The Man Who Died Seven Times - Nishizawa Yasuhiko

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The Man Who Died Seven Times

by
Nishizawa Yasuhiko

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Title:	The Man Who Died Seven Times
Author:	Nishizawa Yasuhiko
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1995 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	285 pages
Original in:	Japanese
Availability:	The Man Who Died Seven Times - US
	The Man Who Died Seven Times - UK
	The Man Who Died Seven Times - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Japanese title: 七回死んだ男
Translated by Jesse Kirkwood

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Our Assessment:

B- : fun idea, but doesn't do nearly enough with it

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The Guardian	.	15/8/2025	Laura Wilson
The Times	.	21/11/2025	John Dugdale

From the Reviews:

"An ingenious and highly entertaining riff on the themes of time and chance" - Laura Wilson, The Guardian

"The blend of Agatha Christie and Groundhog Day (...) works a treat thanks to Yasuhiko Nishizawa cleverly varying the day’s script with each iteration." - John Dugdale, The Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Man Who Died Seven Times is narrated by sixteen-year-old high school student Hisataro Oba and has an elaborate (and far-fetched) premise: Hisataro regularly finds himself caught in what he calls: 'the Trap', where he finds himself reliving the same day -- exactly from midnight to midnight -- nine times before things right themselves and time continues normally. No one else notices the same day is repeating itself except for him -- and, of course, he can choose to act differently each time. He emphasizes that the Trap is a 'condition' rather than an 'ability': "I never know when it will affect me next", and: "there's no fixed pattern for how often it occurs. It might be as often as a dozen times in one month, or only once in eight weeks".
       Unsurprisingly, The Man Who Died Seven Times is largely set on one of these days that he's doomed to repeat nine times, around New Years that he is celebrating with his mother, two brothers, two aunts, and two female cousins at his grandfather's mansion. The novel opens with the family finding grandpa dead -- murdered --, which is all the more shocking to Hisataro as he has already lived through this January second once and no murder occurred: the murder's: "non-occurrence was something I'd already established as fact. Yesterday -- or more precisely, on the 'first' 2nd of January --- nothing untoward had happened". Of course, he'll get to relive the same day seven more times, giving him ample opportunity to figure out -- or (re-)prevent ? -- the murder. Or things could get more complicated .....
       Family history and dynamics play a big role here. Grandfather Reijiro Fuchigami was not a great father to his three daughters, and eldest daughter Kamiji -- Hisataro's mom -- and youngest daughter Haruna fled and started their own families as soon as they could, leaving daughter Kotono as the lone offspring to deal with dad; she is now forty-eight, still his main support, and still unmarried and childless. When they were growing up, Reijiro excelled only at: "drinking, gambling and philandering", but after the death of his wife (and departure of two of his daughters from the family fold) he suddenly has a streak of extraordinary luck which he has since parlayed into the very successful Edge Restaurant Group. Only in recent years have the Oba family (Hisataro's) and the Kanagae family (Haruna, with her husband and two daughters) made the annual pilgrimage to celebrate New Years with Reijiro -- so also this year. After all, he needs a proper heir -- someone for Kotono to adopt and to carry on the family business and line. The stakes are high -- and Reijiro lets everyone know that it's an open competition by revealing that he has gotten: "into the habit of rewriting my will on the 1st of January" each year -- and plans to do again this time, except that this will be the final time: this will will be the definitive one, determining who will get the big inheritance.
       Both Kamiji and Haruna's husbands usually come along, but things have been going badly for them recently, so both didn't make the trip on this occasion; the twists of fate they have faced also leave their wives more desperate: for one of their children to be named the heir would be very welcome. But, as it turns out, the grandkids aren't the only ones in the running: there's also Ryuichi, Reijiro's assistant and driver, and Emi, Kotono's assistant -- both on site for the holidays as well -- who Reijiro is willing to consider .....
       Living through the (first version of the) day when his grandfather is found dead, Hisataro figures:

I had another seven loops in which to fix things; surely it wouldn't hurt to try a variety of strategies. If one of them succeeded in saving Grandfather from his fate, I could simply repeat it for however many loops remained.

As some of the chapter-titles suggest, however, it doesn't prove that simple:

5. The Murder Happens
6. The Murder Happens Again
7. The Murder Happens ... Again
8. The Murder Keeps Happening
9. The Murder Won't Stop

As Hisataro realizes by the beginning of chapter eight: "It was becoming painfully clear that I needed to rethink my approach entirely". He also feels a sense of respnsibility: after all, the first time he lived through this day his grandfather was not murdered:

So, the murder was the product not of 'fate', but of human intervention. Luckily, in my case, that intervention could be undone. And because it could be, I had a moral obligation to make sure it was. Which meant it was my responsibility to save Grandfather, after all.

Nishizawa has some fun with what happens when Hisataro tries to change how each day unfolds, with unintended consequences (that, yes, always lead to granddad being murdered yet again). Preventing one murder -- by keeping the killer away -- doesn't prevent another, as it simply leads to someone else picking up the vase (as it were -- Reijiro gets bopped on the head with that repeatedly). This is a fun idea, but Nishizawa only takes it so far -- as, for example:

loop after loop, I had refrained from asking the perpetrator directly about what they'd done. I couldn't bring myself to go up to members of my own family and say: I know you murdered Grandfather. Now come clean and tell me how and why you did it. It was just too emotionally daunting, even if I knew that the entire day was soon to be reset. All I could do was speculate.

       This seems rather lame -- and leaves the (basically un- or certainly under-explained) murders much less interesting than they could be.
       Nishizawa does throw in a few nice twists -- including some of what Reijiro has been up to -- but tossing in so much, along with all the other many variations of what goes on makes it all a bit messy. The various romantic feelings and relationships add yet more twists, but are also rather crudely used, with the characters also too often veering into the cartoonish when push comes to shove.
       There's lots of good potential to The Man Who Died Seven Times, and some decent ideas, but Nishizawa doesn't do nearly enough with all of this. There's a solid final twist, too, but even this, like most of the novel, feels both over-explained and underdeveloped: as Hisataro sums up the situation near the end, once he's escaped this particular Trap: "The whole thing has become a complete quagmire" -- which is kind of funny but also too accurate a description of the book as a whole.

       (Perhaps slightly lost for readers of the translation is yet another small detail that plays a small role in the whole story, Hisataro's name: as he explains:

My name is Hisataro Oba, but not many people actually call me that. 'Hisataro' is a fancy way of reading the characters and most people opt for the simpler 'Kyutaro' instead, which they combine with my last name to get 'Obakyu'. Which is fun. 'Obakyu' also happens to be the name of a character from a manga series that was popular in the sixties, one my generation has barely heard of, which means the older folks get to have a good chuckle at my expense, too.

The kanji for 'Hisataro' are: 久太郎, and 久 can also be read as 'k(y)u'; the manga character he is referring to is オバケのQ太郎 (Obake no Kyū-Tarō; yes, the 'kyū' here is the (Roman) letter ...), also often simply referred to as 'オバQ' (Obakyu).)

- M.A.Orthofer, 12 December 2025

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Links:

The Man Who Died Seven Times:

Pushkin Press publicity page
Kodansha publicity page

Reviews:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Japanese literature
See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
Other books from Pushkin Press under review

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About the Author:

Japanese author Nishizawa Yasuhiko (西澤保彦) lived 1960 to 2025.

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