This interest in the deviant and bizarre came up in a social atmosphere of nihilistic hedonism, perhaps caused by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, but it has older roots in Japanese culture: it goes for example back to such 19th century ukiyo-e artists as Yoshitoshi, who depicted decapitations and other acts of violence, including bondage, in his Muzan-e or "Bloody Prints."
[From Eimei nijuhasshuku (Twenty-eight Murders) by Yoshitoshi]
There was also a similar streak of the macabre with sexual overtones in the Kabuki, as in the famous "horror" play Yotsuya Kaidan. And today we still find it in certain manga and anime, as well as some Japanese cult films.
We also find the association of the macabre with the erotic in the Japanese literature of the period: Edogawa Ranpo was very much inspired by the novels and stories of Tanizaki Junichiro, who did write many of such erotically tinted, macabre stories in the first decades of the 20th century. Interestingly, Tanizaki also tried his hand at quite a few crime stories, as we saw in the previous article. Tanizaki and Edogawa Ranpo knew each other personally and as older, established author Tanizaki gave encouragement to Ranpo.
[Edogawa Ranpo (Hirai Taro)]
Hirai wrote under the pen name Edogawa Ranpo, a conscious homage to Edgar Allan Poe (when you pronounce it quickly, it indeed resembles the English name; the meaning of the Japanese characters is tongue-in-cheek “The Rambler of the Edo River”). As the selection of his pen name already shows, Edogawa Ranpo felt closer to this author of the macabre than to the "scientific" Arthur Conan Doyle of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In fact, soon Ero-Guro elements start to proliferate in Ranpo's work, before in the late 1920s almost wholly taking over his fiction. Ranpo was one of many popular authors who recognized the appeal that various forms of sexuality and especially "perverse sexual desire" (hentai seiyoku) held for contemporary, urban audiences. Beginning with "The Case of the Murder on D Hill," Ranpo's novels touch upon such matters as sadomasochism, gender transformation, pygmalionism (doll-love), and so on. His strongest works are those which contain a combination of these with more straight detective elements, such as Beast in the Shadows ("Inju").
[Statue of Edogawa Ranpo in his birthplace, Nabari City in Mie Prefecture]
Here are Ranpo's best stories by year. I have listed all Ranpo's creative work published between 1923 and 1936, but left out unfinished novels, adaptations of foreign novels as well as novels written together with others. This first part runs from 1923 to 1926.
Please note that the overview below reveals details of the plot of the stories. The titles of the stories link to Aozora Bunko. The titles between " " are all short stories.
1923
Ranpo wrote "The Two-Sen Copper Coin" and "One Ticket" in September 1922, while staying with wife and child at his father's house in Moriguchi (Osaka), being out of a job. He sent the stories to Morishita Uson, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Shin Seinen, a new magazine dedicated to detective stories - so far only translations of foreign ones as talent in Japan still had to be discovered. Uson recognized Ranpo's talent and promised to publish both stories. "The Two-Sen Copper Coin" appeared in April 1923 with a recommendation by mystery and science-fiction author Kosakai Fuboku. From this first publication, Hirai Taro used the sobriquet "Edogawa Ranpo." In July that year, Ranpo managed to get a job in the advertising department of the Osaka Mainichi Newspaper.“Nisendoka” (The Two-Sen Copper Coin, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. Jeffrey Angles in Modanizumu, Modernist Fiction from Japan, by William J. Tyler (Hawaii UP)]
This is Edogawa Ranpo's first detective story, published in the magazine Shin Seinen (New Youth), which thanks to Ranpo's contributions became one of the main venues for detective stories in the 1920s and 1930s. In this first Ranpo story figures a code, as in Poe's "The Gold-Bug." Also the trick from Poe’s “Purloined Letter” – to hide something precious in full view – is mentioned. This is not imitation, but Ranpo is playing with the conventions of the genre, by applying the Western formula of mystery-solving to a distinctly Japanese context. Ranpo’s story is wholly original and so is the intricate code Ranpo introduces, based on the Japanese braille combined with the Buddhist invocation "Namu Amida Butsu."
A shrewd thief has stolen a large amount of money from a certain company; he has been caught but refuses to divulge the location of the money. Based on newspaper reports where a reward is offered, a poor student tries to solve the case as “would-be detective,” egged on by his room mate with whom he is locked in a daily battle of wits to see who is more intelligent. He finds a code in a two-sen copper coin which consists of two halves, with a small piece of paper hidden inside. While he reasons the case in search of a solution by ingenious ratiocination, the other student plays the Watson to his Holmes. But when he believes to have solved the case and even has the stolen money in his hands, his friend reveals that he has played a trick on him – and that the retrieved notes are false. So Watson has besieged Holmes and the rug is pulled from under the reader's feet who is left with a hoax – after all, the whole ratiocination is shown to be useless and in the end nothing at all has been solved. Ranpo has overturned the central conventions of the genre through the use of a deceitful narrator and the absence of resolution. The story has a nice atmosphere and is by far the best of the three stories Ranpo wrote in 1923. Ranpo was introduced by the magazine's editor as a detective writer who could hold his own against foreign authors. Because of the difficult, typically Japanese code it long resisted translation, but now we are lucky to have the excellent translation by Jeffrey Angles.
“Ichimai no Kippu” (One Ticket, published in Shin Seinen)
[No translation available]
A respected scholar's wife is run over and killed by a train. The autopsy shows that she had been poisoned and the professor is arrested. Two students (again armchair detectives who meet in a restaurant), who honor the professor as a great scholar, conclude on the basis of small clues one of them has collected at the scene, that the woman's death was suicide (made to look like murder as the wife wanted to take revenge on her husband who had fallen out of love with her). The professor is freed from jail thanks to the newspaper article written by one of these students, in which he uses logical reasoning and demonstrates that the clues he has found all exonerate the professor. But in his last paragraph Ranpo again pulls the rug from under this ratiocination: if the accused had not been a famous professor, would the clues point to the same conclusion (the implication is that facts can always be interpreted in different ways)? And would these students even have been interested in the case if their beloved professor's life had not been at stake? As will also become clear in the stories Ranpo wrote the next few years, for him psychology is more important than pure logical reasoning. At the same time, this is a story which gives the reader a chance to develop his own theory based on the evidence presented - and in so far it also has a classical side.
“Osoroshigi Sakugo” (A Terrible Mistake, published in Shin Seinen)
[No translation available]
A man’s house has burned down and in the panic surrounding the fire, he has lost sight of his wife. Later he learns she has died in the fire, and he suspects that an acquaintance who in the past was a rival for the hand of the same girl, has urged his wife to enter the burning house as a form of revenge. He uses a trick to take revenge on the man but makes a fatal mistake – which means that now he will never know whether he was right or not, and he goes mad... The story with its long Dostoevskyan (Ranpo's favorite Western literary author) ruminations in fact boils down to the feeling of guilt of the protagonist: he has saved their baby and run away to put it in safe hands, but he has made the "terrible mistake" to forget to tell his wife that the baby had been saved - because his relation with his wife had deteriorated. The wife didn’t know that the baby was saved and must have reentered the burning house to look for it... In fact, one could say that it is the narrator who has unconsciously killed his young wife. This is a story in which psychology has completely taken over from detection, and Ranpo later judged it a failure.
1924
This year Ranpo wrote two stories, both very interesting ones, and both published in Shin Seinen, like his stories of the year before. Although both contain a crime, they are rather general mysteries than detective stories. In November of this year, Ranpo decides to earn his income solely as a writer and gives up his newspaper job.“Ni Haijin” (The Two Crippled Men, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. James B. Harris in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Tuttle)]
Two elderly men meet at a spa and have a long conversation. One of the two is crippled due to the Russo-Japanese war, the other is "mentally crippled" for he is a sleepwalker and has been led to believe he may do terrible things in his sleep. He recounts his disease to his new friend. He also confesses the crimes, including murder, he has apparently committed unconsciously during his sleepwalking, when he stayed as a student in a boarding house, in the far past. But he is shocked when his companion offers a new interpretation of those events that challenges everything he has always believed: hasn't he been manipulated by a fellow boarder in believing that he was guilty of various somnambulist incidents, including the murder of the old lodging house keeper - and wasn't this fellow boarder probably the real culprit? It finally even appears the man offering this explanation "to lessen his mental anguish" somehow looks familiar - yes, you already guess who he in fact is! An interesting psychological story.
“Soseiji” (The Twins, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. James B. Harris in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Tuttle)]
A doppelganger tale. A condemned prisoner makes a confession of a crime he has never been charged with but that haunts him - he has killed his twin brother and successfully taken over his life. The brothers were a pair of exactly look-alike twins from a rich family, the oldest of whom received the entire family's fortune; the younger in contrast was left with nothing. Being a bad sort, he murders his older brother, throws the body down the garden well, and assumes his brother's identity, taking possession of his fortune... and his wife. But being a big spendthrift and a gambler, he quickly depletes the family fortune, after which he starts stealing and even commits murder - the murder for which he is now awaiting the death penalty. But the other crime, which has never been discovered, was more evil...
Made into a beautiful, moody film in 1999 by Tsukamoto Shinya.
1925
Now that Ranpo has become a full-time writer, this is a very fruitful year with 17 new stories, among which several of Ranpo's best. After the success of "The Case of the Murder on D Hill" he is asked to become a regular contributor to Shin Seinen. He makes several visits to Tokyo and meets at different times with Kosakai Fuboku (in Nagoya), Morishita Uson, Uno Koji and Yokomizo Seishi. With the last one (who is also an important writer of detective fiction) he sets up the Detective Hobby Club (Tantei Shumi no Kai). In July, Shunyodo publishes his first story collection in book form (called after The Psychological Test).
“D zaka no Satsujin Jiken” (The Case of the Murder on D Hill, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. William Varteresian in The Early Cases of Akechi Kogoro (Kurodahan Press, 2014)]
The story in which Ranpo's serial detective, Akechi Kogoro, makes his first appearance. Interestingly, it is a very Japanese variant of the "locked room mystery." In the traditional Japanese house with its sliding doors and movable partitions, a locked room does not exist - there often are not even locks! But in a busy down-town neighborhood of Tokyo (in the story, the real district of Dangozaka in Sendagi is used), people are always watching each other - this "mutual surveillance" creates in fact a virtual locked room. The beautiful wife of a second-hand book seller is found strangled in the living room behind the shop, but as various neighborhood people have been watching both the front and the back of the shop, it is impossible that a stranger has slipped in. Akechi Kogoro is not the Western-suited dandy he would become later, but rather a bookish, poor student in traditional Japanese garb. It was in this story that Ranpo began to introduce Ero-Guro elements into his
work. Akechi
Kogoro discovers that the woman was killed by accident in
the midst of sadomasochistic games with a neighboring shopkeeper. This combination
of problem-solving and sexuality, especially its “perverse”
manifestations, recurs in many stories that Ranpo would write in years to
come. Akechi Kogoro also expresses his doubt about classical ratiocination, as Ranpo did in the stories of the previous years: "Physical evidence can take on all sorts of appearances depending on the point of view. The best method of detection is psychological: to see through to the depths of people's hearts." (Early Cases, p. 25) In order to catch the perpetrator, Akechi also uses the association test described in the story "The Psychological Test" below. By the way, Ranpo has Akechi discuss Poe and Conan Doyle in this story as a clear attempt to position himself in the tradition of the Western detective story.
In 2015 made into a "pink" film by Kubota Shoji.
“Shinri Shiken” (The Psychological Test, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. James B. Harris in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Tuttle)]
A student imitates Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov in murdering an old woman and stealing her money. He thinks he has committed the perfect crime. It is not his sense of guilt which brings him to justice (as Dostoevsky's protagonist), and neither is it the Western-style psychological test given him by Dr. Kasamori, which he passes rather too smoothly. No - it is Akechi Kogoro who catches this too great perfectionist in a psychological trap by asking the right questions - just like Judge Ooka in the colorful days of the eighteenth century, concludes Edogawa Ranpo. What also reminds one of the Judge Ooka stories is the fact that the identity of the criminal is already known to the reader - the emphasis is on the cleverness of the detective (in other words, qua type this is an "inverted detective story"). A fascinating story that breaks down the flaws in the use of a ‘lie detection test’ to discover a murderer.
“Kurotegumi” (The Black Hand Gang, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. William Varteresian in The Early Cases of Akechi Kogoro (Kurodahan Press, 2014)]
Akechi Kogoro solves the disappearance of a young woman from a wealthy family and in the end even acts as matchmaker. There is again a code, as well as an interesting trick, for the criminal uses stilts, so that he doesn't leave footprints. This rather slight story fits in with the other stories written during this period: no real crime has taken place (the young woman was not kidnapped, but eloped herself), and it comes all down to a misunderstanding.
“Akai Heya” (The Red Chamber, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. James B. Harris in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Tuttle)]
A sort of "secret society" meets regularly in a Gothic room to share horror tales - a setting that reminded me of certain stories by Stevenson (The Suicide Club). Tonight, a new member, T., will share his first tale of horror. He tells how, out of chronic ennui, he began committing crimes only for the sake of finding excitement. At that time, incidentally, he discovered a way to murder without being caught: by causing fatal accidents of which random people become the victim - for example by having a blind masseur walk right into a construction pit, or calling out to an old woman who is crossing a busy street, so that she hesitates and is hit by a trolley. Of course he takes care that he seems to have no responsibility for these deaths. His murder count stands at 99, he says - who will be the next victim? Of course there is an interesting twist at the end, even a double one – making also this story a parody - and again a tale in which in fact no crime takes place.
P.S. One episode has been cut from this story in the James B. Harris translation: in one rather sick incident, the man tricks a boy into urinating on a live wire so that he is electrocuted. Probably this was too shocking for American audiences in the 1950s...
“Nikkicho” (The Diary, published in Shashin Hochi)
[No translation available]
A young man has died of an illness and his elder brother looks out of curiosity in his diary. He discovers that the brother corresponded via postcards with Yukie, their far relative. As postcards can be read by anyone, the younger brother apparently used a code to communicate, via the dates on which he sent the cards. Yukie from her side used another code that just had been introduced in a popular novel: to show her love for him she glued on the stamps askew. But it seems neither of them understood the code of the other, so they were not able to communicate their shared love. The correspondence between both stops on a certain day – as the elder brother tells us that was the day he himself became engaged to Yukie, without knowing of her love for his brother. A story about a triple misunderstanding.
“Soroban ga Koi wo Kataru Hanashi” (A Tale of Love Told by an Abacus, published in Shashin Hochi)
[No translation available]
A clerk is in love with one of his company's young secretaries. But he is very shy and doesn't dare to talk to her face-to-face, so he puts a message in code on her abacus (certain numbers corresponding to certain kana syllables) to make her aware of his feelings, and finally even make an appointment with her in a park. When he finds a positive answer to the proposal for a meeting on her abacus one day, he waits full excitement in the park - but she never appears. What has happened? The figures on the secretary's abacus were a true calculation, just numbers, and not at all an answer to his coded message! Again, a story about a misunderstanding.
“Yurei” (The Ghost, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. Willaim Varteresian in The Early Cases of Akechi Kogoro (Kurodahan Press, 2014)]
An entrepreneur is happy to hear his big rival and personal enemy has died. But he is shocked when he gets a phone call from the man. To make matters worse, a recent photo is sent to him on which he discovers his enemy. Then he starts seeing the man frequently, as if stalked by a vengeful ghost. When he goes to an onsen to recuperate, he happens to meet Akechi Kogoro, who solves the mystery: the rival just feigned to be dead in order to pester him. Again a story about a misunderstanding.
“Tonan” (The Burglary, published in Shashin Hochi)
[No translation available]
Story told by a man who used to work for a religious sect in the provinces. Ranpo describes aptly how the believers are fooled by the sect leader, who shrewdly has them donate handfuls of money although he himself doesn’t believe in anything and leads a far from holy life. When the safe is full of money for a rebuilding of the sect’s temple, a letter arrives saying that a thief will come at 24:00 hrs and steal the money (an announcement similar to the one in the later The Fiend with Twenty Faces). A policeman they believe to be from a nearby koban, helps them protect the safe with the money, but finally pulls his pistol and disappears with the loot. Later, the narrator happens to meet the first burglar/policeman somewhere in the countryside. The man says that the burglary was fake, as was the money that was stolen - it was all set up by the leader of the sect. As proof he hands the narrator a few bills of the fake money. Disgusted, the narrator resigns from his job, believing that the sect leader just pretended that the money was stolen in order get the same amount again donated by the believers. But the story is not finished: the wife of the narrator unwittingly uses the "fake" bills, but they turn out to be real money! Now, what is true and what is false? What has really happened?
Note: this story as well as the above ones "The Diary" and "A Tale of Love told by an Abacus" were published in the magazine of Shashin Hochi, a more general publication, and Ranpo felt he could write more relaxed pieces, with no true puzzle elements. The same is true for "One-Hundred Faces Performer" and "Suspicion" below.
“Hakuchumu” (The Daydream, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. Seth Jacobowitz in The Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press 2008)]
A strong story. The narrator sees a throng of people around a man who claims he has killed his adulterous wife. But the onlookers laugh at him and think the wife has just run away with another man. The man is a pharmacist and he confesses he has turned the cut-up body of his wife into a waxen doll. And indeed, there is a female head on display in the shop window and to the narrator it looks terribly realistic. But nobody believes the pharmacist and the narrator flees as from a bad dream.
“Yubiwa” (The Ring, published in Shin Seinen)
[No translation available]
A slight story in dialogue form about the theft of a ring while on a train. The
thief explains his trick.
“Muyubyosha no Shi” (The Death of a Sleepwalker, published in Kuraku)
[No translation available]
A young man suffers secretly from sleepwalking, which is also the reason why he can't accept live-in jobs (of which there were many in Japan at that time, as shop boys etc.). He sits every day jobless in his father's home, doing nothing. These leads to frequent quarrels. One morning, the father is found killed in his garden chair outside. The sleepwalker suspects he himself has killed his father during one of his sleepwalking bouts, and in his paranoia he flees in panic. He is so nervous he eventually dies on the road from exhaustion. Later it is discovered he is not guilty: the father died because a large piece of ice for making ice sculptures fell on his head by accident from the window of the mansion next door.
Kuraku was a glossy magazine that would publsih more stories by Ranpo.
“Hyakumenso Yakusha” (The One-Hundred Faces Performer, published in Shashin Hochi)
[No translation available]
The narrator visits an older friend, a journalist who likes strange books and weird tales. They visit a circus where they see the "One-Hundred Faces Performer," a man who can transform himself in a surprisingly lifelike way into various characters, from old to young, from men to women. Afterward the journalist shows his friend an article about grave robberies where the heads of the deceased were stolen in the area and gives vent to the suspicion that the Hundred Faces actually employs "flesh masks" made form the dead in his performances. The narrator is deeply shocked. Finding no peace of mind, he again visits the friend a few days later and then is told with a big laugh that it was all a joke.
Again a story in which in fact no crime has happened. The scene is set up very well, I therefore consider it the strongest of the four stories Ranpo published in Shashin Hochi.
“Yaneura no Sanposha” (The Stalker in the Attic, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. Seth Jacobowitz in The Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press 2008)]
In this masterful tale Ranpo combines Ero-Guro and detection elements. It is set in a newly built boarding house, where Goda Saburo - a young man bored with life, who seeks thrills by cross-dressing and going out in disguise like the protagonist in Tanizaki's "The Secret" - discovers that via the large Japanese-style built-in cupboard in his room, he has access to the unused attic which runs above all the rooms of the boarding house. He finds a new voyeuristic thrill by spying through cracks in the floor on his fellow boarders as a Peeping Tom. Also just for a thrill, he decides to murder a fellow boarder, Endo, who has the habit of sleeping with wide open mouth below one such a hole in the wooden ceiling. The method Goda uses is very ingenious, but he is no match for detective Akechi Kogoro. This is not a simple crime tale, but the author’s main interest was clearly in depicting the protagonist’s strange
mental state as he peeps down through the boards into the private lives
of his neighbors below. The appearance of the detective at the end serves merely to bring the story to a conclusion.
The various film versions made of this story strongly emphasize the Ero-Guro elements and even introduce new ones (such as the 1976 "pink eiga" version by Tanaka Nobuo).
“Hitori Futayaku” (Playing Two Roles, published in Shin Shosetsu)[No translation available]
A man called T, a bored urban dweller, is married to a beautiful wife, but has many relationships with other women. One day he wonders what his wife would be like with another man and he puts the deed to the word (a situation similar to that in Abe Kobo's The Face of Another). Putting on a disguise and sleeping with his wife, he takes care to leave a cigarette case with different initials than his own. When he continues this bizarre behavior for a while, he notices that his wife has fallen in love with the stranger and out of love with T himself. T has become his own rival in love and is consumed with envy - after all his wife is cheating on him but he himself is the new lover! He therefore gives up his previous identity and having minor plastic surgery, completely becomes the other. However, at the end of the story we learn that T’s wife had known all along that the stranger was in fact her husband. She decided to play along to save their marriage – and has marvelously succeeded. One could say that "bored urbanites need to externalize their desire and sensation before they are able to satisfy their desensitized senses." (Kawana p. 61)
“Giwaku” (Doubt, published in Shashin Hochi)
[No translation available]
A story in dialogue form. The father of a family of five, a very violent man who was often drunk, has been murdered in his garden with an axe. The narrator is the younger brother; one after another suspicion falls on the elder brother, the sister and the mother, until finally the narrator confesses. But it appears he is innocent as well: he had left the axe in a tree and it fell by accident on the head of the father sitting under it... The trick is the same is the one in "The Death of a Sleepwalker."
“Ningen Isu” (The Human Chair, published in Kuraku)
[tr. James B. Harris in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Tuttle)]
One of Ranpo's most grotesquely erotic stories: a man hides in a Western armchair to enjoy the feeling of female bodies sitting on top of him. Yoshiko is a talented authoress who shuts herself up in her study to write every day after her husband has left for the Foreign Office. One morning, she receives a manuscript in which the "chair man" (who is a furniture maker) confesses his strange obsession, which finds its origin in his ugliness and the aversion women feel towards him. First he inhabits the hollow space inside an upholstered armchair he has made for the lobby of a Western-style hotel where he is "caressed" by many different female bottoms - mostly of foreign origin. Then the hotel closes and the chair is sold to a high-ranking official, who puts it in the study of his wife. The chair man develops a deep feeling of love for this purely Japanese woman, enjoying her feather-like gentleness of touch, while he lovingly cradles her on his knees - the reader can already see Yoshiko's shock coming, as she sits reading the manuscript in that very chair... but there is another twist at the end. This is not a detective story, but a pure Ero-Guro artifact in the mock confessional style of Tanizaki Junichiro.
P.S. Also from this story one episode has been cut in the James B. Harris translation: the "chair man" muses in a lengthy contemplation how easy it would be for him to murder a foreign ambassador seated on top of him, and so cause an international incident. Again, perhaps something that was considered too politically incorrect...
“Seppun” (The Kiss, published in Eiga to Tantei)
[No translation available]
A "just married" man thinks he has caught his young wife kissing the photo of another man - his boss, who sponsored their marriage and brought them together. Angry, he resigns his job. His wife, however, explains that a mirror has played a trick on him when he spied on her (turning around left and right when she opened a drawer in the cupboard) and that the photo she was kissing was in fact his own...
1926
In January of this year, Ranpo moves with his family to Tokyo and rents a house in Ushigome. Ranpo takes on too much work, as he starts three serialized novels at the same time early in the year. Of these, The Air Man (Kuki Otoko) is discarded unfinished when the magazine in which it is published stops appearing. The Case of the Lakeside Arbor is finished in five months time, but Wriggling in the Dark is broken off and only later finished, when it appears the next year (1927) in the first edition of Ranpo's Complete Works. In fact, Ranpo discovers he is not a novel writer, but a short story writer - he has difficulty to keep up his own interest in longer works. Moreover, structurally his novels are extremely loose. Besides that, he manages to write 11 short stories and later in the year, starts on two more novels (Panorama Island and The Dwarf) which will be completed the next year after serial publication.
Yami ni Ugomeku (Wriggling in the Dark, published in Kuraku)
[No translation available]
The first novel Ranpo attempted and a pure "ero-guro" story - of cannibalism, and with more eroticism than usual (it was serialized in a glossy magazine). As many of Ranpo's longer pieces, it is more an assembly of various episodes than a tightly constructed novel. He even broke off serialization only to finish the novel the next year. It is the story of a bohemian painter (Nozaki Saburo) who has never yet completed a painting. He is independently wealthy thanks to an inheritance and lives a life of pleasure - he has a fetish for female body parts (like the sculptor in Blind Beast). Finally he finds his ideal type in Ocho, a dancer from Asakusa, who has an unspeakable charm. Together they travel to Nagano where they stay in a remote hotel, the Hotel Momiyama. The fat owner of that hotel is a man with a huge appetite. He also renders massage services to the bathers in the large hotel bath. Ocho is afraid that someone may be stalking her, and when she is playing hide-and-seek with Saburo in the forest, she indeed suddenly disappears near an area of quicksand.
Uemura Kihachi, a friend of Saburo with an interest in playing the detective, comes to the hotel to help him find Ocho. At the hotel, he recognizes a certain Shindo, an old friend of the owner, as the man who was stalking Ocho. When they search in the quicksand, a "monster" appears, and they flee into a cave. The "monster" closes off the cave entrance. Inside, they find human bones and the dead body of the wife of the hotel owner. In the cave they also meet Shindo who divulges that the hotel owner is the monster. After an experience of shipwreck and going without food on a raft with several others, he had killed the chief mate and became a cannibal to survive. But he can't forget the taste of human flesh and has set up the hotel with the common bath where he doubles as attendant so that he can spot delicious human morsels and then kill and consume them...
[No translation available]
Planned as a long novel, Ranpo lost interest about halfway through and brought it to a quick end. The narrator is staying at a spa hotel called Kohantei near a lake for recuperation. He has a weird hobby: he has brought a telescope and likes to spy on women in the dressing room of the common bath. One day, he sees through his telescope a woman being murdered with a glittering knife... But when he rushes to the bath, there is nobody in the dressing room, although later some traces of blood are found. Together with another man staying at the hotel, Kono, he tries to find out what has happened...
“Odoru Issunboshi” (The Dancing Dwarf, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. Seth Jacobowitz in The Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press 2008)]
A dwarf working in a circus is the butt of jokes of the other circus artists. As a joke, they teach him to handle the swords in "The Beauty in the Guillotine Box" (a woman hiding in a box into which swords are stuck which miraculously miss her). This enables him to take a terrible revenge...
“Dokuso” (Poison Weeds, published in Tantei Bungei)
[tr. Seth Jacobowitz in The Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press 2008)]
It is rumored that poor women (who can't support more children) use the poisonous weeds growing near their village to bring on abortions. The narrator gets worried when his neighbor (who suddenly looks very slim) tells him she had a miscarriage...
"Fukumen no Butosha" (The Masked Dancers, published in Fujin no Kuni)
[No translation available]
The narrator is invited by his friend Inoue to join a secret society of wealthy men looking for powerful thrills. The fifth meeting he attends happens to be a masked ball. Women have been invited for the ball and couples are formed by dealing numbered cards. The narrator is coupled with a masked partner who seems somehow familiar. She is also excitingly forward and he dances and drinks himself into a stupor... only to wake up in a strange room with a note of the woman at his side. He now learns that she is Haruko, the wife of the friend who proposed the secret society to him. In the note she severely criticizes his bad and violent behavior. The narrator tries to puzzle out the events of the night. He discovers that as a joke devised by the organizers every man was to dance with his own wife. However, his number and that of his friend Inoue were mixed up and they ended up dancing with each other's wives. The narrator is devastated at the realization of his unintentional adultery... and that of his wife.
"Haikagura" (A Cloud of Ashes, published in Taishu Bungei)
[No translation available]
The protagonist has differences with his friend about a woman - and about money (he is poor and often has to borrow). One time, they quarrel and in the heat of the moment the protagonist picks up a pistol lying on the desk of his friend and in anger shoots him dead. The younger brother of the murdered man, who was playing ball with classmates outside, suspects the protagonist, who tries to save himself with a trick which makes use of the ashes of the hibachi in the room of the deceased...
"Taishu Bungei" was a magazine set up by Ranpo with several other
authors, to promote "literature for the masses" (although he also had misgivings, as he didn't regard detective stores as "mass literature").
All members had to contribute a fixed number of stories or essays and
Ranpo was quite bothered by this duty. To his relief, the joint magazine ceased publication in 1927.
“Kasei no Unga” (The Martian Canals, published in Shin Seinen)
[tr. Seth Jacobowitz in The Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press 2008)]
A man dreams rapturously of his body being transformed into a woman. The protagonist walks through a shadowy, gloomy forest that seems to have no end, afraid that he is walking in circles. Then he reaches a clearing with a pool of water in the heart of the forest. He now notices he is stark naked, and that his body has metamorphosed into that of his white (presumably Caucasian) girlfriend. He swims to a rock in the center of the pool and then realizes he needs some color in the white and gray world – preferably crimson. He scratches his shiny white body until the blood gushes out, leaving wounds like “Martian canals” on his body. He dances and rolls about like a worm – until his girlfriend, next to him in bed, wakes him up from his nightmare with “My dear!” in her own language. This story shows Ranpo's ambivalent feelings towards Western women and Western culture (as in the story "The Human Chair")...
One of the episodes in the film Ranpo Noir.
"Monoguramu" (The Monogram, published in Shin Shosetsu)
[No translation available]
Starts with a long description of seedy Asakusa Park, as in The Dwarf. The narrator meets a young man, who claims to know him. As gradually becomes clear, the narrator used to be at the same school as the (now deceased) half-sister of the young man, and unknown to himself, she kept his photo in her hand mirror set...
[tr. Seth Jacobowitz in The Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press 2008)]
A man plays hide-and-seek with his children and hides in a large chest of which the lid by accident falls into the lock. When his wife (who is often absent because of an extramarital relation) finds him, after only a moment's consideration she again smashes the lid shut and re-locks the chest so that her husband is asphyxiated. A strong story.
Used in the film The Mystery of Rampo by Okuyama Kazuyoshi.
“Hitodenashi no Koi” (Unearthly Love, published in Sunday Mainichi)
[No translation available]
A woman recounts the traumatic experience of being married to a man who was secretly in love with a doll he had cherished since childhood. The exquisitely handsome husband came from a wealthy family, but was rumored to be a woman-hater at the time of their arranged marriage. Just a short way into the marriage, the woman started feeling the husband seemed strangely distracted during their lovemaking. He also began leaving their bedroom to go to his study, a gloomy room filled with books and antiques, on the second floor of a storehouse on their property. One night the wife followed the husband to this room and from outside the door she heard him talking intimately to a female, seemingly his lover. No woman emerged from the room, however, and the wife returned the next day to search it. She discovered a beautiful female doll, with an allure both otherworldly and voluptuous. Out of jealousy and revenge she ripped the enchanting doll to shreds. That night, she again followed her husband to his study to enjoy seeing his despair at the destruction of his lover-doll. But she found him lying in a pool of blood with the doll’s remains, evidently having committed double suicide with a sword. The doll’s still lovely face wore an uncanny smile. Ranpo expertly brings out the multi-faceted allure of love for dolls, a metaphor for love that is somewhat shameful but at the same time superior to ordinary love.
This a great story that certainly deserves to be translated.
"Kagami Jigoku” (The Hell of Mirrors, published in Taishu Bungei)
[tr. James B. Harris in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Tuttle)]
A story of the strange and macabre. Ranpo had an obsession with lenses and mirrors, and in this story he has created the perfect optics fanatic. As he grows up. the protagonist becomes more and more obsessed by telescopes and other contrivances. For example, he builds a large telescope to spy on his neighbor. And in the end, he creates a man-sized sphere which is on the inside wholly clad in various kinds of lenses and mirrors. He then enters the sphere to see himself reproduced endlessly, as in a kaleidoscope. When he comes out again at the end of his psychedelic journey, he has become a raving madman...
One of the episodes in the film Ranpo Noir.
“Mokuba wa Mawaru” (The Merry-Go-Round is Rotating, published in Tantei Shumi)
[No translation available]
Remembrances of the Merry-go-Round in the Hanayashiki in Asakusa. A short piece with a nostalgic atmosphere. Also as an adult Edogawa used to ride the Merry-go-Round, together with the writer Yokomizo Seishi and the poet Hagiwara Sakutaro. Asakusa was a favorite spot of writers in the 1920s, for example also Kawabata Yasunari came here often and wrote The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa about it.
(The stories of the years 1927-1936 will be discussed in my next article)
This article incorporates parts of my previous post, the "Ero-Guro" Mysteries of Edogawa Ranpo.
Also see my articles about Ranpo on Screen:
Edogawa Ranpo on Screen (1)
Edogawa Ranpo on Screen (2)
And the two previous articles in this series:
(1) Ooka Echizen and Kuroiwa Ruiko
(2) Hanshichi and Tanizaki Junichiro
Studies used as reference in writing this article:
Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature, 1868-1937, by Mark Silver (Univ of Hawaii Pr, 2008)
Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture, by Sari Kawana (Univ of Minnesota Pr, 2008)
Mord in Japan, by Robert F. Wittkamp (Iudicium, 2002)
Three Tales of Doll Love by Edogawa Ranpo
Culture and authenticity: the discursive space of Japanese detective fiction and the formation of the national imaginary, by Satomi Saito (University of Iowa)
Double Visions, Double Fictions: The Doppelganger in Japanese Film and Literature, by Baryon Tensor Posadas (University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishonen Culture in Modernist Japanese Liiterature, by Jeffrey Angels (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
Monogatari Nihon Suiri Shosetsu-shi, by Gohara Hiroshi (Kodansha, 2010)