If you’ve been following my recent reviews, you’ll have noticed that I’ve fallen, rather hard, down a Japanese crime fiction rabbit hole. The recent one is The Inugami Curse, and it hasn’t stopped since. And every time I go looking for “what should I read next?”, one word keeps popping up: honkaku.
So I did what any reasonable book nerd would do. I went and found out what it means, and now I’m going to tell you, so you don’t have to.
What does honkaku actually mean?
Honkaku (本格) roughly translates as “orthodox” or “authentic.” In mystery terms, it means the classic puzzle mystery, played fair.
A honkaku mystery is built like a game between the author and the reader. The detective gets the clues, and so do you. Nothing important is hidden up the author’s sleeve, no surprise twin turns up in the last chapter, and no one solves the case because of a clue you never saw. If you pay close enough attention, you could, in theory, beat the detective to the answer.
If that sounds a lot like the Golden Age of British crime fiction, it’s because it is. (I wrote a whole post on The Golden Age of British crime fiction, if you want the English side of the family tree). Japanese writers read Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr with enthusiasm, and then took the puzzle in their own direction.
The hallmarks of a honkaku mystery
Here’s what you can usually expect:
- A fair-play puzzle: all the clues are on the page.
- Impossible crimes: locked rooms, footprint-less snow, bodies in places no one could have reached. Honkaku writers love an impossible setup.
- Closed circles: an isolated island, a snowed-in mansion, a remote village. A small group of suspects and nowhere to run.
- Floor plans and diagrams: many honkaku novels include maps of the house or the crime scene. If you’re like me, you’ll flip back to them about forty times.
- The “challenge” to the reader: borrowed from Ellery Queen, this is when the author breaks the fourth wall shortly before the reveal and essentially says: you now have everything you need. Go on, solve it. I love this so much. I have never once solved it.
A (very) short history of honkaku
The grandfather: Edogawa Rampo
You can’t talk about Japanese detective fiction without Edogawa Rampo. His pen name is playful rendering of Edgar Allan Poe’s, which tells you exactly who his hero was. He debuted in 1923 with “The Two-Sen Copper Coin”, a story built around logical deduction, and it introduced his detective Kogoro Akechi in 1925. Japan’s biggest prize for new mystery writers, The Edogawa Rampo Prize, is named after him.
The golden era: Seishi Yokomizo
After the war, Seishi Yokomizo gave honkaku its most famous detective. The Honjin Murders, serialised in 1946, introduced Kosuke Kindaichi with a locked room murder in a house surrounded by fresh snow, and not a single footprint. Yokomizo was clearly a fan of John Dickson Carr, and it shows. The novel won the very first Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948.
The detour: the “social school”
Then, in 1958, Seicho Matsumoto published Points and Lines, and the mood shifted. Matsumoto and the writers who followed him cared less about whodunnit and more about whydunnit; realistic crimes, ordinary people, and the social pressures that push them to murder. This became known as the “social school” (shakai-ha), and for a couple of decades it pushed the puzzle mystery into the background. If you’ve read my review of Inspector Imanishi Investigates, you’ve already met this style.
The comeback: shin honkaku
By the 1980s, some readers and writers missed the puzzles. In 1981, Soji Shimada’s The Tokyo Zodiac Murders was shortlisted for the Edogawa Rampo Prize. It’s a gloriously outrageous puzzle that openly challenges the reader, and it’s often credited with laying the groundwork for what came next.
What came next was The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, published in 1987. A university mystery club goes to stay on a deserted island where a family was murdered six months earlier, and you can probably guess how that goes. Its success kicked off the shin honkaku (new orthodox) movement. Shimada, who mentored Ayatsuji and other young writers, is sometimes called the godfather of shin honkaku.
Shin honkaku writers aren’t shy about their influences. Characters in these books often read mysteries, argue about Christie and Queen, and know perfectly well they’re trapped in one.
7 Honkaku Mysteries to Start With
These are all available in English, and are arranged roughly from “gentle introduction” to “full puzzle”. (I may go write the full review of each one of them too).
The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
The classic snowbound locked room, and Kindaichi’s first case. Short, clever, and a perfect first taste.
The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
Less of a pure locked room, more of a gothic family saga with a body count.
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
The one to give a friend who doesn’t really read mysteries. A physicist, a mathematician, and a battle of wits.
The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
The book that started shin honkaku. An island, a mystery club, and a lot of nervous people. If you love And Then There Were None, start here.
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada
A decades-old unsolved case, a wildly macabre setup, and one of the fairest challenges to the reader I’ve ever come across.
Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada
A strange tilted mansion in the far north, a locked room, and a solution that made me laugh out loud at how audacious it was.
Death Among the Undead by Masahiro Imamura
A modern honkaku mystery that throws a zombie outbreak into a closed-circle whodunnit. Yes, really. And the puzzle still plays fair.
Should you read honkaku?
If you’ve ever finished Agatha Christie’s and thought, I should have seen that, then yes, absolutely. Honkaku is the mystery genre at its most playful. the author wants you to have a real chance of solving the crime.
It’s not for everyone. If you read crime for character depth and emotional realism above all, some honkaku can feel a bit like a chess problem with names attached. But the best of it, pairs the puzzle with atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a katana.
Have you read any honkaku? Did you actually solve the challenge to the reader?
