Pulp Poem of the Week

What I have come to realize
is that there is no hope
for poor people looking for help.
Thank you.
I am so sorry to have troubled you.
I won’t request your help again.

     Seicho Matsumoto
     Pro Bono
     1961
     (translated by Andrew Clarke)

Book Review: Seicho Matsumoto, Pro Bono (1961)

My first Seicho Matsumoto novel was Points and Lines (1958), the whodunit that made him famously popular in Japan. That mystery hinged on a detailed analysis of train timetables, a subject that Japanese readers love but that many American readers find tedious. Perhaps more to American taste—and certainly more to the taste of noir fans—will be Matsumoto’s Pro Bono (1961), which has just appeared in English for the first time. Kiriko Yanagida, a young woman from Kyushu, travels to Tokyo to solicit to the services of a famous lawyer to represent her brother, whom she believes has been falsely accused of murder. Kiriko has no way to pay the lawyer, and he briefly considers but rejects the possibility of taking her case pro bono. The bulk of the novel tells of the events that follow: the fate of Kiriko’s brother; how his fate affects her; and how all of this comes back to affect the lawyer. Grade: B+

Book Review: Seicho Matsumoto, Points and Lines (1958)

I may never be able to fully untangle the degree to which the woodeness of some Japanese mystery novels is a function of (1) poor translations, (2) the Japanese language itself, (3) Japanese cultural norms (in particular, those governing politeness in speech), and/or (4) the conventions of the Japanese mystery novel (including the conventions of serial publication). In any case, I am learning to take this woodeness as a given, and it interferes less and less with my enjoyment of Japanese mysteries. Points and Lines is an enjoyable though fairly wooden (surprise!) police procedural centering on one man's alibi that he has built, in part, on being seen on trains and in train stations. Was it possible for him to have been at the scene of an alleged "love suicide" while also traveling as he appears to have traveled? According to the note on Seicho Matsumoto's life, the tremendous success of Points and Lines set off a "Matsumoto boom" in Japan. This fact perhaps says less about Points and Lines than it does about Japanese readers and their love of railroad timetables. Grade: B-