Chapter 14 Grandmaster Ranpo

Ranpo, for the Japanese reasoning literary world, is the source, the mainstay, and the spiritual leader... "There is no difference in reasoning, because there is always only one truth!" This classic line will awaken many readers' fond childhood memories.In that era, there seemed to be nothing more enjoyable than watching an episode of "Detective Conan".Since 1996, the myth of Conan has continued to this day, and the popularity has never diminished. However, there are some questions that have been bothering Conan fans- Why did this genius boy give himself the pseudonym "Edogawa Conan" without even thinking about it? "Conan" is of course derived from "Father of Sherlock Holmes" Conan Doyle, so where does the awkward surname "Edogawa" come from?

Why is the name of the famous detective Maori who is still alive and well after hundreds of doses of anesthetic injections called "Kogoro"?Why not "Mori Taro", "Mori Jiro" or "Mori Korokuro"? Why does a very popular Kaitou Kidd appear repeatedly in the story?Is it necessary to let this thief who flies around Japan all day steal Conan's scene? Why did Conan's three classmates call themselves the "Boys Detective Team"?Is it okay for minors to form such an organization? It seems that many of the above questions cannot be attributed to the whim of the author, Gosho Aoyama.If you tell readers that these settings all come from the same mystery writer, I think everyone will respect this writer—his influence on Japanese reasoning culture can be seen.

This writer is Edogawa Ranpo, the originator of Japanese reasoning literature. In the last section we talked about the Enlightenment and its dawn of Japanese reasoning literature.Although the dawn period is pregnant with infinite hope, the cognition of many things is inevitably still in a state of chaos, and the same is true for reasoning literature. Many Japanese writers are already consciously creating mystery novels, but these writers have almost no idea whether the things they write are real mystery novels, or what elements should be in mystery novels.In this case, the reader's ability to understand and identify mystery novels can be imagined.

Therefore, at the dawn stage, we saw such a phenomenon: almost all mystery novels were defined as "time novels" or "genre novels", and some commentators simply defined them as "public books".It is undeniable that this has played a positive role in the promotion of mystery novels, but as a genre of literature, this result may not be what the promoters would like to see. An example will suffice to illustrate the problem.In the 1920s, the mystery writer and critic Jun Mizutani first proposed the concept of "mystery novels".Previously, Japan called the novels originated from Edgar Allan Poe as "detective novels". "Detective" is Japanese, which means "detective".In fact, Japan directly inherited the Western saying of "Detective Story".Jun Mizutani proposed the title of "mystery novel", hoping to refer to the detective novels created by the Japanese in order to consolidate the status of such novels in Japan.

However, the term "mystery novel" was not popularized at that time.The reason is simple—I don’t even think about what a speculative novel should be, and I have to add a title subjectively, which obviously does not conform to the materialism that “matter determines consciousness”.It was not until the 1950s that the term "mystery novel" was accepted by the public-this is a later story, which we will talk about in later chapters. It wasn't until the emergence of Edogawa Ranpo that this chaotic situation finally ended. Edogawa Ranpo, whose real name is Hirai Taro, was born on October 21, 1894 in Nabari Town, Naga County, Mie Prefecture.His father, Shigeo Hirai, was the secretary of the Naga County Office; his mother's name was Hirai Ju.When Ranpo was two years old, his family moved to Nagoya City because his father changed jobs.

At the age of 7, Luanbu entered junior primary school, and immediately developed a strong interest in reading.He began to read "World Story Collection" by Xiaobo Iwatani; at the age of 11, after entering the Municipal No. 3 Higher Primary School, he began to read martial arts novels by Harunang Oshikawa and mystery novels rewritten by Kuroiyan Leika. At the age of 13, Ranpo entered Aichi County Fifth Middle School.He is a typical "thinking" student, because he hates running and mechanical gymnastics, he often misses classes.He is not interested in the joys and sorrows of the real world, and likes to be alone in a dark room, quietly building an imaginary world.

It was during this period that Edogawa Ranpo became interested in mystery novels and determined to become an important mystery writer.He came up with the pseudonym "Edogawa Ranpo" for himself because the Japanese pronunciation of the name (Edogawa Ranpo) is very close to that of Edgar Allan Poe, the originator of mystery fiction.Ranpo's ambition has already appeared in his pseudonym. In 1907, Ranpo's father opened the Hirai store and entered the business world.Unfortunately, within a few years, Hirai store went bankrupt due to poor management.Ranpo, who has already graduated from middle school, had to give up her studies.

After that, Ranpo moved to North Korea with his family.Not long after, Ranpo, who had difficulty adapting to life in a foreign country, returned to Japan alone and worked as a typographer at Unzando in Tenjin Town, Yushima, Hongo.Later, Ranpo was admitted to the Waseda University Preparatory School, but due to objective conditions, he seldom attended classes.In the meantime, he worked as a scribe, magazine editor, librarian, and tutor. In the spring of 1913, my grandmother rented a house in Kikuimachi, Ushigome, and moved in with her at random. Since then, she no longer has to work part-time and can concentrate on schooling.In August, Ranpo graduated from the preparatory course and entered the Department of Political Economy. In 1914, he and his classmates founded a magazine called "White Rainbow".

During this period, Ranpo can devote himself to the study of mystery novels, and he loves the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Conan Doyle more and more.Ranpo firmly believes that mystery novels in the true sense must be presented in the form of short stories-this kind of creative thinking was implemented in his later creative career.In order to study European and American novels, Ranpo went to the libraries of Ueno, Hibiya, Ohashi and other places to read in addition to the university library, and bound his reading notes into a book, which he named "Qi Tan". In 1915, Ranpo rewrote the short mystery novel "Arquebus"-this should be the first mystery novel created by Edogawa Ranpo.The prototype of this work is the novel "Dumdorf Incident" by American writer Melville Davidson Post.He submitted his work to the magazine and was encouraged by the editor, but he failed to publish it.

In 1916, Edogawa Ranpo University graduated.He originally planned to go to the United States to develop his own reasoning career, but because of his financial constraints, he had to stay in Japan to find a job.In the following five years, Ranpo traveled all over Japan, changing more than a dozen jobs.According to statistics, Edogawa Ranpo should be the writer of mystery novels with the most careers in the world. So far, Edogawa Ranpo's experience can hardly be called brilliant.All he can grasp is to keep accumulating knowledge of mystery novels. Opportunities are always for those who are prepared.The opportunity arose from a Japanese magazine called New Youth.

"New Youth" magazine was founded in January 1920.Initially, the magazine was positioned as a comprehensive literary magazine, not just speculative novels.But at that time, the reasoning trend was sweeping all over Japan, and it seemed reasonable for magazines to pay attention to reasoning novels. "New Youth" magazine translated and published a large number of excellent western mystery novels, which were quickly recognized by readers and creators, and became the base camp of Japanese mystery literature at that time. Realizing the limitless prospects of mystery novels, "New Youth" decided to increase its efforts on the basis of translation and introduction, and held a mystery essay essay contest.The call for essays requires that the length of each novel should not exceed 4,000 words, and anyone can participate.Although the quality of manuscripts is hardly satisfactory, the event itself has been unanimously recognized by all walks of life.After that, "New Youth" expanded the scope of mystery novels, and launched many supplements with the theme of mystery novels. In 1922, Edogawa Ranpo wrote two novels, "Two Cents" and "A Ticket".At that time, the "New Youth" magazine had raised the word limit to 12,000 words, but the two works of Luanbu still "exceeded the standard".However, he is very confident in his work and firmly believes that its standard is much higher than all Japanese reasoning works.Therefore, Ranpo did not participate in the call for essays, but sent the work directly to Umura Morishita, editor-in-chief of "New Youth" magazine. Umura Morishita read the two works at once, and couldn't believe that they were written by a newcomer. He even thought that the two works were a rewrite of a certain European and American novel.So, he asked Fuki Kosai, a writer of mystery novels who was already very famous at that time, to appraise it, and the latter was also shocked after reading it.Umura Morishita couldn't help sighing: "Mystery novels that are comparable to Europe and the United States have finally been created by the Japanese!" In April 1923, "Two Cents" was published in the magazine "New Youth"—82 years after the publication of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", Japanese mystery novels finally got on the right track.In July of the same year, "A Ticket" was also published in "New Youth", and Edogawa Ranpo established himself as a master of his generation in one fell swoop. 1923 is a year worth remembering, and critics call this year Japan's "first year of reasoning". From 1923 until the death of Edogawa Ranpo in 1965, the Japanese reasoning literary world was always led by him.The road to creation after that can be described as smooth sailing—— In 1925, he published "Dazaka Murder Incident", shaping the first famous detective in the history of Japanese reasoning - Akechi Kogoro.This talented freelancer is the first serial detective in Japanese mystery novels, and is honored as the "Patriarch" by all reasoning writers in later generations. Subsequent "Walking in the Attic", "The Chair of the World", "The Man Who Traveled with a Scroll", "The Beast", "The Strange Tale of Palo Lama", "The Black Lizard", "The Trickster and the Air" Men" and other short stories have become textbook-style works. From 1929 to 1931, Ranpo successively created three novels, "Ghost of the Lonely Island", "Spider Man" and "Magician", all of which are also of high standard. From 1936 to 1937, in order to further popularize the reasoning culture, Ranpo began to create mystery novels with juvenile themes.He successively published two novels, "Twenty Faces of a Monster" and "Youth Detective Team", both of which were successful.The Phantom Thief with Twenty Faces and the Boy Detective Team portrayed in the book are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, becoming national idols and being put on the screen.The famous movie star Takeshi Kaneshiro once played the weird man with twenty faces.It can be seen how successful this character was portrayed. Edogawa Ranpo's works are divided into two categories: one is traditional mystery novels with puzzle-solving as the core; the other is generalized mystery novels with fantasy and novelty-seeking nature.These two types of works have played a guiding role that cannot be ignored in the development of Japanese mystery novels. The creators have combined the two styles to create countless reasoning works with strong Japanese flavors, expanding the genre that only belongs to this genre. The reasoning culture of Dongying island country. On Saturday, June 15, 1946, Ranpo Edogawa hosted a "Symposium for Mystery Writers in Beijing" and introduced the recent development of American mystery novels to the guests present.After this meeting, everyone decided to hold a regular meeting on the second Saturday of each month, called "Tuyao Kai" (Saturday is called "Tuyao Day" in Japan). A year later, with the Toyokai as their team, Japanese reasoning writers established the "Detective Writers Club" and unanimously elected Edogawa Ranpo as its president. In October 1954, the Detective Writers Club merged with the Kansai Detective Writers Club and was renamed the "Japanese Detective Writers Club". To this day, this society is still the most authoritative reasoning cultural institution in Japan, and the "Japan Reasoning Writers Association Award" awarded every year is known as the "Oscar of reasoning". In 1954, at the banquet celebrating the 60th birthday of Edogawa Ranpo, in order to revitalize Japanese mystery novels, Ranpo provided 1 million yen to the Japanese Detective Writers Club and established the "Edogawa Ranpo Award"—— This award is the most prestigious reasoning award in Japan. In the first two editions, the grand prize was awarded to two theoretical research books on reasoning culture.From the third year onwards, the grand prize has been changed to a long mystery essay solicitation to encourage newcomers to create. We don't need to talk about the great significance of the "Edogawa Ranpo Award", let's take a look at the award-winning works and writers over the past half a century—— "Only Cats Know", written by Etsuko Nigi, is one of the first works of social reasoning; "The Terrorist's Parasol", written by Fujiwara Iori, sold 340,000 copies in a single volume; "Withered Grass Roots", written by Chen Shunchen, a master of Japanese literature; , by Makoto Morimura, a social master; , written by Keigo Higashino, the number one Japanese king today; ... It is not difficult for us to imagine the significance of Edogawa Ranpo to Japanese reasoning culture.What would Keigo Higashino, who is so popular today, be like without the selfless support of Ranpo Dagong? Ranpo Edogawa also actively participated in theoretical research on mystery novels, and successively published "Overseas Detective Writers and Works" introducing European and American mystery novels, and pure theoretical classics "Phantom City" and "Reading Phantom City".In view of Ranpo's contribution to the Japanese reasoning literary world, the Japanese government awarded him the "Purple Ribbon Medal" in November 1961. On July 28, 1965, Ranpo died of cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 71.The Japanese government awarded him the "Third Class Ruibao Medal of the Five Honors" to commemorate his immortal achievements. Edogawa Ranpo is the founder, the spiritual leader and the mainstay.Without Edogawa Ranpo, it would be impossible to have the situation of "a hundred schools of thought contending" today.Both the Honge School and the Biange School, both the Socialist School and the New Honge School, all originated from Ranpo; both Yokomizo Masashi and Matsumoto Seicho, Shimada Shoji and Higashino Keigo all learned from Ranpo. Why the boy’s surname is “Edogawa”, why the detective is “Kogoro”, what happened to Kaitou Kidd and the Detective Boys, I believe there is no need to explain now. All this is to pay the highest respect to Grandmaster Ranpo.