The Village of Eight Graves, by Seishi Yokomizo

 I'm looking at the date I was last here -- September!  Yikes!   I have to say that we had an extremely rough 2021 which is actually putting it mildly, but now, thankfully, we've turned that corner and things are much better and slowly getting back to normal going into 2022.   I'll be picking up where I left off with the septimo circulo list shortly as well as with a stack of books I've sadly neglected.    Truth be told, I'm just glad to be back.  

 9781782227453

originally published 1950

translated by Bryan Karetnyk

349 pp

paperback

Village of Eight Graves will be the third book I've read that features the somewhat shaggy-looking detective Kosuke Kindaichi, whose creator Seishi Yokomizo wrote him into a grand total of 77 novels.  Pushkin Vertigo has also published translations of his The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Clan (my favorite of the bunch so far), and there will be another one, Gokumon Island  later this year.   I've already preordered the last one, and I bought a dvd of that film as well.  I tried to find a copy of Village of Eight Graves on dvd, but I'm not all that sure I really want to pay the $60 the one I actually found goes for.   I did however, content myself with the trailer on YouTube (note: if you to and take a look at it you should know ahead of time that there are no English subtitles, but you'll get the drift).  

The story in Village of Eight Graves is set in postwar Japan, but before arriving in that time period, Yokomizo takes his readers back in time to the sixteenth century to explain how the village got its strange name.  Legend has it that eight samurai fled when their daimyo surrendered to another, taking along with them some 3,000 tael of gold.  They ended up in the village, where the people were hospitable to them until they learned that the samurai were being sought;  at that point they killed all eight, offering their heads in exchange for a promised reward.   With his dying breath, however, the leader of these warriors put a curse on the village, "vowing to visit his vengeance upon it for seven generations to come."  The villagers never did find the gold,  and six months later, the "ringleader of the attack on the warriors," a certain Shozaemon Tajimi,  went more than a bit beserk and not only killed members of his family but "every villager he came across."  Seven died, and Shozaemon killed himself, bringing the total to eight.  Believing that this attack was some sort of "retribution from those eight warriors who had been murdered in cold blood," the villagers decided to give them proper burials, "erecting eight graves where they were venerated as divinities."  

Flash forward first to the 1920s and then on to the postwar era,  as a young man named Tatsuya Terada recounts the story of  how he "embarked on an adventure of dazzling mystery and stepped into a world of blood-chilling terror."   It all begins with  the appearance of an attorney who comes looking for Tatsuya on behalf on someone who has been looking for him.  Identity satisfied, all the lawyer will tell him is that the person seeking him out is "extremely wealthy" and wants to "adopt and provide" for him.  But before he gets any further news, he receives a letter telling him  to "never set foot in Eight Graves again,"  and that if he does, "there will be blood!"  It was the first Tatsuya had heard of Eight Graves, but in another visit to his lawyer, he meets his maternal grandfather, whom the lawyer reveals is actually not the person looking for him.  However, he offers Tatsuya his true identity as the son of Yozo Tajimi, reveals that he has two unmarried half-siblings, and that neither one will ever have children. To prevent the Tajimi line from dying out, it seems that his great aunts have decided to name Tatsuya as the Tajimi heir.  But before Tatsuya even travels to the village, he is there when his grandfather dies, not a natural death, but one determined to be from poison.  This is the first of a number of strange deaths; the remainder will wait  for Tatsuya's return to Eight Graves Village, where it doesn't take long for the villagers to believe they are all done by Tatsuya's hand.  If I say much more there won't be a need to read the book, and people will likely be upset that I've spoiled things.  However,  it's when Tatsuya is taken to Eight Graves Village that not only do the deaths continue, but also that there are a number of strange, seemingly inexplicable occurrences that will test Tatsuya's mettle to the limit.  And while Kindaichi is on the scene here and there, his role remains sort of behind the scenes until the very end, leaving a 300-page plus mystery for the armchair detective reader to try and solve.  I never did but I had great fun getting to the big reveal.    

from Amazon Canada.  Kosuke Kindaichi action figure.  I want one of these!. 

One thing brought out very quickly which is extremely well done here is the effects of fear and superstition on the villagers, all stemming back to the  sixteenth-century and the ongoing belief of these people that history tends to repeat itself,  leading to exactly what some people are capable of when overcome by fear for their own lives.   The mystery (and its solution) is beyond satisfying, and there are a number of suspects from which to choose to up the whodunit game.  Like any good mystery writer, Yokomizo lays down any number of red herrings that tend to take readers down certain paths before realizing they've been had.  Unexpected twists and turns abound right up until the very end, adding to the fun and continuing to add more to the mystery itself  as well as ratcheting up the tension level for the reader.  Two things: first, my advice would be to copy the cast of characters offered at the front of the book -- I ended up doing this not too long into the novel because I found myself  constantly flipping back and forth.  Second, the story takes a bit of a turn into the realm of adventure tale having to do with the samurai gold, which was a bit off-putting until I just let myself go with it, figuring we'd get to the solution at some point -- a good decision.    And while it's not great literature, who cares? It's an incredibly fun book that will test any mystery reader's solving ability.  Definitely recommended.