The Man Who Died Seven Times [1995/2025] – ★★★
Who doesn’t like a time-loop in their fantasy story? The idea that one can go back to the past and relive it, changing it or gaining particular insight from it is irresistible for fiction lovers. In novels The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North and Replay by Ken Grimwood, there are people who have a chance to relive their lives, and such films as Back to the Future and Groundhog Day popularised the concept of time-travel/loop in action and romantic comedies. Of course, the most famous example of a time-loop in detective fiction now is Stuart Turton’s The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and in Japanese fiction – probably still a light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka titled All You Need Is Kill (later Hollywood film Edge of Tomorrow). Since Nishizawa’s book of 1995 predates Sakurazaka’s light novel of 2004, it was one of the first in Japan to break into the market with the theme, and the idea of mixing sci-fi time-loops and a detective mystery. Now, it is published for the first time in English under the title The Man Who Died Seven Times, translated by Jesse Kirkwood.
The story here is uncomplicated, but it gets quite laborious by one somewhat tricky familial dynamic, background stories and the presence of numerous characters. Our narrator is sixteen-year-old boy Hisataro Oba, but he admits that he has the mindset of a thirty-year-old man because he suffers from a certain “condition” that comes and goes randomly. That “condition” means that, sporadically, he relives the same days over and over again. He can never predict when the recurring days will start, or when they will end – he just experiences them.
Fast forward to the present day, and we are in the house of Hisataro’s grandfather, Reijiro Fuchigami. He has just been found murdered in the attic of the house, and the murder weapon is apparently a vase containing moth orchids. Every family member is a suspect because there was an ongoing inheritance battle prior to the grandfather’s death. Hisataro’s mother Kamiji and her two sisters, Kotono and Haruma should be the equal successors to the grandfather’s fortune as they are his daughters, but, once, Haruma and Kamiji abandoned grandfather Reijiro when he needed them, and now he wants nothing to do with them. On the other hand, Kotono, who stayed with Reijiro, has no children to become successors. To complicate matters further, grandfather Reijiro decided a long time ago to write a new will every 1st of January and appoint a random family member as his successor to the fortune. The thing is no one knows who will end up on his will this time around. Now, grandfather Reijiro is dead, and the murderer has gotten away. Will Hisataro uncover what really happened using his secret time-loop “condition”?
Japanese philosophy is all about God being in the details, but while reading The Man Who Died Seven Times, one would think that more popular in the West saying “the devil is in the details” is more appropriate. There are some restatements and over-explanations filled with irrelevant nuances, but, thankfully, when we get to the day of the murder, everything goes more smoothly in the story. The “match” has been lit up, so to speak, and everything starts to catch fire. As we read on, we find out more about the grandfather, the circumstances of his death, and who may be responsible. For example, it may be Hisataro’s brother Fujitaka or his cousin Runa. They were the last people to see grandfather Reijiro alive. They also wanted to talk him so as to persuade him to change his will in their favour. We also find out that the murder actually occurred on one of the “repeated” days of the time-loop, and not on the “original” day. That puts our narrator in the position to try to prevent his grandfather’s murder if he wants him to come out alive from the “repeated days”-loop.
I recall I compared Yukito Ayatsuji’s mystery novel The Decagon House Murders to an exciting video-game, and The Man Who Died Seven Times has the same vibe. This is a kind of novel which might have been a manga or a film with lots of voice-over, and we would hardly notice much difference because the point is not the depth of plot, believable, fully-fledged characters or the writing, but certain ideas and situations. This necessarily results in artificiality. But, the ideas are also imaginative, providing for a fair share of thrills and surprises. Time-loop has a mind of its own in the story, as the narrator tells us “experience had shown me that the Trap [time-loop] usually attempted to replicate the original loop as faithfully as possible. It was as though there was some sort of guiding force that sought to prevent the permutations that took place within each loop from ever straying too far from the ‘original’ version” [Nishizawa/Kirkwood, Pushkin Vertigo, 1995/2025]. This characteristic will play a pivotal role in the story.
The curious feature of many Japanese mystery novels is that, in comparison to their western counterparts, many of them are preoccupied not with the whodunit question, but with the question of motive (also called “social mystery” in Japan). For example, this fixation is seen in such Japanese mysteries as Malice by Keigo Higashino and Confessions by Kanae Minato, and in film The Third Murder by Hirokazu Koreeda or in film adaptations of novels by Seichō Matsumoto. The Man Who Died Seven Times is no different because it is the motive that often puzzles our narrator. There are even some distant echoes of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None in the novel, but the plot is in reverse of that classic (to explain fully is to give spoilers).
Improbabilities aside, we are often in the territory of conjecture and uncertainty in The Man Who Died Seven Times, but it fuels our curiosity more than it confuses and exasperates. It is hard to keep the readers’ attention when each day repeats itself in the story, but Nishizawa manages to pull us head first into the vortex of events, making us question free will, choice and destiny one after another. It often feels like we are in a dark video-game and can only wake up in the real world once the murder puzzle is solved.
⏳ The execution does lag behind all the ideas in The Man Who Died Seven Times, and not everything fully connects or makes sense. It is the plot’s very foundation that is shaky – why wouldn’t our narrator Hisataro simply choose his “plan of last resort” and just stay drinking with his grandfather to prevent him from being killed every repeated day? Hisataro’s issue of mere discomfort is nothing. But, despite that, the novel is still brainy and thrilling. The way the narrator navigates around his family members and the question of inheritance will keep the reader turning the pages in anticipation. As the story mixes one intriguing sci-fi time-travel concept with an “impossible crime” story and a family drama, it would appeal most to those who love an eclectic mash of ideas in their fiction.
English (US) · 