Edogawa Ranpo (1894- 1965) began writing detective and mystery stories in 1923, the year of the Great Kanto Earthquake, and he usually is credited with being the first such professional writer in Japan. Ranpo's real name was Hirai Taro; he chose a pen name like that of one of the then most admired and popular of all American writers in Japan, Edgar Allan Poe. Ranpo gained a worldwide reputation for his tales, which often are filled with the erotic and the grotesque. "The Human Chair" (Ningen isu) is one of his early works, having been written in 1925.
YOU ARE READING
The Human Chair
Mystery / ThrillerA self proclaimed master chair maker creates a chair that he himself is astonished by, so much that he contorts the inside of the chair to fit his body inside of it. He uses a letter to a woman named Yoshiko as a way to confess his crimes.
