Western-style stories of crime and detection began making their appearance in Japan from the mid-19th century, initially as translations of works by American, British and French authors. After decades of adaptation and experimentation and the interlude of the Pacific War years, the genre finally came into its own.
The work under review, in the author's own words, aims to provide a "description and assessment of Japanese writers' responses to the problem of writing in the borrowed genre of detective fiction."
"Purloined Letters" is a solid work of scholarship and analysis that will appeal to those interested in knowing more about how this cultural transplant progressed. It focuses on three writers who figured prominently in the evolution of mystery and crime fiction in Japan: Ruiko Kuroiwa, Kido Okamoto and Edogawa Rampo. (The latter is rendered family name first, to preserve its intentional mimicry of Edgar Allan Poe).