Bad People

Bad People (Japanese original title Warui Yatsura) is a full-length novel published by Seicho Matsumoto in 1961, a social-school mystery work from the peak of his career. The Chinese edition was translated by Yang Suhang and published by Writers Publishing House in 2010, and is regarded as the final installment of Matsumoto's "vicious women" series (alongside The Black Leather Notebook and The Beast's Path). The story begins with a poorly run private hospital. The young director, Shinichi Togawa, is superficially charming but has no interest in managing the hospital his father left him, devoting himself instead to antiques and women. Though he has not divorced his wife, he is surrounded by women infatuated with him, most of them wealthy and lonely, willing not only to hand him large sums of money but even to conspire with him to harm their own husbands. Togawa never makes any promises when he bewitches these women—everything is done "voluntarily" by the women themselves. Yet whenever Togawa secretly gloats over his flawless escapes, a cold, piercing pair of eyes sees through his schemes and humiliates his pride. The hospital is drowning in debt, and Togawa is desperate to marry Ryoko Makimura, a daughter of a distinguished family, and begins to eliminate the obstacles around him one by one. Just as he takes reckless risks to win Ryoko Makimura's heart, he finds himself caught in an even larger trap. The book unfolds from the limited third-person perspective of the criminal Togawa, rendering the characters' calculations, desires, and malice with calm restraint; the layered reversals behind the case—"behind bad people there are worse people"—are a typical expression of Matsumoto's social-school technique. According to the publisher, the book has sold two million copies in Japan and has been adapted for film and television multiple times.