Gold Mask by Edogawa RampoMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
A novel which pits Japanese master detective Akechi Kogoro against Maurice Leblanc's gentleman thief Arsène Lupin (see Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief). Lupin featured in 17 novels and 39 short stories by Leblanc, starting with "The Arrest of Arsène Lupin" from 1905. In 1906 Leblanc pitted his master thief against Sherlock Holmes in the story "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late" - the name Sherlock Holmes was for copyright reasons later changed into "Herlock Sholmes." Later also appeared the story collection "Arsène Lupin Contre Herlock Sholmes." So Ranpo repeats Leblanc's trick by bringing on Leblanc's Lupin, a Lupin who displays something of a a colonial and racist attitude and is castigated by Ranpo for his lack of chivalry. As he wrote in Japanese, Ranpo apparently didn't have to worry about copyright matters... Lupin would later be transformed into "The Fiend with the Twenty Faces," the master thief from Ranpo's children's books (see The Fiend with Twenty Faces). And again much later, he would keep Japanese minds occupied as Lupin III, the grandson of Arsène Lupin, whose adventures form a manga (and anime) series written and illustrated by Monkey Punch (see Lupin III, Vol. 1). So, thanks to Edogawa Ranpo, Maurice Leblanc had an enormous influence on Japanese popular culture...
It is clear that Ranpo was rather strongly influenced by Maurice Leblanc: with both writers, the master thieves announce their crimes in advance and escape by a certain trick which is soon after explained. In both cases, there is no real mystery – we know the thief will get away by a trick and we know that trick will be discovered, and that this will be repeated an X number of times. There are no real puzzles, and the novels read more as adventure stories for children than detective novels...
Gold Mask is episodic and light – Ranpo said of himself that he was not good in writing novels, he was in the first place a short story writer, so in his longer works there is no overarching structure, but he just strings several short stories together. Ranpo’s style of writing in this particular book also seems rather uninterested – as if he wanted to tell his story as quickly and with as little details as possible so that he could soon finish it. There is little "showing," but almost only quick "telling." There is also none of the fascination we find in Ranpo's "ero-guro" productions.
One could wonder why this book has been translated, while so many better stories (such as "Maggots", "The Monster Worm", "Playing Two Roles", "The Masked Dancers", "Unearthly Love" and "Pomegranate") and even novels like "The Demon of the Desert Isle" and "Wriggling in the Dark" are awaiting English translation. The publisher seems to be concentrating on the figure of Ranpo's detective Akechi Kogoro, but unfortunately, Ranpo’s Akechi stories are not his best work (with the exception of the first story, "The Case of the Murder on D. Hill" (translated in The Early Cases of Akechi Kogoro). Akechi Kogoro's character was initially not planned by Ranpo. In that first story of 1925 he is an amateur detective with a young, collegiate image. In the four next stories in which he appears (until and including "The Stalker in the Attic", see The Edogawa Rampo Reader), all still from 1925, he functions as a sort of plot device, appearing only towards the end of the stories to explain the solution (in fact, the stories would be better without him). His personality remains rather vague. Then in "The Dwarf" from 1926 (translated in The Early Cases of Akechi Kogoro) he appears as a professional detective who has spent time in Shanghai and wears Chinese robes. At the time of his next appearance, in "The Spiderman" of 1929, he has English-colonial or Indian looks and now is called a "master detective." In this capacity he will return in five more stories and novels: "Who" (1929), "The Limits of the Bizarre," "The Magician," the present "Gold Mask" and "The Vampire" (all 1930). And finally, from 1936 on, he is transformed into the dandy-like detective hero in the 27 volumes of the Boys Detective Club series of juvenile books. It is only there that he finds his final and stable form, with a twelve year old boy called Kobayashi and the Boys Detective Club as helpers (those "boys detectives" call a contemporary manga (and anime) to mind, "Conan the Detective" in Case Closed, Vol. 1).
But that is kid’s stuff – for the reader interested in literature, Edogawa Ranpo is in the first place the author of a number of fascinating "ero-guro" (erotic-grotesque) stories. I’m sure more of those in translation would find a welcoming public!
Two stars because I generally applaud translations from Japanese literature.
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