A Puzzle for Fools
The year is 1997. The winner of the 3rd Mephisto Prize has just been published. Although the book is selling well – far above expectation – the judges of the competition were facing an unprecedented level of criticism. The work in question, Six Tonkatsu, is positively shunned by readers – mystery novel enthusiasts and general public alike. The collection of short stories within are simplistically written, feature crude and childish jokes, and can barely be considered satisfying mysteries in any sense of the word.
Still, the book is selling and the threats do eventually fizzle out.
Except one.
“You have not published a work, but an insult. It is an antithesis not only to good taste, but common sense. It is as if you placed a glass of water in front of us and forced us to die of dehydration. This will not stand. Prepare to die.”
Such was the note that the competition judges had found in their mailbox.
They could do little else but ignore it. There were no evidence as to who the letter-writer could’ve been. And the threat itself, while odd, was certainly not the first of its kid.
Thus, time passed. The book sold.
Then, in 1998, ahead of the judging period for the 4th Mephisto Prize, tragedy struck.
One of the judges was found dead in his home. He was on the floor of his living room. The only other thing of note was a glass filled with water, only a few feet away from him.
The cause of death was dehydration.
At the victim’s feet were numerous pieces of paper covered in the victim’s handwriting. They said:
“Damn the Six Tonkatsu!”
It was baffling. There was nothing wrong with the water in the house – be it in the glass or the kitchen sink. The victim was perfectly healthy, denying the idea that the victim had been experiencing rabies-induced hydrophobia. The house door was unlocked, and the key was on the victim’s person. Talking to the neighbors confirmed that the victim’s car never left the driveway in the week leading up to the death.
There were no signs of restraints on the body. No drugs were found in the system. There was no indication the victim’s body had been moved after he died.
It was as if the man had simply given up and died. In the time leading up to his death, he hadn’t even bothered going to the bathroom, instead choosing to do his business on the spot.
Death would’ve come in only a few days – the man was short, unkempt and generally frail.
After months of investigating, the police eventually declared the case to be closed. The conclusion was that the victim had committed suicide due to the harassment received over The Six Tonktatsu.
The very next day upon the declaration, a man turned himself to the police and admitted to killing the man.
How had he done it?
We’ll return to this problem a bit later. For now, I wanted to talk about the book itself.
As I mentioned, The Six Tonkatsu is a collection of short stories by Kenichi Sobu. It follows an insurance investigator and some of the stranger cases he’d encountered in his line of work – ranging from theft to murder and kidnapping. He frequently turns to his friend Furudo, a writer, for insight into these bizarre cases. When the answers he gets aren’t bizarre, they’re often just flat-out wrong.
Because Six Tonkatsu isn’t your typical collection of mystery stories. While – obviously – no murder happened in real-life, the outrage most certainly did. The work was often criticized because the solutions were often intentionally either underwhelming or just flat-out silly. In them, Furudo would approach the mysteries in a detective-like manner and use the clues to assemble a deduction that – even while he’s saying it – sounds completely ridiculous. The worst part is, sometimes he even gets to be right. The other times, the solution comes at you completely out of the left field from little to no real hints at all.
It’s difficult to really explain just how silly these stories can get, so I’ll do something a bit heretical and actually spoil one of the stories. It’s probably my favorite in the collection.
The story is called Baron Katsura’s Ball.
During a ball, the narrator is tasked with keeping watch of a woman wearing a precious necklace insured by his company. In a moment of inattention – as Furudo is remarking on what he calls “wallflowers”, women leaning against a wall for the entire ball and not really interacting with anyone – the necklace disappears. Thankfully, the entire dance floor is sealed off in time, and it’s determined that the culprit and the necklace must still be inside.
When the police arrive, the men and women are searched by a male and female police officer respectively – but the necklace is simply gone.
Use ROT-13 to read the solution. If you want to remain unspoiled, you can just skip this part.
Shehqb’f gurbel vf gung gur arpxynpr jnf fgbyra ol gur Oneba gb pynvz gur vafhenapr zbarl. Gur zna vf onyq, gurersber, ur chg gur arpxynpr ba uvf urnq naq chg ba n onyq pnc ba gbc bs vg. Crbcyr, nsgre nyy, jbhyq fhfcrpg fbzrbar gb uvqr gur bowrpg va gurve unve be jrne n jvt – ohg abobql jbhyq fhfcrpg n onyq zna. Guvf riraghnyyl cebirf vapbeerpg (nsgre gur aneengbe whzcf ba gbc bs gur oneba naq gevrf gb crry uvf onyq pnc bss). Nf ur’f pbagrzcyngvat gur snpg gung gur oneba jvyy yvxryl fhr uvz vagb boyvivba, ur naq Shehqb ner nccebnpurq ol n jbzna ubyqvat gur zvffvat arpxynpr. Vg dhvpxyl orpbzrf nccnerag gung fur qbrfa’g fcrnx Wncnarfr. Vg ghearq bhg gung gur arpxynpr unq fvzcyl snyyra ba gur sybbe naq fur unccrarq gb cvpx vg hc. Fvapr ur qbrfa’g haqrefgnaq Wncnarfr, fur qvqa’g haqrefgnaq jung nyy gur shff jnf nobhg. Gur jbzna jnf nyfb jrnevat n sybjre-cnggrerq qerff – fur jnf gur “jnyysybjre” Shehqb jnf rlrvat rneyvre. Nf vg unccraf: gur qerff oyraqrq vagb gur sybjre-cnggrearq jnyycncre. Guvf pnhfrq gur srznyr bssvpre gnfxrq jvgu frnepuvat ure gb zvff ure pbzcyrgryl, naq gur znyr bssvpre gb fvzcyl nffhzr fur’q nyernql orra frnepurq.
This is often heralded as a defining work of the so-called “stupid mystery” or “bakamys”. As the title might suggest, these mysteries are often ridiculous in their answers and cluing.
…For the first half, anyway.
As you continue reading, the stories actually start resembling actual mystery stories. There’s a very good one on how a man saw his wife at train station A and made it all the way to train station B to stab her in disguise – all in just 70 seconds, in spite of the fact the traffic between the two stations was completely congested.
But the stand-out is definitely the titular story: The Six Tonkatsu. The mystery features the murder of a wealthy man during his stay at a mountain resort. The main suspects are his six sons, who the insurance company suspects teamed up to kill him. Five of the brothers, however, were seen in the lobby of the resort at the time when the man was murderered. The sixth son was in a different resort altogether, over an hour away – with no means of getting there, because the other five brothers had taken all five of the snowmobiles to go and see their father.
It’s a mystery that works on the same principle as another famous Japanese novel – one that the collection itself warns you about potentially spoiling right before you get to these stories. But though I’d read the novel, it still took me a bit to see the trick, which I actually really like.
The writer liked it too, because in this later release, he actually added a story called The Five Tonkatsu, which uses the exact same principle, but answers the mystery of how one of the five stage performers could’ve murderered the troupe’s owner during a performance where all five were featured so prominently that it would’ve been impossible for any of them to slip away.
I really loved this collection. It’s a geniunely funny book, with protagonists often as dumb as the mysteries they’re trying to solve. Some of the solutions involving dying messages or wordplay went over my head, but I really did enjoy most of them. (It helps that the wordplay solutions were generally ridiculous or just flat-out wrong, too.)
The author himself has apparently long-since transitioned out of writing stories like this, considering this a bad collection (judging by the afterword). But I don’t know. I think, in spite of all the outrage it might’ve gotten at the time, it’s something that could’ve only come from a place of love for the genre. The things it parodies: the method of detection, locked rooms, alibi mysteries with tricky train timetables – and even its genuinely cool puzzles in the latter half – could’ve only appeared if they were written by someone that gets it.
Speaking of getting things, I’m assuming you’ve already solved the mystery of the dehydrating man?
Of course, the answer is simple.
The victim was sealed into a small space, with thousands of copies of The Six Tonkatsu used to build the walls around him.
The victim was drugged (these drugs were not found in his system, because the victim would’ve gotten it out of his system by the time he was found) and sealed in with the books completely. The entire house was completely covered – from the living room to, to the kitchen, to the bathroom – everything. Thus, it was impossible for the victim to push his was out. Pulling out one of the books to collapse the stacks also didn’t work, because they were wedged in so tightly. The victim was short, so he couldn’t even try to punch into the ceiling or start pulling the books from the top of the walls of books surrounding him.
The culprit had intentionally left the victim writing utensils. He had no issue if the victim wrote down what had actually happened to him. However, as the culprit had predicted, the victim was too embarrassed to admit dying in such a stupid way, and instead cursed the books themselves.
A few days later, the victim died of dehydration, the culprit returned and started dismantling the wall from the outside (he had the privilege of having tools to slowly break through the tight wall he’d created). When he was done, he placed a glass of water next to the victim’s corpse and slipped the key to the house in the victim’s pocket (obviously, during the time the victim was dying, the culprit had locked the house up with the victim’s key just in case someone tried stumbling into the house).
As it happens, for his plan to work, the culprit had to buy thousands of copies of The Six Tonkatsu, thus explaining why the book sold so well.
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