Category: Japanese Mystery Stories

‘Kurotoka—ge!’ (The Black Lizard)

I used to live in a mid-size city in a foreign country (foreign to Japan, of course). It’s the third-largest city in its country, so I think it’s pretty big. I didn’t get homesick for Japanese stuff, but around the time I met Chris, I couldn’t use my English well enough to help him understand more about me and Japanese things. It was the same with books and movies I liked. It was hard for him to understand them without seeing them. (Surprisingly, we share a lot of the same musical tastes. To tell the truth, there are many times when I feel it’s difficult to talk about music with most of my Japanese friends.)

At the time, in the late 1990s, I tried to find books and movie versions of Edogawa Rampo and Yokomizo Seishi stories overseas. It was pretty difficult. I guess it could be easy to find them in a big city like New York, but in the city where I used to live, ‘Japanese movies’ were mostly Kurosawa Akira and Itami Jûzo. It was around the time that Kitano Takeshi was starting to be well known among fans of Japanese movies. ‘Shall we dance?’ was also very popular. Until the end, I couldn’t find the Kindaichi Kôsuke movies directed by Ichikawa Kon. I really wanted to show them to Chris… (I like the visual sense of the director.)

The central public library in my former city had a large collection of Japanese books: more than a regular large-scale book store would have. However, the books translated into English from Japanese were only Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki and other leading figures in the Japanese literary world. The only English translation of Edogawa Rampo was a collection of short stories, and it was published about fifty years ago. Many people who are interested in Japanese literature have probably read it already. (Actually, Chris has this book, too.)

Since we moved to Japan, I think we’ve watched most of the movies and TV series of Rampo’s Akechi Kôgoro series and Yokomizo’s Kindaichi Kôsuke series. Even though Chris hasn’t read most of the Japanese originals yet, he knows many stories and their characteristic atmosphere. I’ve also collected and read books related to Rampo and Yokomizo.

There have been a few Rampo-related movies released in the past few years in Japan. When I search for information on Rampo, I can find foreign language reviews of these movies, so perhaps it is possible to see them overseas more easily than it was before.

The first English translation of a Yokomizo Seishi book, The Inugami Clan, was published a few years ago. When I searched for translations of Rampo and Yokomizo, I learned that, for some reason, many more have been translated into European languages than have been into English.

By the way, now we’re coming to today’s main topic. At last, an English translation of Edogawa Rampo’s Kurotokage (The Black Lizard) and Injû (Beast in the Shadows) has been published by Kurodahan Press! And Chris was the editor and did the book design for it! In the past, I couldn’t find books like this when I wanted to, but now you can read mid-length Edogawa Rampo stories in English!

–YS 23 January 2006

The best movie version supplies the theme for our title line:
‘Kurotokage’
1962, Daiei Eiga
Director: Inoue Umeji
Original novel: Edogawa Rampo
Original script: Mishima Yukio
Music: Mayuzumi Toshiro
Main actress: Kyo Machiko
Please watch this movie once and imagine the song. It’s very catchy.

23 January 2006