Japanese Gothic: Four twisted tales from Japan's master of the macabre

by Edogawa Rampo, Alexis Brown (Translator)

Born as Hirai Tarō, Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965) was an influential author and critic known for his tales of the mysterious and macabre. His pseudonym is a rendering of Edgar Allen Poe using Japanese characters. Ranpo often dealt with themes of sexual perversion and the grotesque, as well as writing more conventional crime fiction.
This is a collection of four of his darkest and most deviant short ‘The Idol’ (人でなしの恋 , 1926); ‘Pomegranate’ (石榴 , 1934); ‘The Hand’ (指 , 1960); and ‘The Devouring Insects’ (虫 , 1929).
‘Pomegranate’ and ‘The Devouring Insects’ have previously been published under the title ‘Pomegranate and The Devouring Insects’. 'The Idol' and 'The Hand' are published here in English for the first time.
Alexis J Brown is a translator living in London.
Cover image

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Horror

110 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 26, 2023

About the author

Hirai Tarō (平井 太郎), better known by the pseudonym Rampo Edogawa ( 江戸川 乱歩), sometimes romanized as "Ranpo Edogawa", was a Japanese author and critic who played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery fiction.

Reviews

[Robert]

I completely enjoyed this collection, almost as much as Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The stories weren’t quite as good, but the translation was solid. It’s a shame how stories are so hard to find translated. They are clever and reminiscent of Tales from the Crypt mixed with detective stories. Highly recommended.

[Genesis]

Japanese Gothic: Four twisted tales from the pen of Edogawa Ranpo

After read 3.75 on 5⭐️

For: Fast short twisted stories you could finish in a day if you wanted.

After thought:
I loved how these short stories made me delve in the mind of an obsessed person and felt disturbed in a psychological way.

Kind of creepy yeah. 🫣

[Ash]

(Average score after ranking all of the short stories was 3.2/5 so 3 stars)

Before I begin my review of each of the individual stories, I wanted to give a special shoutout to the translator of the novel, Alexis Brown. I've read a number of their translations so far and they have all been wonderful and very coherent and natural-sounding. Also thanks to them, I've been able to read a lot of classic Japanese authors that probably would not have been published otherwise. I cannot wait to read more of her future translations of both Ranpo and other authors in the future. I want it to be noted none of my criticisms come from her translation work.

Now, onto the actual works.

Ever since reading The Demon of the Lonely Isle and loving it, I've been quite endeared to Edogawa Ranpo and he is beginning to become one of my favorite classical Japanese authors. His writing style is simple and enjoyable and he clearly has such a love for what he writes. I love a lot of the writing quirks of his I have noticed in his works - from his constant name drops of authors like Poe and Doyle (amongst many others) and his recurring themes of perversion, disfigurement, strange characters... he is just a good time.

In this collection, we have four of his short stories and I got to say, the collection started out strong but kind of died down for me at the end, though I overall had a really good time reading all of these.

My individual ratings and mini-reviews are thus:

- The Idol - 5/5 stars - This was by far my favorite work from the collection and was a strong opening. The story was very compellingly told and while the ending is predicable, it was satisfying and overall, it had a good build up. This is the work I will probably remember best out of everything in this collection. Perfect length for the story it was trying to tell.

- Pomegranate - 4/5 stars - This was is a mystery novel and a rather endearing one. Light spoilers, but there is a bit of hokiness - like the main character "forgetting" about a seemingly very morbid case which involved a friend of his and also totally willing to sit on a precarious cliff edge with a man to tell this tale - but it was still a very enjoyable time and a nice mystery. There were some quibbles I had with the ending, which knocked it down a star, but overall it was a good classic mystery story and I love the nods to other works of literature it contained within it.

- The Hand - 1/5 stars - This is by far the worst story in the collection. Very, very short and predictable story that doesn't really offer much - neither in terms of horror or as a story. It honestly reminded me of a bad short creepypasta a YouTuber I used to watch would read out to meet a daily video quota. As I said before though, it is incredibly short (only a page long) so it doesn't torture you for too long.

- The Devouring Insects - 3/5 stars - This is the story in this collection that I am most mixed on. It had a compelling set up and characters... my problem is I just think it lasted longer than it needed to (it began to feel repetitive at a certain point) and then ended far too suddenly for me to give it a much higher rating. It had a lot of interesting concepts throughout though and I found the descriptions in this one to be some of the best in the collection.

Overall, a mixed bag of stories but all easy to read and digestable. I highly recommend reading Edogawa Ranpo if you haven't and if you were to indivually look up the stories in this book, I recommend 'The Idol' and 'Pomegrante' the most.

Can't wait to read more Ranpo in the future and can't wait to read more of Brown's translations.

[Fionnuala]

A solid collection. The style of writing isn't my favourite; I'm not sure if this is a translation thing, as I've read other Japanese translations that don't have this problem. It could also be that this is just how things were written during this time period, and the translation reflects that. It came across sometimes as a little clunky, and one of the stories had the monologue as narrative thing that I hate -- thankfully it was a decent story, and I know this technique was typical of the time, but I still dislike it and would have probably been rolling my eyes even if I'd been a contemporary reader.

There's a variety of styles in here, which is impressive as there are only four stories. Two of them are straightfoward Gothic, with deranged characters and forbidden love and murder and suicide and secrets and all that fun stuff. Another is a detective fiction, which is a lot of fun and a brilliant homage to the style. It has all the classic tropes while still remaining interesting and not entirely predictable; the things I did predict were fun to see come to light, and the crime itself is wonderfully convoluted and deranged. The final one is a very short ghost story that isn't that great -- it's barely a page long, written choppily, and gives the story no room to settle or grow. Personally if I were Ranpo I would not have wanted it included; it seems like a very, very rough draft.

Overall, though, an enjoyable collection. There's definitely a lot of dark content in here and it's written as actually disturbing, rather than simple shock value. The stories (with the exception of the short one previously mentioned) all take time time to get into the minds (or try to) of those concerned, and it's genuinely deranged in parts. Overall it's a lot of fun, shocking and uncomfortable in the good way, and definitely with a distinct Gothic flavour.

[Hanan]

Japanese Gothic by Edogawa Ranpo is a collection of four short stories, and it was absolutely amazing. I loved every single story. If I had to recommend a reading order, I would start with “Pomegranate,” then read “The Doll,” then move on to the third story (I unfortunately forgot the title), and finish with the Hand. In that order, the whole collection felt even more enjoyable and well-paced.

The writing is outstanding, beautiful, intense, and memorable. Each story pulled me in completely, and by the end I felt like I had read something truly special. It’s an amazing book with amazing writing. I love it,
😍

[John Marr]

While certainly not top notch Rampo, this oddly assembled collection of four stories more than lives up to the title as well as Rampo's legendary perversity. The story where the killer forces his victim to drink sulfuric acid isn't even the sickest thing here! Not recommended for the cozy crowd.

[Author Mike Froom]

Gave me nightmares. This made me feel uncomfortable in my own home. I can't wait to see what else is written by Rampo.

[Silver Oh]

(Florals? for spring? groundbreaking)/5