Customer Reviews

Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I can think of few more truly disturbing stories than Edogawa Rampo's "The Chair." A psychologically fable describing in minute detail how a master furniture maker, obsessed with an unachievable woman, creates a chair with himself hidden inside. This chair is given to the woman, and each time she sits in it she nestles unknowingly in his lap, puts her weight onto him, lays her head against his face. The furniture maker silently feels her every night, without her ever knowing. The atmosphere, the detail of the language, and the sheer nature of the story combine for one of the classics of this genre.

"The Chair" is of course included in "Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination," a compilation by the father of Japanese mystery writing. Much is made of his adopting the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allan Poe as his pen name, but Rampo's style is his own. He favors psychological horror, and there are few elements of the supernatural to be found. Sociopaths and obsessives seem to be his stock in trade, with detailed exercises on how to commit the perfect, untraceable murder. Many of the stories end with some unexpected revelation, although I would not call it a "twist ending." The obsessive nature of the stories renders them all the more disturbing, as almost every story is something that could conceivably happen.

In addition to the excellent "The Chair," you will find "The Caterpillar" featuring a cruel wife's abuse of her de-limbed husband, "The Cliff," a back-and-forth story that will leave you wondering who is manipulating who, "The Hell of Mirrors," a man obsessed with optics and reflecting surfaces descent into insanity, "The Red Chamber," revealing the true nature of those who are attracted to stories of others deaths, "The Two Crippled Men," a story of a murderous sleepwalker who commits crimes without ever knowing it and "The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture," the only story with a supernatural twinge, showing brotherly devotion and love of the unreal.

Each story in "Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination" is well-selected, and James B. Harris does a fine job with the translation, maintaining the tension and original intention. The only real shame is that this is the only collection of Rampo's works that has been translated into English. After reading this you will long for more.

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.

Edogawa Rampo (a pen name based on the Japanese phonetic rendering of "Edgar Allan Poe") wrote stories featuring bizarre plot twists, keen insight into human nature (usually the dark side), and dreamlike imagery. Rampo was truly a brilliant writer, way ahead of his time, and this excellent translation is a pleasure to read. Many of these stories continue to haunt me long after I read them, and I've enjoyed reading them again and again--and sharing them with friends.

First let me say that I picked this volume up with low expectations and now I must say that I'm deeply impressed.Here is a writer whose vision is entirely his own, his style succint and easy to understand.
Although frequently labelled as a mystery writer, Rampo`s short stories are best viewed as weird fiction with pulp mystery flavour.
All stories are worth reading but THE HUMAN CHAIR is an undisputed masterpiece and in my humble opinion one of the best weird short stories ever written
Edogawa Rampo is an original and deserves recognition and a larger audience.

THE JAPANESE TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION:

The Human Chair ======================== *****
Psychological Test ===================== ***
The Caterpillar ======================== *****
The Cliff ============================== ****
The Hell Of Mirrors ==================== *****
The Twins ============================== ****
The Red Chamber ======================== ***1/2
The Two Cripple Man ==================== ***1/2
The Traveller with the Pasted... ======= ***1/2

One of the most intriguing visuals associated with Gothic Lolita fashion is Ero-Guro, or the erotic-grotesque. This sensibility has its roots in the Taisho era (1912-26), during which the Japanese experienced World War I and struggled to make sense of the West after centuries of isolation. The disturbed mood of the times was captured in the mystery stories of Edogawa Rampo (a pseudonym inspired by Edgar Allan Poe). An English compilation, dubbed Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination, includes:

>> The chilling story of a quadruple amputee living in isolation with his perverse wife;
>> The weird record of a man obsessed with optics who creates a chamber of mirrors and descends into insanity;
>> The morbid confession of a maniac who envisioned a career of foolproof "psychological" murders;
>> The eerie encounter with a portrait that appears to be alive;
>> The twisted psyche of a somnambulist who commits murder in his sleep;
>> The bizarre tale of the chair-maker who buried himself inside an armchair and enjoyed a sordid career of "loves" with the women who sat on him.

The fetishistic impulses of Ero-Guro are laid bare in "The Caterpillar," a story of a lieutenant horribly disfigured by a shell. "His arms and legs had been amputated so closely that not even stumps remained, but only four lumps of flesh to mark where his limbs had been. Often he would lie on his great belly and, using these lumps to propel himself, manage to spin round and round - a top made of living flesh. (P74)" His wife must devote every minute to caring for this fragment of a man, who can only express himself through round, child-like eyes. And she finds herself wrestling with strange and perverse sensations: "The very disgust and ugliness [...] seemed to excite all her pent-up passions and to paralyze her nerves. (P75)"

The wife's reaction is disturbing, but perhaps not so surprising. There is something captivating about a cute, helpless baby doll that is simultaneously grotesque and gory; Guro-Lolita fashion flirts with this tension. For those intrigued by Gothic Lolita, check out the website http://www.lacarmina.com

If you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes, Dostoyevsky, and Poe, check out Edogawa Rampo's fast-paced stories. They'll chill your blood - and give you a glimpse into the cultural background of Gothic Lolita.

The first 4 stories are awesome!
The rest are ok... but overall, it's an amazing book!

Somewhat convoluted tales. some i could not finish as symbolism got the better of the story and i lost the meaning. But what else can one expect really... Worth a read as a backdrop to Murakami, need to have a little understanding of Japanese mythodology.

Rampo's stories are startling and disquieting. He also has the taste for the bizarre (the Human Chair). His tales demonstrate the lengths that human beings will seek out or succumb to evil.

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.

Hirai Taro (1894-1965), who wrote under the name Edogawa Rampo (in theory, the name is supposed to sound like 'Edgar Allan Poe' when spoken by a person for whom Japanese is the native tongue) may have been a great literary writer, but no evidence of such a claim is found in this translation of Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination (first published in America in 1956). In fact, the stories presented are third-rate at best, and don't even begin to approach the depth, power, majesty, and complexity found in Poe.

In The Caterpillar, for example, a woman finds herself burdened with the care of her helpless husband, who has lost all his limbs, half of his face, and most of his senses in a military exercise. While her service to her spouse is perceived as admirable among those in her immediate social circle, in private, the woman rages in frustration and cruelly tortures her dependent mate.

But since this story, like all the others included here, is overwritten on a line-by-line basis but under-dramatized, the bare plot, which is told with no emotional insight or power whatsoever, becomes the sole focus of the piece. A Nathanial Hawthorne, or even a Stephen King, would have been able to explore and magnify all the psychological nuances inherent in the wife's plight, including her continued sexual attraction to her horribly deformed spouse, but Rampo, at least as translated here, does absolutely nothing with his material.

The most famous Edogawa Rampo story, The Human Chair, starts well, and certainly is the best of the stories included in the volume. A very ugly but brilliantly-talented furniture maker, socially isolated and outcast by his appearance, creates a chair into which he can conceal himself for long periods, and thus indirectly experience human contact on a very restricted basis.

However, the climax of the tale reveals the 'story' to be only a literary hoax perpetrated on one character by another, a revelation that completely undercuts the narrative's power.

In Two Crippled Men, one character, Ihara, attempts to relate the horror, shame, and guilt he has felt over the course of his life as a person suffering from somnambulism.

Rampo, via Ihara, repeatedly tries to convey to the reader how awful this experience has been, but Ihara's enpassionated entreaties to his guest, Saito, for understanding and sympathy are unconvincing and shallow, and so weakly presented as to appear almost stupid.

Additionally, the sleepwalker scenario is unimaginatively presented and developed: Ihara comes to fear slumber, then talks in his sleep, steals a watch, and robs a neighbor.

There is no mystery of either the literal or figurative variety found in this book, and very little imagination. The stories come off as weak pulp fodder at best, perhaps glamorized by Rampo's foreign origins, his reputation in Japan, a mild emphasis upon the grotesque, and a measured amount of publisher's hype.

There is also the possibility that Ramp was a genuine literary talent, but if so, his original work has been very badly served by James B. Harris's translation, which is bursting with trite description and an overabundance of exclamation points.