Edogawa Rampo

by Stephen Sheeran

Those of you who remember my column from June 2017 will know that I am no great fan of murder mysteries—especially the so-called “cozy” variety featuring those thoroughly irritating sleuths like Miss Marple, Father Brown, Hercule Poirot, and Peter Wimsey. Time and setting don’t seem to affect these preferences—I find Cadfael and Falco every bit as annoying as Armand Gamache and Jimmy Perez.

My invariable reaction to a Whodunit is…Whocares??? It is quite possible that this indifference is influenced by the habit of my “cohabitante” to invariably, and with unerring accuracy, blurt out HE DONE IT! five minutes into any of the spin-off television mysteries that I have the misfortune to be watching.

But my aversion goes a bit deeper. Perhaps it is the tiresome devices of the genre—the red herrings, the false leads, the blind alleys, the airtight alibis—or the overall fact that readers are arbitrarily suspended in a state of ignorance while the author/narrator selectively dangles evidentiary morsels before their noses. One is driven to empathize with a rat in a maze: Enough, already! Someone put him out of his misery and give him the DAMN FOOD PELLET!

I do have a few generic soft spots—for Sherlock Holmes, Auguste Dupin, and American hard-boiled detectives like Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe. In the “hard-boiled” genre I find the usual tired devices and contrivances well embedded in atmospherics, dialogue, and occasional eruptions of violence. (I find oddly cathartic the fact that main characters are frequently rendered insensible by blows to the head.)

I grudgingly extend a soft spot to Japanese mystery writer Hirai Tarō (1894 – 1965) who in his youth was strongly influenced by the works (in translation) of early crime writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe. In fact, Hirai’s nom de guerrewas Edogawa Rampo (Psst! Say “ed-uh-gar-uh-LAN-poe” three times quickly!). He and several other Japanese writers in the 1920s and 1930s worked at establishing a home-grown variety of the mystery and detective fiction that was so popular in Europe and North America at the time. As Hirai matured his works seemed to follow public tastes for more sensational end erotic fiction. In fact, he was at the vanguard of a movement styled “ero, guru, nansensu” (erotic, grotesque, nonsensical). This seemed to catch fire in depression-era Japan, and actually reached its zenith in a very notorious real-life public scandal involving a geisha who strangled her lover and carried his severed bits around in her kimono…but that’s another story.

Edogawa’s two novellas The Black Lizard and Beast in the Shadows do not quite approach that level of kinkiness, but they do intrigue. The Black Lizard matches two worthy opponents: the ever-resourceful and indefatigable super detective Akechi Kogorō; and the female arch criminal and master manipulator Black Lizard, aka Dark Angel, aka Mme Midorikawa. At stake, both the daughter (Sanai) and prize diamond (Star of Egypt) of jewel merchant Iwase Shōbei. 

It happens like this: Merchant Iwase receives a series of letters which threaten violent outcomes for his daughter. Alarmed at the threat of kidnapping or worse, he enlists the help of dozens of security people, chief among whom is Detective Akechi. The Black Lizard (incognito) insinuates herself into the bosom of the family and puts her dastardly plans into effect. Through the use of various disguises and ruses she manages to abscond first with the daughter and then with the diamond…or so she thinks. But reversals and double reversals and then triple reversals keep the reader at a high level of suspense, confusion, and bemusement.

It is intriguing to see how the traditional mystery conceits are adapted and pressed into service by Edogawa/Hirai. There are at least two “locked room” scenes, in which apparently foolproof safeguards are confounded by the old hide-the-victim-in-the-suitcase trick, or the hide-the-perp-in-the-sofa stratagem. The time-worn “seedy bar” setting is taken to hitherto unimaginable heights of excess; Black Lizard’s haunts make Marlowe’s and Spade’s locals seem like church picnics. And Black Lizard’s hideout—replete with evil trophies, stolen goods, kidnap victims (some of them stuffed)—rivals that of the worst comic-book villains and serial killers of popular culture.

Another interesting facet is the “breaking of the fourth wall” when the narrator stops at a particularly momentous point to address the audience, as in, “Dear Reader, well you may wonder at how Detective Akechi contrives to be in two places at once….”

An unintended source of humour is the fact that both adversaries are masters of disguise, yet are invariably taken in by each other’s deceptions—picture Whodunit meets Who’s-on-first, with a good dose of Maxwell Smart thrown in for good measure!!!

The plot-lines are inventive, almost post-modern in places. Beast in the Shadows deals with a detective writer who is approached by a young married woman who is being, by all appearances, blackmailed and threatened with violence by a former lover. The former lover turns out to be another famous writer of crime fiction and the two crime writers match wits—at least, seem to match wits—until a final outcome is wrung out of a cascade of disguise, deception, and competing interpretations of the contradictory clues.

If you feel like a romp with Rampo contact the library!