My friends who know me well are aware that I have a great love for Japanese detective and ethical novels because I appreciate how Japanese authors use straightforward and explicit language to narrate stories that are chilling and shocking, allowing readers to gradually uncover the depths of human nature. During this reading week, I read "Screams," a detective novel written by the Japanese author Kazuaki Uneme. I was deeply impressed by its narrative style and clever logical design.
"Screams" is a detective novel written by Kazuaki Uneme, a rising star in the field of social detective fiction in Japan. It tells the story of the protagonist, Yoko, who leads a seemingly mediocre and weak life but hides a secret and sinful past. The book reveals social issues that are often overlooked, offering profound and thought-provoking insights. The portrayal of the characters' changing thoughts is delicate and incisive. Through Yoko's extraordinary experiences, the novel connects various aspects of Japan's social changes over the past forty years, making it one of the representative detective novels in Japan in recent years.
The outline of the story is roughly about a single woman in her late thirties to early forties found dead in her solitary apartment in Tokyo. Her body has been devoured by 11 cats in the apartment, and the scene is too gruesome to bear. According to the police's inference, the victim had been dead for at least five months. The belongings found in the apartment indicate that the tenant's name is Yoko Suzuki, and it seems that she died alone. Under the investigation of female detective Ayano Okura, it is discovered that there are more tragedies and stories hidden behind all of this, all of which are closely related to a woman named Yoko.
From my perspective, this novel is an ethical novel disguised as a detective novel, or rather, a representative work of social detective fiction. The narrative of the entire novel alternates between the second-person and first-person perspectives, and the reasons behind all these tragedies involve the entanglement and conflicts among family, ethics, and society. Yoko's life is full of misery and oppression, from "being unloved and even hated by her mother in her childhood" to experiencing the collapse of Japan's bubble economy as an adult, her father disappearing, her family falling apart, and experiencing unemployment, eventually ending up as a street prostitute. The author uses a restrained and calm tone to narrate the most heart-wrenching tragedies of her life, with a detached and straightforward narrative style that avoids unnecessary emotions. The most distinctive feature of the novel is the combination of the second-person and omniscient perspectives, allowing readers to intuitively understand Yoko's life, the investigation process of Detective Ayano Okura, and the changes in the overall social environment. It is thanks to this unique narrative technique that the protagonist's emotional changes and the collapse of her values are fully exposed. When I deeply empathized with Yoko's tragic life and even thought I gradually understood the reasons behind it, feeling that "the woman who died in the apartment at the beginning must be Yoko," the author gave me a blow in the final deduction, revealing that all the evil originated from this most tragic Yoko.
The second temporal space of the narrative perspective is Detective Ayano, who is described in great detail. It repeatedly depicts the psychological changes she experiences while investigating the clues, and mentions the similarities between Detective Ayano and Mrs. Yoko's experiences, leading readers to expect a decent ending for the female detective, as is often the case in many detective novels where good triumphs over evil. However, Kazuaki Uneme did not use such a mainstream or somewhat cliché ending. The story abruptly ends after Yoko turns dark and kills everyone who troubled her. The puzzle solver and the puzzle creator are in a constant confrontation throughout the story, but we do not know whether Detective Ayano will continue to pursue the truth.
After finishing the book, I went online to read the reasoning and explanations of other readers and discovered that there were many ingenious designs that made me exclaim in admiration:
Mrs. Yoko used her pitiful former colleague's fake death as a means to escape and start her "second life." In the epilogue, Mrs. Yoko, who now goes by the name Tachibana, says she wants to undergo plastic surgery to establish her own "safe haven." This aligns with the explanation given by the beautiful-faced female store clerk to Detective Ayano about the initial intention of opening a coffee shop as a "refuge for the homeless." Perhaps this is the fascinating aspect of the novel that differs from reality. The heavily sinful female protagonist returns to her old home address with a new identity, and the newly built white apartment on the old site symbolizes her splendid and virtuous second life.
Everything Yoko experienced was a means for her to "grow," but as mentioned earlier, this growth is not always in the right direction. Most of the time, it leads her step by step towards the abyss. However, it is precisely in this sense that the author presents a path of redemption that is born out of desperation, hitting rock bottom and bouncing back. After experiencing countless deceptions and injuries, Yoko ultimately falls into selling her body for a living. But at this point, it becomes the true turning point in her life because in the daily abuse, she finally lets go of her "dignity." Is this pitiful? Let go of our superficial sense of justice as outsiders. For her, it is not pitiful. She completely transforms herself into an other, originally believing that love is supreme, but now she no longer feels the fatal conflict between shame and powerlessness. When something that was once cherished is repeatedly given, taken away, and consumed, it becomes worthless. She gains a certain degree of "freedom." She separates love from sex. When the group led by Kamishiro rapes her and almost takes her life, she simply mixes love and sex together and discards them all.
In this visual displacement, she sees her destiny over the past forty years. When countless men lie on her body to satisfy their despicable desires, she finally gains the ability to "reflect on herself." This is her moment of awakening. Living in the Kamishiro family is a reenactment and imitation of her previous family environment, which was inferior and extreme. She unconsciously gains a subjectivity that she had never had before, but this subjectivity is twisted and instrumental. She constantly returns to herself, placing herself in an absolute barren place. Love is fake, marriage is fake, family is fake. She no longer has any self-esteem or morality. Tools cannot have morals, and it would be outrageous if they did. Just as Hitler learned to disregard life during World War I, Yoko also learned to despise all morality and justice in this situation of insult and harm.
Closing the book and stepping away from the logical reasoning and clever calculations in the novel, this book touches on many real-life issues. It reflects the social background of Japan from 1973 to 2013, including the collapse of the bubble economy, the tragedy of the original family, the concept of favoring sons over daughters, domestic violence, lonely deaths, school bullying, workplace harassment, high-interest loans, pyramid schemes, consumerism, and compensated dating. Yoko, from being a harmless and even self-deprecating obedient girl, ultimately transforms into a heartless woman who kills without hesitation, manipulates her colleagues, and schemes to accumulate wealth. This is the result catalyzed by so many problems and backgrounds, and Yoko's tumultuous experiences reflect the diversity and unpredictable mutations of human nature in such a context.
Despair is not the fall of each step, but the inevitability of each step. The reason why "Screams" is named "Screams" is, I believe, the final cry of an ordinary person who has experienced such misery and sorrow. After this, they will transform into a beast without ethical morals, venting their accusations and revenge against society.