In the prewar period screen versions were still relatively rare and it starts more seriously after the war, first with another version of The Dwarf, and then in the 1950s with a whole slew of films based on the various stories for young people about the “Boy Detectives Club” and detective Akechi Kogoro.
It is only in the late 1960s that film makers discover the real Ranpo. In 1968-69 there is a sort of "Ranpo explosion," with Black Lizard by Fukasaku Kinji, Blind Beast by Masumura Yasuzo and Horrors of Malformed Men by Ishii Teruo, three truly great films inspired by the author. From this time on, there clearly was also renewed interest in the “erotic, grotesque, nonsense” trend of the late 1920s-early 1930s.
In 1976 Tanaka Nobuo filmed The Stalker in the Attic as a “pink film,” another excellent film in which the director transcended the narrow confines of the genre. The same story inspired Jissoji Akio in 1993, and in 1998 Jissoji also adapted The Case of the Murder on D Slope – and that same story again inspired Kubota Shoji in 2015.
Also interesting is the film version of Beast in Shadows made in 1977 by period-director Kato Tai. In 1995 The Mystery of Rampo (in Japanese just “Ranpo”) was made by Okuyama Kazuyoshi and Mayazumi Rintaro, a poetic masterwork in which Ranpo himself is brought on stage. In 2001 Ishii Teruo makes his second Ranpo adaptation with the low-budget film Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf. In 2005 follows the four part anthology Rampo Noir, with contributions by Jissoji Akio, Sato Hisayasu and others, based on four Ranpo stories, among which "The Caterpillar." That last story also forms the inspiration for Wakamatsu Koji’s Caterpillar from 2010. The above are just the highlights.
Ranpo adaptations have the following in common. In the first place, the “erotic, grotesque, nonsense” elements in Ranpo are heavily stressed and further developed. Secondly, different stories by Ranpo are often freely mixed together in one film (something Ranpo himself also did, for in his later stories he often revised and newly mixed elements and themes from earlier work). And finally, many of these films are “art films,” containing experimental and surrealistic elements.
Below follows a more in-depth look at the best films based on Ranpo’s work.
(1) The Black Lizard (Kuro Tokage, 1968, Fukasaku Kinji)
Ranpo wrote The Black Lizard in 1934 (tr. Ian Hughes, Kurodahan Press, 2006); the book was in 1961 adapted for the theater by Mishima Yukio (tr. in Mishima on Stage: The Black Lizard and Other Plays by Laurence Kominz). Detective Akechi Kogoro competes in cleverness with the Queen of the Underworld, the Black Lizard, who has kidnapped the daughter of a jeweler to obtain a precious diamond. The finale plays out in the secret lair of the Black Lizard on a remote island, where she keeps an eerie collection of “human statues,” in fact embalmed corpses...
The film was based on Mishima's play and was helmed by maverick director Fukasaku Kinji (1930-2003), a pioneering yakuza film maker who introduced more realism into gangster movies, leading to the jitsuroku trend of the seventies. Fukasaku became famous for his extremely violent series Battles Without Honor and Humanity, featuring Sugawara Bunta – one of the most acclaimed yakuza movie sagas ever made (1973-76).
Although Fukasaku worked mainly for Toei, in 1968 he was invited by Shochiku to make The Black Lizard, with Kimura Isao as stubborn detective Akechi Kogoro, a character patterned on Sherlock Holmes, who appears regularly in the stories of Edogawa Ranpo. But dominating presence in the film is Japan's most famous drag queen, Maruyama Akihiro (now Miwa Akihiro, popular thanks to countless TV appearances), who - at that time in the prime of youth and beauty - gives a shining performance by playing the notorious female criminal of the title.
The plot is deliciously nonsensical: the Black Lizard is an enchantress who likes nothing better than dancing in a packed house wearing only her jewels. She is a thief, a killer and a sadist. She kidnaps the beautiful daughter of a jeweler in order to obtain the famous "Star of Egypt" diamond. Akechi has been hired to thwart her. While they are dueling with their wits, the two adversaries, kidnapper and private eye, start to love each other – this was an element added to the plot by Mishima. As a result, the Black Lizard jeopardizes her power. The finale plays out in the secret lair of the Black Lizard on a remote island, where she keeps an eerie collection of naked human statues. Here we also have an interesting cameo by a muscular Mishima, playing one of the embalmed humans. A delicious film, pure camp.
Note: This was not the first adaptation of The Black Lizard. An earlier and more straight adaptation was made in 1962 by Daiei with Kyo Machiko in the main role, but I have not been able to find a copy of that film.
(2) Blind Beast (Moju, 1969, Masumura Yasuzo)
Ranpo wrote The Blind Beast in 1931 (tr. Anthony Whyte, Shinbaku Books, 2009). It is the story of a deranged, blind sculptor who captures a singer and imprisons her in a labyrinth of giant sculptured body parts, before killing and dismembering her and scattering her limbs, head and torso all over Tokyo. But far from being satisfied, the blind killer continues on his sexually-charged spree of amputation and decapitation, all with one purpose: an exhibition of human sculptures which are a bit too life-like for comfort…
The film was helmed by inventive iconoclast Masumura Yasuzo (1924-1986), one of the most important directors of the sixties. Although close to the New Wave, Masumura’s style was more classical than modernist. He is known for his satirical and bleak accounts of Japanese society. Masumura worked for the Daiei studios and in line with the strategy of Daiei, also made many literary adaptations, but he never lost his subversive stance.
Instead of roaming all over Tokyo like the novel, the film takes almost wholly place in the underground studio of the blind sculptor – a claustrophobic setup – and is known for its surreal art direction. A blind sculptor (played against type by popular 1960s actor Funakoshi Eiji) kidnaps a young fashion model (Midori Mako) and keeps her in his cavernous studio, where each wall is covered in plaster sculptures representing parts of the female anatomy. On the studio floor lie two gigantic nude torsos, serving as a sort of couches. It is the artist's dream to sculpt the ideal female form. The young woman has been kidnapped with the help of the sculptor's mother, who also acts as prison guard, but when the sculptor drops the ominous words "my mother is the only woman for me," she shrewdly uses her charms to drive a wedge between son and mother.
She succeeds admirably and with mum safely under the kitchen floor, the artist is sort of sexually liberated, so that he can find the inspiration for his ideal masterpiece. From her side, the woman has started to love him, too. They loose themselves in ever more transgressive lovemaking, finally cutting off each other’s limbs and dying in ecstasy – a story that with its weird and intense sadomasochistic relationship reminds one of In the Realm of the Senses. Visually inventive, this is a true classic of erotic horror.
(3) Horrors of Malformed Men (Edogawa Ranpo Zenshu: Kyofu Kikei Ningen, 1969, Ishii Teruo)
This film is based on two Ranpo novels, Strange Tale of Panorama Island (1926, tr. Elaine Kazu Gerbert, University of Hawai'i Press, 2013) and The Demon of the Desert Isle (1929-30). From the first novel two themes have been borrowed: that of the doppelganger and appropriated identity, and that of the creation of a utopia on a desert island. From the second novel we have the theme of filling an island with freaks, by stunting the growth of children and surgically graft foreign body parts unto them.
Ishii Teruo (1924-2005) started as director of B movies at Shin Toho, before transferring to Toei where he made gangster movies like Abashiri Prison with Takakura Ken, which spawned a long and very popular series about a good-hearted yakuza. Ishii also made exploitation films as Joys of Torture (1968) in the zankoku (cruelty) genre and was known for his colorful, stylized art direction, despite the often savage themes.
Horrors of Malformed Men starts with a man (played by Yoshida Teruo) suffering from loss of memory, who escapes from a mental asylum. A folk song from the Hokuriku area sounds familiar to him so he travels to the Noto Peninsula. In a newspaper, he sees an obituary of a wealthy estate owner who looks like his doppelganger - he decides to impersonate the man, pretending to have suffered from suspended animation. This creates some difficult situations - he discovers he has not only a wife, but also a mistress! The father is hiding out on an uninhabited island where he performs atrocious surgeries to turn normal human beings into monstrosities ("malformed ones"). This is where the founder of Butoh, Hijikata Tatsumi, comes into play, making the film a valuable document. We get surrealistic scenes of Hijikata sliding among the rocks - avant-garde theater meets B-exploitation flic. The film ends with detective Akechi Kogoro appearing as Deus ex Machina, after which everything ends with literally a big bang.
Malformed Men combines exploitation, perverse family relationships and experimental performance art into one bizarre and sadistic whole. The film was (and is) controversial in Japan because of its exploitative portrayal of disfigured “monsters,” but it has also been praised for its visual imagination.
(4) The Watcher in the Attic (Edogawa Ranpo Ryokikan: Yaneura no Sanposha, 1976, Tanaka Noboru)
This “pink film” combines two short stories, “The Watcher in the Attic” (1926, tr. Seth Jacobowitz in The Edogawa Rampo Reader, Kurodahan Press, 2008) and “The Human Chair” (1925, tr. James B. Harris in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Tuttle Books). The first story is set in a boarding house, where Goda Saburo, a young man bored with life, discovers that via the large built-in cupboard in his room, he has access to the unused attic which runs above all the rooms. He finds a new voyeuristic pastime by spying on his fellow boarders through cracks and knots in the thin wood. Just for a thrill, he decides to murder a boarder who has the habit of sleeping with wide open mouth below one such a hole in the ceiling. And in “The Human Chair” a man hides in a Western-style armchair to stealthily enjoy the erotic thrill of women sitting down on his knees.
The Watcher in the Attic was made by Tanaka Noburu (1937-2006), who after his apprenticeship with Imamura Shohei and Suzuki Seijun, became known in the 1970s for the erotic melodramas he helmed for the Nikkatsu studios. Despite the disreputable new genre in which he worked, Tanaka became known for his visual inventiveness and atmospheric location work. That is also true for the present film, which contains the in the pink genre usual nudity, but is also done very tastefully in a beautiful period style – the film is set in the summer of 1923.
Ishibashi Renji plays Goda, the bored voyeur who spies on the sexual conduct of the eccentric tenants in an apartment block. As in Ranpo's story, he is enticed to become a murderer when he realizes how easy it would be to drip poison into the mouth of a sleeping man. The stimulus to kill comes from a new character added by Tanaka Noboru: Lady Minako, a wealthy aristocrat played by pink film veteran Miyashita Junko. This lady – who lives in a rich mansion - has rented a room in the shabby building for secret trysts with lovers. One is a Pierrot, whom she kills during lovemaking. This inspires the peeping Goda to his own grotesque murder in order to prove to her that he is her soul mate. In the meantime, Lady Minako continues to kill her lovers one by one – including her chauffeur who hides in an armchair to reenact the “Human Chair” story. Goda becomes obsessed by her and eventually the two become partners. The film ends apocalyptically when the Great Kanto Earthquake strikes, killing both of them during their lovemaking.
In the last scene we see the maid of the now destroyed apartment building trying to use the water pump in the courtyard: but it is only blood that spurts out. Tanaka drives the ero-guro elements in Ranpo's fiction to their extremes in an orgy of voyeurism, lust and murder. This is one of the best and most stylish films to come out of Nikkatsu.
(5) Beast in the Shadows (Edogawa Ranpo no inju,1977, Kato Tai)
The novella Beast in the Shadows was written by Ranpo in 1928 (tr. Ian Hughes, Kurodahan Press 2006). It combines classic detective elements with the erotic and grotesque and also contains the doppelganger motif we so often find in Ranpo's fiction. When a detective novelist is asked for help by an alluring young woman named Shizuko, he gets entangled in a real murder case. The truth is elusive and ratiocination ultimately leads nowhere in this world of doppelgangers and mirrors. The well-structured novella is counted among Ranpo’s best work.
The film by period director Kato Tai (1916-1985) keeps relatively close to the novel. Kato Tai mainly made films about Edo-period yakuza; his most famous works are Tokijiro of Kutsukake: Lone Yakuza (1966), as well as the Red Peony (Hibotan Bakuto) series with Fuji Junko as a female Robin Hood. As Alexander Jacoby writes (in A Critical Handbook of Japanese Directors), Kato developed a personal style characterized by wide and low angles, looming close-ups and exaggerated deep focus compositions – nothing subtle, but effective in accentuating the solitude of his protagonists (Jacoby, p. 103).
Aoi Teruhiko plays traditional (puzzle) detective novelist Samukawa Koichiro. Oyamada Shizuko, the wife of a wealthy businessman and ardent detective novel fan, is played by Kayama Yoshiko. Wakayama Tomisaburo is Samukawa’s publisher, who both helps and hinders him by constantly reminding him about the looming deadline for his latest work.
During a chance meeting with Samukawa, Shizuko claims she is receiving threatening letters from a jilted lover who also is a detective novelist who apparently writes Ero-Guro mysteries (i.e. in the style of Ranpo himself) under the pen name Oe Shundei – but his address and real identity are unknown. The letters contain many intimate details, as if Shundei has been peeping into her bedroom from above the ceiling (like "The Stalker in the Attic") and observing her relation with her husband. This husband has just returned from England and has brought back both an English mistress (aptly named “Helen Christie”) and a riding crop that considering a nasty wound on Shizuko’s shoulder is not only used for horses. The sadomasochistic relation suggests that the husband could himself be masquerading as Oe – however, when he is killed and his body found floating in the river Sumida, that option has to be struck out. Samukawa feels as if he is not writing a mystery, but enacting one, in a battle of wits with the elusive Oe Shundei...
A beautiful, atmospheric movie with a strong erotic undercurrent that does full justice to Ranpo's novella.
Note: Inju was also filmed by Barbet Schroeder in 2008.
(This post has been written with input from from my earlier articles Best Japanese Cult Films and The Ero-Guro Mysteries of Edogawa Ranpo.)
Continued in Edogawa Rampo on Screen (2)