THE STORY OF THE STORY OF BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA

The beginning of my fascination with Japan is easy to determine—Captain Tsubasa—an anime series focusing on a soccer prodigy living in the shadow of Mount Fuji. For a star-gazing six-year-old growing up in a satellite town near Madrid, Spain, he was Doctor Doolittle, Robinson Crusoe, and Captain Nemo all rolled into one. Aside from the fantastical on-field action, each episode would explore his friendships, his bitter rivalries, and a sometimes tricky relationship with his parents (mother = concerned housewife, father = jovial, mustachioed seafaring captain). But what I loved most about his world was the mise-en-scène. Strange haircuts. Raw fish. Futuristic trains. Buildings with clean angles. The way people would become embarrassed at the most trivial things. Even the strange alphabet looked like a secret code. And, though the show was dubbed into Spanish, they couldn’t fool me. I knew Captain Tsubasa’s world existed a million miles away from mine. And that’s precisely why it was so wonderful to me. Every episode was like a glimpse into another dimension where they looked and moved like us but in a place so completely other.

Naturally, I wanted to find out more. I went to the library to ask about Japan. The librarian came back with a book about tall buildings and big bridges. Sure enough, I came to a double-page spread of Rainbow Bridge, all lit up at night.

“You see those colors?” She tapped the page. “They use solar power. In the day, the bridge stores up the power and then at night it lights up.”

And that was that, I was captivated. Gazing at those magical pages, I swore that one day I would cross that bridge.

Shortly after that, my parents divorced and I moved with my mother to London. I remember the alien feel of trousers on my shins. How different the cartoons were. Dole lines and spaghetti hoops. John Major’s Britain, going back to basics.

By my midtwenties, I was still in London and had fluked my way into a travel magazine. After a few years of writing articles on far-flung destinations such as Cardiff and Temple Cloud, I was finally given my first big assignment: Japan. Not quite believing my luck, I read a ton of books and planned my article meticulously. (It never saw the light of day, the magazine folded while I was out there.) I did, however, get to keep that promise to my child-self. I stood on the pedestrian walkway of Rainbow Bridge, fifty meters above the water, and watched the city sparkle in the cold. The bay below filled with party boats and skyscrapers stretched out in every direction, each one topped with red lights to warn off low-flying aircraft, like lighthouses. Trucks thundered past me on the bridge, their drivers maybe thinking I was a jumper. And to my shock, I felt tears in my eyes, sluggish and unfamiliar. The cityscape blurred into shifting hexagons of silver and gold and I blamed them on the cold. But I had made it to my bridge. I had kept the promise to my six-year-old self.

It struck me then that Japan, or at least my idea of it, had always represented an escape. And the bridge had always been the physical expression of “from here to there.” And I had finally reached there.

The beginning of Blue Light Yokohama is also easy to determine. During my first trip to Japan in 2010, I came across an article about the Miyazawa family murders. The case was unsolved and already ten years old. I remember looking at a photograph of the family. They were sitting on some stone steps, most likely on a day out. The father, Mikio, wearing an ocean blue polo shirt and moccasins, had let two fingers touch the shoulder of his son sitting below him. It was the only trace of visible affection. Yasuko, the mother, although almost smiling, looked more rigid. She wore a beige blouse, her hair neatly plaited, hands in her lap. She looked like a teacher, somehow. A good teacher but one who wouldn’t have stood for any nonsense. Niina, cute, rosy face and Velcroed sneakers, mimicked her mother’s pose. Rei, legs apart, fiddled with his fingers and looked to the camera openmouthed. He wore sailing shoes, similar to his dad’s. Nobody was quite smiling. Nobody was giving away much. I gazed at them for a long time and asked myself: Who could murder an entire family with a sushi knife and a pillow, then walk out the front door in broad daylight?

I cut out that image and put it in the book I was reading at the time. (I’ve never been able to find it.)

A few years later, I returned to Japan for my thirtieth birthday. It was April 16, 2014 and I was staying in a dated business hotel on the banks of the Ōta River. In my room, which had a “no smorking” sign, I was unable to sleep. I put the shopping channel on and leafed through the newspaper from the day before. And that’s when I stumbled across an article similar to this:

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/setagaya-family-murders-remain-unsolved-15-years-later.

My breath caught. I was looking at the same photograph I’d seen years before. The Miyazawas on some stone steps surrounded by greenery. Maybe I want to remember it this way, but I felt it was as if they were calling to me. Here we are again.

I spent that night feverishly researching the case, by then fourteen years old. The upshot was that on December 30, 2000, a man broke into the Miyazawa home, murdered the entire family, then used the family computer, ate their ice cream, and spent up to eleven hours in the house. He left the next day in broad daylight. There was no real motive but the killer did leave behind plenty of evidence—brand-new clothes, a hip bag, a bucket hat, sand grains from the Mojave Desert, and powdered fluorescent dye (red and violet). In the pocket of the sweater were traces of bird droppings and Japanese zelkova leaves. The killer also left behind his blood at the scene. DNA analysis revealed a mother of European descent, possibly from a Mediterranean country. He left his feces in the toilet, the stool revealing he was likely a vegetarian. He left behind the murder weapon, a sashimi knife which he bought that day costing him ¥3,500 (about £20). He left traces of French aftershave on a handkerchief.

It was approaching dawn in my hotel room. I looked again at the faces of the family. I had the shopping channel on—a limited-time offer for a music CD box set in the background. Ayumi Ishida was singing “Blue Light Yokohama,” smiling painfully as she sang. I looked at the lyrics passing along the bottom of the screen.

The lights of the city are so pretty, I’m happy with you. Please let me hear. Those words of love from you. I walk and walk, swaying, like a small boat in your arms. I hear your footsteps coming, Give me one more tender kiss. The scent of your favorite cigarettes, Yokohama, Blue Light Yokohama. This will always be our world.

And in that moment I felt it. Although intellectually I understood that the killer was still at large, it suddenly hit me. Fourteen years after this atrocity, the case was still unsolved. There was no ending. The person who did this was—and to this day, still is—free. Someone. Someone who travels. Someone who wears young, fashionable clothing. Someone who has contact with birds. Someone with a taste for spinach. Someone with a taste for French aftershave. Someone who, on the night of December 30, 2000, was walking through the streets of Setagaya, sashimi knife in his hip bag, bought with the purpose of slaughtering an entire family.

I went to bed unable to get that faceless man out of my mind. The next day, I woke up still thinking about the case. I boarded the Shinkansen bound for Kyoto, still going over the countless odd details in my mind. Sitting in my comfortable seat on the climate-controlled bullet train, I went over the notes I’d made. And as I looked out of the window at Chūgoku countryside, streaking past watercolor fast, I thought about the lyrics to “Blue Light Yokohama.” I wrote down the following bullet point:

Murder case involving a family of four. Blue Light Yokohama novel?

I knew I had to write a novel involving a family murder. I had to. It wasn’t that I wanted to write about the family itself, that would be cheap, but the abhorrent fate that had befallen them wouldn’t let me go. Perhaps it might sound crass but there were just too many haunting curiosities to ignore. Too many compelling questions. Too much mystery to explore. Ultimately, I wanted to write about facelessness. The agony of facelessness. Though I’d never seriously considered writing crime fiction, I’d always toyed with the idea of a Japanese detective. I would write little set pieces but he would always come off sounding like a bad marriage between Rick Deckard and Philip Marlowe. I could never decide who he was, so I wrote him as a tough guy by default.

I think it was an innocuous line from the Japan Today article that changed that:

Approximately 246,000 officers have been involved in the case to date … Forty officers remain assigned to the case full-time.

It was set next to an image of policemen dressed in black, respectfully lined up outside the Miyazawas’ house, bowing before it on the anniversary of the murders. Where I was from, policemen didn’t beg for forgiveness. I looked at their faces and wondered who they were. I pictured them waiting by the telephone, fourteen years after the murders. Handing out flyers at train stations. Endlessly bouncing around theories. Paying their respects every December 30. It struck me then that my detective should be one of them. He wouldn’t be wisecracking and he wouldn’t be tough. He would be alone and full of sorrow, fighting the battles of the dead. I realized then that Blue Light Yokohama would be a crime novel only in façade. At its heart, I wanted to write about people in pain. About people who had lost something. So it was that Inspector Kosuke Iwata was born.