Is Seicho Matsumoto as outdated as newspapers？

Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992), a japanese mystery family, is famous for her portrayal of "evil women", and The Woman Who Bought a Local Newspaper is also a woman’s crime story. When writing three volumes of Seicho Matsumoto’s Short Stories, Miyuki Miyabe, who is also a representative of social school reasoning, classified this article as "my favorite", probably because he is a writer’s preference for the story of "the writer plays the detective".

Saya Longzhi, a writer, serialized The Legend of the Wild Thief in a local newspaper. She was very happy to learn from the newspaper that a female reader in Tokyo specially subscribed to this newspaper with a very small circulation in order to read her own novel. Soon after, I received a letter that "the novel has become unsightly and I want to unsubscribe", and I feel a little strange. This woman must want to get something else from the newspaper … Starting from this, she started some reasoning.

In the latest Japanese drama SP "The Woman Who Bought the Local Newspaper", the writer detective is played by Tamura Masakazu. The woman who claimed that "I want to subscribe to this local newspaper because I like the writer’s serial novels" is Ryoko Hirosue. Tamura Masakazu and Ryoko Hirosue (Stubborn Daddy (2000) and Father (2002)), who played the role of father and daughter twice more than a decade ago, have turned into an ambiguous relationship between imaginative writers and enigmatic readers.

Speaking, the origin of reasoning is the writer’s unwarranted confidence (how can my novel be unsubscribed if it is so beautiful! ), Orwell in Why Do I Write? The reason given in is "pure conceit"-some writers desperately want to hide it, but most people write because they want to be regarded as smart people and better be praised by later generations. Fortunately, this time, compared with the narrow-minded image of the writer in the 2007 TV series, Tamura Masakazu is obviously much wiser and cuter, with the elegance and pride of Shirzaburo. Ryoko Hirosue, who just helped Yuki Uchida kill her husband in Naomi and Kanako, once again appeared as a "wicked girl".

Plus the original writer’s assistant Mizukawa Asami in this remake, Watanabe Mayu, a guest geisha, and many other roles, Seicho Matsumoto SP drama is indeed more luxurious than the afternoon reasoning theater for middle-aged and elderly people.

Apart from the charm of the character itself, the charm of the story "The Woman Who Bought the Local Newspaper" originally came from the theme of "newspaper". Women worry about the news of "accident" by subscribing to newspapers, and writers speculate on women’s motives by unsubscribing letters. The connection maintained through paper reveals a kind of showiness, and if there is a blank space, it will give people room for reverie.

However, if the background of the times is moved to the present, the blank space will have to be filled. The development of clues in the story seems too far-fetched: in this age, you have to order newspapers to check the news, but you can’t check it on the Internet or on your mobile phone? Is it necessary to write "because I like reading your novels" when subscribing to newspapers? Isn’t it an invasion of privacy for newspapers to disclose the personal information of subscribers to writers?

Regarding whether newspaper subscription is an obvious bug, I specially asked my Japanese friends, and the answer is: local newspapers with a very small circulation will publish weddings, funerals and weddings as news, not necessarily online. But you can always find it in the library database, right? The accident that female readers care about has also held a press conference, and there is no reason why it can’t be found online. Japanese friends also agreed. So we come to a conclusion that we don’t want to admit, Seicho Matsumoto’s works, which have been remake and adapted countless times in the past 60 years, may be out of date.

From 1957 to now, this is the ninth time that The Woman Who Bought the Local Newspaper has been made into a TV series, plus a movie. I’m afraid it will be more and more difficult for the audience in the future to understand the unique romance of "newspaper", and it’s also difficult to understand the imagination of Seicho Matsumoto, a writer who is often serialized in newspapers, behind the seemingly serious type.

If a "woman" conceals the crime as a double suicide and then checks the news through the Internet, even if she subscribes to the newspaper, if the newspaper does not disclose her information to the writer, things will not be revealed. In the era we live in, cases are more likely to be detected through phone records, surveillance videos and DNA. Accurate and boring.

Today, the image of "evil girl" still dominates the Japanese screen and occupies half of the mystery novels. Even if the background of Qing Zhang’s story is gone, the tradition of evil girl still exists.

Some people say that the theme of evil women reflects the author’s inner disgust and suspicion of women, but on the other hand, it may be seen that men are more attracted to the image of evil women than pure ladies. Beautiful women meet people who are unlucky, and do not hesitate to kill them in order to change their miserable situation … Whether it is Seicho Matsumoto’s Black Handbook, House of Beasts or Keigo Higashino’s The Relief of the Saint, such a routine seems to be inexhaustible for a long time.

Perhaps the social school’s point of view is not in reasoning. Even if the reasoning is weak and the clues are far-fetched, Tamura Masakazu’s Showa amorous feelings drama makes this work still worth seeing. Nowadays, newspapers are dying. Even if The Woman Who Bought the Local Newspaper is remake in the background of Seicho Matsumoto’s era, it is difficult for young people who keep their mobile phones to understand the interest.