Somekichi’s Vermilion Tray and Other Writings

A lacquerworker’s vermilion trays carry fragments of a love poem. Around a mysterious mansion, an arresting officer and his storyteller friend encounter beautiful strangers, missing young men, and clues that seem to connect desire, art, and death.

Kunieda Shirō brings a different kind of ingenuity to each of these four stories. A fictionalized Bakin struggles to become a writer; a doctor’s Egyptian collection becomes the scene of a strange theft; and a physician’s murderous scheme turns on a borrowed umbrella and a dangerous exchange of identities.

Two literary essays widen the view. Kunieda considers writers he would like to see attempt detective fiction, then surveys the achievements, limitations, and possibilities of Japan’s growing detective literary world in 1926.