本陣殺人事件 Short Stories(金田一耕助 Reading Club)

Pretty sure 日兆 showed up as にちょう early in my paperback copy.

おしげ seems to make sense for お繁.

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Spoilers up to and including part 八.

Just when I was wondering when 金田一 would appear, he shows up. In a completely unexpected fashion! To me at least, haha. I had to re read the part where 風間 enters the 二号 (:joy:) - there were hints as to there being a guy in the home, but nothing about that possibly being 金田一, I think? Hopefully it was meant to be as surprising as it was, haha.
So I guess 二兆 was aiding 繁子 in hiding the evidence? I wonder why she had to kill herself. Probably because she didn’t want to face jail and such, but I guess I wonder if there might not be a deeper reason. She seemed to change her mind when 風間 came onto the scene. :confused:

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Glad that I reached the last page of the book :smile: I think I like this story more than 本陣, but less than 車井戸.

Spoilers

I had trouble understanding the words used by 金田一 when he was talking about his relationship with 風間。
There were allusions to stories I didn’t know, such as 権八小紫. I skipped this part when I first read it because I didn’t want to break the flow of the story. But I still don’t think I understand it. I’m guessing 権八=金田一, 長兵衛=風間。

The part where 金田一 was almost shot was a surprise to me. There were guns already back then?! I feel like I’m watching a movie, and THIS is the climax. It’s funny that at one moment, I imagined what if 金田一 was shot and dead. Would this be the end of the series? The next moment I realized the author had full control of the whole story. He wouldn’t let him die.

I like how the Method(一人二役) was revealed at the end of Chapter 8 (when お繁自殺した) before 金田一 walked us through his thought process of solving the case. When I read “お繁が一人二役を演じていた,” I was surprised but, at the same time, came to realize a lot of things could be explained if that’s the case. But still, I had many “whys” and “hows” that propelled me to read the rest chapters!

I’m using Kindle to read the book. But the logo of Book Walker is on the last page of the book. Amazon and Book Walker share ebooks with each other?? :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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I’m not quite finished yet. Still on 九…

There have been more details than I would like to admit that I just haven’t been able to parse out. These don’t seem to hinder my understanding of the story as a whole, but they bother me.

For example…

When 金田一 is explaining his theories about the murder, the phrase 気の抜けたビールを舐めながら comes up repeatedly. Is he drinking a beer that’s gone flat? Or does ビール have another meaning that I’m missing?

Sorry for the random question. Just not sure why he would be drinking a beer. I’ll go back to my reading now… :sweat_smile:

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That’s what I think it means as well. Why wouldn’t he be drinking a beer? He’s at his friends house, and quite in shock still from the happenings the night before. And, well. I’m sure they’re all quite relieved it’s over. :beer: :grin:

Ooh, I let that slide when I was reading. Thank you for the link!

That’s super interesting. I liked both 車井戸 and 黒猫亭 - the style of the first was really nice, but I like that we get more exposition in the longer stories. And there was something about young 金田一 in 本陣 as well… Difficult!

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Yeah, you’re right. It is just a beer. The line 気の抜けたビールで咽喉をうるおし… made me feel pretty stupid for asking that question. Don’t know why I thought it was something else. :sweat_smile::laughing::tired_face:

P.S. Is a beer really a spoiler? :joy:

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Japanese loves drinking beer, so… Now that you mentioned, 気の抜けたビール appeared 4 times!! It raises an interesting question that why didn’t he just say “ビール”? Maybe 気の抜けた shows that 金田一 had been talking for a long while

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:beers:

I don’t know, maybe. :joy:

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Glad I waited until I finished reading the book to click on that! Major spoiler alert!!!

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I also puzzled over this part for a while and then decided it was useless to try to decipher a reference to a story and characters that I know nothing about. My vague interpretation was that 権八 doesn’t get the girl, but he stays free from trouble, while 小紫 leads 長兵衛 to his downfall. Is that even close to correct?

I’ve read through the passage posted above countless times and I think I understand it less every time I read it. :laughing:

その腕前に惚れこんで、長兵衛がつれてかえるという段取りであるべきところ、時勢がかわると雲助源治は一切長兵衛にまかせておいて、権八は戦々競々として、ふるえているのだからだらしがない。

Particularly this line. I have no idea what it means! How can I have read two full volumes of 横溝 and still have this much trouble??

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I looked a bit further into it and found wikipedia and this page the most useful for describing the scene that’s being talked about.

My impression as to how the original scene goes is:

Important guy 長兵衛 is traveling through a rough spot - gets attacked by burglars. Cool guy 権八 pops out and drives away the burglars. Important guy is impressed with how cool and strong Cool guy is, so he asks him to come with him and work for him. Cool guy says a famous cool guy line, asking if he’s one to be made to come and go on another’s wishes. (but does end up living with Important guy as a retainer and ends up being a symbol for 居候).
Later on - Cool guy kills somebody, and runs away eventually living with a prostitute 小紫 and living via crimes, eventually being executed at 鈴ヶ森
.

So, my interpretation of the passage screenshotted by @wangqiwen is something like (very very roughly):

居候 → that calls to mind 権八, but this 権八 doesn’t follow the plot so well. 権八 is supposed to beat up the burglars, and have 長兵衛 be impressed with him and take him away, but at that point our 権八 was too scared and left it completely up to 長兵衛 to deal with the burglars. At least if that meant he didn’t meet 小紫 and do all those crimes it’d be better for him in the long run anyway, but no - he went with 長兵衛 still (?) and ended up with an inexhaustible supply of 小紫.

(Again though I don’t remember enough about the Yokomizo story to say how well that ties in to what the characters are talking about).

I mean to be fair, most of the text in volumes of 横溝 don’t rely heavily on your knowledge of particular scenes from kabuki plays! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

In the 1940s? :sweat_smile:

Congratulations on finishing both stories! I remember liking both of the back-ups but I definitely remember them much less well than 本陣 - whether because of the movie adaptation I watched or it being the first impression, I’m not sure. I think I read them quite quickly after the main story which maybe helped them fade into the background.
I remember thinking 黒猫亭 felt a little like a story I would have preferred to read Ranpo’s rendition of - like “grisly happenings in Tokyo? That’s Ranpo’s thing! I come to Yokomizo for extensive family lineages in Chuugoku!” :sweat_smile:

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I still don’t really understand how 金田一 and 風馬 are supposed to relate to 権八 and 長兵衛, but your summary did help me parse out what’s written in the text at least. Every time I feel like my Japanese reading skills are getting pretty good, something like this comes up that totally throws me for a loop. Guess I have to accept that I’ll never understand this passage 100% and just move on to something else…

I agree that this story was very Ranpo-esque, which made it enjoyable for me despite some difficult passages towards the end. Also thought it was interesting that we have another murderous monk here, just like in 獄門島. I thought the character of 日兆 could have been explained/developed a bit further though. In the end, he kind of seemed like a wild card in the whole scheme of events. No real motive except that he fell for お繁 and wasn’t entirely right in the head to begin with.

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