The Bottom Line of Human Nature and Emotional Struggle: Revisiting "Dun hou's Fraudster"
Huang Zihong
"Dunhou's Fraudster", one of the best Works of Japanese suspense novels in the 1970s, tells the story of a past actor who knows the privacy of barbershop owners, and after repeated extortions and threats, dies under the barbershop owner's razor, leading to a series of stories that make people feel sorry for the inside story.
This former actor, once an N-stream actor, acting is not hard, so later there is no drama to shoot, life is embarrassing, the family burden is very heavy, but also suffered from some diseases, but his high insurance can only be some major diseases, accidents to receive.
Just when he was at a loss, he inadvertently witnessed a car accident on the side of the road: a small barbershop owner was driving, hit and killed a primary school student, and then fled, and was not investigated because of insufficient evidence.
He found the barber shop, and when he was receiving a haircut and a facelift, he inadvertently raised this matter with the boss, who thought that no one knew, and was anxious and afraid at the time, because the boss's family worked hard from morning to night, but they did not have much savings, let alone withstand the disaster of imprisonment.
Secretly happy in his heart, he went down according to his own plan: after the haircut, he not only did not pay, but also extorted a small amount of money and left.
Since then, this has happened several times, which has made the barber shop owner frightened. He also investigated the actor through private detectives, and from the TV to find his previous works, he felt that his acting skills were exaggerated, but these rounds of blackmail were indeed so vicious and ruthless.
Then, something happened that puzzled the barbershop owner: the actor rescued a child from the wheels of a speeding car, but he himself was injured. He wondered why such a loving and conscientious person blindly bullied and blackmailed himself.
When the actor on crutches came to the store again and continued to extort several times, the barbershop owner finally couldn't bear it and killed him with a razor. Before dying, he simply said to the people around him, "I touched the knife myself!" ”
The police soon intervened, detained the shop owner to investigate and collect evidence, and was acquitted because several customers testified about the deceased's dying words.
Not long after, a strange woman approached the barbershop owner, claiming to be the actor's wife, and handed him a letter from the deceased before his death, as well as the return of all the haircut fees and extortion money during this time. It turned out that the actor was also forced by life, and could only receive high insurance money through unnatural death, so he extorted and extorted again and again, and deliberately said the privacy of the barber shop owner, that is, he hoped to die under the razor; including his rescue of the child, in fact, he wanted to crash himself to death, a hundred...
The barbershop owner holds a letter and money, and has mixed feelings...
The author of "Atsushi's Fraudster" is Seiichi Morimura, a well-known Japanese suspense writer who wrote the "Proof of Trilogy" ("Proof of Human Nature", "Proof of Wildness", "Proof of Youth"). Compared with the artistic appeal and influence of the "Proof Trilogy", especially "Human Witness", "Dunhou Fraudster" shows the bottom line and emotional struggle of human nature in a series of details from small cases, as well as the true portrayal of Japan's social life at that time, which can be called a mirror and magnifying glass of social reality, and is an enduring excellent work.