The New Indian Express ·
Love and lies in Tokyo
It takes special skill for a crime writer to keep a reader engaged despite revealing the perpetrator of the crime halfway through the book. This is the case with Twilight in Musashino. Then again, the author Seicho Matsumoto is no ordinary crime novelist. He is a veteran, the founding father of Shakaiha, the social school of crime-writing.
In this genre, crime is the lens through which the socio-political realities of post-World War II Japan are explored. The story at the core of this novel, published in 1951 and translated from Japanese into English in 2026 for the first time, unfolds in the titular Musashino on the outskirts of Tokyo. An important focus is the Basilio Order of the Guglielmo Church, a charitable Christian mission operating in the area. The author gradually introduces us to various people connected with the church; it soon becomes clear that under the guise of being a religious institution, it is involved in all sorts of illegal activities such as black-marketeering, the smuggling of contraband goods, and drugs. They are not acting alone; a shadowy, secretive trader directs all these movements to insidiously gain total control of the church.
In the midst of all this intrigue, a young and handsome priest starts an illicit relationship with a woman who works at a nursery school affiliated with the church. The priest is soon made treasurer of the church and, in this capacity, has to deal with the sinister trader and do his bidding. The trader arranges things so that the woman is given a job, with an obviously nefarious motive in mind. It culminates in her murder at the midpoint of the book, and an investigation begins, with a seasoned detective leading it.
