Detective Fiction and Crime Journalism around the 1930s: Rampo Edogawa, Shirō Hamao, and Crime Reporting

Abstract

This paper will examine the development of detective fiction in the 1930s that came from its ambivalent relations to journalism. In 1932 Rampo Edogawa and Shirō Hamao, both the major detective novelists, made comments on the dismemberment murder case at Tamanoi. While Rampo emphasized the grotesque nature of the crime, Hamao made a logical interpretation of it. Their discourses on the case reflected their style of writing or vice versa. Thus the genre of detective fiction was dynamically formed in interaction with journalistic representations of actual crimes.