Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer? Have Japanese writers created super-sleuths like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe? A courtroom detective like Erie Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason? A priest detective like G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown? A scientific detective like R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke? Are the official detectives of Japanese fiction like George Simenon's Inspector Maigret or more procedural like John Ball's Virgil Tibbs or the men of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct?
There was only one way for me to find out: read whatever histories of the Japanese detective story I could locate, and perhaps more relevant, read the stories sent to me by the Suedit Corporation from which I was to prepare the Japanese Golden Dozen.
From James B. Harris' Preface to Edogawa Rampo's Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination and from Katsuo Jinka's "Mystery Stories in Japan" (in the February 1976 issue of The Armchair Detective), I learned that until 1923 "no Japanese writer had attempted a modern detective story."
In the beginning the old-style mystery story was known in Japan only through the tales of court trials imported from China. But as long ago as 1660 Japanese writers began to fashion similar tales; the most famous was Saikaku Ihara's Records of Trials Held Beneath a Cherry Tree (1689).
So far there was merely a duplication of the Chinese tradition. But in the Meiji period (1868-1912), Japanese writers broke with the Chinese tradition and a new era began. Still no native Japanese stories were written, but the Chinese imports gave way to a flood of translations of Western detective classics—the works of Poe and Doyle, of course, and of Wilkie Collins, Emile Gaboriau, Anna Katharine Green, R. Austin Freeman, G. K. Chesterton, and others, most of these translations appearing as serials in Japanese newspapers. Apparently, in the mystery field, there was no fear of the blending of cultures, no attempt to protect Japanese writers and readers from the intrusion of a foreign influence.
Then, in 1923, Edogawa Rampo founded a native Japanese school. "The first original Japanese mystery story," according to James B. Harris, was Rampo's short story "Nisen Doka" (The Two-Sen Copper Coin), which appeared in Shin-seinen (New Youth), the only mystery magazine published in all Japan at that time. The detective tie with China, if not with the West, was broken forever.
Next we studied the historical data supplied by the Suedit Corporation. The modern Japanese detective story can be divided into three periods. The first began with Edogawa Rampo in 1923 and ended just before World War II. It is called the Tantei era; Tantei means "to solve a puzzle," and the emphasis in this period was on the qualities that distinguished The Golden Age of the Detective Story in the West (1920-40)—pure puzzles stressing ingenuity, complexity, bafflement, and surprise.
The middle period shifted the emphasis from "unrealistic" puzzles to "social" detective stories. This second period is called the Suiri era; Suiri means "to reason." In these social detective stories, with the work of Seicho Matsumoto the dominant influence, a more literary and more realistic approach took over. Greater attention was paid to credible motivation, to the dictates of human nature, and to the events of everyday life. The nature of crime also changed. No longer was the crime of or by the individual the focal point; instead, the stories dealt with political crimes, corruption in high places and in industry, gangster organizations, and social evils. It might be said that the Japanese detective story had come of age.
The third period, still in process, is in essence a continuation, a further development and growth of the social detective story.
This is usually called the Neo-Social era—detective fiction of today and tomorrow (until the stories of a fourth period begin to emerge). The writers in this collection belong to the third period. Examples of their work, chosen from more than 2500 short stories published in Japan since 1970, were gathered by a special Japanese Mystery Committee, and the twelve stories finally selected by Ellery Queen for the Japanese Golden Dozen represent a cross-section of the contemporary Japanese genre.
The publication of mystery stories in Japan is more than a flourishing business—it is experiencing an extraordinary boom. Each month an average of 30 books and 40 short stories are published. Ten years ago the sale of mystery books totaled approximately 14,000,000 copies; this year it is estimated that more than 20,000,000 copies of hardcover and paperback mysteries will be purchased by Japanese devotees of the detective story. One of the reasons for this tremendous popularity is that "mysteries provide an escape from Japan's nervous urban life." But another reason will strike Western readers as unusual: most Japanese commute to work by train, and their favorite reading, as relaxation before and after the serious problems of the day, is a good detective story.
The major Japanese writers today are considered to be Yoh Sano, Seiichi Morimura, and Shizuko Natsuki, together with the above-mentioned Seicho Matsumoto, all of whom are contributors to this anthology; but the older writers, Edogawa Rampo and Masashi Yokomizo, still have a large number of loyal fans. Masashi Yokomizo published The Honjin Murder Case 30 years ago, in 1947, and last year his books sold 3,000,000 copies; at the age of 71 he was still an active writer.
The most popular Western detective writers are Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, followed by Freeman Wills Crofts (a rather surprising favorite), John Dickson Carr, G. K. Chesterton, Erie Stanley Gardner, and S. S. Van Dine (another surprise); but most of the important Western detective writers are translated and widely read. Whereas Shin-seinen (New Youth) was the only mystery magazine in Japan in 1923 (it was founded in 1920 and continued publication until 1950), there are now ten major publishers in the Japanese detective field. Mystery magazines include Hoseki (The Jewel), Lock, The Phantom Castle, and Shosetsu Gendai; the Japanese edition of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is 20 years young and still going strong.
In the United States we have an organization called the Mystery Writers of America; in England there is the Crime Writers Association; and in Japan there is the Association of Mystery Writers of Japan* (Nihon Suiri Sakka Kyokai), founded by Edogawa Rampo. The Japanese association gives two annual awards comparable to the American Edgar and to the English Gold Dagger—the Edogawa Rampo Memorial Award to a new writer and the A.M.W.J. Award to the best Japanese mystery novel of the year.
And now let us consider the stories in this volume. The ideal detective-crime-mystery story of today, in the eyes of Japanese writers and critics, is "one which, although written around a believable framework, is first and foremost a detective fiction." And that definition is exemplified and adhered to in most of the stories that make up the Japanese Golden Dozen.
The twelve stories in this book offer you detection of all types—deductive, intuitional, and procedural—and a "compleat calendar of crime" ranging from theft and poisoning to blackmail and murder. You will meet a variety of crime investigators, both official and amateur, including legal, journalist, and scientific detectives, in locales as different as a police inquest, a barber shop, a hospital, and a luxurious hotel. You will find in the diverse styles humor and horror, in the diverse plots "vampires" and villains—hours of excitement and escape, of suspense and suspension of disbelief, days of entertainment and adventure, and weeks of afterthoughts about the serious problems of modern living.
Only a few Japanese detective stories, perhaps less than a dozen, have been translated into English and published in the United States; and probably no more than that in Europe. The Japanese mystery is therefore unknown to almost all American readers, and Western critics have had little or no opportunity to judge its qualities. As a result, the influence of the Japanese mystery has been negligible, if not nonexistent. It is hoped that the publication of the Japanese Golden Dozen will prove to be a breakthrough in the current history of the Eastern detective-crime story.
Footnote
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