The Composite of D

The Composite of D (Japanese original title D no Fukugō) is a novel by Seicho Matsumoto, a leading writer of Japanese social-school mystery fiction, first published in 1968. The protagonist is an obscure novelist, Tadataka Ise, who is invited by Kusamakura, a leisure magazine funded by a wealthy businessman, to join the well-read editor Mitsuo Hamanaka on a serial interview journey titled "A Tour in Search of Legends of Remote Villages," writing reports on local rural legends for the magazine. The journey begins on the Tango Peninsula, associated with the legend of Urashima Taro, and as the two visit remote places, Ise gradually comes to admire Hamanaka's vast knowledge of folklore and history. Yet strange things keep happening: bones stolen from a grave, the hull planks of a fishing boat appearing deep in the mountains, an eccentric number-obsessed man, a page torn from a historical record... and clues related to the number "three-five" keep surfacing—a 135-kilometer railway line, a 350-kilometer journey, a thirty-five-poet sequence with a missing corner. As the mystery deepens, the serialization is inexplicably halted by the magazine, and Ise slowly realizes that there is another scheme behind the journey and that he too has been drawn into the maelstrom. The novel fuses ancient Japanese historical sources, folk legends, and a criminal case into one, and critics regard it as one of Seicho Matsumoto's most representative revenge stories.