Written by Takaki Hiroshi1
(For those who have not finished reading the book, please be aware that this commentary touches on the ending in section 2.)
1. Towards the everyday mystery
“Is there a philosophical meaning behind this?”
Maja always poses this question to her friends whenever she encounters something unfamiliar. Even though she says “philosophical”, but there is no need to overthink it. What Maja means by “philosophy” is, by going to the origin of the word, “The love of sophia, or wisdom”, or at least I believe it acceptable to consider it as such. She asks that question about the man who does not hold up an umbrella even when it is raining. For the meaning behind the 〒 mark on a post box. For the reason surrounding the colors on a red-white daifuku. The situations that Maja was intrigued by are all trivial mysteries that might eventually fall into our daily lives.
Goodbye Fairy is set in Fujishiba City, a provincial city with a population of 100,000. The narrator, Moriya Michiyuki, goes to Fujishiba High School, which is located in that city. In April of the year 1991, while heading home with his female friend Tachiarai Machi, they encounter a young girl who is taking shelter from the rain. The girl introduces herself as Maja, and says that she came from Yugoslavia to learn about Japan, where she will stay for two months. And thus the story is about the time they spend together, as well as the pursuit of mysteries sprinkled throughout.
When the word “mystery” is mentioned, one usually thinks of murder mysteries, but in modern day Japan, there is a pedigree of mystery stories that do not deal with murders. Instead, they put the spotlight on small mysteries that reside in daily life, and this style of writing where surprising truths are found is called the “everyday mystery”. Following Kaoru Kitamura’s short story collection The Flying Horse, many other authors debuted under Tokyo Sogensha, like Tomoko Kano, Jun Karuchi, and Yuri Mitsuhara.
Honobu Yonezawa, who won the Encouragement Award at the 5th Kadokawa School Novel Prize (Young Adult Mystery and Horror category) had his debut work Hyouka and his second work Credit Roll of the Fool focus on these everyday mysteries. In these two books, the detective is played by Oreki Houtarou, a high school student living in Kamiyama City, and he participates in the Classics Club. This fellow believes in a creed of energy conservation, and has the motto “If I don’t have to do it, don’t do it. If I have to do it, make it quick.” In spite of that, he is at the mercy of the catchphrase “I’m curious” of another Classics member, a bundle of curiosity, Chitanda Eru. Thus, he often winds up as the detective, though he plays his role reluctantly.
These works caught the eye of the long-established broker of everyday mysteries (?) Tokyo Sogensha, and the next one published in 2004 in the Mystery Frontier collection is this very book, Goodbye Fairy. Here, the character who plays the same role as the Classics Club Series’ Chitanda in confronting the reluctant detective with mysteries is the Yugoslavian, Maja. When it comes to weaving everyday mysteries, a heartily inquisitive foreigner makes for an excellent setting, in my opinion. Through Maja’s sparkling eyes, the everyday scenery that surrounds us is reconstructed with new colors and dimensions.
Maja finds many mysteries within Japanese society, and there is a reason why she tries to solve them. Her homeland, Yugoslavia, was formed from six nationalities, each of them with different histories and cultures. Regarding this, Maja says, “Yugoslavia has six cultures. But I, or rather, we are creating a seventh. […] Our traditions were manufactured. Our sense of unity was imaginary. Even so, it came to be that we lived not in one of the six cultures, but in our culture.” To Maja, who wants to sublate the six cultures and create a new culture for Yugoslavia, observing the unfamiliar land of Japan is directly linked to measuring the distances between the strangers in her country. Yes, through the endeavor of finding mysteries and solving them, Maja wants to reaffirm the connections she has with others.
Logic and reasoning being portrayed as an act of being involved in the lives of others is not limited to this book, among Yonezawa’s works. In Hyouka, Credit Roll of the Fool, and The Kudryavka Sequence, while Oreki Houtarou gets deeply involved in cases due to Chitanda’s curiosity, the hidden sentiments of all sorts of people are addressed in the background. Also, in the Petit Bourgeois series, which consists of Case of the Spring-Exclusive Strawberry Tart and Case of the Summer-Exclusive Tropical Parfait, Kobato Jougorou plays such a role. Someone aspiring to become a petit bourgeois should not show off their wisdom. Even with that in mind, he cannot help but play the detective and get involved with others, drawing scornful looks from his partner Osanai Yuki. In Where did the Dog Go?, Kouya Chouichirou intended to establish a detective agency specializing in searching for lost dogs, but the first case that falls into his lap is somehow a search for a missing person.
2. Towards another everyday mystery
The wish of being connected with others is briefly portrayed in the “bridge” episode of Goodbye Fairy. While Moriya and his friends are touring around the city, Maja reveals this as she is crossing Ronden Bridge.
“In Yugoslavia, most bridges carry some symbolic meaning. They are buildings that can represent a city.”
For example, a popular symbolic meaning for bridges is “a door to another world”. In that case, Maja might be imagining a door that connects all six nationalities of her home country. Thinking in that vein, when Maja looks at the signboard placed at the foot of the bridge and jokes that “Do not cross this bridge” is written there, it sounds meaningful, does it not? This witty story is quite famous in Japan, but it hinges on the pun of where “bridge” can be taken to mean “sides”, so it is difficult to convey its wit to foreigners. While Maja is proficient in Japanese, why does she remember this particular anecdote? If you take bridges as points of connection with others, it is not difficult to imagine that this witty story holds some special meaning to Maja. The seemingly paradoxical solution of boldly walking down the middle of a sealed bridge to reach one’s neighbors must be an empowering one for the Yugoslavian Maja.
Of course, the mysteries that Maja encounters in Japan do not always have blissful solutions. Like the mystery in the graveyard at the mountains to the back of Tsukasa Shrine where the group comes across red-tinged salvia flowers and a pair of red-white manju, some of them are stippled with the bad intentions of people. However, even in that example, Maja laughs and says that she is happy to see Japan’s “usual appearance”, “not prepared for others to see”, something that would not usually be shown to a guest like herself. In my opinion, the malice here is based on the premise that red-white is associated with good fortune. That is to say, for the grave decorated with red-white objects to convey malice, the receiving party must share the same symbology and values. The fact that ill will can be conveyed this way might be something worth admiring to Maja, who lives in a country with six cultures.
From this perspective, something even more interesting is the mystery that their friend Shirakawa Izuru poses during the farewell party before Maja has to return to Yugoslavia. The question is about the origin of her given name “Izuru” and why it is in hiragana, and the answer is that the kanji inherited from her mother’s and father’s sides of the family contradict each other. Just as Shirakawa says, “My name is very Japanese,” having two kanji with directly opposing meanings is easily linked to utilizing hiragana, which is a script unique to Japan, in a name. Maja is deeply moved, saying that “inheriting only part of the name and forming a new one is very interesting to me,” but her smile contains a hint of gloom. Her chimera of a country is starting to break apart due to the dispute between ethnic groups, so a name like “Izuru” that symbolizes “harmonious inconsistency” is like an unattainable dream to her.
Of course, the daily lives we live in may not be overflowing with pleasant, small mysteries. Works like Kaoru Kitamura’s Enemies on the Chessboard, Tomoko Kano’s Glass Qilin2, and Jun Karuchi’s Paradise Inside a Pot sharply cut to the core of the idea that murderers might be wandering around in our everyday lives. This absurd reality is constantly delivered to us by the media, even as we want to seek respite in our living rooms. It might not be limited to domestic affairs, for the data space flooded with “everyday life” from the world also includes news from countries that live through the “everyday life” of a battlefield, or the “everyday mysteries” or mass deaths. But are our imaginations truly able to reach such a world?
It is probably impossible to connect with Maja’s everyday life with only imagination. To shorten that distance, Moriya wants to be brought to Yugoslavia, even when it has turned into a battlefield. However, simply living in the same physical location does not mean that one will understand another person’s everyday life. Due to that, Moriya’s entreaty was painfully rejected by Maja.
Leaving behind those words, Maja left Fujishiba.
Would it be too Romanticized to say that the door to another world closed with her departure?
One year after parting with Maja, Moriya resolves to try opening the closed door again. If imagination is not enough to reach Maja, he could build a bridge towards the faraway Yugoslavia, and for that he mobilizes his powers of deduction. Just as Maja constantly reinterpreted Moriya’s daily life, finding philosophical meaning there and cherishing the connections with others, Moriya builds a bridge using the words that Maja left while touching the bridge in his hometown, and tries to cross the abyss between their daily lives.
As a result, Moriya’s fingertips might have reached Maja’s everyday life for just an instant. Due to that moment, this book became an excellent “everyday mystery”.
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