Reading Edogawa Rampo as a Japanese Learner: Where to Start with Japanese Mystery

Edogawa Rampo (江戸川乱歩) was born on October 21, 1894 and died on July 28, 1965. He took his pen name from Edgar Allan Poe. His debut was 二銭銅貨 (The Two-Sen Copper Coin), published in the magazine 新青年 (Shinseinen) in April 1923.

His work entered the public domain in Japan in 2016, fifty years after his death, and Aozora Bunko began publishing it early that year (INTERNET Watch, in Japanese). His author page now lists 111 works, nearly all in modern spelling. The copyright rules are explained in What Is Aozora Bunko?

This post compares nine of his works by the numbers and looks at the spellings and phrases that catch learners.

Nine works, counted

These are the modern-spelling editions on Aozora Bunko, counted the same way as in Which Japanese Classics Can You Read at Each JLPT Level?, leaving out furigana, editorial notes, spaces and the source information at the end. The furigana column is the number of furigana per 100 kanji. The figures are rounded.

Work	Published	Characters	Kanji ratio	Furigana
まほうやしき The Magic Mansion	1957	about 5,500	8%	0.2
かいじん二十めんそう (the たのしい二年生 version)	1959	about 8,800	7%	2.9
ふしぎな人 The Strange Man	1958	about 43,500	7%	0.9
怪人二十面相 The Fiend with Twenty Faces	1936	about 109,000	18%	1.9
少年探偵団 The Boy Detectives Club	1937	about 102,000	18%	1.0
人間椅子 The Human Chair	1925	about 15,000	30%	5.4
二銭銅貨 The Two-Sen Copper Coin	1923	about 17,000	33%	3.8
Ｄ坂の殺人事件 The Case of the Murder on D Hill	1925	about 22,000	31%	2.1
心理試験 The Psychological Test	1925	about 23,000	33%	2.0

They fall into three groups. The work for young children’s magazines is under 10% kanji, the boys’ serials in 少年倶楽部 (Shōnen Club) are 18%, and the adult stories are 30% or more. Rashōmon and Botchan are around 28%, so Rampo’s adult stories have slightly more kanji.

On length, 怪人二十面相, written for children, is about 109,000 characters. Botchan is about 88,000.

A boys’ serial: The Fiend with Twenty Faces

怪人二十面相 ran in Shōnen Club through 1936. A thief said to have twenty faces, a master of disguise, goes after jewels and works of art. The opening section, はしがき, is about 1,300 characters and begins:

そのころ、東京中の町という町、家という家では、ふたり以上の人が顔をあわせさえすれば、まるでお天気のあいさつでもするように、怪人「二十面相」のうわさをしていました。

“In those days, in every town and every house in Tokyo, whenever two or more people met, they would talk about the fiend ‘Twenty Faces,’ as if exchanging remarks on the weather.”

The narration is in でした and ました. There are 31 chapters averaging about 3,500 characters each, so a chapter a day takes a month.

In a later note on his own work, Rampo says he was aiming at a Lupin story for boys. The title was first 怪盗二十面相, “Phantom Thief Twenty Faces,” but the boys’ magazine rules of the day objected to the character 盗, “steal,” so it became 怪人. In the same note he says the adult stories he wrote for popular magazines had “childish plots and mostly easy prose.”

Words repeat often. 賊 (ぞく, “thief”) appears about 230 times and 変装 (へんそう, “disguise”) about 25 times. One idea behind extensive reading is that you learn words by meeting them again and again. The sequel, 少年探偵団, has about the same length and kanji ratio.

Shorter works

Among the works for young children, まほうやしき is about 5,500 characters.

With so few kanji, the kana run on at length. This is the other かいじん二十めんそう:

ある日、しょうねんたんていだんのぽけっと小ぞうは、ひとりで、さびしいのはらをあるいていました。

(かいじん二十めんそう, the たのしい一年生 version and others)

There are no spaces between words. Reading Japanese Without Spaces covers how to find the boundaries. Two works share this title because they are separate stories, serialized separately.

The adult stories

Sorted from shortest to longest, the four adult stories in the table are 人間椅子, 二銭銅貨, Ｄ坂の殺人事件 and 心理試験. That is also the order from most furigana to least.

In 人間椅子, a woman novelist receives a thick manuscript from a stranger. It opens with the address 奥様 (“Madam”), and most of the story is this letter, in polite です・ます that goes as far as 御座います. Dialogue makes up about 2% of the text. It has the highest yearly access count of Rampo’s works in Niho’s catalogue, about 29,600 on the 2022 figures.

二銭銅貨 centers on a cipher built from the characters of 南無阿弥陀仏, the Buddhist invocation. Solving it takes a knowledge of Japanese kana.

In Ｄ坂の殺人事件, the narrator stumbles into a case at a secondhand bookshop. It is the first appearance of the detective Akechi Kogorō (明智小五郎). Two students insist on completely different colours for the suspect’s kimono.

In 心理試験, you know the criminal from the start and follow how he tries to get through a judge’s test. It was published the month after the D Hill story, and the text itself refers to people who have read 「Ｄ坂の殺人事件」.

Spellings and phrases that catch learners

The boys’ serials and the adult stories are written differently. Here are the counts.

Spelling	Today	Ｄ坂の殺人事件	心理試験
併し	しかし	22	30
云う (including 云った, 云わぬ)	言う	37	49
却々	なかなか	10	5
若し	もし	4	9

心理試験 also writes 連想 (“association”) as 聯想, 19 times.

How much furigana. Ｄ坂 and 心理試験 have about two per 100 kanji. See When to Stop Using Furigana for more on furigana.

読者諸君. The phrase means “dear readers,” and 怪人二十面相 uses it 22 times, as in ところがです、読者諸君. The narrator is stepping outside the story to speak to the reader.

わし and じゃ. One chapter of 怪人二十面相 is titled 「わしがほんものじゃ」. These forms are covered in Set Phrases and Old Forms in Japanese Folktales.

Same surname, different person. 小林 in 怪人二十面相 is a boy. 小林 in Ｄ坂 is a police detective.

Reading Rampo in Niho

I make Niho, a free reading app for iPhone and iPad with more than 17,000 Aozora Bunko works and a built-in dictionary. It has no ads and no in-app purchases.

Rampo’s works are on the Mystery shelf in the Discover tab. 怪人二十面相 and 少年探偵団 are also on the Children’s shelf, and 人間椅子 and Ｄ坂の殺人事件 on the Fiction shelf. You can search for him in kanji, in kana or in romaji as ranpo, the spelling Aozora Bunko uses.

For a word you don’t know, long-press it and tap Look up. 賊, 変装, 怪盗 and 名探偵 are all in the dictionary, 云う comes up under 言う, and 併し under しかし. Words you look up are saved to your word book with the sentence you met them in, and you can quiz yourself on them. People’s names and the like can be checked with Jisho in the selection menu.

About 30% of the text of 怪人二十面相 is dialogue. In Chat view, a chapter arrives one sentence at a time in speech bubbles, with dialogue on the right. Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.