Today, Japanese hard-boiled crime fiction prospers very well and is one of the most popular fiction genres in Japan, with many best-selling writers and works adapted into films and TV dramas. This popularity, however, is not very well known of in other countries.

Hard-boiled crime stories were introduced into Japan after World War II. At the time, the US army was in Japan and some Japanese became familiar with American hard-boiled novels, mainly from paperbacks published for the army. 'Hayakawa Pocket Mystery Books,' which was started in 1953, had The Big Kill by Mickey Spillane as its first translation, followed by Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest and Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black. This series has been actively publishing hard-boiled novels since its early days.

During the late 1950s, Japanese writers began to write hard-boiled stories. One typical writer from this period was Haruhiko Oyabu. His first novella, Yajyu Shisubeshi (The Beast Must Die), which was written when he was a university student, was published in a commercial magazine in 1958. It is a crime fiction in which the hero, Kunihiko Date, stole big money. It was evident that the story was deeply influenced by US hard-boiled fiction, especially those by Mickey Spillane. Oyabu wrote many hard-boiled novels for about 40 years, with the Date series being one of his major works.

Assuming Haruhiko Oyabu transplanted the seedling of hard-boiled fiction from the United States to the soil of Japan, the young tree was brought up by some excellent pioneers, such as Tensei Kono, Shouji Yuuki, and Jiro Ikushima, who nursed it in the Japanese climate. They created Japanese hard-boiled fiction and became widely acknowledged for their excellent private detective novels in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tensei Kono's first novel is a Noir story about the falling of an ambitious young man. Kono also created a private detective for his 1963 novel, Satsui Toiu Na No Kachiku (Cattle for the Slaughter), which won the Mystery Writers Award of Japan.

Shouji Yuuki was writing various kinds of mysteries, from humor mysteries to serious spy novels. His most important work in the hard-boiled/private detective genre is a series involving a protagonist called Maki (first name unknown). This series contains three novels, including the 1965 Kurai Rakujitsu (Dark Setting Sun). All three were stories about tracing a missing person, finding a homicide, and a past tragedy-similar as in Ross McDonald's novels. Yuuki's controlled writing and his gentle views on the weak  impressed the readership positively.
He won the Mystery Writers Award of Japan with Yoru No Owaru Toki (At the End of the Night) in 1963, a devastating story about a rogue cop.

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Naomi Hoida

Member of the Mystery Writers of Japan, Noami Hoida has been an avid reader of mysteries and Hard-Boiled literature since her young days and is now regularly reviewing foreign mysteries for three Japanese magazines. Besides her article about Japanese HB/Noir that follows here- especially written for H ard- Boiled M ysteries-, she is preparing a short essay on William Bernhardt which will be published in November in Japan. to Naomi Hoida web site >>>

Kateshi Kitano
(actor and film director)
Emblematic Japanese Noir films