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Discussion Guidelines
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Spoiler Courtesy
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Proper Nouns
Name
Hiragana reading
Notes
Kindle location first mentioned
赤川次郎
あかがわじろう
the author
cover
尾田医師
おだいし
Doctor Oda
24
目高組
めだかぐみ
Medaka clan
86
Izumi’s family
星泉
ほしいずみ
main character, Izumi
170
酒井好子
さかいよしこ
aunt Yoshiko
172
星貴志
ほしたかし
main character’s father, Takashi
179
酒井呈一
さかいていいち
Uncle (Yoshiko’s husband)
201
知子
ともこ
Tomoko (?Izumi’s mother)
211
マユミ
-
mysterious woman in Izumi’s apartment
348
Classmates
奥沢哲夫
おくざわてつお
Classmate of Izumi, Tetsuo (son of an executive, smart dresser, family expect him home for dinner on time)
251
渡辺周平
わたなべしゅうへい
Classmate of Izumi, Shuhei (stocky, bowlegged, loves Judo)
251
竹内智生
たけうちともお
Classmate of Izumi, Tomo. (Smart, heading for Tokyo university, wears glasses)
261
Schoolteachers
三浦久子
みうらひさこ
Miss Miura, teacher
357
保科校長
ほしなこうちょう
Headteacher Hoshina
368
和子
かずこ
classmate,
433
Yakuza
健次
けんじ
Kenji, Medaka gang member, short, unbalanced (brought the doctor in the car in the prologue), chews gum
555
英樹
ひでき
Hideki, Medaka gang member, skinny and unhealthy looking, wears thick glasses
556
武
たけし
Takeshi, Medaka gang member, stocky and overweight
558
佐久間
さくま
Sakuma, Medaka second in command, unusually tall (‘beanpole’), in 50s
558
浜口
はまぐち
Hamaguchi, local Yakuza chief
1,034
Other characters
黒木
くろき
detective, head of the S section
870
浜口物産
はまぐちぶっさん
Hamaguchi trading company
936
野田代議士
のだだいぎし
Representative Noda, politician, waiting for Hamaguchi
1,064
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0voters
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Man, what a cliffhanger. I read this chapter early because I’m on vacation next week, but now it’s painful to stop here. That last scene where Izumi sneaks into her room was a total page-turner, too.
I understand the meaning, but can’t unpack the end of the this. Not yet… it seemed had been stabbed…interval wasn’t…
?
三人の頼りがいのある（？）用心棒に守られて無事到着
I was puzzled by this until I discovered that 頼りがい was a word
I’m still a bit unsure about the のある construction, though I can see what it is doing
but the other thing I was going to ask about was the editorial (?)
Akagawa does this intermittently. Are these supposed to be ironic question marks - a bit like ‘scare quotes’?
what is the meaning of なったからには in the middle here
and is the idea that because she doesn’t have much experience, she is going to have to study to be able to be Oyabun?
It's all connected...
すべてがつながり、関わり合っているのなら、まだこの先何かが起こるのではないかと思えたのだ…
I’m a bit lost in this construction
Everything was connected, because she was mixed up in it, she could think that already earlier something wouldn’t have happened…???
I agree. This did not feel like a sensible decision by Izumi - especially when the doorman was missing from downstairs. I’m assuming (despite Akagawa’s tendency to kill off characters) that she will survive this, but I’m keen to read on to make sure…!
I think this is the “you can mark the subject in a short relative clause with の instead of が” の – same meaning as 頼りがいがある用心棒 lit. “bodyguards who have trustworthiness”.
からには has an entry in the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar; it means “now that”, “once s.o. has done something”, etc. Here it means “given that you’ve become a yakuza boss, you should learn something from the experience”.
Couple of hopefully orienting hints:
なら divides this sentence in half, giving you an overall structure of "if it is true that (stuff before なら) then (stuff after なら)
the 思える here is an odd use of the potential form with a verb like 思う or 考える which Jay Rubin has a brief section “The Natural Potential” in his book Making Sense of Japanese. The potential or passive form is used to describe a situation where the situation or environment naturally or spontaneously leads to the person thinking something. A natural English translation is often “it seemed that”, eg “…it seemed like something more might still happen in the future”.
間(ま)がない is an expression meaning ‘not much time has passed since (preceding words)’. Several dictionaries state that it comes after the -て form of a verb though, so it’s leaving me a little unsure. I’ve struggled to find example sentences. It’s much easier to find sentences for 間もない, which seems to mean the same thing and is used with and without -て forms.
Assuming we’ve got the correct meaning, that’s how we get “not much time had yet passed since she looks/seems to have been stabbed” for that last bit.
The hints are pretty overt, yeah. Izumi described him as looking mid thirties in last week’s reading, too… Considering there was something similar in 殺人犯になれる, I’m curious how many times Akagawa has paired high school kids with adults in his books. なれる spoiler: also curious to see if this one turns out to be a bad guy as well! I’m with @Boodil in that he could be a corrupt cop, or maybe not even a cop to begin with. Did he ever show any credentials or proof? Might have forgotten if he did.
I have to say that I felt quite uncomfortable with the flirting from the ‘detective’ towards Izumi… it was already a bit weird on the previous book, but I feel that here it just felt even more like grooming. She’s 17, her father just passed away, and it seems so much like he’s just taking advantage of the situation… ew
It is one of the bits of the book that obviously date it. It is hard to imagine someone writing this into a contemporary novel (unreflectively, and without it being an explicit theme…)
He didn’t, but after they found Mayumi’s body, he seemed to call a real forensic squad and none of them exposed him as a fake cop, which gives a bit of credibility to his claim, imo. The jury is still out on whether he’s got his own agenda in regards to finding the mystery parcel, though.
I spotted that Izumi seems to be getting a bit of a crush on the mop-cop and trusts him more than she probably should at this point, but tbh, I didn’t find it creepy so far. I mean, at least not in a sexual way, just maybe in an intentional “the reader is supposed to have a bad feeling about this” kind of way. I didn’t have a problem with the other one-sided teenage MC crush in 殺人犯, either. Since everyone here seems to agree that it was creepy - I wonder if there was something overly flirtatious in the mop’s manner that simply flew over my head for language reasons.
and asking about joining her fan club make it clear that it’s not just a friendly adult and a one sided crush. (Plus in-story the classmate trio are dubious about the detective: 君のことを食いつくような目つきで見てたぜ.)
Hm, good points. As an isolated incident, this one didn’t immediately stand out to me as fishy, because it seemed more like he was trying to gain her trust by stroking her ego - kids love getting told how grown-up they are, after all. But the trio’s opinion might be a clue. They are borderline weird stalkers themselves, so maybe it takes one to know one.
I didn’t get to read much the last few weeks and am trying to catch up with the club. Just finished this weeks portion! With that ending, will probably continue reading as soon as I can
question
「分かってるようなこと言ってら」
This is said by one of her fanclub members (I think). What does 言ってら mean? I interpreted this as 言ってろ, but does that work?
on detectives behavior
I rolled my eyes with how he was behaving in the apartment, but since Izumi didn’t seem to think much of it, it felt mostly silly (I almost hope he continues to make vague affectionate gestures, just for her to ignore it completely).
This was what made it very creepy to me, but thankfully Izumi didn’t blush or something
I also thought that! I wouldn’t be surprised if it tuns out to be the same, but I am hoping it doesn’t.
So it means the same as 言っている + emphatic/critical tone.
I also found some stuff suggesting it was part of the old tokyo dialect speech style; it wouldn’t surprise me if nobody in real life speaks like that. (I think this line is from 哲夫, who also uses ぜ as a sentence ender.)
