Edogawa Ranpo: The Black Lizard and Beast in the Shadows
The Black Lizard and Beast in the Shadows by Edogawa Ranpo (Translated by Ian Hughes)
Published: 1988 (original 1984)
Genre: Mystery, Literary Fiction
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Overall Review
I was blown away by Tales of Mystery and Imagination, a short story collection of Edogawa Ranpo’s best short stories. His uniquely grotesque and suspenseful mysteries quickly made him one of my favorite authors and made me hungry for more. So naturally, I became very excited when I found more of his work translated into English, and without hesitation, laid my hands on it.
Although my primary motivation for reading Edogawa Ranpo’s work is my love for mystery fiction, my secondary motivation is the desire to be aware of canonical Japanese mystery fiction. Through my attempts at writing my own mysteries, I’ve become more and more aware of the difficulties of writing an original story. At the same time, I’m beginning to realize that striving for originality—especially as a novice writer—is hopeless. A phrase that I heard a lot during my artist phase was “steal like an artist,” meaning that you should use a reference when trying to draw, but you should change it enough to the point that it becomes “original.”
Since my goal is to one day write mystery fiction geared toward the Japanese audience, it only makes sense to understand the stories that were influential to the current state of Japanese mystery stories, which was the same reason I read the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes, which were a huge influence for Edogawa Ranpo himself and almost every mystery writer ever. Another author that I cannot leave out is Agatha Christie since she is the most successful fiction writer ever, estimated to have at least two billion copies of her books sold—rivaled only by Shakespeare, who also is estimated to have at least two billion in sales as well (in third place is Barbara Cartland, estimated to have 500 million in sales).
The book I read this week contained two famous works by Edogawa Ranpo. The first, The Black Lizard, is said to be the most famous novel featuring Akechi Kogoro, where he faces a beautiful criminal with a black lizard tattoo in a series of battles of wits. Before reading this, the only other story that I’ve read involving Akechi Kogoro was The Psychological Test, a story about a poor student who murders an old rich woman for her money and his attempt to fool the police—inspired by Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevski and a great example of using a reference to create something original.
In The Psychological Test, Akechi Kogoro only featured briefly at the end of the story, which surprised and disappointed me. It was my first time reading a story that featured Edogawa Ranpo’s iconic sleuth, so his minor role in the story as a whole left me craving more. I mention this because I want to highlight Akechi Kogoro's starring role in The Black Lizard, preventing the kidnapping of Sanae, the daughter of Iwase Shobei, a wealthy jeweler, as well as inhibiting the theft of Iwase’s most prized jewel—thoroughly satisfying my craving.
Despite how famous Akechi Kogoro stories are in Japanese Mystery fiction, I’ve found myself enjoying other works by Edogawa Ranpo more, and of the two stories, I personally preferred the Beast in the Shadows (I’ll explain why in a later section).
The second story in this book, Beast in the Shadows, is a story about a mystery writer who plays the role of detective when a married woman—who he has feelings for—asks for his assistance in solving the mystery behind letters she’s received from a stalker who also happens to be a mystery writer. Overall, if you prefer crime fiction that is more focused on tricks and deduction, you’ll definitely enjoy The Black Lizard, and if you prefer a mystery that has a deeper plot along with the tricks, I’d recommend Beast in the Shadows.
The Black Lizard
The story begins with grotesque and dark descriptions—that I’ve come to love—of a bar where we, the reader, meet Jun and the Black Lizard. Jun has come begging for her protection after he haphazardly murdered a man. Once the body was discovered, the police would easily conclude that Jun was the culprit, and so he came to the Black Lizard in hopes of escaping his fate. After agreeing to devote himself to her as a slave, Jun was taken to a medical school to use one of the many corpses to fake his death:
“...he felt himself in the grip of a queer illusion he had never experienced before, and his body was covered in greasy sweat.
The disk of light from the flashlight in her hand crawled across the floor, as if searching for something.
The floorboards, rough, passed under the circle of light, with no carpet to hide them. A solid desk-like object, varnish peeling, gradually crawled into the light from the legs up. It was a long, large table. Ah! a person. The legs of an awfully old person. And why was there a little wooden tag tied to the ankle?
Hey, this old man is sleeping naked, in spite of this cold!
The circle of light moved from the thighs to belly, then on to the ribs and chest, traveling on to illuminate a neck like a chicken’s leg, the fallen jaw, and the gaping, black, foolish mouth with exposed teeth, and cloudy glass balls that were eyes... it was a corpse.
Jun’ichi shuddered at the eerie juxtaposition of the spectres that had been haunting him and the thing that had appeared in the circle of light. Still upset at the enormity of his crime, still unaware of where this room was located, he wondered if he had gone insane, or was trapped in a nightmare.
But when the next object came into glow of the flashlight, he totally forgot the woman in black’s warning, and let out a shout of surprise.
This surely was a scene from Hell itself! A large tub, maybe two meters on a side, was filled with a pile of naked corpses: young, old, male, female.
Could this scene, just like the ancient pictures of the damned squirming in the pools of blood in Hell, be a part of this world?”
The above excerpt was my favorite part of this story. Unfortunately, creepy and dark scenes and descriptions like this one stopped appearing after this point. Instead, the focus shifted toward deductions that, in my opinion, were elementary at best. Usually, when reading a mystery book, I cannot deduce the crime or trick, but for probably the first time, I was able to deduce most of the tricks. There were multiple events where the Black Lizard and Akechi Kogoro would face-off, and as the story progressed, the events became increasingly harder to deduce—the last one caught me off-guard but didn’t baffle me.
Something I disliked about this story was the needless and redundant narration. I remember reading On Writing by Stephen King, my favorite American author, where he talks about the fundamental rule of writing, ‘show don’t tell.’ He explains how the writer should always assume the reader is intelligent and write in a way that allows the reader to think for themselves. By refusing to follow this rule, the writer faces the consequences of overexplaining everything, basically belittling the reader by holding their hand through the story.
The specific example below was used to end one of the chapters and reminded me of the animation series Dragonball because, at the end of each episode, there would be narration that goes along the lines of, ‘will Goku be able to defeat his opponent? Find out next time on Dragonball.’ This is done a handful of times throughout the story, which I found annoying and unnecessary, but not a big deal overall.
“Now perhaps readers will think that the author has committed a major bungle here. They might object that because Mme Midorikawa had disguised herself as Sanae and was sleeping in the bed beside Iwase, it would make absolutely no sense for the same Mme Midorikawa to be coming into the room from the corridor.
But the author has not made a mistake. Both are correct. And this is the only Mme Midorikawa in existence. What this all means will become clear as our story unfolds.”
Although Edogawa Ranpo doesn’t go as far as to underestimate the reader—far from it—there were some instances where he said more than he needed to. This is very nitpicky, but for some reason, it stayed in my mind and got me thinking about why he chose to do this, so I wanted to mention it.
Beast in the Shadows
I preferred this story over The Black Lizard because there was more to it besides the mystery behind the tricks and a simple battle of wits. Don’t get me wrong. I love being deceived by the author’s tricks, especially when they reel me in to the point of assuming I’ve solved them, but it will leave me with a feeling of emptiness due to the lack of emotion. However, when combined with a narrative that provokes an emotional response as well, there is no comparison in the sense of connection I will experience with the latter, which is exactly what happened. And despite being about half the length, Beast in the Shadows has a lot more depth in every aspect—characters, plot, narration, dialogue, theme, etc.
“It sometimes seems to me that there are two types of detective novelists. One, you could say, is the criminal sort, whose only interest is in the crime and who cannot be satisfied when writing a detective story of the deductive kind unless depicting the cruel psychology of the criminal. The other is the detective type, an author of very sound character whose only interest is in the intellectual process of detection and who is indifferent to the criminal’s psychology.”
The reason why I emotionally resonated more with this story is because of the introspection of the protagonist, a mystery writer of the latter variety described in the excerpt above. He was desperate to save Shizuko, a married woman, from a man named Hirata, who was threatening Shizuko years after an affair they had together which ended with him being discarded by her. Hirata, also known as Oe Shundei, a famous mystery writer of the former variety, had somehow located her and had written letters to Shizuko warning her of his desire to cause her as much pain—physically and mentally—as possible.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but basically, Shizuko’s husband is found dead and there is a lot of evidence that suggested that he was in fact the person that was threatening Shizuko, especially because the letters stop coming after his death. However, the protagonist is wary that there is too much evidence as if someone wants these clues to be found, and he starts to suspect his new lover, Shizuko.
Like many mysteries, the best part is the resolution where all the pieces of the puzzle are put together, and it was similar in this story with a slight twist. Throughout the story, we see the protagonist’s obsession with finding the truth, which ends up being his downfall in the end. Below I have included the parts of the ending that I loved and are the most relevant in showing the protagonists downfall:
“Who was it that set things up perfectly and led me to make my conclusions? It was you! It was you who lay in wait for me at the museum and thereafter manipulated me at your will.
’You would easily have been able to add the little phrases to the diaries and put the other evidence in Oyamada’s book cabinet as well as to drop the button in the attic. This is what I have been able to deduce. Is there any other way to think about it? Now, what do you say? Please answer me.’
Crying out, ‘ I can’t bear this. It’s too much!’ the naked Shizuko clung to me. She pressed her cheek against my collared shirt and began to cry so hard that I could feel the warm tears on my skin.
’Why do you cry? Why have you been trying to stop me from proceeding with my deductions? Surely you would want to hear me if it were a matter of life or death for you. That alone makes me suspect you. Listen to me. I have not finished yet.
[...] I shook Shizuko off. She fell heavily on the bed, burst into tears, and would not answer no matter how long I waited. I was quite agitated and without thinking I raised the riding whip and lashed her naked back. Take that, and that, I thought as, losing control, I lashed and lashed. Gradually the redness spread on her pale skin until a wormlike wound stained with scarlet blood took shape. She lay there at my feet in the same lewd pose as always, with her hand and feet writhing and her body undulating.”
“I learned that Shizuko has committed suicide in the evening of the following day.
[...] Reading this article, I felt profoundly sad thinking of the pitiful death of my former lover, but then Shizuko’s death seemed to me an entirely natural outcome for it was indeed appropriate that she should confess her terrible crime. I believed this for about a month.
However, finally the intensity of my imaginings began to gradually subside and as it did an awful doubt entered my head.
I had not heard Shizuko herself utter a single word of confession. Even though all the evidence was lined up, the interpretation of this evidence was all of my construction. There was no immovable certainty such as in the equation ‘two plus two equals four.’ Once I had put together my flimsy deductions based solely on the word of the taxi driver and the evidence from the house cleaner, did I not interpret the evidence in a way that was opposite to the truth?
[...] If so, I was clearly her murderer, even if I did not directly lay a hand on her.”
I loved the ending because, like the protagonist, I was convinced that Shizuko was the culprit. I was so possessed by the idea that I used the available evidence to justify my reasoning and claiming that someone was the culprit without any concrete proof. This was also a great way to end a story as a cliffhanger without abruptly cutting off the story, leaving me more than satisfied.
Thanks for reading my review! I hope I was able to give you an idea of this book and the stories inside of it. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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