I've finished this third entry (in English translation order) in the Kosuke Kindaichi series, translated by Jesse Kirkwood and released by Pushkin Vertigo. Originally published in 1948, it's narrated for long stretches by a mystery writer, Torata Yashiro, who is drawn into the strange goings-on of the aristocratic Furugami family — their estate enclosed by earthen walls in the Musashino countryside west of Tokyo. After Yachiyo, the family's heiress, shoots her own fiancé and starts receiving anonymous warnings about her nighttime walks, a headless corpse turns up on the grounds, killed with a legendary Muramasa blade kept locked away in the family's storehouse. Kindaichi doesn't arrive until the story is well underway, but once he does, the tangle of sleepwalking, hereditary prophecy, and old shame starts to come apart in his hands.
Themes I Noticed
Aristocratic Decline and Inherited Shame
- A once-powerful family propped up by a name it can no longer live up to
- Old obligations and a hereditary "curse" dictating the present generation's choices
- Shame kept indoors, behind the estate's earthen walls, for as long as possible
Gothic Machinery Inside a Golden Age Puzzle
- Sleepwalking and a supposed prophecy sit right alongside methodical police procedure
- The novel is as comfortable with superstition as it is with alibis and timelines
- A story that feels, as one reviewer put it, suspended between eras
The Weapon as the Locked Room
- Yokomizo's usual impossible-crime device shifts from a sealed room to a sealed sword
- The Muramasa blade's supposed curse is both a plot engine and a red herring
- Motive turns out to matter more than the sword's reputation ever did
A Line Worth Keeping
Reviewing the Kirkwood translation, Helen at She Reads Novels wrote that "this one feels particularly smooth and easy to read" — and that held up for me too; it's an easy entry point into the series even with Kindaichi offstage for much of the first half.
This one has a different rhythm than The Honjin Murders or The Inugami Curse — less locked-room geometry, more slow-burn Gothic dread, with the detective work compressed into a shorter, sharper back half once Kindaichi finally steps in. What stayed with me is how little the supernatural trappings — the sleepwalking, the cursed sword, the prophecy — actually matter to the solution. Yokomizo keeps dangling them, but the answer, as usual, comes down to very human motive: shame, inheritance, and what a family will do to keep its name intact.