An Unsolved Mystery: The Paragraphs Omitted from Edogawa Ranpo’s “The Human Chair”

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2022.266

Abstract

A comparison between a translation and its original sends the author on a quest to explain a seeming discrepancy between the two versions. Edogawa Ranpo’s 1925 story “Ningen isu” contains four paragraphs that have been silently omitted from James B. Harris’s 1956 translation, “The Human Chair.” The omitted passage treats the theme of political assassination, and it is plausible that the omission is not accidental. Investigation into the matter, however, has not yet clarified how the passage came to be omitted. The author of the present paper describes how he structured a lesson on Edogawa’s text, summarizes his students’ contributions to a discussion of the omitted passage, and offers some observations on the benefits of disseminating seemingly inconclusive research results.

References

Edogawa Ranpo. La chambre rouge. Trans. Jean-Christian Bouvier. Paris: Éditions Philippe Picquier, 1990.

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Edogawa Ranpo, “The Human Chair,” in Edogawa Rampo [sic], Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, trans. James B. Harris (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1956), 1-23.

Edogawa Ranpo. “The Human Chair.” Trans. James B. Harris. In The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, Volume 1: From Restoration to Occupation, 1864-1945, ed. by J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 365-375.

Edogawa Ranpo 江戸川乱歩. “Ningen isu” 人間椅子. In Edogawa Ranpo kessakusen (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1960), 220-244.

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Kawana, Sari. Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Kōmoto Sutezaburō, J. L. Shrauger, and J. B. Harris. Kaitei shinpan Nichibei kaiwa hikkei = A Handbook of American English Conversation. Tokyo: Ōbunsha, 1977.

Mizusawa Fujio. “Satō Haruo ‘Ritsugisha,’ Edogawa Ranpo ‘Imomushi’ no ken’etsu.” Nihon kindai bungaku 83 (2010), 199-206.

Silver, Mark. Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature, 1868-1937. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008.

Welch, Patricia. “Foreword: Excess, Alienation and Ambivalence: Edogawa Rampo’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination.” In Edogawa Rampo, Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, trans. James B. Harris [Tokyo: Tuttle, 2012], 13-25.

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Published

2022-09-30

Issue

Vol. 56 No. 2 (2022): Japanese Language and Literature

Section

JLL FORUM

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