Azoth-Mitarai

The Azoth Case with Mitarai By Aquitosias Discord: zevahn2 Introduction What This Document Is A reconstruction of the solution to a fictional murder case, rebuilt as a formal chain of inference. (Part 1-18) The case is the one at the centre of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, Sōji Shimada's 1981 debut novel. In the book the solution arrives as explanation. Here it is taken apart and rebuilt as numbered steps, each resting on stated premises or on conclusions already established, so the whole can be walked from the first observation to the last without any gap taken on trust. Steps the novel passes over in a sentence are written out in full. Where the chain disagrees with the novel about what does the work, it says so. This document gives away the entire solution. Anyone who has not read the novel and intends to should stop here. The Case The detective is Kiyoshi Mitarai, an astrologer working as an amateur investigator. He takes up the case in 1979, forty-three years after the events, from documents alone. Nothing physical remains. Everything he has, the reader also has. In February 1936 the painter Heikichi Umezawa was found dead in his studio in Meguro, Tokyo. The studio had one door, barred windows, and a skylight fifteen metres above the floor. The door was bolted from the inside. Snow had fallen that night, the heaviest in thirty years, and two sets of outbound footprints were found in it. None led in. Among his papers was a manuscript. Heikichi meant to create Azoth, a …