Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: お探し物は図書室まで

[Akashelia]

Nomination post

怪人二十面相

Author: 江戸川 乱歩
Page count: 245
Natively link: 怪人二十面相 | L29

Summary

Japanese

著者：江戸川 乱歩（1894-1965） 底本：怪人二十面相／少年探偵団 江戸川乱歩推理文庫、講談社 このコンテンツは日本国内ではパブリックドメインの作品です。印刷版からデジタル版へ変換はボランティアによって行われたものです。 おことわり: この青空文庫作品に収録されているコンテンツには、誤字脱字等の問題が含まれる場合があります。「青空文庫作業マニュアル」の指針に基づき、Amazon においてその内容を修正および改変することなく、作品のコンテンツは一字一句そのまま収録しています。報告された誤字脱字等の問題については、青空文庫に連絡させていただいておりますが、修正の是非および時期については青空文庫の意向によるため、改善しかねることがございます。あらかじめご了承ください。

English

Author: Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965) Bottom line: The Phantom with Twenty Faces / Detective Boys Edogawa Rampo mystery collection, Kodansha This content is a public domain work in Japan. Conversion from print to digital edition was done by volunteers. Notice: The contents contained in this Aozora Bunko work may contain typographical errors or other problems. In accordance with the guidelines in the Aozora Bunko Operations Manual, the content of this work has been included verbatim without modification or alteration by Amazon. We will contact Aozora Bunko regarding any reported typographical errors or omissions, but we may not be able to remedy the problem, as the decision as to whether and when to make corrections depends on Aozora Bunko’s wishes. Please understand in advance.

(Translator: DeepL)

Availability

Rakuten
CD Japan
Aozora (Free - this book is outside copyright)
Bookwalker (Free)
Downloadable epub (Free)
Amazon US
Honto
Amazon JP
Kinokuniya JP
audiobook.jp
Amazon Kindle JP
Audiobook (free):
youtube - male narrator, one long video
youtube - female narrator, playlist

Personal Opinion

This is the quote that made me really want to read the book:

@javerend

江戸川 乱歩 was a mystery writer who published a series of novels from the 20s to the 50s about a master detective 明智 小五郎, kogoro akechi, who is definitely kind of a sherlock holmes character. His counterpart is the master 怪盗 ‘the fiend with 20 faces’, our titular 怪人二十面相. It’s all very supposed to be sort of gentlemanly and before stealing from people with some miraculous plot, he always sends a calling card informing them of his intent to steal some item of value from them.

If all those words sound familiar, it’s because they should be. A real group of criminals in the 80s used this language and inspiration to conduct a series of very highly publicized corporate blackmail campaigns: The Monster with 21 Faces - Wikipedia, and that in turn helped inspire the plot of a game you may have heard of: persona 5. A lot of the language in these games, even the names of some of the characters, are basically lifted straight from these books, including our ace sleuth 明智 吾郎 Akechi Goro and our group of 怪盗, the phantom thieves

To some extent it probably was part of the cultural background that inspired other series like death note, and definitely nisioisn’s 美少年探偵団 きみだけに光かがやく暗黒星 | L35, which also takes its name from the series equivalent of the baker street irregulars, the 少年探偵団

This book itself is clearly intended as a childrens book, although not all of his books are. The writing is very straigthforward, and as @pocketcat described his writing to me: “he’s my 推し / ride or die silly 1920s mystery man” and it’s been quite silly so far. I am having a great time. Occasionally you run into some older grammar or cultural references or funny words, like I had to figure out how to decode a japanese telegram (well, until they explained what the telegram must have meant like 2 sentences later).

Comparing it to other books, I’d say the dated language puts it a step above コンビニ人間 | L29 , but still well below a lot of the hard manga I’ve read and definitely a few steps below とらドラ! (1) | L32

I’ve read it last month and really enjoyed it! I think it’s a good pick for the Book Club, see why in the Pros.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

• It’s available for free on Azora (and even an audiobook version on youtube). I didn’t find the formatting on Azora to be amazing, but I’m sure we can save the text as a text file and upload it to a better reader like https://reader.ttsu.app
• The chapters are quite short and full of action, perfect for scheduling
• Even though the book is old, it wasn’t too bad with old words or kanji forms or expressions, and unknown words were easy to lookup thanks to Yomichan (or you can also copy paste sentences directly to a machine translation)

Cons

• ? maybe something with the page counts that will need to be calculated

Pictures / Example sentences

Not pasting pictures, you can skim the whole book directly by yourself:
https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001779/files/57228_58735.html