Pathway to Japanese Literature

Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.

'The Spiritualist Murder Case'Author: Sakaguchi Ango

Original Title	心霊殺人事件
Author	坂口安吾
Genre	Detective & Mystery
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In a coastal town shadowed by postwar intrigue, a retired magician-turned-innkeeper receives an unusual plea: two sisters beg him to expose a fraudulent spiritualist manipulating their father, a notorious moneylender obsessed with contacting his eldest son’s ghost. The son, presumed dead in Burma, allegedly haunts their patriarch with tales of a secret family abroad—a claim the siblings dismiss as either delusion or a scheme to divert their inheritance. As the magician delves deeper, he encounters a family fractured by greed and resentment: a dwarf brother clinging to legitimacy, a vapid model sister savoring chaos, and husbands harboring wartime sins. Their collective disdain for their father’s newfound "compassion" culminates in a staged séance—a pitch-black theater of floating trumpets and clattering apparitions—where deception twists into murder. Amid luminous props and echoing groans, a dagger finds its mark, leaving the magician to untangle a web of motives where spiritualist tricks pale against the family’s venomous truths. What begins as a con artist’s game spirals into a labyrinth of betrayal, where every shadow hides a lie, and blood proves thicker than loyalty.