11 Facts About Edogawa Ranpo

Taro Hirai, better known by the pen name Edogawa Ranpo, was a Japanese author and critic who played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery and thriller fiction.

Edogawa Ranpo's pen name is a rendering of Poe's name.

Edogawa Ranpo's father was a merchant, who had practiced law.

Some, such as James B Harris, have erroneously called this the first piece of modern mystery fiction by a Japanese writer, but well before Ranpo entered the literary scene in 1923, a number of other modern Japanese authors such as Ruiko Kuroiwa, Kido Okamoto, Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, Haruo Sato, and Kaita Murayama had incorporated elements of sleuthing, mystery, and crime within stories involving adventure, intrigue, the bizarre, and the grotesque.

In 1939, two years after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Edogawa Ranpo was ordered by government censors to drop his story "The Caterpillar", which he had published without incident a few years before, from a collection of his short stories that the publisher Shun'yodo was reprinting.

Since the translator could speak but not read Japanese and Edogawa Ranpo could read but not write English, the translation was done aurally, with Edogawa Ranpo reading each sentence aloud, then checking the written English.

Edogawa Ranpo dedicated himself to finding books published in the West and Iwata dedicated himself to finding books having to do with Japan.

Iwata died in 1945 with only part of his work published, so Edogawa Ranpo worked to have the remaining work on gay historiography published.

Edogawa Ranpo, who had a variety of health issues, including atherosclerosis and Parkinson's disease, died from a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in 1965.

Edogawa Ranpo's grave is at the Tama Cemetery in Fuchu, near Tokyo.

The Edogawa Ranpo Rampo Prize, named after him, is a Japanese literary award which has been presented every year by the Mystery Writers of Japan since 1955.