Points and Lines

"Points and Lines was another turning point for Japanese crime mysteries. After some short stories, Seicho Matsumoto’s debut was sensational. With this book he brought a new ingredient, called social realism, to Japanese mysteries. Tokyo Station was completely burned out because of air raids during World War II. My understanding is that there was very little left. That was in 1945. This book was written just over ten years later. In that short time, Tokyo’s metropolitan station had been completely restored, and more. By mentioning trains coming into platforms 13 and 15 it suggests there are a lot of platforms. Also, the trick is that from platform 15, there’s only four minutes in which you can see a train on platform 13. Otherwise, every platform has trains coming in and out. I was not born at that time, but that crowdedness is telling me how quickly Tokyo was coming back to life. That’s an interesting view for me. Japan recovered after the war from almost nothing. After the United States occupation ended in 1952, a new direction was launched for Japan, of Americanization, so to speak. We put our foot on the ladder of rapid economic growth under democracy and capitalism. Seicho Matsumoto captured its reality and the sacrifice of people behind Japan’s success. Government bribery was one of them. It was partly from Seicho Matsumoto’s experience of hardship before becoming a writer. He had to work after middle school—instead of going to high school—in order to support his parents. He probably wanted to portray the reality of these sacrifices through his crime mysteries. Also, while the scale of events and its meaningfulness for world history is totally different, realism in art and literature in Europe sprouted in the wake of the European revolutions in the mid-1800s. Japanese social realism in crime mysteries was born as a reaction to the new Japan in the post-war period by the voice of Seicho Matsumoto. That’s my view."