Edogawa Ranpo: Life and Major Works

Life
1894–1965
Born in
Mie
Literary schools
  • Popular Fiction
Wikipedia
Wikipedia

Biography

Born in 1894 in Nabari, Mie Prefecture; his real name was Hirai Tarō. After graduating from the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, he drifted through various jobs before publishing "The Two-Sen Copper Coin" in 1923 under the pen name Edogawa Ranpo — a tribute to his beloved Edgar Allan Poe — and emerged as the pioneer of Japanese detective fiction. He created the great detective Akechi Kogorō and won a wide following with a range that spanned orthodox detective stories such as "The Psychological Test" and "The Case of the Murder on D. Slope" to works steeped in the grotesque and fantastic, such as "The Human Chair" and "The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture." His boys' adventure series "The Fiend with Twenty Faces" also won him nationwide popularity among young readers, while after the war he devoted himself to criticism, scholarship, and mentoring younger writers, serving as the first president of the Detective Writers Club of Japan (now the Mystery Writers of Japan) and endowing the Edogawa Rampo Prize from his own funds. He died in 1965 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 70.

Works in the app

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