Yuji Namiya: Ma Guanying
Kousuke Waku / Takayuki Namiya: Liu Baichen
Atsuya: Liu Ounan
Shota: Liu Zheng
Kohei: Wang Meng
Moon Rabbit (Shizuko): Lu Zhengting
Katsuro Matsuoka: Li Jue
Lost Doggy (Harumi Muto): Gao Ruoxin
Eriko: Zhou Xiangyi

Keigo Higashino, born in 1958, is a Japanese author known for his mystery novels. After graduating in Electrical Engineering from the Osaka Prefecture University, he worked as an engineer and wrote novels during his free time. In 1985, he won the 31^st Edogawa Ranpo Prize with After School and began his full-time writing career.

With over 100 novels published, Higashino writes in various styles about a wide range of subjects, and is known for his meticulous twists. Most of his early works are honkaku (orthodox) mystery with a focus on solving riddles. He later departed from tradition and shifted to the shakai (social) school with a focus on criminal motives and character depiction. With a scientific educational background, he often integrates scientific elements into his works as exemplified in the “Detective Galileo Series”.

His signature works include The Devotion of Suspect X, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store and Journey Under the Midnight Sun. The Devotion of Suspect X was awarded the 134^th Naoki Prize and the 6^th Honkaku Mystery Award and has been shortlisted for the Edgar Allan Poe Awards by the Mystery Writers of America.

“I’ve always believed that they want to write letters because there’s a hole in their hearts, and from there important things are slipping away. The voice of people can by no means be ignored.” – Yuji Namiya

There is an abandoned store in the town which was once famous for giving advice. Those who dropped letters into the store to confide their worries and confusions would receive a reply from the shopkeeper, Yuji Namiya, the following day.

One midnight, three young men who have just committed a crime break into the store. To their surprise, letters from the past written by people who need help drop through the mail slot one after another. The help-seekers include an athlete hesitating between her lover and her dream, a musician struggling between his aspiration and reality, and a young woman lost between family bonds and her future.

Despite feeling lost in their journey of life, the three young men write back to help these people who are standing at a crossroad. The advice-seekers can start a new life while they can find their redemption. The different stories, times and spaces, and coincidences link them all together.

Unlike other mystery novels by Keigo Higashino, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store does not narrate a murder case but is instead imbued with words that warm our hearts.

Firstly, speaking of the script, certain characters and stories in the five chapters of the original novel The Miracles of the Namiya General Store are more or less cut in all film adaptations, whereas 95% of the original story is retained in this 2.5-hour stage play version. The hardest challenges in this adaptation are how to surprise the audience members who have already got the spoilers from the novel and how to attract those who have never read the novel to enter the theatre. These questions are tremendous challenges to the directing team.

We have therefore made a bold decision to tenderly stir the souls of the audience with simplicity instead of using high technology and multimedia. On the stage, we have built a two-storey Japanese house which can undergo stunning transformations every time it revolves; it can be a grocery store, gastropub, fish store, orphanage, and even an open-air cinema for hand-shadow films. The set and props, such as the luminous milk crate that can travel through time and space, or the Tokyo Metropolis that suddenly becomes visible and illuminated by neon light, and floors with meticulous and covert designs, blow the audience away from the moment they appear on stage.

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store is one of Mr Keigo Higashino’s favourite works. He is therefore very prudent about its stage adaptations, and it is predictably very difficult to be granted the right to do so. To obtain the copyright, the directing team spent over a year preparing the proposal, which was the best possible one at the time of submission that could be directly executed. Our wish eventually came true, giving us the opportunity to bring this heart-warming work to the Chinese audience.

Against the background of social development in Japan, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store depicts the genuine care and encouragement that continue between people despite changes in time and space. The story starts with three young idle thieves who accidentally enter the deserted Namiya General Store and find their time and space overlap with that of a number of letters. The theatre version adopts a different strategy of artistic expression from that of the novel featuring a constant attempt to make the words in these letters “three-dimensional” through the visualisation of many of the situations mentioned in the letters, showcasing them to the audience through theatre language, including shadow plays and integrating elements of puppetry, accompanying each transition with music. The letter writer and the recipient are sometimes separated on the left and right sides of the stage, and sometimes on the upper and lower parts of the space, to intentionally create a dramatic conflict between letter writing and reply, conveyed by the altering of the colours and intensity of lighting. This unique performing approach not only reproduces tenderness beyond time and space as revealed in the original work, but it also conveys humanity in a more direct manner.

By Frankie Wong
A theatre aficionado and writing enthusiast

This article is excerpted and translated from Chinese