Keigo Higashino Translated Books

[Margaretha Palone]

Higashinowas born in the Ikuno-ku ward of the city of Osaka in Osaka Prefecture. The logographic letters that make up the family name were initially read as "Tono", but Keigo's father changed the reading to "Higashino".

Growing up in a working class area, Higashino's childhood was challenging because of the lower class to which his family belonged.[2] He attended Koji Elementary School, Higashi Ikuno Junior High School, and Hannan High School. During his high school years he started reading mystery fiction.

In 1981, he began working as an engineer at Nippon Denso Co. (presently DENSO), and married a high school teacher. He continued to write in the evenings and on weekends,[3] submitting unpublished mystery novels for consideration for the annual Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1983. In 1984, his submission, which drew on his wife's occupation, reached the final round. In 1985, at the age of 27, he won the Rampo Prize for best unpublished mystery for Hōkago (放課後, After School), drawing on experiences of the archery club at his former university. He resigned from DENSO in 1986 to start a career in Tokyo as a full-time writer.

In 1998, Higashino published Himitsu (秘密, Secret), which was adapted into a feature film and won the 52nd Mystery Writers of Japan Award for feature films in 1999. Secret was later translated into English by Kerim Yasar and published as Naoko in 2004, with a limited print run.[3] Higashino was inspired to write the story by reading a book in which a young child possessed the memories of someone who died nearby. He tried writing a short story featuring the implications of what would happen in such an instance, "but the ideas didn't fully materialize. Finally I presented it as a novel and it got picked up." A 1999 Japanese film, Himitsu, was based on the book, as was a 2007 English-language French remake,The Secret, starring David Duchovny.[2]

Higashino received the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Prize in 2014 for Inori no Maku ga Oriru Toki (祈りの幕が下りる時, When the Curtain of Prayer Descends), the 10th book[a] to feature Detective Kyoichiro Kaga. He thought that the book would be the end of the Kaga series, as he had done what he wanted to do with it.[4]

Higashino is one of the most popular authors in Asia and, reportedly, the most popular novelist in China.[5] Translation rights for his books, like Suspect X, were sold as far afield as China, Thailand, France, Russia and Spain.[3] Both his Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint were published in 6 languages.[6] His popularity has drawn the attention of Asian academics, with papers and master's theses on his work published in China,[7] Indonesia,[8] Malaysia,[9] and Taiwan,[10] for example, and has also stimulated United States scholars.[11]

Higashino was elected president of the Mystery Writers of Japan (MWJ) in 2009, and served until 2013. From 2002 to 2007 he served on various MWJ selection committees, and fulfilled a similar role for the Edogawa Rampo Award from 2008 to 2013. In 2014, he became a selection member for the Naoki Prize.[12][13]

Higashino admitted in 2015 that his content and style had changed from his earlier writings, in which he treated motivation as the most important element.[4] In a 2011 interview, he stated that he wants his "readers to be continually surprised by my ideas."[3]

In addition to mystery novels, Higashino writes essays and story books for children. His style of writing the latter differs from his novels, and he does not use as many characters as in his novels.[citation needed] Higashino's works often include scientific elements, such as nuclear power generation and brain transplantation. Sports references, such as archery and kendo, ski jumping, and snowboarding, also occur often.

Suspect X inverts the classical whodunit structure, as the reader learns early on who the murderer is. Andrew Joyce writes in The Wall Street Journal that Higashino explores how "feelings of loyalty and the oppressive weight of human relations" are "catalysts for murder and dark pacts between neighbors or co-workers to dispose of bodies." Higashino claims that Japanese people prefer this format, in which the effects of characters' actions and intentions, in terms of emotions such as guilt and anguish, become clearer only towards the end of the story.[3]

While Higashino admits to liking Western writers, he feels most strongly influenced by Japanese authors such as Edogawa Rampo and Seicho Matsumoto. And "so my work naturally has that Japanese sense of old-fashioned loyalty and concern for human feeling." Regarding his Western readers, Higashino wants them "to read my work and come to understand how Japanese people think, love and hate. I want them to be impressed that there is a Japanese person who came up with such unusual stories."[3]

By 2018 Higashino had published 66 novels, 20 short story collections, and one picture book. In all, there were 715 works in 8 languages by Higashino worldwide in 2020, excluding 20 which were about him.[6]

Keigo Higashino is a prolific writer, more than sixty novels published and not only in the mystery genre, yet only thirteen have been translated into English. The Final Curtain is his latest, albeit it was published in Japan in 2014. English version by Giles Murray in 2023.

Take this as a preview rather than a review. Why, this book has not been translated into English yet. The prominent Japanese mystery writer Keigo Higashino has written more than sixty novels but only eleven had been translated and published in English so far.

If this will be translated into English in the future, I would not hesitate to read it again. The Swan and the Bat (title might be changed in the English version) has become my best Keigo Higashino book replacing The Devotion of Suspect X which sits securely in second place.

(Winner of the 2005 Naoki Prize for Best Novel in Japan, and also winner of both the Edogawa Rampo Prize and the Mystery Writers of Japan Prize for Best Mystery. The English translation was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2012.)

Detective Galileo is the nickname the Tokyo Police Department had given Manabu Yukawa, Assistant Professor of Physics at Imperial University. Yukawa is a college friend of Detective Kusanagi and someone whom Kusanagi seeks when he needs to bounce off ideas or just shoot the breeze, an actual phrase from the English translation, curious to know the original Japanese idiom.

When an amateur attempts to conceal something, the more complex he makes his camouflage, the deeper the grave he digs for himself. But not so a genius. The genius does something far simpler, yet something no normal person would even dream of, the last thing a normal person would think of doing. And from this simplicity, immense complexity is created.

Higashino has written two main series of mysteries, one with Detective Kaga, the other Detective Galileo. There are also stand-alone novels. Almost twenty of his books have been turned into movies and TV series in Japan.

I also appreciated all the details showing the tough and messy job of an investigator: spending so much times trying to find needles in a haystack, and sometimes not even knowing if the needle is relevant:

And many characters have strong personalities and their own reasons for fighting in life. This is definitely not a rosy picture of life in Japan.

But if you love your family, to what extent are you ready to go to sacrifice yourself for them?

One theme of the book is the Japanese social phenomenon of the Jōhatsu, ie people who purposely vanish from their established lives without a trace.

It actually makes for a fascinating theme in literature. I have already run into it in Respire, by Niko Tackian, and in Les vapors, by Thomas B. Reverdy.

The only trouble element here is that The Final Curtain is presented to the Anglophone readers as the conclusion of the series. It is actually volume 10 in Japanese, but only volume 4 in English. Seriously, are they going to stop and not publish more than these 4 out of 10 books?

I think a few more are available in French translation, but still this is insane and very frustrating. Alas, my Japanese will never be good enough to catch up in the original.

Malice, the first one in English, is actually number 4 in the original series. The first 3 books of the series have not been translated into English.

The literal translation of book 1 would be something like: Graduation: Snow, Moon, Flower Murder Game.

Hmm, a translator would give us some idea of the plot, though we would lose all the subtleties of language. But better than nothing I guess

The author is an award winner of the Edogawa Rampo Prize, a prize that is awarded annually to writers who have finest but unpublished mystery works. In 1985, at the age of 27, Higashino quit his job as an engineer and began a full-time writing career.

The author was awarded the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1999 for his novel Naoko, which was later years translated into English and published by Vertical Inc later in 2004. Later in 2006, he was listed as the 134th winner of Naoki Prize for the novel The Devotion of Suspect. Some of his novels have been nominated several times for various awards. The Devotion of Suspect X also won the 6th Honkaku Mystery Award and subsequently ranked as book number one by Kono Mystery gas Sugoi in 2006 and the Honkaku Mystery Best 10 the same year.

Apart from writing mystery novels, Keigo Higashino, the author also wrote storybook and essays for children, and his unique style of writing novels and other books differs in that he does not use many characters in other works as in his novels.

The Devotion of Suspect X is book three in Detective Galileo series by bestselling Japanese novelist Keigo Higashino. The series features Detective Galileo, also known as Manabu Yukawa is a physics professor and a police officer Kusanagi.

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