Rating:★★★★☆
Author Akane Araki is sandwiched between translator Bethan Jones and replacement interviewer Junko Takekawa. They’re perched on a modest platform in The Workstation’s Creative Lounge, setting the stage for a snug discussion on homicide and human nature.
Murder at the End of the World is a novel that features an asteroid hurtling towards Earth and mankind having around two months to live. Enter Haru, an anxious twenty-three-year-old who has decided to continue her driving lessons despite it all. Upon discovering a corpse in her boot, she finds herself trailing alongside Isagawa – her driving instructor with an odd eye for detail. As it is a murder mystery, Araki reads a short passage from the first chapter to highlight the leads’ dynamic without giving too much away.
The bizarre premise came to Araki when she was taking driving lessons and had realised that just as she had always been bad at sports, she was also bad at driving. Long stretches of time in the car with her instructor became bearable when she thought of it as a means to research a novel. Araki loves crime stories, and, to keep her protagonists the primary investigators, utilises an upcoming cataclysm to ensure the police steer clear. “Forensic investigators are a real problem for crime writers”, she muses, as their presence has to be considered for some degree of believability. Takekawa questions this dysfunctional system, adding indignantly, “the police should stay till the end!”
It is difficult not to see the parallels between Araki’s fictional world and the one we live in, from the decisions made by larger power structures to people’s differing responses based on their socioeconomic status. Unlike many other dystopian novels that focus on the initial disaster, she “wanted to show a world after it had settled”, compelling her to flesh out characters who behaved practically amid an acceptance of the end.
This is a story about two women who team up to catch a culprit in a society that has deemed it a pointless attempt at justice. Araki wanted to challenge common female representations in Japanese mystery novels: “Women end up getting killed for no reason, or if you do have female characters, they end up feeling like stereotypes”. She tackles this through a personal lens, basing Haru’s character on herself (“passive and not very good with people”) and crafting Isagawa’s character to contrast with it.
Araki’s debut novel has won Japan’s prestigious Edogawa Rampo Prize and she is already considered one of the best female crime writers of the younger generation. Although she finds the constant focus on her gender and age irksome, she understands the awe, as Japan’s crime-writing scene is male-centric. She notes that ‘Akane Araki’ is a pen name that a Japanese person would recognise as female. Whilst she did consider a more neutral-sounding name, she decided against it out of a hope that others like her would “be encouraged” to write.
Hopefully, Araki’s popularity spurs stories of equal calibre to be published. Starting with the other book on the table, her untranslated second novel, which involves a series of murders on a deserted island. Takekawa leaps at the chance to emphasise: “Trust me, this one’s better!”
