Jiro Ikushima strongly intended to transplant the hard-boiled root in Japan's climate since he was chief editor for the Japanese version of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. After resigning in 1963, he wrote his debut work, Shoukon No Machi (The Scared City, 1964), which won admiration as a true Japanese hard-boiled novel. His deep admiration for Raymond Chandler, and his thought that the essence of the hard-boiled protagonist was to carry out his (or her) life, had a strong influence on subsequent Japanese hard-boiled writers. His most important work is a series with Sirou Shida. The first appearance of this private eye is in Oitsumeru (Cornering, 1967). The novel won a major award, the Naoki Award, and Jiro Ikushima gained recognition as a popular writer.

These writers, appearing in the 1960s, contributed tremendously to the development of the hard-boiled genre in the 1970s. The Japanese hard-boiled genre expanded its roots and grew steadily by their works.  
In the early 1980s, many writers produced various kinds of hard-boiled fiction, amongst them were the writers Kenzo Kitakata, Arimasa Osawa, Yoshinaga Fujita, and Ryou Hara, almost all of whom wrote bestsellers, won many major literature awards, and whose works are still applauded.    

Kenzo Kitakata is a very prolific writer who has published more than 100 books since 1970. His early works belonged to mainstream polite literature. He has won almost all of the main literature awards for five years since his first hard-boiled novel in 1981. He produced many series, of which Ori (The Cage) is one of the best and most important hard-boiled novels in Japan. Kitakata, in this novel, described the way of life of a man who fought alone against a Yakuza (a Japanese Mafia member) and against a big company. Kitakata has also actively challenged various other genres, and recently became very well known as a bestseller writer of historical fictions, some of which have garnered literary awards.  
Arimasa Osawa is famous for his Shinjyuku Same series featuring Sameshima (first name unknown), a lone wolf lieutenant of the Shinjyuku police station. Osawa finally produced an excellent hard-boiled private eye novel, Kouri No Mori, (The Ice Forest) in 1989, after having written novels in a variety of hard-boiled styles during the 1980s. He then started the best-selling Shinjyuku Same series in 1990, in which he vividly describes the chaotic world of the Shinjyuku area where various types of crimes occur frequently.  

It is not easy to succeed with hard-boiled fictions featuring a private detective in Japan, because this kind of job is not familiar to the Japanese public. Therefore, Yoshinaga Fujita started, in 1986, as a mystery writer by introducing a Japanese private detective in Paris. His best work, Koutetsu No Kishi (The Knight of Steel, 1994), is a Noir story about a young Japanese man involved in a complicated conspiracy in Paris, France, in 1936. But, Ryou Hara stuck to typical private detective fictions like Raymond Chandler's works. His first novel, Soshite Yoru Ha Yomigaeru (And the Night Revives, 1988), which features a middle-aged private detective, Sawazaki (first name unknown), reminds of Philip Marlow's stories. Hara did not produce much, but all of his works are excellent hard-boiled novels and he has many ardent supporters in Japan.  

There are some crime writers who have created hard-boiled "orientated" heroes, who cannot be ignored. Some of them such as Gou Ousaka and Tatsuo Shimizu write stories about men whom overcome severe troubles and several difficulties. 'The Maltese Falcon' by Dashiell Hammett deeply affected Gou Ousaka when he read it in his junior high school days. In one of his important books, Kadis No Akai Hoshi (The Red Star in Cadiz), the protagonist searching after a mysterious guitar in Spain is involved in a historical stratagem about the Spanish Civil War.
Tasuo Shimizu creates hard-boiled stories with a lyrical writing style of his own.
In one of his praised works, Somuite Kokyou (Against Home, 1985), the protagonist searches the murder of his bosom friend. Shimisu's vivid description about friendship and severe nature made a great impression on the readers.  

                        Continuation     [to page 3]

 Ori (The Cage)
by Kenzo Kitakata 

 
 
 Shinjyukuzame
(The Saint in Sodom) - Arimasa Osawa