Vision and Putrescence: Edogawa Rampo Rereading Edgar Allan Poe

WilliamMarling Vision and Putrescence: Edogawa Rampo Rereading Edgar Allan Poe In 1914 theJapanese writer Hirai Taro adopted the pen name “Edogawa Rampo,” a phonetic play on Edgar Allan Poe, whose work he had recently discovered . Owingto the paucity of translationsof Rampo’s work, the West has ever since presumed that he simply imitated Poe when writing his own detective and horror stories.There is no doubt he was “influenced,” but his work expands significantly on the ways Poe explores vision, the human body, space,and decayways that scholars have only recently begun to a p preciate in Poe himself. To useJerome J. McGann’s term, it appears that Rampo read Poe radially,that is, putting himself “in a position to respond actively to the text’s own (often secret) discursive acts.”’ Rampo’s reputation in Asia, while based on his popular fiction, goes far beyond it. Many films depict his stories,*and a large number of current international manga (comics) and several film mimeand television serials are based on his writings. His life has also been a subject of public interest; two recent films depict it, if somewhat sensationally: Rampo (1994),directed by Rintaro Mayuzumiand Kazuyoshi Okuyama; and Rampo: Okuyama Version (1995), directed by Okuyama. All of Rampo’s work is still in print inJapan, and he is widely translated throughout Asia, where popular literature reinforced by the energy of manga earns respect. In Asia he is clearly better known than his namesake. But what makes Hirai Taro particularly interesting in relation to Poe studies is that his sexual interrogations led him to reread Poe in a manner that broadly anticipates contemporary interest in the gaze, the body, and decay. I Hirai Taro was born in Nabari, in the Mie Prefecture , on 21 October 1894.3He spent his childhood in Nagoya, which he left in 1912at age seventeen to enter the prestigious, private Waseda University in Tokyo. He majored in economics, graduating four years later,and then for sixyears he worked as a clerk, accountant, salesman, and editor, sometimes also pulling a cart as an itinerant sobavendor. His years as a dock clerk at the Toba Dockyard (now the Shinko Electric Company) are a source of corporate pride, detailed at the company’sWeb site.4In 1914he read “TheMurdersin the Rue Morgue.”But not until 1923, while unemployed in Osaka, did he publish what is considered to be the first modernJapanese detective story,“Nisendoka” (The two-sen copper coin),which appeared beside the work of Poe, Doyle, C . K. Chesterton, and others in Shin seinen (New youth), the onlymysterymagazineinJapan. The editors asked for more, and Rampo followed with “Ichimai no kippu” (Oneticket).Bothworks,writes Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “reflect obvious influences from ‘The GoldBug ’ and ‘The Purloined Letter.”’ In 1925, Rampo published a collection of stories and founded the Association of Lovers of Detectives,which after World War 2became theJapan MysteryWriters Club,a group of enormous importance to the genre in Asia. Writing prodigiously, Rampo also began to translate Poe and completed six stories by 1931. Of Rampo’s own earlywork, Lippit has identified “Panoramato kitan” (Astrangestoryof Panorama Island, 1927)as strongly Poe-influenced-directly “based on an idea taken from ‘The Domain of Amheim’ and ‘Landor’s Cottage .”’5 Rampo was so prolific that his collected works, filling thirteen volumes, were also brought out in 1931,when he was only thirty-sevenyears old. One of these, Wagayume toh shinjitsu (My dream and truth), contains his thoughts on Poe and Freud as well as “Doseiai bungakushi” (The literary history of homosexuality )and “Renaifunousha” (Mentallyimpotent for heterosexual love), neither of which is translated into English.These are of great value in understanding the way Rampo read Poe. By 1956,he had written twenty full-length books, fifty-three short stories and 22 novellas, and six books of essays. When he died in 1965, Rampo was not only Asia’s most famous mystery writer but also an internationallyknown literary figure. While Rampo’sdebt to Poewas noted early,it has customarilybeen taken asoneof uncomplicatedhomage .6A fewJapanese scholars have been more perceptive about parallelsand similaritiesin theme and plot, but disinclined to explore the way Rampo pursued Poe’s probings of sexuality.’ Any investigation of this dimension...