Eugene completed a number of translations, most notably translations of the Twelve Kingdoms novels. He understood that a translation was itself an art--not something that can be left to a machine. A translation needs to capture the tone and pacing of an original--as well as its allusions, even jokes!

In the past few years, he completed translations of Ranpo Edogawa's Boy Detectives Club books.

The first translation he made, The Space Alien, is now available.  

   

INTRODUCTION

The year is 1953. The Korean War is winding down. The Cold War is heating up. In 1952, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb. In 1954, Godzilla will stomp onto the world stage. UFOs are appearing all over the world. And in Ranpo Edogawa’s latest young adult novel, five flying saucers zoom across the skies of Tokyo.

A day after that alarming incident, a woodsman stumbles out of the forest to report the landing of an alien spacecraft in the mountains southwest of Tokyo. A month later, Ichiro Hirano’s neighbor goes missing. He then reappears as abruptly as he vanished, claiming he was kidnapped by a mysterious winged lizard creature—

The same lizard creature that is now stalking the pretty and talented sister of Ichiro’s best friend. What in the world is going on? What do the aliens want? These are the kind of questions that only master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club can hope to answer.

*** 

Ranpo Edogawa is the pen name (a pun on Edgar Allan Poe) of Taro Hirai (1894–1965). He is best remembered for the Kogoro Akechi and Boy Detectives Club novels, published between 1925 and 1962. The two series regularly cross paths, the Boy Detectives acting as a kind of Baker Street Irregulars in the former and Kogoro Akechi featured as the go-to adult in the latter.

The Boy Detectives Club stories are reminiscent of the Hardy Boys books and the Scooby-Doo television series. First serialized in the young adult “pulps,” these early versions of the “light novel” are highly readable, with an emphasis on action, vivid passages, and clever but not overcomplicated plots.

The Space Alien is also part of the Fiend with Twenty Faces series, the Fiend being a master of disguise and Detective Akechi’s nemesis. Though comparisons to Moriarty spring to mind, the Fiend is more a high-minded Thomas Crown, committing elaborate crimes for the intellectual challenge and the thrill of the chase.

The relationship between Detective Akechi and the Fiend, one based on a grudging mutual respect, is thus probably closer to that between Inspector Zenigata and Arsène Lupin III, making these stories less whodunits than howdunits or whydunits.

Edogawa was an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and French mystery writer Maurice Leblanc (Arsène Lupin was his creation), and integrated themes and characters from their stories into his own novels.

Edogawa’s lifelong efforts as a writer and promoter of the western detective novel in Japan were well-rewarded. Police procedurals and “cozy” mystery fiction are staples of Japanese scripted television and populate the best-seller lists. The genre is hugely popular in manga and anime.

In Gosho Aoyama’s long-running Case Closed series (over 900 episodes to date), the boy detective sports the nom de plume of Conan Edogawa. Two homages in one!

*** 

The Space Alien takes place in the year following the end of the Occupation (1945–1952), at a time when Japan was struggling to find a firm footing in a brand-new world.

During the Korean War, the American military relied heavily on Japanese suppliers for logistical procurement. In a great historical irony, Japan was destroyed by one war and revitalized by the one that followed it. Though the heady growth of the 1960s was a decade away, the economy would begin to markedly improve in 1954.

Yet rice paddies could still be found throughout Setagaya Ward, inside the Yamanote loop line that defines Tokyo proper. They wouldn’t last for long. Japan was starting over from scratch. Everything was up for grabs—except those principles of truth and justice that will always remain the same for every sentient soul in the universe.

Because even aliens from outer space have to obey the law. Detective Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club will see to that!

***

Following in the style of traditional Rakugo storytellers, Edogawa occasionally breaks the fourth wall to muse aloud about the unfolding events in the story. I try to reflect such rhetorical quirks in my translation.

 

Labels: edogawa, translations

The traditional police procedural is one genre where live-action Jdrama holds it own. Hollywood could do a lot worse than license a series like Partners just for the premise and the plots.

Much of the credit goes to Ranpo Edogawa (1894–1965), a tireless promoter of the mystery novel in Japan. His pen name is a pun on the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allan Poe. Edogawa is best remembered for the Kogoro Akechi and Boy Detectives Club young adult mystery novels, published between 1936 and 1962.

His efforts are widely acknowledged today. The mystery genre is prominent not only on prime-time television and the best-seller lists, but has long been a staple of young adult manga and anime.

Kindaichi Case Files, based on characters created by mystery writer Seishi Yokomizo, has been published by Kodansha since 1992. The ongoing Case Closed (titled Detective Conan in Japanese) was launched by Shogakukan in 1994, with the accompanying anime totaling more than 1140 episodes.

The main character in Case Closed sports the nom de plume of Conan Edogawa, an additional tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle as well. There is no shortage of detectives surnamed Akechi in contemporary Japanese crime fiction.

Speaking of Conan Doyle, Great Britain and Japan share similar cultural elements that make them ideal settings for the cozy mystery. Namely, generally accepted rules of propriety and a veneer of "polite society" easily disrupted (but not deeply damaged) by an otherwise "ordinary" crime. The world need not end in every episode.

Like a returning tide, we expect the greater cultural forces at work to wash away the disruptive elements and reset the stage for next week. So we shrug off the comically high murder rates in Midsomer and Cabot Cove, and the body counts in Kindaichi Case Files and Case Closed that can exceed that of the entire country on a weekly basis.

To be sure, a gun is rarely the murder weapon. But watch out for knives, rope, stairs, and every kind of blunt object! Reality forces Japanese crime writers to get creative, and they embrace all the plausible possibilities. It follows that the geeky appeal of the CSI subgenre has made it a favorite with audiences.

The CSI guy on Partners played a supporting role for twenty-one seasons. Kasoken no Onna ("Woman of the Science Research Institute") is in its twenty-fourth season. Like Crime Scene Talks (seven seasons), the plotting is pretty much by the numbers. But the reason we follow a recipe is because it works.

Viki has a handful of localized live-action police procedurals. For now, though, your best bet for subs or dubs is anime.

Crunchyroll has a boatload of Case Closed episodes. Sticking strictly to the puzzle-solving cozy mystery formula, five of my anime favorites are Holmes of Kyoto, Hyouka, In/Spectre, Beautiful Bones, and Onihei.

Hyouka and Holmes of Kyoto are classic whodunits that closely follow the classic formula, even though the cases often don't involve any actual crimes.

I love the clever English language title for In/Spectre, a supernatural detective series. It can get overly talky, especially in the first season, but Kotoko takes us through her reasoning process step by step. Though she is an often unreliable narrator, manipulating events to produce the outcome she prefers.

In Beautiful Bones, Sakurako Kujo is an even more eccentric osteologist than Temperance "Bones" Brennan, the series that inspired the English title. The Japanese title translates as "A Corpse is Buried Beneath Sakurako's Feet."

Onihei is an action-heavy Edo period police procedural that doesn't flinch from depicting the complete lack of due process rights for suspects at the time.

And although she only appears in a couple of episodes in a series that can't be classified in the genre, the hard-boiled vampire-hunting private eye in Call of the Night is such a great noir character that I'd like to see her get a show of her own.

Related posts

Scene of the crime writer

Labels: crunchyroll, dlibjapan, edogawa, hidive, japanese culture, japanese tv, mystery, streaming, tubi, viki

In a previous discussion about the Mary Sue trope, I suggested the "cozy romance" as a companion to the "cozy mystery." Well, a series that qualifies as a cozy mystery, a cozy romance, and a Mary Sue that mostly works is Holmes of Kyoto.

Aoi Mashiro is a boy-crazed ditz when we first meet her. But her encounter with Kiyotaka Yagashira at the Yagashira Antique Shop turns her into a cool-headed antiques appraiser.

Eventually. Kiyotaka hires her to dust and sweep and make tea. But she's a fast study. A really fast study. Nevertheless, we see her put in the work. And she's got a great tutor. So she earns it.

Kiyotaka is, of course, young and handsome, the smartest appraiser in Kyoto. He claims that "Holmes" is merely a play on the kanji for "home" in his name, but he and Aoi end up solving a lot of crimes and mysteries.

The series has a Moriarty as well, though he's closer to the "Fiend with Twenty Faces" created by Ranpo Edogawa. Ensho is a defrocked Buddhist priest and frustrated forger who seems mostly obsessed with fooling Kiyotaka.

Along the way, of course, Aoi and Kiyotaka develop feelings for each other. But by externalizing the conflicts and taking the usual "complications" out of the relationship, the "cozy" romance can mature at a slow slow burn.

Aoi is still in high school, to start with. In any case, I'm not interested in a Mary Sue who is forever torn between cowboy Billy and billionaire Bob. Nobody plucks petals off a daisy while intoning, "She loves me, she loves me not."

The art and animation isn't as polished as Snow White with the Red Hair. But if you're looking for cozy mysteries and a very gently simmering romance, this dive into the world of Kyoto antiquing nicely fits the bill.

Holmes of Kyoto is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Labels: anime, anime reviews, crunchyroll, edogawa, mystery, thinking about writing

Nippon published a concise and informative retrospective of Ranpo Edogawa's literary career by Kimie Itakura, featuring an interview with Takumi Ishikawa, professor of modern literature and culture at Rikkyo University. My translation of The Bronze Devil gets a brief mention.

Labels: bronze devil, edogawa, japanese, mystery, thinking about writing, translations

Illustration by Kyosai Kawanabe.

In chapter 5 of The Space Alien, Kitamura-san describes a piece of mind-reading alien technology as a "magic mirror."

At first glance, it looked like a round silver metal tray. When I brought my face closer to it, I did not see my reflection as in a typical mirror, but a reflection of my mind. The thoughts of the person holding the mirror are displayed like a photograph on the surface of the silver plate. In short, a movie of the mind.

This "magic mirror" bears a strong resemblance to the jouharikyou (浄玻璃鏡) in Buddhist mythology, commonly translated as "Enma's Mirror of Judgment" or the "Mirror of Karma."

Enma (閻魔), commonly known outside Japan as "Yama," is the Ruler of Hell. Enma is a wrathful god who judges the dead. But unlike Saint Peter, he stands at the gates of Hell, where he decides which of the six paths in the eternal cycle of death and rebirth (samsara) the recently deceased will take.

One of the tools Enma uses when passing judgment is a mirror. Wrote the poet Kobayashi Issa (courtesy David Lanoue, edited for syllable count), perhaps referring to Issa's habit of "stealing" flowers from the gardens of his neighbors,

In Enma's mirror
shines back a reflection of
the plum blossom thief

This "magic mirror" reflects the deeds and true nature of those who stand before Enma, such that they cannot deny the verdict he hands down.

Labels: edogawa, japanese culture, mystery, space alien, translations