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 writers use straightforward and explicit language to narrate stories that make people shudder and shock, allowing readers to gradually realize the depths of human nature. During this reading week, I read "The Scream" written by the Japanese novelist Kazuaki Unno, and I was deeply impressed by its narrative style and clever logical design.
"The Scream" is a detective novel written by the emerging Japanese social detective novelist Kazuaki Unno. It tells the story of the protagonist, Yoko, who leads a hidden and tumultuous life beneath her ordinary and weak appearance. The book reveals social issues that are often overlooked, providing 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 reflections of social changes in Japan over the past forty years, making it one of the representative excellent detective novels in Japan in recent years.
The outline of the story is roughly about a single woman in her late 30s to early 40s living alone in Tokyo. Her body is discovered by the landlord in her apartment. 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. Through 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 a representative social detective novel, because the narrative of the entire novel alternates between the second-person and first-person perspectives. The reasons behind all of these tragedies involve the entanglement and conflicts among family, ethics, and society. Yoko's life is full of misery and repression, from "being unloved and even hated by her mother in her childhood" to experiencing the collapse of the Japanese 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 heartbreaking and corrupt life tragedy, with a distant and straightforward narrative that does not carry any unnecessary emotions. The most distinctive feature of the novel is the combination of the second-person and God's perspective, allowing readers to intuitively understand Yoko's life, the process of detective Ayano Okura's investigation, 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 believed that I gradually understood the reasons behind it, thinking that "the woman who died in the apartment at the beginning is Yoko," the author gave me a shocking blow in the final deduction, revealing that all of this evil also originated from the most tragic Yoko.
The second temporal perspective of the narrative is Ayano, the female police officer. There is a lot of description about her, repeatedly depicting the psychological changes she goes through while investigating the clues. It is mentioned multiple times that the experiences of the female police officer and Mrs. Yoko are similar, leading to the expectation of a decent ending for the female police officer, as is the case in many detective novels with a clash between good and evil, where the evil will eventually be brought to justice. However, Kazuaki Unno 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 throughout the story are constantly clashing in different time periods, and we do not know whether the police officer Ayano will continue to investigate.
After finishing the book, I went online to read the reasoning and explanations of other readers and realized that there were many ingenious designs that made people exclaim in admiration:
Mrs. Yoko used her pitiful former colleague's fake death as a way to escape and start her "second life." In the epilogue, Mrs. Yoko, who now goes by the name Momoka 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 the female police officer 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 brilliant and virtuous second life.
Everything Yoko experiences is a way 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 rises from the depths. 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 tragic? Let go of our superficial sense of justice as outsiders. For her, it is not tragic. She completely transforms herself into an other, someone who used to believe in love above all else. But now, she no longer feels that shame and powerless self-esteem torn between love and 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 top of 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, but she unconsciously gains a subjectivity she had never had before, although 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 is immoral for tools to have morals. Just as Hitler learned to disregard life during World War I, Yoko also learned to disdain all morals and justice in this situation of humiliation 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 sadness 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, eventually transforms into a heartless and ruthless woman who kills her colleagues and schemes to accumulate wealth. This is the result catalyzed by so many problems and backgrounds, and Yoko's tumultuous experiences also reflect the diversity and unpredictable mutations of human nature in such a context.
Despair lies not in each step of the fall, but in the inevitability of each step. The reason why "The Scream" is named "The Scream" is, I believe, the final cry of an ordinary person who has experienced such tragedy and sorrow. After this, they will transform into a beast without ethical morals, venting their accusations and revenge against society.