Shizuko Natsuki

• Born: 1938
• Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan
• Died: March 19, 2016

Types of Plot: Inverted; police procedural; thriller

Contribution

Shizuko Natsuki has enjoyed enormous success and popularity in Japan, publishing more than eighty books. Translations of several of her mysteries have brought her international recognition as a mystery writer. In 1973, she won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Jōhatsu (vanishing). In 1989, she was awarded the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure for Daisan no onna (1978; The Third Lady, 1987).

Biography

Shizuko Natsuki was born in Tokyo in 1938. She graduated from Keio University with a degree in English literature. She married in 1963 and moved to Fukuoka, where she has lived since that time with the exception of nine years spent in Nagoya. Natsuki is not only one of Japan’s best-selling mystery writers but also one of the most prolific. She has written more than eighty novels and short-story collections, and more than forty of her novels and stories have been made into films.

Natsuki published her first mystery novel, Tenshi ga kiete iku (the angel has gone), in 1970. The first of her novels to be translated into English was W no higeki (1982; Murder at Mount Fuji, 1984). Several of her short stories have been published in translation in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Natsuki’s writing, like that of many other Japanese mystery writers of her generation, often shows the strong influence of well-known mystery writer Seichō Matsumoto.

Analysis

Shizuko Natsuki writes murder mysteries that are meticulously developed through detailed analysis of what did or could have occurred and what will happen. Detailed description is very important for building suspense and atmosphere in her novels. She accumulates precise details of the plot, often with considerable repetition of exactly what occurred or may have occurred, without really explaining its importance. This technique imbues the story with a sense of the unknown. The puzzle plot is a common structure in her novels. In Kumo kara okuru shi (1990; Death from the Clouds, 1991), she portrays detectives who reconstruct the crime in various ways by reasoning out how it may have taken place. Her use of this technique recalls the analytical style of Seichō Matsumoto.

Another technique that Natsuki often employs is that of the public inquiry. This plot structure is built on collaboration between the police and the people questioned. By portraying the interaction between the police and the public in slightly different ways, she creates complex plots in her novels and challenges the reader to solve them. She uses this technique in Fuhō wa gogo niji ni todoku (1983; The Obituary Arrives at Two O’Clock, 1988). The relationship between the police and the public is often not portrayed as totally positive. There is a reluctance on the part of many of the characters to talk with the police. They view the police with a mixture of respect and fear.

Natsuki also uses the inverted plot structure and a variation on it. In The Third Lady, Kohei Daigo plots and reasons about the murder that he is planning to commit. Natsuki uses this type of plot in the traditional way, giving the killer’s view and interpretation of the murder. In Kokubyaku no tabiji (1977; Innocent Journey, 1989), Yoko Noda and Takashi Sato enter into a suicide pact, but when Yoko wakes up from the sleeping pills, she finds Takashi has been murdered and she is likely to be the prime suspect in his death. In an effort to find Takashi’s killer before the police arrest her, Yoko attempts to reconstruct the crime and find the psychological motivation for it. Here the crime is not portrayed through the eyes or mind of the murderer but rather through the eyes of the innocent suspect.

Natsuki’s novels inform the reader about social customs and the Japanese lifestyle. Japanese temples and their social and financial relationship to the public are extensively discussed in Death from the Clouds. The settings of her novels also reveal much about life in Japan. Her male characters are typically businessmen whose lives revolve around their companies. Business trips are common, and the men are often called away on such trips; thus, business hotels and coffee shops play a major role in her novels.

Telephone calls also play a significant role in Natsuki’s mysteries. Her businessman husbands often call to inform their wives that they will not be home that evening or that they are going away for a few days on a business trip. The lives of her wives are centered on their homes and children, while their husbands’ daily lives are controlled by their companies. Natsuki portrays a society in which married couples live separate lives.

The social background of the characters—their financial and social class and family status—are important in the plots of Natuski’s novels. She demonstrates the affluence of her characters by giving them golf club memberships, very expensive in a nation where real estate is at a premium. Family relationships and status form the driving force of the plot of Murder at Mount Fuji. Chiyo, the favorite in the Wada family, suddenly claims that she has killed her grandfather; however, the death actually appears to have been an accident. Concerned for their family reputation and for Chiyo, the family bands together to create alibis, deceive the police, and throw the blame on someone who is not a member of the family.

Natsuki’s murder mysteries are permeated with psychological drama and a sense of an inexplicable supernatural element. Kaze no tobira (1980; Portal of the Wind, 1990) recounts a murder that may not have happened. A man’s photograph in a magazine has a mysterious, overwhelming attraction for a young woman, and a bereaved daughter has a sense of a tragedy that she cannot identify. The protagonists are continually forced to cope with loneliness, isolation, and a sense of dread. The characters are also fascinated by death; suicide and murder occupy them as they accumulate facts about potential acts of destruction either of themselves or of someone else.

The Third Lady

The Third Lady is a novel of revenge and of a strange quasi-religious sharing of love, which leads to a murder pact. In Chateau Chantal, a hotel in France, Kohei Daigo meets a mysterious woman named Fumiko. Sitting in the dark salon of the hotel during a severe thunderstorm and blackout, Daigo and Fumiko experience an inexplicable bonding that causes them to reveal their darkest secrets and hatreds. Both return to Japan fatalistically bound to murder for each other.

The novel has been compared to Strangers on a Train (1950) by Patricia Highsmith. However, Natsuki’s novel intensifies the suspense as her characters’ motivations are not rational. The end of the novel reveals a shocking surprise for Daigo and for the reader: Fumiko has killed the colleague whom Daigo hated because he was responsible for causing cancer in a number of children. Daigo has in turn killed Midori, who murdered Kume and whom Fumiko hated—or so Daigo believes. Fumiko’s sister Akane, pretending to be Fumiko, meets Daigo in a darkened room, re-creating the scene in the salon of the Chateau Chantal. She reveals to Daigo that he killed Fumiko when he killed Midori. Fumiko had chosen him as her executioner. The novel ends with Daigo, eyes glazed over, waiting to board a plane to France to refine the illusion he had experienced in the salon of the Chateau Chantal.

The police have constructed a more practical series of events for the crime. According to them, Daigo and Fumiko/Midori had made a murder pact. Midori poisoned Daigo’s colleague. However, instead of carrying out his part of the pact, Daigo betrayed and killed Midori to keep her from revealing the pact.

The Obituary Arrives at Two O’Clock

In The Obituary Arrives at Two O’Clock, Natsuki uses a fake wrong-number call to frame the protagonist Kosuke Okita for murder. A woman dials Kosuke seemingly by mistake, and moved by her desperation, he rushes to help her. Meanwhile, Nasuno, an entrepreneur who owes Kosuke money, is killed with a golf club. Kosuke’s wife, Shimako, and Kinumura have framed Kosuke, who figures out what they have done. He devises a plan to make them reveal that Kinumura is actually the murderer. Kosuke sends a note to Shimako stating that he has been kidnapped. Then, he cuts his finger off and recuts it such that the finger appears to be from a dead man. He sends this finger to Shimako. Relying on his belief that the shocked and frightened Shimako will immediately go to her accomplice, Kosuke hopes to cause them to reveal themselves. His plan works.

As well as being an entertaining mystery, this novel is an excellent source of sociological detail about Japan. The business activities among the owners of the golf club and the landscaping companies and the portrayal of the employees who sell the memberships depict business life in Japan. The detailed description of Shimako’s life as she waits for news of Kosuke provides an insight into Japanese home life.

Objects play an important role in this novel. A five iron is missing from Nasuno’s set of clubs, and the golf club, along with a towel and a pair of gloves, is found under a shed in Kosuke’s backyard. The five iron is identified as the murder weapon. Natsuki foreshadows this discovery by mentioning dogs barking in the neighborhood. It is assumed that the neighbor’s dog, who has a habit of digging in the Okitas’ yard, has dug up the items. In a separate incident, a child’s tricycle is placed in the road to stop a car. The driver is put in immediate danger when he stops, so the tricycle becomes a sinister object that signals someone is about to be hurt.

A common theme in Natsuki’s novels is a love interest or a developing love affair between a fleeing suspect and a younger woman. Kosuke is romantically involved with Chiharu, who, of course, believes in his innocence. As in Natsuki’s other novels, she portrays the lovers, here Kosuke and Chiharu, clandestinely meeting in coffee shops as the suspect attempts to clear himself.

Innocent Journey

Innocent Journey is an extremely complex novel. It is a novel of revenge, criminal pasts, and characters who have taken new identities. The novel begins with the relationship between Yoko Noda and Takashi Sato. Takashi and Yoko met in the Jugon bar where she works as a hostess and have entered into a casual sexual relationship. Takashi is the president of the Sato Metal Company, a wholesale firm on the verge of bankruptcy. Takashi acquired his position by marrying the only daughter of the previous president and was adopted into the Sato family. His wife died because of an abnormal pregnancy and he remarried. He is in an awkward position because his connection to the Sato family is through his dead wife. In addition, Takashi has accidentally killed a little girl who ran in front of his car. Disgusted with life, he asks Yoko to commit suicide with him. Yoko, who suffers from depression and schizophrenia, agrees to the suicide pact without really knowing why.

Yoko and Takashi go into the mountains and take what they believe is a fatal dose of sleeping pills. However, the suicide attempt fails. A very sick Yoko wakes up to find Takashi dead, not from the pills but from a knife in his back. Yoko is now the most likely suspect, and Natsuki introduces the technique of reconstruction and analysis of the crime into the novel.

Yoko’s search for the real killer leads the reader through an extraordinarily complex tangle of events. Yoko is helped in her search by Taki, who is looking for his missing brother-in-law Tanaka, who was last seen at the Jugon bar looking for Takashi. When the crime is finally solved, it is revealed that Takashi Sato is still alive. Takashi’s wife, Midori, killed Tanaka, and she substituted his body for Takashi’s at the suicide site. Tanaka had been looking for Midori, who was Jiro Miki until he had a sex-change operation, because Midori killed Tanaka’s fiancé. This tale of murder, subterfuge, and disguise is the most complex of Natsuki’s translated novels.

Bibliography

Copeland, Rebecca L., ed. Women Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. These essays focus on how female writers have been received in Japan. Places Natsuki’s work in perspective.

Herbert, Rosemary. Review of Murder at Mount Fuji, by Shizuko Natsuki. Library Journal 109, no. 8 (May 1, 1984): 918. Knowing Natsuki’s reputation, the reviewer wonders if the translator did her justice. Finds the novel flawed but captivating.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory, ed. Great Women Mystery Writers: Classic to Contemporary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Contains an essay looking at the life and earlier works of Natsuki.

“Musings.” The Daily Yomiuri, April 3, 2004, p. 1. This editorial bemoans the increase in violent crime and murder in Japan. It quotes Natsuki, in her Ittari kitari memoir, as saying that writing about crime is becoming more difficult as actual crimes are more horrific than anything she could create.

Pollack, David. Reading Against Culture: Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel. Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1992. This work examines how culture interacts with modern Japanese fiction. Although it does not cover Natsuki’s work, it helps readers understand Japanese fiction.

Stasio, Marilyn. “Crime.” Review of Innocent Journey, by Shizuko Natsuki. TheNew York Times, May 14, 1989, p. A30. Reviewer finds her style less elegant than that of Seichf Matsumoto, another famous Japanese mystery writer, but praises her storytelling.

Vernon, Victoria. Daughters of the Moon: Wish, Will and Social Constraint in Fiction by Modern Japanese Women. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1988. Although this work does not touch specifically on Natsuki, it reveals her place within the large scope of Japanese female writers.