Oh yeah, also, speaking of what we’re listening to while reading… I’ve been listening to this Kindaichi-themed album!
It’s an interesting, odd thing! It’s apparently not actually a soundtrack for any real adaptation, some funk musicians just got together and made an album based around the Kindaichi novels? On the surface, the funkiness makes it feel like a fun 70s detective show, but there’s some more atmospheric parts in there too. The included papers for this LP edition have a quote from Yokomizo who apparently heard it, where he talks about it having an “underlying melancholy which echoes Kindaichi’s loneliness,” which is interesting. I think I like the track named after 迷路荘の惨劇 best - I wonder if that bodes well for if/when we ever get to that one…
Anyway – putting that on and reading the next chapter makes for a pleasant weekend afternoon, I’ve found!
I just finished Chapter 2! It was great to finally read all of your comments.
I’m not sure that I really agree with any of the theories about the murder, although I also don’t really have a viable alternative. 
Is Naoki involved? He definitely seems suspicious and there are a lot of obvious setups making it look like he was trying to create an alibi for himself. Then again, he seems shocked by a lot of what’s going on, but it may not be what it looks like on the surface. And what about that woman locked in the cabin? Only mentioned once, by Hachiya, and then swept under the rug for the next 100 pages. I agree that that’s one of the biggest elephants in the room right now.
Yachiyo is the most blatantly suspicious and seemingly involved, but it’s unlikely that she committed the murder. To me, the question is how deeply was she involved. All of the other characters have some suspicious moments, but to me the most intriguing idea is the possibility that Hachiya was created as a double for Morie. There is a lot of doubling going on here - I have a feeling that this theory will come back into play at some point.
All in all, a lot of intriguing theories have already been introduced or alluded to within the story. But there’s always the possibility that Kindaichi will uncover something completely new. Would Yokomizo really show his hand this early? I guess we’ll find out…
The second case… in the first volume? Or the second volume? Or does a case usually go on for longer than one volume? I haven’t read that other one, and I do like getting these little or big cameos.
Also I shall refrain from seriously perusing that site this year then, shall I? o.o
Chaper 3 spoilers
I very much enjoy reading your comments, haha.
It didn’t seem like they’d separated for a long time before 金田一 found the body, and I assume it takes a bit to behead a corpse and then hide the head. I wouldn’t know, of course, but it is a bit more involved than merely killing someone.
I do believe it is very possible that it’s not 八千代’s body - it’s highly suspicious that it’s beheaded again, but that might also be a red herring.
So I guess I just don’t know! At least we know our narrator is considering that it’s a different woman, and 金田一 himself has suggested that the answer to it all may lie in his musings! Which seemed like a hint to me, at least.
Very nice! Thank you for sharing! 
Indeed. 
This is also very interesting! Listening to the tracks is making me very curious about the titles we haven’t read yet that got tracks.
Chapter 2 spoilers
There is! I’m having a lot of fun with this aspect of the case to be honest. There’s so much room for all these theories. I do wonder how exactly this case is going to be resolved though. I can only imagine there is some sort of vital clue still left to be found, or that hasn’t been mentioned yet, that will tie everthing together nicely.
This one, it’s the second case in the original run. Kindaichi isn’t like Conan where a case is 2-3 chapters, each Kindaichi case is basically a full novel. (Although some of the tankobon runs just have a set number of chapters/pages per volume, meaning you don’t get a clean case per volume…)
(Also, another thing that could be confusing is that each time Kindaichi stopped and re-started publication, they changed/added the subtitle and reset the case number. Fortunately the Wikipedia page tends to serve as an easy reference.)
To be honest, I haven’t read the Tokyo Zodiac Murders either, but the reaction of every person I know who has read both has been:
“C’mon, how much plagiarism could there really be?”
reads
“Wow. They plagiarized everything”
I think modern reprints of the Kindaichi case even feature a spoiler warning for Tokyo Zodiac.
hee hee hee… c’mon, give into the darkness…
Anyway, I am slowly progressing through Chapter 3… At the beginning of the story I thought this book was particularly hard to read for some reason but got into it as we went through chapters 1 and 2, but now with 3 I feel like I’m out of it again
That’s good to know! I might even be able to get myself to just skip file 2 for now, then.
Thanks for all this information, by the way! I appreciate it. 
I think I had a moment like that with 獄門島 where I had to read in very small doses for a while. I love all the details 横溝 provides with his storytelling, but at times they can be a lot to take in.
Which might not be what’s happening for you at all, haha. Just what made me have to take a bit more time then.
You still have most of the week left, so take your time~
I’m also moving slowly on Chapter 3. This always happens after I have a binge reading week. The next week it’s always hard to get myself to read anything.
Powered through Chapter 3. Really liked Rodan’s foray into the geography!
Naoki is suspicious, but it feels super hard for him to have committed the murder while going through the woods with Yashiro. On the other hand, something super screwy seems like it’s going on–why would ‘Yachiyo’ have gotten stabbed at the top of the waterfall if the crime scene (or at least the place where the decapitation occurred) was that little cave? I feel like maybe Yachiyo is an accomplice and that whole episode was just an act (with the “murderer” a giant dummy/puppet propped up by Yachiyo was that prepared beforehand).
One other comment I forgot to make to the previous chapters is that I recently read クビキリサイクル by 西尾維新, and I find it kind of hilarious how the protagonist in that book and 夜歩く have the exact opposite reaction to headless corpses.
Anyway, anyone know how 海勝院 is supposed to be read? うみかついん？かいしょういん？ (This one is unfortunately not on my cheat sheet.) I find it annoying and weird how we don’t get the readings for any names… I was going おにくび、おにくび until the book graciously decided to let us know it’s actually おにこうべ…
Oops, I finished the book!
END OF BOOK discussion
END OF BOOK SPOILERS
I was particularly starting to be grumpy with Yashiro for hanging out with Naoki, since murderer or not, he’s awful - I suppose at least I can’t hold that against Yashiro now .
I like how there’s a number of speculations in this thread that point in the right direction (like basically my very first comment 
) but I certainly wouldn’t have seen coming exactly how things play out. I think Naoki in particular is well-done as a mystery novel plot device, since he’s so suspicious in how he constructs things to make sure he’s definitely not the murderer, and he’s terrible so you could totally buy him being the murderer, but the sleep-walking is a completely reasonable explanation for why he would have done that, and that same terribleness is a completely reasonable explanation for why someone might want to kill him… I think the thing I’m most surprised about in the whole book is that the safe was a sincere countermeasure that even almost sort of worked in a way, and not part of a scheme.
The “beheading people just wasn’t a particularly big deal to me since I did plenty of it in the war” aspect is interesting and intense…
In general, I liked the book quite a bit! I enjoyed reading it. It’s not as atmospheric and special-feeling as 獄門島 I don’t think, and almost every major character being a terrible person, the women in the book all ending up as pawns and assaulted in various ways, and the not particularly progressive portrayal of body and mental disabilities are all maybe points against it… but I really did savor the parts just describing the unusual family history and the 中国 history!
Sorry for always posting early, but I’ll be curious to read everyone’s thoughts and will certainly be up for 八つ墓村 down the line! I might jump the gun and read another 殺人鬼 story next weekend just out of habit… maybe catch up on some Kogoro Akechi while y’all are reading S&M…
I had a feeling this would happen…
Haha, oops. The danger of a short, short, last week!
Sorry for the tags under the drop down.
Spoilers for week 4
Seems like you called it here!
I have to say, he really had me going though. I was getting more and more convinced that he wasn’t our guy - until that very last part of chapter 4 (もう一人の女).
I really enjoyed this part. From the little allusions to 直記’s glaring eyes/sweaty face, to the time spent with 金田一 - 
I think that was very well played.
Called that one too! Not quite in the way any of us could have foreseen… I think. 屋代 kept some very important cards very close to his chest.
I’m almost sure this won’t come up again - or maybe on the way back out of the village? Haha.
I’m really looking forward to the remaining 25 pages. No promises I won’t finish it over the weekend rodan-style! 
I also couldn’t find anything. I’ve been reading it as かいしょういん, for what that’s worth. I default to on reading a lot with anything religious, not sure how accurate that it.
Finished chapter 4. I wasn’t expecting that… I thought the resolution would all be stuffed into the stub chapter at the end.
First part: GET THEE TO A NUNNERY!
Second part: The casual rape was pretty squick. shudder
(Random interlude: When they witnessed the ‘murder’ last chapter I thought they saw both Yachiyo and the クル at the top of the waterfall, but based on this chapter it seems it was just the クル, which makes it even easier/more obvious…)
Anyway, the bombshell. When they were leading down the Yachiyo + Naoki path I was feeling pretty down on the book. After all, it basically just came down to everyone lying about everything. But then we have the twist killer and… to be honest, if Yachiyo is still an accomplice, I’m still not that excited about it. “Everybody lied” just doesn’t cut it for me, but there’s still plenty of stuff that needs to be explained, so final judgment has not been rendered yet. Honestly, I’m mostly surprised because this is the third Yokomizo book I’ve read but the second time I’ve seen him pull this twist.
Also, does anybody get the timeline? It seems kinda weird to me. Naoki raped Oshizu during the war, but it felt to me like Yashiro and Naoki have been hanging out for a good while, but that Oshizu/the woman in the shed was sent away recently. So I just… don’t really get it.
Just speculating a bit (spoilers up to ch 4
To be honest, I kind of forgot about that in the excitement! Thinking about it now, if 屋代 is the mastermind, maybe it was 八千代’s body in the cave after all? … I’m super bad at speculation, I usually just read on!
… She has to be involved somehow though, thinking about the scene at the stairs where she came from bringing up dinner to 蜂屋’s room.
… That would mean 屋代 is the one who sent the two letters to her? With 直紀 coming to him to drink and complain, he probably knows pretty much everything about the family.
How the heck would he have known about 守衛’s gun shot wound though? Or maybe he didn’t - aside from the old lady, no one seemed to know about it.
I don’t really see why he would need to kill 守衛 and 蜂屋 to begin with, unless he’d made a deal (maybe with 八千代?) and instigated it for someone else’s purpose.
… Possibly the first murders weren’t his doing, but then after learning about ‘the woman confined in the other house’ he decided to bide his time and wait for a chance?
Or maybe he went to investigate, found out it was his wife, and started murdering people…?
He did seem surprised or at least react when he learned her name at the nunnery though…
I assumed he kept her confined to hide that she’d gone mad. And then he sent her away when he knew he’d be bringing 屋代 to the house? I’m assuming we’ll learn more about that. 
The ‘it was the narrator all along’ twist? That’s true, we’ve seen that before… It was a short story then, though, so maybe he wanted to try and get a bit more deeply involved with it?
It seems everything we read was Yashiro’s book intended to be published so everyone could see his experience of the murders, which means I think he has license to lie about his thoughts. I haven’t and am not going to check, but if he was the mastermind, I’m pretty sure he’s been constantly lying the whole time (I mean, he’s constantly wondering what’s going on and whose body it is, right?)
No idea about Morie/Hachiya. I think Yashiro was the one who sent the letters, but we’ll see. It definitely feels like we might be straying into “omniscient god” levels of knowing how everything would play out, but there’s still one more half-chapter…
Also, if everything really was done to avenge Oshizu, it seems strange that they’d then kill her to create a body double for Yachiyo, so maybe that corpse really is Yachiyo?
It seemed weird to me cuz, like, why bide your time and pretend to be friends with him while waiting for the perfect time to execute your overcomplicated murder plan and leaving the person you’re doing this for to rot in what is essentially a prison rather than, y’know, rescuing them, but if Yashiro didn’t know what happened to Oshizu after she went mad and/or thought she had died then I suppose it works. That’s a good point on the timing of sending the woman away, and would also explain why Yashiro had never been to the Furugami manor before despite his longstanding ‘friendship’ with Naoki.
Welllllllllllllllll, I’ll just point out that the only reading clubs I’ve done here are 殺人鬼 (which I didn’t count as one of the three books) and this one. The fact that I didn’t mention a title may or may not have been intentional 
Hey everyone, sorry I haven’t checked in for awhile. Just haven’t felt like writing about the book, although I have been staying on schedule. There’s been a lot going on, with very little time to stop and let it sink in, so I feel like it’s all just gone by in a flash.
First of all, I’ve found 金田一’s involvement in all of this quite unusual. He was called in by the father but is never shown talking to him directly. He only shows up halfway through and even then doesn’t seem as involved as he would normally be, although he seems to be figuring everything out in the background. Is this one of those stories that 横溝 wrote before he realized how popular 金田一 was and then wrote him in later? It seems like a possibility. I know I read something about him doing that in the endnotes to one of the other books.
As for the revelation at the end of Chapter 4, I still feel like there are a lot of things that haven’t been cleared up yet. I agree that it seems strange for 屋代 to have been asking so many questions (to himself…) about things that happened earlier on? As part of his novel? If what came before was a novel, I would rather have it written from someone else’s perspective other than the author’s. Then, it would make more sense to have the rest of the story narrated by the author once it’s revealed that everything that came before was just part of his novel.
Either way, this story is so convoluted that I didn’t really see any of it coming. Just passively taking the ride, for the most part. Interested to see what happens in the conclusion though. I feel like 金田一 is going to swoop in and tie up some of the loose ends (of which there are a lot). Now that we know generally what was going on with お静, I would like to know what was going on with 鉄之進 and お柳, who both seemed pretty suspicious at multiple points, most uncomfortably in that weird (consensual?) rape/fight scene, where 屋代 mysteriously hinted that it was all just acting. I doubt that everyone was in on his murder plot behind 直記’s back… so why were they acting?
[Light/vague 八つ墓村 spoilers] I find these kinds of comments really funny because the only other Kindaichi book I’ve read is 八つ墓村, and he’s even less involved there than in 夜歩く
I think this entire thing, including post-reveal, is Yashiro’s novel. So he intended to end it right before the last sub-chapter, so the plan was to publish it like that and it’d look like he was innocent b/c he was asking all those questions. There is a Christie novel that uses this same plot device, although I won’t mention the title. The muttering under his breath also probably really did happen, and was also supposed to make him look innocent, although obviously he wasn’t really wondering about those questions.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, I agree. We all thought he was writing down what happened, but it turns out its all part fiction…
Having now finished the story, I have to say I’m a bit disappointed that that’s all we get. The last part felt super rushed. It’s chock full of author guy rambling along, and I guess it makes sense that he’d not spent time making it pretty if he doesn’t feel like completing this truth telling - but couldn’t we have gotten a nice change of narrator instead? The last part ruined much of the nice build up we got in the middle part for me.
Even though I ended up feeling a bit let down, so did I! The build up and atmosphere were well done, as usual. I guess especially 獄門島 really raised my expectations for 横溝 long stories. I’ll have to consciously keep that in check in the future, I suppose, so I can enjoy our next books better for what they are.
Which reminds me, we planned to read one more of the 殺人鬼 stories before S&M anyway this week.
By the way, how are you finding Kogoro Akechi? I’m really curious and I’d like to read some because, well, it’s a famous detective!, but my experience with Panorama Island has made me a bit wary of Edogawa Ranpo.
I only read one volume a long time ago (I think before at least I read 獄門島?), and it was short stories so it was pretty limited, but it seemed pretty good! The mysteries weren’t particularly more garish than Yokomizos - and really weren’t very different at all from what I remember. Akechi’s hook is I think he solves stuff via psychology, and I was pleasantly surprised that aspect didn’t seem painfully old-fashioned. The best stories I remember had two fun solutions - one that’s a convoluted mystery novel-y contraption solution, and then a follow-up that’s the correct solution from Akechi derived from some point about the motivation of the people involved that the convoluted solution lost sight of. I think I remember there was a full-on Columbo-style “howcatchem” in there too.
I’d be curious if the more エログロ type elements show themselves more in the longer novels or not! If there’s an Akechi novel that really shows off Ranpo’s particular writing style the way I think 獄門島 does for Yokomizo I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I’d certainly be open for it.
I haven’t read Panorama Island, but I have read a book that referenced Panorama Island, and I do think they talked about how it wasn’t really a traditional mystery, so I have a feeling that Panorama Island is not really the best basis on which to write off Rampo. Although tbh I haven’t read much Rampo at all, just a few short stories and no novels. If you’ve played Ace Attorney, 心理試験 is cool because it’s very clear that the second case in Ace Attorney was inspired by it (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the “howcatchem” story rodan just mentioned). It’s not a traditional murder mystery but I highly recommend 人間椅子 (and I will not say anything else about it).
Anyway, on topic. Started the stub chapter yesterday and finished today.
Thoughts
Overall this book definitely missed the mark for me. It feels like a waste of the “narrator did it” trick. Like, did he really do it? It feels like everything except for Yachiyo’s murder was either done by Yachiyo or was coincidence. (I guess there were a few more things Yashiro did, but it feels like the vast majority could have easily been done by Yachiyo as well.) The most famous “narrator did it” book specifically has the narrator never lie, although here, since this was a record that he intended to leave to implicate Naoki, he’s lying constantly. In the two spots where Yashiro did the most (the discovery of Morie’s head and Yachiyo’s murder), it’s not clear to me exactly what happened (timing-wise it seems a bit strained to me), and I’m not sure if it’s because Yashiro bent the truth in his narration or my Japanese comprehension or what. Either way I don’t really like it.
Moving away from that, there are still just a bunch of sloppy points. Yachiyo is super sus, and then she’s just guilty, that’s it. There was nothing clever with the sword in the safe, that was literally exactly what was presented to us. The plan hinged on people witnessing Yachiyo’s sleepwalking, and Naoki just happened to always be there to see it (how’d they plan that??). One of the points with the gunshot wounds was that nobody except the wet nurse knew about Morie’s. Except for the other person who did know, with no info of how they knew it. Or how about Hachiya’s head? It’s in the manor, but no we won’t tell you where or why the police didn’t find it.
The idea of double-bluffing the headless corpses is better than just playing them straight (like a certain other detective novel), but it’s not amazing, and it feels like everything else is sloppy but supposed to not be noticed because you’re so dazzled by the super-crazy narrator twist.
The timeline seems super muddy. There’s a lot of stuff in the past, and sure when it’s all happened now it’s fine, but the timeline for it all happening seems sketch. Like, Naoki doesn’t think he’s siblings with Yachiyo until she starts sleepwalking. Yachiyo doesn’t start sleepwalking until Yashiro tells her to. Yashiro doesn’t tell her to until she’s started trying to woo him. Yachiyo doesn’t start trying to woo him until Naoki tells her about him. Naoki doesn’t tell her about him presumably until he’s become Yashiro’s “patron,” which is presumably after they’ve been out of school a bit and Yashiro has had time to fail at being a writer and learn he needs a patron. But hasn’t Naoki had feelings for Yachiyo a while? Didn’t Naoki and Yachiyo basically grow up together? So it seems like Naoki should have developed feelings long before he thought they were siblings, and that the sleepwalking habit should’ve developed kind of recently.
And then there’s the whole casual rape thing. Hachiya gets killed, Naoki is clearly a jerk and goes crazy, and Yashiro is obviously evil, but we still have not one but two cases of women raped into romance, which is just… gross. As rodan mentioned every woman is just assaulted and/or abused in some way. I can separate out a good mystery story from the dated views within (see: The Greek Coffin Mystery), but these are pretty disgusting and not even attached to a decent murder plot, so I’d probably caution basically anyone against reading this book.
八つ墓村 isn’t great as a murder mystery but as a book is overall way more fun.
Count me in as being disappointed by the finale. I agree with everything mentioned here regarding the plot holes and sketchy timeline, but I also have to add that I got increasingly annoyed every time 屋代 referred to himself as a 三文作家. Yeah, we get it! Just give it a rest already!
Overall, I see this as a book with a tantalizing setup which ultimately fails to deliver on its lurid promise. It also wastes the character of 金田一, who could have at least come in at the end and spared us 屋代’s delirious and barely believable ramblings. For reasons that everyone has already laid out in detail, the way the murders are explained to us, I just don’t believe that the events described could have actually happened. And that’s not a good way for a mystery novel to end.
Still, I enjoyed the first three chapters of the book quite a bit, and I’m still looking forward to 八つ墓村 in a couple months!