Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination

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Summary: A wonderful collection of stories!
Review: I am a huge Japanophile and a lover of dark tales of mystery and I found that this book is the best of both worlds. After reading these stories, I pulled out my dusty old collection of Poe stories and started reading them all over. The translations are excellent (despite a few questionable spellings) and the overall feel of the novel is very Poe-esque (undoubtedly because Edogawa Ranpo, himself, assisted the translator in the creation of this collection).

While a few reviewers have criticized Edogawa Ranpo for his stories lacking Poe's feel for the dark horror novel, one must know that Edogawa Ranpo is regarded as the father of the Japanese MYSTERY novel, not horror. So, for anyone hoping to get a good scare from this book, you will be let down.

But, with that said, the stories are wonderful and I, quite honestly, would have forgotten that the stories were set in Japan if not for character names. A beautiful collection of dark mysteries that would please fans of Poe's "The Purloined Letter" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," but not necessarily fans of "The Pit and the Pendulum."

I highly recommend this book to fans of Japanese literature, those who like the "Kindaichi Case Files" (Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo) and fans of a good mystery.

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Summary: weird...
Review: I've just finished reading this book today and let me tell you that it was quite a ride. I use to read horror fiction quite often, but as I got older I kind of let it fall to the wayside. But for my modern Japanese literature class we had to read this book, and Let me tell you that it really, really was something else. I don't want to go into any details about the short stories, because one should experience them for oneself. Some of you out there might remember a film about Edogawa that was released a few years ago. Well, if you liked that film I am pretty sure that you will enjoy this book also.

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Summary: An Oriental Poe, without the Poe Punch
Review: One of the hallmarks of Japanese civilization has been its propensity for adopting foreign ideas, improving them slightly, and then remarketing them competitively with brutal efficiency: from Japanese ideograms to corporate inventory systems to economy and luxury cars, this cultural tactic has served the island nation well.

It is unfortunate, then, that Hirai Taro, who adopted the pen-name Edogawa Rampo (a play on the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allen Poe's name, which James Harris's boring introduction spends far too much time on) was not able to draw on that distinctly Japanese capacity to modify and improve with his "Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination", inspired by his love affair with the works of that Godfather of the American horror tale, Edgar Allen Poe.

There are some sleek, black little slivers of grue in this collection, to be sure, and the book is highly recommended for horror completists and those who are interested in what is certainly a literary curiosity. For instance, there is "The Chair", a nasty little shocker about a deformed and lonely chairmaker who gives in to his fantasy of being sealed up in a chair of his own making: at first to steal from the hotel in which the chair is placed, and then, by degrees, to derive his own pleasure from the sensation of being so close, separated only by cloth and leather, from the bodies of those who sit in the chair.

There are two other stories in this little volume that approach the raw grue of "The Chair": "Two Crippled Men", a tale of somnambulism and trickery, and "Caterpillar", a nasty, perverse little story about a woman and her horribly maimed husband, a veteran with no limbs and no ability to hear or speak; this last story resembles in form and in tone the classic French 'contes-cruelles', where the greatest of horror is found, not in the supernatural, but in the perversities and nastiness that men practice on their neighbors, friends, and lovers.

The other tales in the book are variations on the same theme: committing the perfect crime. These are typically well staged, slightly eerie, and all make good use of their Japanese settings, but ultimately the redundancy becomes tiresome, and the stories lack that nasty final bite that characterizes the true tale of terror. Even with the stunning "Chair", Rampo manages to undermine his own ending, sapping the tale's initial unsettling power.

"The Chair" is unique; it is hard to imagine a similar horror tale that manages to creep under the skin so effectively; for that reason, I give Rampo's little volume 3 stars. If you're intrigued by the prospect of "The Chair" and "The Caterpillar", then by all means buy the book, but don't expect Rampo's other tales to have the pungency of evil and the thrill of these first two stories.