Graduation

Graduation is the first novel in Keigo Higashino's Detective Kaga Kyoichiro series. Originally titled Sotsugyō: Setsugetsuka Satsujin Gēmu, it was published by Kodansha in 1986 and was Higashino's first full-length novel after winning the Edogawa Rampo Prize for After School. The story unfolds in the final autumn at National T University: seven friends who have known each other for years are about to graduate and are busy with their separate futures. Kaga Kyoichiro cannot decide between becoming a police officer or a teacher; Wakao is trying hard to find a respectable job for his girlfriend's sake; Tōdō wants to continue his studies and must defer to a strict professor in everything; Hōka's dream of competitive kendo has collapsed, leaving her pessimistic and lost; and Shōko is the most certain, having already found a satisfying job and steadily working toward her goal. Then one morning Shōko is found dead in her locked apartment with cut wrists, and the police initially rule it a suicide. Kaga and his friends find this conclusion hard to accept and hope to uncover the truth through the diary Shōko left behind. During the investigation, at a traditional tea ceremony held to celebrate their teacher's birthday—the Setsugetsuka ceremony—another friend dies, and the youth that was about to culminate in graduation is thrown into complete disarray. Amid friendship, love, and the confusion of entering society, Kaga gradually peels back the rueful truth behind the case. The novel is both a tightly constructed locked-room and poisoning mystery and a coming-of-age parable about "the end of youth": when people emerge from the protective shell of student life, the most beautiful emotional bonds may turn into malice at any moment.