Between 1916 and 1937 the critic and playwright Kido Okamoto (1872-1939) published the "Hanshichi Torimonocho"; stories, devoted to the activities of a fictional detective, Inspector Hanshichi. These tales the author claimed to have heard straight from the aging informant himself, born, he says, in 1823 in Nihonbashi. The various deductions were presumed to have occurred around 1850 and Hanshichi was supposed to be telling these to Okamoto in the 1890s. Ian MacDonald here translates 14 of the original 68 stories, mostly from the first year of serialization.
By the time Okamoto was publishing these, the exploits of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes were well known and quite popular in Japan. Consequently Hanshichi behaves in a manner somewhat similar — he relies on observation and logic as well as on coincidence and the knack of being in the right place at the right time. The stories themselves are as rudimentary as those of Doyle and often depend upon an equally tiresome prowess for their effect.
A further resemblance is that Okamoto himself stands in for Dr. Watson, to whom Holmes discloses his various deductions. It is Watson, who provides the great detective with an admiring audience, just as Okamoto does for Hanshichi.