The Red Chamber

by Edogawa Rampo, Kazuya Fukuju Minami Hara (Translator), Mio Hirabayashi Nanase Hirayama (Translator)

Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965) is, as his nom de plume indicates, Japan's answer to Edgar Allen Poe. This tale of a madman who spends his days devising new ways to murder each of the hundred people he must kill before he can rest runs true to Edogawa's gothic, horror roots. A short but compelling story, with an ending that you will never see coming.

This story was translated by the participants of the Japanese-English Literary Translation workshop, held at Akita International University in the winter of 2019. The translators, in alphabetical order, are Kazuya Fukuju, Minami Hara, Mio Hirabayashi, Nanase Hirayama, Norichika Ishiyama, Yuna Kajimoto, Sakura Kodama, Moe Miyajima, Hitomi Miyaki, Sayo Morimoto, Hikaru Ohba, Emi Ozaki, Rin Saito, Saho Shimizu, Daiki Takemoto, Misato Tamaki, Mariko Tamura, Hinako Tanikawa, Miri Taniyama. Edited by Mark Gibeau.

Genres: Short Stories, Japanese Literature, Fiction, Japan, Horror, Classics

18 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 7, 2019

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

[cyannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

no one imagines that the law might overlook murder

bardzo krotkie, ale genialne

[Zuzia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Podobało mi się, ale chyba mam problem z wyższym ocenianiem krótkich książek:(
Plottwist na koniec był fajny tho, unexpected!

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

kinda cheating again but this was such a good story! probably one of my favorite edgar allan poe stories (not written by edgar allan poe). full of plot twists and turns of the screw and very cunning and witty. i'd definitely like to read some more edogawa rampo! best pen name ever

[Fumiko · Rating 5 out of 5]

* too stunned to make a review *

[Riki (˶˃⤙˂˶) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 💫

“Rather, I had a long-established, good friendship with him.
Nonetheless, I felt a peculiar desire to transform him into a corpse, smiling all the while and without him suspecting a thing”.

Ugh, that was spooky (｡>﹏<)

I liked the way the protagonist narrated the story. He had a sophisticated way with words, but still I felt he had this brutish side to him under the surface. At times there was even a kind of amusing, yet disturbing, nuance to his telling. I could find it funny even, what he’d done, along with him.

I think I liked this. The version I read had quite a lot of spelling errors and the grammar was a bit off in some places, but I tried to not let it cloud my judgement.

There was this bit where the child died, which was really tough on me, but that wasn’t really what brought my grade down. What I found less agreeable was the ending.

[nat ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“come now my poor, bored friends. isn’t this precisely the sort of thing that you wanted all along? isn’t this exactly the kind of excitement that you sought?”

[mish]

I enjoyed this a lot!

[Worm · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this short story as a part of a greater Edogawa Rampo short story collection Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination.

A secret society meets to tell tales - and one man recounts how he has killed 99 people and gotten away with it. These "murders" are easy for him to get away with as "accidents" - unfortunate incidents that just so happen to end poorly for the victim involved.

While this premise could have been interesting had there been more thought/written about the plotting and avoidance of being caught - it was all just rather dumb. Mostly little incidents that are actual unfortunate accidents that happened - whether or not he had actual malice in wanting these people dead.

That being said, I quite like the idea of the ending (even if - again - the execution of it wasn't done to my tastes). It really puts on display the foolishness of it all- taking into account how dumb all the previous incidents felt as well.

While I'm not sure this story was worth the read for me- it was entertaining enough thinking about the ending.

[Vera Papp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Ranpo fella is really tricky! This story is one of those few cases where I even liked how the author cheated multiple times as this ‘fiction in fiction’ / ‘illusions in illusions’ kind of narration was carried out constantly. I did figure out some of the plot twists though, but in the end the whole plot managed to trick me.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tale about a secret society that functions as a leisure getaway for bored adults to tell enticing horror stories to cure their boredom and that of the other members. The character telling the story in this book frightened me to the core. It's absolutely incredible.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilarious honestly

[Afra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wild narrative. Definitely worth reading.

[emil · Rating 5 out of 5]

YEET