The Meiji Guillotine Murders

It’s 1869 in the newly renamed capital of Tokyo, a year after the political revolution known as the Meiji Restoration overthrew the ruling Tokugawa shogunate that kept Japan in feudal isolation for over 200 years. It’s a time of rapid social change and political turmoil; not everyone is happy with the new government’s policy of Western modernization. Law enforcement, such as it is, is represented by five corrupt rasotsu (police officers) who are more interested in lining their pockets than in protecting the public. But they are reluctantly enlisted into the services of two chief inspectors from the Imperial Prosecuting Office as they investigate government corruption and a string of impossible-seeming murders. One inspector is the elegant and handsome Keisherō Kazuki, who cuts an odd figure in his old-fashioned clothes that make him look like “a courtier who had stepped out of the Heian period.” He is also obsessed with making the new government a just one and has imported a French guillotine as a more humane means of execution. His older colleague,Toshiyoshi Kawaij, is more down to earth, but he too is an outsider. The two men share a friendly rivalry as they probe several gruesome, supernatural-like killings. They are aided by Esmeralda, a beautiful Frenchwoman who followed Kazuki back to Japan (much to the dismay of Kazuki’s fiancée and her father) and who now is studying to become a miko, a Shinto shrine maiden with shamanistic powers that enable her to speak for the dead. How these crimes connect to the book’s title is resolved surprisingly and cleverly in the final section. Although the plethora of Japanese names can at first be confusing (a glossary of Japanese terms would also have been helpful), Karetnyk’s stylish and witty translation (there’s a lot of humor in this dark, bloody tale) quickly draws readers into Yamada’s atmospheric world. And Kazuki and Kawaij (a historical figure considered the father of the modern Japanese police force) make for a memorable sleuthing duo. Noted for his ninja novels, Yamada has written an engrossing, twisty tale that will appeal to fans of well-designed puzzle mysteries and international crime fiction with a fascinating historical setting.