The Honjin Murders
is a mystery novel by Seishi Yokomizo. It was serialized in the magazine Houseki from April to December 1946, and won the first Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948. It was filmed as Death at an Old Mansion in 1976. In 2019, it was translated into English for the first time by Louise Heal Kawai, and the translation was named by The Guardian as one of the best recent crime novels in 2019. The novel introduces Kosuke Kindaichi, a popular fictional detective who featured in seventy-seven Yokomizo mysteries. In it, he solves a locked-room mystery murder that takes place in an isolated mansion (honjin) blanketed in snow. Yokomizo had read classic Western detective novels extensively, and the novel makes allusions to John Dickson Carr, Gaston Leroux, and others, with several mentions of Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room as an emblematic locked-room mystery. Though writing a noir and sometimes graphic murder mystery, Yokomizo worked within the tradition of literary Japanese aesthetics. He frequently paused to include lyrical descriptions of nature, the mansion, and the characters. The novel provides a detailed sense of place, including repeated references to cardinal directions and a detailed sketch of the murder scene. Koto music, instruments, and implements play a recurring role in the case. In addition to the central mystery, Yokomizo uses the story to illuminate the traditions, customs, and agrarian rhythm of rural Japan in the early twentieth century as well as anxieties about changing class distinctions. The omniscient narrator, in an aside to the "Gentle reader," explains that the word "lineage, which has all but fallen out of usage in the city, is even today alive and well in rural villages like this one," and the killer's motive is revealed to relate to an obsession with traditional concepts of honor and family bloodlines. Story The novel takes place in 1937 in an unspecified rural village in Okayama. The anonymous narrator reconstructs the events surrounding the legendary double murder of a married couple, based on witness statements and various documents. The narrative centres around the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, living in a honjin. Kenzo, the family's eldest son, decides to marry a simple primary school teacher against the firm protest of the tradition-conscious family. On the morning of the wedding day, an unknown man is seen in the village, with a conspicuous scar on his face and only three fingers on his right hand. He inquires about the house of the Ichiyanagi family and also appears there on the evening of the wedding, where he hands the groom Kenzo a letter. Kenzo, however, tears it up without a word. Early in the morning after the wedding night, screams and then the music of a koto are heard from the family's nearby annexe, which was intended for the newly married couple. The residents rush to the newly wedded couple's bedroom, only to find the couple killed in a brutal fashion. A Japanese sword is later found thrust into the ground in the middle of