Journey Under the Midnight Sun
The unsolved mystery of the human soul
「她連一次都沒有回頭。」
“She didn’t turn back, not even once.”
Rating: 8.5
Cups of tea: 🍵🍵
Translation: Chinese (original: Japanese)
A book that ends with more questions than answers, and that’s ironic because it’s a mystery novel. For most mystery novel readers, the fun comes from unwrapping the mystery, it comes from solving the crime and the puzzle with the detective. There’s never a ta-da! moment in Journey, no big reveal even at the very end, only small, sharp pinches that suggest the truth is actually worse than and beyond the limits of our imagination.
The story opens in 1973 with the death of a pawnshop owner. The detective Sasagaki acquaints with the victim’s young son Ryo and crosses paths with a beautiful young girl Yukiho. Sasagaki suspects a connection between Ryo, Yukiho and the victim’s murder but without any concrete evidence, the murder becomes another cold case that is buried by time.
The narrative changes perspective with every new chapter and through the eyes of various characters, we see the development of Ryo and Yukiho over two decades, from their schooling years to their ventures into the adult world. The choice to introduce new characters and new perspectives did throw me off a little, especially as a non-Japanese speaker, I had trouble keeping track of everyone’s names. Nevertheless, I still managed to mostly enjoy Higashino’s simplistic and no-bullshit style of writing — there’s no time for flowery language when there are crimes to be solved.
Having said that, Journey is one of Higashino’s longer novels with over 350,000 Chinese characters (the English translation is about 540+ pages), and it did take a while for me to chew through it. Higashino has a habit of chopping things up, a trademark of his style, but Journey feels he decided to put all the clues through the grinder, filtered the mush and then fed it to the reader through a drip. There are a lot of thought-provoking side characters and ‘side quests’ that I enjoyed in the story, most of them cleverly used to illustrate the complex and conflicting sides of Ryo and Yukiho. Another reason I enjoy Higashino’s style so much is that he has a way of drawing out his characters clearly even with very few sentences. Both Ryo and Yukiho came to me vividly within two or three chapters, so I did feel like he spent a little longer than he should have on emphasising certain elements for both characters. I felt that about a third of the book could’ve been cut to improve the pacing of the story and maintain the impact of the initial murder.
For me, the ending made the entire book. It’s a contradictory kind of ending. In a way, it was anti-climatic, and I did think that the end came a little too quickly too rushed. I would even say that it came a little too easy. At the same time, the ending is arguably the climax of the plot — the story closes on one of the most action-packed, intense scenes of the entire novel. For Journey, I couldn’t think of a better way for it to end. It had to end this way, or I would’ve felt betrayed after spending nearly a month on it.
Although some readers might argue that they were betrayed anyway. Most readers should be able to suss out the connection between Ryo and Yukiho, as well as the rough causes of the crimes after about three chapters, but we never find out if we got any of it right. Higashino only hints at the truth without ever telling us in black and white. Everything is speculation, even detective Sasagaki admits it himself in the final chapter. But the truth isn’t really the point of the story. The charm of Journey isn’t that it’s some clever, beautifully crafted mystery with twists that shock and amuse. It’s not a whodunit or howdunit or even a whydunit. Murder aside, it’s a story about how two tragic souls walk together under the midnight sun for twenty years.
Yukiho is one of the best female characters I’ve read in a while. I was utterly drawn to her and completely sympathetic to her actions, but at the same time, I hated everything that she stands for. Some critics have noted how Higashino is smart with the narrative to ensure that karmic balance is restored before the story ends. Looking at the big picture, that may be the case, but I’ve had to swallow a few bitter bullets along the way, especially with how Higashino closed off some of the arcs for the female characters. I was hugely irritated by how Higashino swept all the female characters under the rug after he was done with them and used a happily married life as a consolation prize for every hardship and abuse that they endure in the novel.
Having said all that, I’m a sucker for good endings, and the ending was pretty much perfect, so I’ve possibly given it a higher score than I should’ve. It’s also the first time I’ve read anything like it, so the aftershock did last quite long. It’s one of Higashino’s earlier works and it’s obvious in the style of his writing as well as the themes that he touches upon. There are even soft sprinkles of Japanese history and culture as readers follow the story through two decades. All in all, a good read that I would recommend.
Background
Higashino is well known for his mystery novels. He made steady progress with several acclaimed novels throughout the 80s and 90s, until he became a household name with the publication of The Devotion of Suspect X in 2006, the third novel in his famous Detective Galileo series. Almost all of his works have been translated into Chinese, but only a handful of his more well-known works have English counterparts.
Translation
With Japanese novels, I always prefer the Chinese translation. I was happy enough with my translated copy, and I’ll possibly update this section when I’ve read the English version. However, I did glance over some snippets of the English translations and they did not seem as emotionally impactful or accurate as the Chinese translation, which is a typical flaw when Asian works are translated into Western languages.
