eye of compromised authority.

So why did you need to know all that about Matsumoto? Because, you will want to know about the author of the March 26 English language release of Matsumoto’s “Point Zero,” more than adequately translated by Louise Heal Kawai and published by Britain’s esteemed Bitter Lemon Press. “Point Zero” was published in Japan in 1959 under the title “Ten to Sen.” It cemented Matsumoto’s reputation for introducing literary crime fiction to Japan and elevated him as Japan’s best-selling and highest-earning author. 

“Point Zero” is peopled with few characters, so confusion doesn’t set in as with many foreign language novels that seem to parade a dozen or more characters who are easily forgotten or confused. Matsumoto’s only actors are marquee players we follow through a brokered marriage and the peculiar disappearance of the bridegroom days after an awkward honeymoon. The death is investigated by an irascible new wife who bends norms while conforming to tradition.

Teiko Itane is a 26-year-old woman who is appreciated as attractive by her family and friends. After several unremarkable romances, she develops a calloused indifference toward marriage, despite the fading tradition of encouraging population growth. 

Nonetheless, Teiko receives a marriage proposal from Kenichi Uhara, arranged by a marriage broker who was a friend of Teiko’s late father.

Kenichi is 10 years older than Teiko. He is a respected manager at the satellite office of a prestigious Tokyo advertising agency in the woebegone town of Kanazawa City, a lengthy train ride from Tokyo. But Kenichi punctually spent 10 days a month at the Tokyo office and maintained an apartment there. His promise accompanying his marriage proposal to Teiko is that he will transfer to the home office in Tokyo after three months of training his replacement, Yoshio Honda. 

Respect is central to the Japanese culture, even while Western fashion, music and social media compete side by side with traditional Japanese fashions and hierarchic customs. Kenichi wears western suits and accessories, while Teiko, by choice, lives in two worlds, dressed nearly as often in traditional Japanese kimonos as in Western fashions, as they call them in Japan. 

Kenichi and Teiko marry, board a train for a scenic destination bundled as a honeymoon and, over the next few days, become intimate strangers. Kenichi is aloof and preoccupied but accommodating. Teiko is accommodating in return but increasingly confused about what this man, her husband, is feeling or what he is thinking during their intimacies, delivered rougher and more domineering each time. There’s a creep factor that comes with Kenichi, as easily disturbing to Teiko as to us. But in Japanese society, perhaps all new husbands depreciate the value of their wives the moment after marriage.

Back in Tokyo, Kenichi prepares immediately to board a train to Kanazawa to train his replacement. Teiko comes to the railway station obliged to bid farewell until he returns in three weeks. 

This is the last time Teiko ever sees her husband.

The only thing more you need to know – and there’s much more to come – is that after WWII, Kenichi was a policeman in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Force assigned to the Public Morals Division overseeing the streets where pan-pan girls cater to GIs during America’s post-war occupation.

Matsumoto is a storyteller of the first order, and “Point Zero” is a masterpiece equal to and mostly better than any crime fiction coming out of Europe and absolutely anything published in the U.S. His 2016 book, “A Quiet Place,” was reviewed in these pages, and I still think reading it is one of the reasons I left my dog outside all night. 

“Point Zero” is a $17 trade paperback – spring for this one. And don’t forget to ask Maria’s Bookshop for your 15% “Murder Ink” discount.