Appreciation and Analysis of "The Point and the Line" by Kiyotaka Matsumoto: the pioneering work of the social school mystery novel

Matsumoto Kiyocho 's " Dots and Lines " is considered to be the pioneering work of Japanese social school mystery novels . The critics highly praised the significance of the novel's criticism of reality. This evaluation undoubtedly improves the status of mystery novels in the history of Japanese literature, but ignores its uniqueness as mystery novels. Inspired by flashback detective novels , Matsumoto Kiyotaka made two innovations: firstly, introducing social factors into the trap design; secondly, solving the problem of closed ending of mystery novels with a double story structure, which not only maintained the interestingness of mystery novels , and improve the literary character of the speculative novel.

In 1957, Matsumoto Kiyotaka serialized two long mystery novels "The Dot and the Line" and "The Partition Wall Has Eyes " at the same time, and all of them were published in a single book the following year, which immediately set off a mystery novel craze in the Japanese reading circles. The reading range of Japanese mystery novels has also rapidly expanded from the narrow fandom in the past to general readers, and the critics have also given positive comments. Arashito believes that the most important feature of Matsumoto Kiyotaka's mystery novels is the integration of sociality and dailyness, and collectively names the works of writers such as Minamizu and Kuroiwa who have this tendency as social mystery novels. From the perspective of literary history, Masaru Ito pointed out that Matsumoto Kiyosho's speculative novel not only inherited the tradition of traditional literature's criticism of social reality, but also corrected the conceptualization tendency existing in traditional literature, making Japanese "social realism" literature reach a new level. high. These evaluations undoubtedly improve the status of Matsumoto Kiyosho's mystery novels in the history of literature, but such evaluation also ignores its uniqueness as a mystery novel. As a result, not only does Matsumoto's unique contribution to the development of mystery novels fail to be seen, but also does not fundamentally change the discriminatory evaluation structure of academic circles on mystery novels. It can be said that this is not limited to Matsumoto's research, but a fundamental problem in the study of speculative fiction.

In fact, Matsumoto Kiyotaka attaches great importance to the exploration of speculative novel skills, and there are many innovations. Matsumoto once said, "Since mystery novels are based on the fun of deciphering, then attention should be paid to the design of criminal traps. If this is lacking, it will be no different from ordinary novels." Taking "Points and Lines" as the research object, he examines the originality of Matsumoto Kiyosho's mystery novels from the perspective of mystery novel creation skills, and its important contribution to the development of Japanese mystery novels after the war.

Before "Points and Lines", Matsumoto Kiyotaka had published short stories such as "Ambush" and "Face", showing a markedly different style from previous detective novels. This new style of Matsumoto is closely related to the trends in the Japanese postwar detective fiction world. After the war, two new trends emerged in the world of detective fiction. First, Edogawa Ranbu vigorously advocated the "Theory of Authentic Detective Novels". Edogawa believes that "detective novels mainly focus on using rational thinking to gradually unravel the difficult mysteries in criminal cases." In contrast, "transformed detective novels" are full of strangeness, fantasy, crime, mystery, etc., including abnormal psychology, secret realms and other content.

"Deformed detective novels" became popular in the postwar period, and they tended to shake the logical reasoning on which detective novels depended. Therefore, Edogawa Ranpo proposed to strengthen the reasoning logic of detective novels. However, the "Benge Detective Fiction" that focuses on logical reasoning has plunged into the design of ingenious criminal traps in the actual creation, turning the detective novel into a kind of intellectual game.

Second, Kiki Takataro advocated the "art theory of detective novels", trying to break this dull situation from another angle. It should be noted that Kiki Takataro's "Detective Fiction Art Theory" was launched simultaneously with his promotion of the name "Special Fiction". After the war, due to the cancellation of the word "Detective" in the commonly used Chinese characters in Japanese, which brought inconvenience to typesetting and printing, Kotaro Kiki proposed in 1946 to replace "Detective Novel" with "Detective Novel". He tried to take the opportunity to expand the class of detective novels and improve the taste of detective novels. In addition to the traditional detective novels, the "Speculative Fiction Series" edited by him also includes novels by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Kotaro Kiki proposed his unique concept of mystery novels in "The Geek of Mystery Fiction", which includes detective novels, science novels, historical novels, thought novels and other types of novels into mystery novels.

According to Miki Kotaro's idea, as long as the novel involves the content of thinking and reasoning, any type of novel can be regarded as a mystery novel. But in this way, speculative fiction is also dissolved in these types of novels, and lacks uniqueness. Therefore, his theory of pan-debt exploration novels was opposed by Edogawa Ranpo, which caused controversy. This debate involves the relationship between Bengues and Variants, and between Bengues and "advanced detective fiction". In fact, the goal of the present party is to improve the quality of detective novels, but the starting point is different, but the two sides insist on their own words, and in the end they have not reached a consensus. The biased views and stubborn attitudes of both sides actually hinder the innovation of detective novels to a certain extent. The reason why Matsumoto Kiyocho was able to succeed in the creation of speculative novels was precisely because he sublated these two viewpoints at the same time.

Matsumoto Kiyotaka was supported by Kiki Takataro in the early days of creating mystery novels. In concept, he agrees with Takataro Kiki's "Detective Fiction Art Theory". Matsumoto believes that the post-war Japanese detective novels were just ignorant efforts to renovate the criminal trap, despised the motives of the crime, and did not describe people. As a result, detective novels turned into pure intellectual games. Therefore, he advocated that detective novels should be written with criminal motives. Because criminal motives are people's psychological activities under extreme conditions, describing such criminal motives also describes people.

Since Matsumoto Kiyosho clearly criticized the game of Benge detective novels, the academic circles generally put Matsumoto in the camp of Kiki Takataro, which is opposed to Edogawa Ranpo's "Benge Detective Fiction Theory". But such a division method is too simplistic. First of all, Edogawa Ranpo has repeatedly stated that he does not reject the artistry of detective novels, and his own creations are actually mostly degenerate detective novels. Secondly, although Kotaro Kimi advocated the "advanced detective novel theory", he did not propose a specific methodology. Instead, Edogawa Ranpo devoted himself to introducing foreign detective novels, so he provided a methodology for creating advanced detective novels. Therefore, it is necessary to reorganize the inheritance relationship between Matsumoto Kiyotaka and Edogawa Ranpo.

Matsumoto Kiyocho believes that the key to improving the character of mystery novels is to write about people, and to write about the psychology and motives of crimes. But how to do this, he proposed a "flashback" method in the creative method. Matsumoto divides mystery novels into two types: one is the "sequential narrative" technique, which describes the process of detectives tracking criminals in the chronological order of the crime. For example, after a murder case occurred, a detective with great powers came to the scene, collected the remains of the prisoner, linked these clues to each other and reasoned, and finally locked the criminal suspect. This method is often used in general mystery novels. The second is the "flashback" method, that is, the criminal suspect is known from the very beginning, but the criminal suspect is outwitted in the collection of evidence. Matsumoto believes that the "flashback" technique will inevitably make the interest of detective novels focus on the process of tracking down the criminal suspect, while the "flashback" technique is more conducive to analyzing the characters' complex motives and motives because the identity of the criminal suspect has been half disclosed. Unearth the social roots of crime. He thinks that he uses the "flashback" technique in the creation of speculative novels.

As a kind of creation of detective novels, the "flashback" technique is not the first of Matsumoto's creation. In the history of detective fiction, flashback detective novels can be traced back to The Singing Bones published by British author Austin Freeman in 1912. Detective novels of this type include Elz's "Killing Intent", Crufts' "12:30 in Chloetown" and Phil Potts' "Portrait of a Villain". In Japan, Edogawa Ranpo was the first to discuss and advocate the creation of flashback detective novels. Edogawa Ranpo introduced these famous flashback detective novels in detail in articles such as "Flashback Detective Fiction-Revisiting Flashback Detective Fiction" published in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and summarized the following characteristics:

1. Flashback detective novels are composed of two parts in structure. The first half is to write the crime process from the perspective of the prisoner, and the second half is to write the detective's detection process.

2. The psychology and motive of the crime are described in detail.

3. Detectives are ordinary people who attach importance to on-the-spot investigation.

4. The storyline is natural, with a realistic style, and the taste of solving puzzles is correspondingly reduced.

Although Edogawa Ranpo thinks that flashback detective novels are not the mainstream of detective novels, he still gives a high evaluation, and believes that Japanese detective novels still lack this type of novels, and some attempts should be made in this regard.

It should be pointed out that Edogawa Ranpo refuses to dissolve flashback detective novels into ordinary novels. He said that although the flashback detective novel and Dostoevsky 's " Crime and Punishment " both write about criminal psychology, there are fundamental differences between the two. Flashback detective novels focus on the description of the path of crime and the tension of discovering the truth. Although "Crime and Punishment" also spends time in this regard, it focuses on the spiritual issue between God and man.

On this point, Matsumoto Kiyotaka and Edogawa Ranpo have a common understanding. Matsumoto Kiyotaka advocates writing about criminal psychology and social motives, but he also criticizes the argument that overemphasizes the literary nature of mystery novels. "The closer mystery novels are to ordinary novels, the more literary they are considered to be, the more I feel as a fan of mystery novels. Loneliness. Other novels have the charm of other novels, and mystery novels have their own charms. If there are no special elements of mystery novels, mystery novels will become extremely boring. The skill and unexpectedness of this special element, I think it is very Important. Motivation, while important, must not deny the importance of skill and surprise.". It can be seen from this that Matsumoto Kiyocho recognizes the uniqueness of mystery novels. It is precisely because of this understanding that Matsumoto Kiyotaka is not in general novels, but in the creation of mystery novels, and has become a master of the generation.

Matsumoto Kiyotaka clearly criticized the detective novels in the middle and late stages of the Edogawa Ranpo for lack of sociality, but he highly praised his early works "Two Cent Copper Coins", "Psychological Experiment", "D Po Murder Case", etc. The novel describes society and criminal motives. By the way, "Psychological Experiment" uses the "flashback" technique. The inspiration for this novel, according to Edogawa Ranpo's memory, was inspired by Freeman, the author of "Singing Bones". This is Japan's first flashback detective novel. Some critics (Japan Reasoning Writers Association) pointed out that in the mid-1950s, a group of detective novelists such as Takagi Sugimitsu, Shimada Kazuo and Matsumoto Kiyosho were exploring new types of speculative novels, that is, those with strong logical reasoning and literary qualities. Speculative fiction. Although everyone made various attempts, they were unsuccessful. In the end, it was Matsumoto Kiyocho who solved this problem in terms of creative methods and stood out. The solution Matsumoto used was the "flashback" technique introduced by Ranpo Edogawa. Therefore, when sorting out the history of Japanese postwar mystery novels, we must not only see Matsumoto's criticism and denial of Edogawa Ranpo, but also his inheritance and development.

The flashback detective novels by Matsumoto Kiyotaka can be roughly divided into two types. The first type is like the short story "The Accomplice". The novel consists of two parts, the first part describes the motive and psychology of the crime from the perspective of the criminal suspect, and the second part is the reasoning and exposure of the criminal process. The detective in the novel is an ordinary clerk. Works belonging to this type include short stories such as "Face" and "Ghost Storage".

The representative work of the second type is the short story "Ambush". It tells the story of a murder and theft in Meguro, Tokyo, and the suspect was quickly arrested. According to the prisoner's confession, there was also an absconded accomplice, Hisai Ishii, who was also a worker at the same construction site. Ishii suffers from lung disease and is desperate for life. Recently, he has been talking about returning to his hometown and dreaming of his ex-girlfriend. Based on this, the young detective Soegi believed that the suspect might meet his ex-girlfriend on the way to escape, so he came to the town where Ishii's ex-girlfriend lived in Kyushu to ambush and monitor. Ishii's ex-girlfriend Yokogawa Sadako has married a bank clerk who is nearly 30 years older than her and has become a stepmother to three children. Soleki stayed at the hotel opposite Yokogawa's house, monitored him, and finally arrested Ishii. The structure of this novel is different from the features of Edogawa's above-mentioned flashback mystery novels. It lacks the first half of the description from the perspective of a criminal suspect, and only has the second half of the description from the perspective of a detective. But Matsumoto Kiyocho himself claimed that the novel was written in flashbacks. Therefore, it can be understood that this is a new type of flashback detective novel explored by Matsumoto Kiyotaka. As a flashback detective novel, although the novel lacks the first half of the direct description of the suspect's psychology, other conditions are met.

Identify the criminal suspect, and the detective is an ordinary person, and the process of solving the case focuses on on-the-spot investigation. The suspense of this novel is not in the question of who the suspect is, but in whether the conjecture of the detective Soegi will be confirmed, and the contest of wisdom between the detective and the criminal suspect. · Another layer of suspense is whether the peaceful life of the Yokogawa family will be destroyed by the appearance of the criminal suspect. However, with the observation of Yokogawa's house, Soaki finds that Yokogawa Sadako's daily life is monotonous and unfortunate. Ishii's appearance brought her short-lived happiness instead. Therefore, the final arrest of Ishii is a perfect ending from the perspective of solving the case, but Yokogawa Sadako has to return to her previous life again, which is unfortunate for her. The novel does not stop at the arrest of criminal suspects in general detective novels, but focuses on the fate of people through a special event.

Structurally, Dot and Line also belongs to the latter type of flashback detective novel. The plot of the novel is summarized as follows: The bodies of a man and a woman are found in Hakata Bay, Kyushu. The man is Kenichi Sayama, an assistant to the section chief of a certain province who is under investigation for malfeasance, and the woman is Ah Shi, the waitress at Chisho's "Xiaoxue" restaurant. Judging from the side by side of the bodies, the two died of love. However, the Fukuoka Police Department's Detective Toba Jutaro, based on various indications, doubted this. He thought that since they came from Tokyo specifically to die for love, but they didn't live together before they died, it didn't make sense logically. However, due to the lack of conclusive evidence, the Fukuoka Police Department still treated it as a love death case. At this time, the Mihara Kiichi Police Department of the Second Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department came to Fukuoka to investigate the suicide case of Sayama. Mihara's department is responsible for investigating this case of malfeasance. When Lan Yuan heard that Zuoshan committed suicide, he suspected it was related to this case of malfeasance, but there was also no evidence. After arriving in Fukuoka, Mainhara listened to the doubts raised by Tomi. Inspired by Tori, he returned to Tokyo to re-investigate. He first investigated the testimony proving that the two died in love. It is said that three witnesses at Tokyo Station saw Sayama and Akashi getting on the platform of Line 15 on the platform of Line 13. The three witnesses were the two waitresses of "Koyuki" and Tatsuro Yasuda, the president of the machine tool company who often came to the store. In the evening, when Yasuda went to Kamakura, he asked the two waitresses to see him off, so he accidentally witnessed the scene of Sayama and Akira getting on the train together on the platform. However, when Mihara went to Tokyo Station for on-site investigation, he found that the time period when he could see Platform 15 from the platform of Line 13 was only four minutes in a 24-hour day. Mihara immediately felt that such an accidental sighting was extremely unnatural, and began to doubt Yasuda. As the investigation unfolded, it was found that Yasuda's business had a deep relationship with the government, and his personal relationship with Minister Yoshio Ishida, the key figure in this malfeasance case, was also unusual. But the problem is that there are witnesses that Yasuda traveled to Hokkaido on business on the day Sayama and Ah Shiqing died. The whole chain of witnesses looks seamless. But under Mihara's persistent pursuit, the witness chain finally broke. At the end of the novel there are two letters, one is a letter from Tori, which talks about the doubts and reasoning about the illusion of love and death. The other is Yasuda's reply, which thoroughly analyzes the entire case.

The novel has the following basic characteristics of flashback detective novels: First, the first sentence of the novel makes clear hints to the criminal suspect:

On the night of January 13, Yasuda Chenlang entertained a guest at the "Xiaoxue" restaurant in Chipo. The guest is a minister of a province.

Yasuda Tatsuro runs the Yasuda Chamber of Commerce, a machine tool maker. The company has grown rapidly in recent years. It is said that this is also the reason for the large number of orders from the official hall. Therefore, Yasuda often entertains the guests of the official hall in "Xiaoxue".

From the above storyline introduction, we can know that the background of the murder case in the novel is the case of reading a certain official office. At the time of the incident, the investigation was entering a critical stage and many businessmen were already involved, and the next step was to investigate the minister of the ministry. Sayama died at such a critical moment, and the newspapers believed that his death was related to the case of reading a job. Therefore, the first chapter describes Yasuda entertaining the minister of the department before the accident, and then writing the plot of letting the two waitresses of "Xiaoxue" attack Sayama and Ashi when they send him off, which has already hinted Yasuda's feelings to a large extent. Suspected crime. And this kind of suggestion is not like the general mystery novel to disrupt the detection idea. The novel finally proves that Yasuda is the suspect. Therefore, the obvious hint to the suspect in the first chapter meets an important condition for flashback mystery novels. Secondly, the two detectives in charge of the case are extremely ordinary people who focus on on-the-spot investigation. Detectives Tomi and Mihara not only look and dress plainly, but their personal abilities are not outstanding either. The relationship between the two of them is not one that sets off the other, but a collaborative relationship, each with obvious limitations, inspiring and supporting each other. Even so, there are still unsolvable problems for them.

In connection with the mundane image of the detective, a great deal of everyday life enters Dot and Line. First, the design of the criminal trap in Dots and Lines is premised on everyday life. Matsumoto Kiyocho recalled some materials and inspirations for his creation of mystery novels in "The Conception of Mystery Novels". He said that many of the works were initially inspired by news reports, details of everyday life or a legal clause, of which "Dots and Lines" made use of a legal clause that does not allow the right to conduct a search. Generally, a death incident occurs, and the identification section and the criminal police come to the scene of the accident to investigate. If it is concluded that it was suicide and not a crime, no investigation will be launched. So for criminal suspects, it is safest to find a way to disguise murder as suicide. So Matsumoto devised such a trap: a pair of unrelated men and women drink the same medicine and die in one place, making people mistake them for love. In addition, in order to make this trap appear believable, a scene was designed for others to unconsciously witness the two people riding the train together.

The cleverness of this snare design is the use of everyday details. It should be pointed out that this most brilliant trap is not fabricated out of thin air, but comes from the author's real experience. Matsumoto Kiyotaka once said: "I was working at the Asahi newspaper at the time, and I lived in Huokang. I was often on platforms 1 and 2 of the Chuo Line at around 5:30 in the evening. Sometimes I could see the train to Kyushu across the platform, and sometimes I was caught in the middle of the platform. The other trains are blocked and invisible. (Omitted) I wrote this experience into "Points and Lines", in fact, the timetables of trains and planes used in the novel are all real. Matsumoto Kiyotaka specifically notes at the end of the novel "In this article The time of the train and plane is from the timetable of the 32nd year of the Showa era". This not only increases the authenticity of the event, but also adds a bit of interest because the novel was originally published in the train's special magazine "Travel".

If the criminal suspects in "Dots and Lines" try their best to hide the extraordinary crimes in the ordinary, then the detectives try their best to discover the extraordinary crimes hidden behind the ordinary. Whether it is Tori or Mihara, their inspiration for targeting criminal suspects does not come from their extraordinary intelligence but also from their daily life. When the police detective Tobia first appeared on the scene, he found the suspicious point of the place of love and death, relying on his daily life feeling. After that, he held onto the details of Sayama's meal alone on the train. Because he believes that since they are a couple and have decided to die in love, the two of them should have a very deep relationship, and it is impossible to dine alone under such circumstances. Torii thought hard, went home and asked his daughter, who was in love, "When you are dating, do you let your hungry boyfriend → eat alone and go to the store by yourself?" The daughter replied, no. I'll have coffee with me. "Because it's not an appetite issue, it's a love issue.". His daughter's answer gave him pause. He is even more convinced that the scene of the death of love is an artificial illusion, and that Sashan's death cannot be characterized as a death of love. Although Tofu could not explain the reason, and could not produce specific physical evidence to overthrow the death of love. But he told Mihara what he thought, essentially pushing the investigation further.

The main inspiration for Mihara's final solution to the case also came from daily life. When suffering from an unexplainable love death, he was inspired by an accidental misunderstanding.

(I went to a coffee shop on a rainy day.) Just as I was about to push the door in, a young woman suddenly came. I was quite gentlemanly letting the woman in first. She smiled and nodded, went first, and handed the umbrella to the clerk. Then I came in and handed the umbrella to the clerk. The clerk thought it was a companion, so he tied the two umbrellas together and gave a number plate. The young woman blushed, and I said quickly:

"No, no. We are not companions, we are separate."

This misunderstanding gave him a flash of inspiration, and he immediately thought of the mystery of the trap of corpses side by side: the woman and I were misunderstood as a couple, because the two of us entered the store together. The reason that Sayama and Ashi were taken as the basis for their love and death was also because of the illusion that the two of them were side by side. When this trap is seen through, the fog of the entire case disappears.

Such a case-solving method seems to rely on chance, but it has its inevitability. Torii and Mihara first conducted on-the-spot investigations, then made inferences based on the surveyed data, and then concluded one or two fundamental doubts through inferences. These two doubts have been investigated in many ways, trying to solve the mystery from different angles. These seemingly accidental inspirations often arise from certain life experiences when they meditate. It should be said that this is the result of their persistent and unremitting efforts.

5. Of course, the uniqueness of detective fiction as a type of fiction

The charm is not mainly in the everyday, but in the interestingness of the intellectual competition between the author and the reader, the detective and the criminal suspect. The magnitude of this interest is largely related to the difficulty of solving the case.

Edogawa Ranpo has discussed this issue. He divides detective novels into two categories: one is detective novels with strong gameplay. The detectives and criminal suspects in such novels are geniuses, and their criminal traps and methods of solving cases are often beyond the intelligence of ordinary people. The other type is detective novels with weak gameplay, such as flashback detective novels, which are typical and have a tendency to realism. The detectives in such novels are ordinary people, but the suspects are still geniuses. This is often overlooked by critics. Edogawa believes that if the genius of criminal suspects and the extraordinaryness of criminal traps are denied from the standpoint of realism, then detective novels will completely fall into the realism of everyday life, and their original interest will be obliterated. Edogawa once confessed to himself, "The motive for my love of detective novels lies in this anti-everyday. This transcendence, which is hard to find in other literature, is what attracts me."

Edogawa's above point of view is also instructive for understanding Matsumoto Kiyocho's "Points and Lines". The novel's detectives Tomi and Mihara are extremely ordinary, but the criminal suspect has extraordinary intelligence, devising a wonderful trap with only four minutes of sighting time out of 24 hours a day. Just as the suspects in traditional detective novels are mostly paranoid geniuses, Ryoko, the wife of Yasuda, the designer of this trap, also has this tendency. She was bedridden with tuberculosis and developed a special interest in train timetables. Time numbers that seem dull and boring to the layman are full of poetry to her. She fantasized about traveling across the country on these timetable trains. This paranoid hobby made her well aware of the national timetable, and only then did she discover the mystery hidden in the subtle time difference between trains entering and leaving the station. The combination of the brilliant idea of this trap design and Yasuda's powerful implementation ability undoubtedly increases the difficulty of solving the case.

However, the difficulty of solving the case of "Dots and Lines" is not only related to this, but also related to the powerful forces of the looming government agencies behind the case. There are actually two interrelated cases in this novel: one is Sayama's suicide case, and the other is a case of malfeasance by a government agency. In these two cases, the Sayama murder case was part of the covert work of the graduation case. Many people take part in this covert work and play different roles for their own benefit. From the perspective of identity, these people can be roughly divided into two categories: the first type has close business relations with the province, and participates in concealment in order to maintain or establish special relations in order to obtain business interests. Anhui is its representative. His relationship with Minister Ishida is secretive. Knowing that Minister Ishida was distressed that the malfeasance case under investigation would endanger his own safety, Anhui took the initiative to undertake the task of murdering Sayama. Although he was not directly related to this malfeasance case, he actively suggested and implemented the murder plan in order to sell favors to Ishida and pave the way for the future development of the company. This exposes the corrupt structure of Japan's postwar government. The rapid rise in malpractice cases after the war was related to the strengthening of bureaucratic power. After the war-time dictatorship was expelled, the policies of the occupying forces were implemented not primarily through politicians, but through administrators, with bureaucrats given powerful authority. At the same time, the chaebols were disintegrated, the proportion of many enterprises with weak and small capitals that relied on government funds increased, and the public power increased the involvement of enterprises through government financing and subsidies. At the beginning of the work, it is explained that the machine tool dealer Anhui Chamber of Commerce operated by Yasuda Chenlang has developed rapidly in recent years, relying on orders from the official department. Therefore, maintaining a special relationship with the official office also preserves the possibility of sustainable development of the enterprise. Therefore, Yasuda did not hesitate to take risks. In Yasuda's view, this is business. The purpose of the other three merchants ginseng and hidden work is the same as Yasuda, in order to maintain a special relationship with Minister Shi Hui. They don't know Yasuda, but they are willing to lend their names to Yasuda for the plane ride, which is because of their special relationship with Ishida. The participation of these three people increased the difficulty of solving the case. Mihara speculated that Yasuda had to take a plane to get from Kyushu to Hokkaido in a short time, but his name was not found in the passenger list. Because the names of these three businessmen replaced Yasuda's name.

The second type of people involved in covert work were the lower-level officials of the provincial government, and the victim Sayama was one of them. As for Sayama's motives for participating in hidden work, the novel explains through the words of the characters in the novel that although people at the assistant section chief level are proficient in business, they are discriminated against in the organization due to their low education and no longer have hope for promotion. Therefore, occasionally being valued by superiors is like the light of hope shining in a world that has already given up, and he will serve his superiors with gratitude. These people specifically deal with illegal things, and once there is a problem, they will often use death as an excuse for their bosses. Although Sayama did not commit suicide, he followed Ishida's arrangement and mysteriously left Tokyo to go to Hakata alone in an attempt to evade the summons.

In traditional detective novels, in order to confuse the detective, criminal suspects also play several roles, or several roles play one person, and often use makeup, deformation and other means. But in "Dot and Line", it relies on the power of institutions to let many people come in to form a false chain of witnesses, with layers of protection. Creating the illusion of Sayama's suicide is only one aspect of protection. After Sayama's real suspect, Yasuda, is exposed, his suicide sets up new obstacles. It can be seen from this that in {dots and lines, the detectives have to face not only the extraordinary intelligence of the criminal suspects, but also various obstacles from the relevant interest groups. Therefore, what the novel finally reveals is not only a criminal trap, but a social problem. In other words, although "Dots and Lines" was created by Matsumoto Kiyotaka in accordance with the rules of mystery novels, and it also showed a difficult intellectual contest, he added to the problem of increasing the difficulty of solving the case, in addition to the high IQ of the criminal suspect. social factors. In this regard, it can be said that this is Matsumoto's inheritance and breakthrough of the "benge novel" rule discussed earlier by Edogawa. In this regard, we will further discuss this point in conjunction with Matsumoto's exploration of the ending of speculative novels.

Matsumoto Qingzhang's "Japanese Mystery Novels" said that both mystery novels and general novels contain decryption elements, but the difference between the two is that mystery novels must reveal all the mystery at the end, while ordinary novels can only solve half of it. , the mystery is not fully revealed, "but it makes people feel that there is a kind of literature". In Matsumoto's view, the reason why ordinary novels are literary is that they do not provide ready-made answers, leaving readers with open endings to think and imagine, but speculative novels must provide a clear answer, in the structure of the work The reader's imagination and interpretation rights are excluded. It can be said that speculative novels bear the fate of repelling literature's character in structure. Therefore, he believes that in order to solve the literary problem of mystery novels, it is necessary to innovate the non-literary ending of mystery novels.

When discussing how to solve this structural problem, Matsumoto Kiyotaka returned to the open-ended problem analysis of ordinary novels and said that "general novels also have solutions. It seems that there is no solution on the surface, but it is not actually written in the article. It has been resolved in the reader's mind." That is to say, the open ending of a general novel is not that the story is only half told, but that there is some kind of completion in form or structure of the story, but at the same time there is a great deal left over. leave room for the reader's imagination. Although speculative novels are not structurally allowed to rely entirely on the reader's imagination for the final solution, "since ordinary novels can do this, then a genius of speculative fiction can also discover and write the same ending, or a better one. At the end, remove the detailed and redundant explanations at the end." He believes that as long as such an ending can be written, mystery novels will also have the literary quality of ordinary novels.

It is worth noting that as one of the solutions, Matsumoto mentioned flashback detective fiction in this article. Matsumoto Kiyocho once said that "the reason why flashback detective novels are considered more literary is that the final decryption part is not necessary". In this regard, it can be said that Matsumoto Kiyotaka has been exploring the open-ended ending of speculative novels since the introduction of flashbacks in "Ambush". The interesting thing about the story structure of "Ambush" is that in the process of chasing down a fugitive, the criminal policeman Souki discovers the unfortunate life of a woman, and the story slides from the main line of chasing the suspect to another story line. The suspect who was hunted down in the second storyline acted as the person who brought the woman happiness. So when the criminal suspect is finally caught, the law and public morals triumph, but the woman's happiness is ruined. On the one hand, the novel satisfies the conditions that speculative novels need an ending, and finally successfully arrests the criminal suspect. But on the other hand, this ending raises new questions: what will happen to the heroine's life when she returns? Is such a life legal, but reasonable? Why can't these two young people live together? The story is set after the war In difficult times, judging from the fact that the suspect left his hometown to work at a construction site in Tokyo, and the woman married someone with a very different age, it is conceivable that they could not live together because of poverty. The narrative of the novel hints at a lot of social issues, but the novel doesn't address these issues at the end, forming an open-ended ending. In fact, it is no accident that this novel is literary. Matsumoto later recalled, "When I wrote this novel, I didn't realize that it was a mystery novel, and now I generally use this novel as the starting point of my mystery novel. Observing a woman's life from the eyes of a detective in "Ambush" That's what this novel is about."

Dot and Line is also a dual story structure. The main line of the novel revolves around the case of Sayama's love death, and through unremitting efforts, the case was finally solved. The murderer Yasuda and his wife committed suicide, and they deserved it. But as mentioned above, the Sayama case is a covert work of malfeasance cases, and malfeasance cases are the fundamental problem. The National Police Agency originally hoped to solve the case of malfeasance in one fell swoop by detecting the Sayama case. But the Yasuda couple's suicide cut off the clues to detect the malfeasance case. The real suspect, Ishida, was unscathed. He was implicated in the malpractice problem and moved to another department, but the new position was actually better than before. That is to say, there is also a clear ending in "Dots and Lines", the detection of the Sayama case. However, the detection of this case could not become a breakthrough in the detection of malfeasance cases, leaving a larger unsolved case. In this sense, the novel clearly does not fully solve the problem and has an open ending. The detective's mundane nature gives such an ending a strong sense of authenticity.

Although Matsumoto hoped that a genius would revolutionize the ending of mystery novels in "Japanese Mystery Novels", he actually solved this problem in his own creation by means of a double story structure. Ordinary mystery novels also go back to the past when describing the cause of the crime, but the cause and the result of the crime are a single causal relationship, and when the criminal suspect is finally punished, this causal relationship also ends. However, when Matsumoto Kiyocho's novels describe the cause, the cause and the effect are no longer a single causal relationship, but become complicated. Suspects can also be victims, and victims can also commit crimes. Mrs. Anhui in "Dot and Line" was the mastermind of the entire murder plan in the Sayama case, but she was also a victim. Her murder was out of female revenge. Due to tuberculosis, she could not lead a normal married life, so when she learned that her husband was having an affair with the maid Ah Shi, she had to hold back, admit the relationship between the two, and even show affection on the surface. In such a relationship, she is a victim. Just because she was physically disqualified as a wife, her jealousy was twice as strong as that of others, and she would take revenge whenever she had the chance. Sayama is the victim and an important suspect. All bribes were carried out by him. He was finally deceived and killed because he wanted to get away with guilt, so he obeyed Ishida's instructions and fled to Hakata. He was clearly negligent in cases of malfeasance and murder. Of course, the main responsibility for this negligence is not Sayama, but a corrupt government agency. In this corrupt social structure, Yasuda is also a victim. Because if he can't get a special relationship with government agencies, he can't develop his own business.

It can be seen that the causes of crime in Dots and Lines are intertwined with personal and social networks. Matsumoto said that in the past, the motives of detective novels were all about personal interests. For example, the competition for money and the relationship between love and desire were all typological and not special. He advocated that the motives should increase the sociality and make the inner barrel of the mystery novel wider and deeper. Compared with the early "Ambush", Matsumoto more consciously carried out the excavation of social reasons in "The Point and the Line". explore.

From the above discussion, we can see that Matsumoto Kiyotaka's social faction mystery novels are influenced by flashback detective novels in the creation of sub-methods, but they are not blind imitations, but innovations in two aspects. First, the difficulty of trap design is not entirely due to the superior intelligence of individuals, but to attract social factors. Second, the double story structure solves the problem of the open ending of mystery novels, which not only maintains the interest of mystery novels, but also improves the literary quality of mystery novels. It is particularly interesting to note that this kind of mystery left behind by the double-laying of the cypress scarves not only motivated Matsumoto to continuously ask about social reasons, but also provided the subject matter for his subsequent creations. For example, it is unclear what role Sayama, a lower-level bureaucrat in Dot and Line, played in the malfeasance case, but there are more specific and vivid descriptions in a series of works such as "The Murder of an Official" later; Stories of living conditions in China and revenge in a distorted way have new developments in "Zero Focus", "Woman Who Buys a Local Newspaper", etc.; issues related to institutional corruption have led to documentary works such as "Modern Official Shock". And these new and more social problems prompted more new works to be created. In this sense, "Dots and Lines" is not only the pioneering work of the social school mystery novels, but also the driving force behind the continuous output of the social school mystery novels that spawned Matsumoto Xiaozhang.

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