Edogawa Rampo (pseudonym of Hirai Taro, 1894-1965) is the acknowledged grand master of Japan's golden age of crime and mystery fiction. He is also a major writer in the tradition of Japanese Modernism, and exerts a massive influence on the popular and literary culture of today's Japan. The Edogawa Rampo Reader presents a selection of outstanding examples of his short fiction, and a selection of his non-fiction prose. Together, they present a full and accurate picture of Rampo as a major contributor to the Japanese literary scene, helping to clarify his achievements to the English-speaking world. All the content of the Rampo Reader is brand-new to English. His non-fiction work has never been translated into English before. This is the only place to find a comprehensive one-volume introduction to the world of Edogawa Rampo.
When 1930s Tokyo is threatened by a master thief who can disguise himself to look like anyone, and laughs at the law, the people of the city have nowhere else to turn but Japan's greatest detective, Akechi Kogoro. Unfortunately for Tokyo, however, Akechi Kogoro is off on overseas business, so it becomes the job of his 12-year old assistant, Kobayashi Yoshio, to track down the thief and desperately keep him at bay until his mentor returns. In the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Baker Street Irregulars, a classic thriller by Edogawa Rampo, grand master of Japan's Golden Age of crime and mystery fiction. Filled with disguises, tricks, "A-ha!" moments, and spiced with a unique Japanese flair, it is sure to delight readers of all ages. Will Kobayashi's intrepid band of young detectives be able to outwit the nefarious fiend, or will Tokyo be forever at the mercy of the face-swapping phantom?
Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965) was a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe and like Poe drew on his penchant for the grotesque and the bizarre to explore the boundaries of conventional thought. Best known as the founder of the modern Japanese detective novel, Ranpo wrote for a youthful audience, and a taste for playacting and theatre animates his stories. His writing is often associated with the era of ero guro nansense (erotic grotesque nonsense), which accompanied the rise of mass culture and mass media in urban Japan in the 1920s. Characterized by an almost lurid fascination with simulacra and illusion, the era’s sensibility permeates Ranpo's first major work and one of his finest achievements, Strange Tale of Panorama Island (Panoramato kidan), published in 1926. Ranpo’s panorama island is filled with cleverly designed optical illusions: a staircase rises into the sky; white feathered “birds” speak in women’s voices and offer to serve as vehicles; clusters of naked men and women romp on slopes carpeted with rainbow-colored flowers. His fantastical utopia is filled with entrancing music and strange sweet odors, and nothing is ordinary, predictable, or boring. The novella reflected the new culture of mechanically produced simulated realities (movies, photographs, advertisements, stereoscopic and panoramic images) and focused on themes of the doppelganger and appropriated identities: its main character steals the identity of an acquaintance. The novella’s utopian vision, argues translator Elaine Gerbert, mirrors the expansionist dreams that fed Japan's colonization of the Asian continent, its ending an eerie harbinger of the collapse of those dreams. Today just as a new generation of technologies is transforming the way we think—and becoming ever more invasive and pervasive—Ranpo's work is attracting a new generation of readers. In the past few decades his writing has inspired films, anime, plays, and manga, and many translations of his stories, essays, and novels have appeared, but to date no English-language translation of Panoramato kidan has been available. This volume, which includes a critical introduction and notes, fills that gap and uncovers for English-language readers an important new dimension of an ever stimulating, provocative talent.
This collection of mystery and horror stories is regarded as Japan's answer to Edgar Allan Poe. Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the first volume of its kind translated into English, is written with the quick tempo of the West but rich with the fantasy of the East. These nine bloodcurdling, chilling tales present a genre of literature largely unknown to readers outside Japan, including the strange story of a quadruple amputee and his perverse wife; the record of a man who creates a mysterious chamber of mirrors and discovers hidden pleasures within; the morbid confession of a maniac who envisions a career of foolproof "psychological" murders; and the bizarre tale of a chair-maker who buries himself inside an armchair and enjoys the sordid "loves" of the women who sit on his handiwork. Lucid and packed with suspense, Edogawa Rampo's stories found in Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination have enthralled Japanese readers for over half a century. Mystery stories include: The Human Chair The Caterpillar Two Crippled Men The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture
In Edogawa Rampo’s "Moju: The Blind Beast", a deranged, scarred and sightless sculptor kidnaps a model and imprisons her in a psychedelic labyrinth of giant sculpted eyes and other outlandish body parts, before dismembering her in a fearful blood-orgy. Her limbs, head and torso are later found scattered throughout Tokyo. The blind killer continues his sexually-charged spree of amputation and decapitation, claiming several more victims before finally presenting his work at an acclaimed art exhibition in which the sculptures are a little too life-like for comfort... The most disturbing of Rampo’s novels, "Moju: The Blind Beast" is a classic of grinding horror and weird sex, tainted with a virulent black humour. It represents one of the earliest literary examples of the Japanese “erotic-grotesque” genre, in which such subjects as dismemberment, mutilation, coprophilia and cannibalism are presented in a perverse sexual context. This is a special ebook presentation of the first-ever English translation of Rampo’s classic.
From the author of the internationally bestselling, award-winning The Devotion of Suspect X comes the latest novel featuring "Detective Galileo" In 2011, The Devotion of Suspect X was a hit with critics and readers alike. The first major English language publication from the most popular bestselling writer in Japan, it was acclaimed as "stunning," "brilliant," and "ingenious." Now physics professor Manabu Yukawa—Detective Galileo—returns in a new case of impossible murder, where instincts clash with facts and theory with reality. Yoshitaka, who was about to leave his marriage and his wife, is poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee and dies. His wife, Ayane, is the logical suspect—except that she was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered. The lead detective, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi, is immediately smitten with her and refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. His assistant, Kaoru Utsumi, however, is convinced Ayane is guilty. While Utsumi's instincts tell her one thing, the facts of the case are another matter. So she does what her boss has done for years when stymied—she calls upon Professor Manabu Yukawa. But even the brilliant mind of Dr. Yukawa has trouble with this one, and he must somehow find a way to solve an impossible murder and capture a very real, very deadly murderer. Salvation of a Saint is Keigo Higashino at his mind-bending best, pitting emotion against fact in a beautifully plotted crime novel filled with twists and reverses that will astonish and surprise even the most attentive and jaded of readers.
Edogawa Rampo is the pen name of Japanese author Hirai Taro. Influenced in his early career by Western mystery writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he is one of Japan's most famous authors, and a true master of the short story form. This collection brings you a selection of his finest work, including 'The Human Chair' and 'The Hell Of Mirrors'.
The horror, of seemingly ordinary people doing horrifying things, can take the eyes of just as seemingly ordinary people to see. Tall, soft-spoken Natsume used to work with troubled kids at a reformatory but resigned mid-career to become a police detective. Those who've known him wonder why the gentlest of men, whose vocation had been to have faith in humans, now doubts them professionally. The truths of his path unfold over seven carefully crafted chapters, each of which stands on its own as a short story with the power to move and delight the most seasoned reader. Determination, not vengeance, animates A Cop's Eyes, its focus neither well-placed punches, nor even stunning feats of forensics, but the stubbornly interpersonal dimension of detective work. An anti-hero in a wholly different vein from noir protagonists, the yin to Dirty Harry's yang, Natsume will endear himself to fans of understated Robert Parker goodness and the late Peter Falk's Lt. Columbo.
