The Aosawa Murders, by Riku Onda

"I'll tell you the truth, as I know it."

Generally I don't reread crime/mystery novels because I can only be surprised once,  but this is no ordinary crime/mystery novel, and it affected me much more the second time through. After the original read I knew I had something great in my hands but things were still a bit murky; rereading brought clarity and I was flat out chilled.  

781912242245

Bitter Lemon Press, 2020

originally published 2005

translated by Alison Watts

304 pp

paperback

It was a summer day and a special one: there were two "auspicious" birthdays at the Aosawa home: those of Dr. Aosawa, now sixty, and the grandmother who was eighty-eight.  There was another birthday as well, that of a grandson, and it was a day for celebration.  A neighbor child, Junji, had gone home to get his brother Sei-ichi and sister Makiko to come back to the Aosawa house to join the festivities, and the three arrived back just in time to witness a "scene from hell."  Seventeen people lay either dead or dying from drinks laced with poison, six of them children.  Two people survive: Kimi, the housekeeper who had only had a small taste of her drink, and Hisako Aosawa, the young daughter of the doctor who had none.   Kimi was out as a suspect because although she survived she was hospitalized right away, severely ill,  leaving only Hisako.  The thing is though that she is blind, and had no way to identify any possible suspects; nor is there any possibility that she could have laced the bottles of sake and soft drinks containing the poison.  The detective investigating the case is sure it's her, but there is no evidence linking her directly to the crime.  The case stalls, but another line of inquiry opens centering on the man who delivered the drinks to the party that day.  It's not until his suicide that, as the back-cover blurb notes, "his actions seem to seal his guilt," but the question is why? No connections could ever be discovered linking him to the Aosawas.  And then there are those people who aren't convinced he's guilty, still holding on to the idea that it was Hisako who was responsible. 

Years later,  Makiko Saiga publishes a book about that day called The Forgotten Festival, which she claims was "ultimately fiction" although it was "based on facts and research."  Nonfiction, she says, "is an illusion," since "All that can exist is fiction visible to the eye. And what is visible can also lie."  Later her assistant will reference her work as a "grey area."  She had written Forgotten Festival after countless hours of interviews with people somehow connected to the crime;  and once published it caused quite a stir.   Now, thirty years after the murders, a friend of Makiko's younger brother feels compelled to start looking into the truth of things, going back to many of the same people who were  involved with the case or who had once been interviewed for The Forgotten Festival, including the detective on the case, Makiko Saiga and of course, Hisako Aosawa herself.

The Aosawa Murders is not simply about discovering the who and the why.  Among other issues, the author so disturbingly reveals throughout this story that although the murders happened thirty years earlier,  that day took its toll and  had a lasting, often devastating impact on several people, and continues to do so in the present.  She also asks the question of how to get to the real truth behind events, especially when it comes from so many different perspectives; there's also the ultimate question of responsibility. 

The author should be commended on how she put this book together, ultimately leaving it to the reader to go through several perspectives using personal recollections, newspaper articles, diaries, pieces of Saiga's Forgotten Festival etc. to pick up a number of clues before arriving at the chilling truth of what actually happened that day and why.    I discovered that there is nothing wasted here, that everything that everyone says is important, and the trick is in putting together things that may not at first seem to matter or to be connected.  We are handed that clue at the outset by Makiko Saiga, who as she is walking around the city talks about a "synaptic experience...all connected but separate."

If you must have a linear, easy-to-follow plot, or you're not one to really sit and think about what you've just read, this book is likely not for you.  This novel is brilliant; it is very different and quite cleverly constructed so as to provide a challenge to even the most seasoned of crime or mystery fiction readers.  It zeroes in on human nature which moves it well into the literary zone, which is where I most enjoy being.

For me, this book is not just Japanese crime fiction at its best; it is crime fiction at its very best.