In the end, I did finish reading my Japanese mystery novel, Seicho Matsumoto's Inspector Imanishi Investigates. By British and American standards, it is by no means a "great" mystery novel. But it was different enough that it merited pushing through. Together with some of the stuff I'm seeing on Midnight Diner, I'm definitely seeing some themes emerge.
First off, it's worth discussing the role of coincidence in mystery narratives in general. For the most part, the mystery genre relies on a steady stream of coincidence: this character or that event just happening to occur when somebody is walking by or within earshot of the detective's cousin or somesuch. Coincidences yield up clues which in the end help solve the mystery.
Fiction has always relied on coincidence to make its little worlds tick. It's everywhere in Dickens and other 19th century fair, we see it in Shakespeare. Without any commentary coincidence conveys the message that there is order in the world, not chaos, and that the world is not as big as it seems. In mysteries, this is doubly important, because all these stabbings and beatings at random times in the dark of night feed on our deepest fears, but together the detective and coincidence work to restore order when it is most threatened.
In the literature of Tokyo (and I suppose other big cities, but I'm seeing it in Tokyo narratives) there's an additional message: one character happening upon another tells us that while Tokyo may seem like a massive city in which one may lose one's self, in the end Japan is a small nation and one cannot wholly leave behind wherever it is one comes from. You can move to Tokyo and try to remake yourself into something altogether new, but in the end something from your past, your village off in the mountains 800 miles to the south -- can easily come back and haunt you. If necessary, a determined detective will figure that shit out, so it's better not to even try.
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