A major writer in the early development of Japanese mystery literature. He was famous for his legal detective novels. He was born into a noble family. He attacked the viscount in 1925 and worked as a prosecutor and lawyer. He is good at describing intricate interpersonal relationships and the complex and sensational reasons for crimes behind them, and gradually solves the mystery with rigorous logical thinking, creating a wonderful novel with extremely twists and turns that fully demonstrates the darkness of human nature and the blind spots of the law. Died suddenly due to cerebral hemorrhage in 1935. In his short life of forty years, he only left behind novels such as "The Murderer", "Murder in the Chains", "Murder in the Black Armor Family" and fifteen short stories, but they were all written before the war. The world of Japanese detective novels shines brightly.
Chinese name: Hamamo Shiro
Nationality: Japanese
Birthplace: Tokyo
Date of birth: 1896
Date of death: 1935
Occupation: A major writer in the early development of Japanese mystery literature.
Representative works: "The Murderer" and "Murder in Chains".
Preface
At the beginning of the development of Japanese mystery literature, it generally inherited the achievements accumulated during the heyday of European and American short stories and began to try localized integration. Since Edgarvar Lapore's "Two Coins" (1923) caused a sensation in the literary world, it has collaborated with Masashi Yokomori, Saburota Otsuka, Uta Otsuka, Wikipedia, Jun Mizutani, Yumeno Kyū saku, etc. Together, the rookies, with "New Youth" magazine as the core, opened the first golden age of Japanese reasoning, which lasted until the outbreak of World War II.
During this fruitful dawn period, two mystery writers who died young and failed to realize their ambitions appeared. 1. Fuki Kosakai, a medical doctor who is as famous as Edgar Var Lapore, made his debut with "The Cursed House" (1925) and had a weird style. He died in 1929 at the age of 39. The other is legal expert Shiro Hamao, who debuted the year Kimi died and was only 39 years old.
Legal detective novelist
Hamao Shiro was born in Tokyo in 1896. Born into a noble family, his grandfather was Kato Hiroyuki, Baron, with a doctorate in literature and a doctorate in law. His father is Dr. Kato Zhaomo, a doctor of medicine. He is the newly adopted son of Hamao, First Viscount and Speaker of the Privy Council. Hamao graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Tokyo. A former prosecutor and lawyer, he devoted himself to writing while practicing law.
Just as Kosakai, who specializes in medicine, can write "Love Curve" (1926), a unique work that combines medicine and fantasy, Hamao, who has a deep understanding of law, is best at handling the relationship between law and human relationships. disputes and apply professional knowledge to reasoning creation.
Edgarvar Lapore mentioned in "Japanese Detective Novels" (1935) that the works of Hamasaki Ayumi, Aki Saburota or Yamamoto Taro are all called "legal detective novels" ". Hamao Shiro, in particular, "even questions the law or criticizes the law everywhere in his articles, and most of these works are derived from the author's own experience."
Hamao Shiro loves elegant literature and has read extensively such as Shakespeare, The works of Romain Rolland and others have cultivated outstanding literary and dramatic qualities. At the beginning of his career, he published "Language and Crime" (1927) and "Research on Criminal Language" (1928) in "New Youth", aiming at the study of drama and criminal psychology.
In 1929, Hamau published his first novel "Is He a Murderer?" In the same year, he published several excellent short stories such as "The Devil's Disciple", "Confessions at Dusk", "Murder in a Dream", and "The Square on the Day of the Murder", which immediately attracted widespread attention. His literary talent is profound, he questions whether the law is fair and just, and he observes human nature throughout all his works. It is one of the few mystery novels with special social consciousness in Japan before the war. This undoubtedly influenced Matsumoto Seicho, Saga Jane, He Jiujun, etc. A social writer who pays attention to criminal motives.
Because of the author's aristocratic atmosphere and the realistic style of the work, Hamao particularly admires the works of the American reasoning teacher S.S. VanDine. Van Dyne inherited the British puzzle-solving style, with special emphasis on solid and rigorous logical procedures.
His representative works include "The Greene Family Murder" (1928) and "The Bishop's Murder" (1928).
In 1931, "Nagoya Shimbun" began to serialize Hamao's first novel "Ghost Kuro". The story style of this work is mainly imitated by "The Greene Family Murders", describing the serial murders of an Akiyama paper company. It has a grand idea and detailed reasoning, and has become a classic of long-form original reasoning works in pre-war Japan. Later, "The Iron Shackles Murder Case" (1933), which was also about the case of private detective Shintaro, also had a charming and strange mystery and an exquisite and dense reasoning process. Hamao's career as a writer reached its peak. In the same year, he was elected to the House of Lords.
Died
In 1935, Wei Bin suddenly died of cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 39. His legacy is the novel "The Killing of the Taira" (1934), which was discontinued due to the suspension of publication of the magazine. Hamao did not write much in his lifetime, but he laid the early foundation for Japanese puzzle reasoning.