Life> Reading

Move aside manga, it's time for mystery

By Qiu Yijiao (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-01 09:41

While stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie remain the favorite of fans of the detective fiction genre in China, Chinese youth are eyeing a more diversified collection.

Books from Japan appear to be the newest flavor.

Last Thursday, hundreds of young readers queued up to meet Japanese mystery novelist Soji Shimada during his first trip to China, which also marked the release of the latest Chinese version of his work, Jack the Ripper - One Hundred Years of Solitude.

His debut novel, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, written in the late 1970s, hit the mainland market last year, and has already sold 50,000 copies. This was soon followed by translations of 15 other works by him.

"Interest in mystery and detective stories has seen a sharp spike in recent years. Besides the well-known Western classics, we want to introduce more works from different parts of the world," says Julia Chen, editor-in-chief of Feel Publishing Co Ltd, one of the leading publishers of detective fiction.

Japanese mystery novelist Soji Shimada releases a Chinese version of his work, Jack the Ripper - One Hundred Years of Solitude in China last week.

According to her, the genre is quite popular in Japan. The classic Western detective novel, invariably starts with a crime scene and a detective who come in and cracks the case through deductive reasoning from the available clues. But in the Japanese version, the crime scene is built up slowly. The novelist uses characterizations and settings to foreshadow the crime, before zooming in on it.

"I present all the details and then tease my readers to find the murderer," Shimada says with a wicked smile.

Civil servant Hu Tianyou, who has been a Shimada fan for years, says he is always left open-jawed by the breathtaking endings of those stories. "In every story, Shimada's logic and rational reasoning yield a satisfying answer," Hu says.

In addition to Shimada, Chinese readers have also taken to other Japanese novelists, such as Seich Matsumoto, Keigo Higashino and Hirotaka Adachi. Their stories first came to the notice of readers here through the Internet, Japanese movies and TV dramas.

Chu Meng, a young editor at New Star Press and a fan of Japanese detective stories, says: "There aren't as many surprises and challenges in Western detective and mystery novels as in Japanese ones. The latter offers a whole new reading experience."

Japanese detective novels seem to draw inspiration from a variety of sources, including theories of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Chu says that although Japanese stories combine many elements, such as religion, fantasy and science fiction, the ending is always rooted in logic and science.

While traditional Chinese literature also boasts detective classics, such as Bao Gong An and Di Gong An, written during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), most young Chinese don't see them as true to the genre.

"The stories have a supernatural element and a huge cast of characters. The focus is also not on logical reasoning," says Zhang Hui, a postgraduate student of Chinese literature at Peking University.

The growing interest in Japanese detective stories is also motivating Chinese amateur writers. Wang Jiajun, a designer from Shanghai, released his first detective novel Magic Murders last year. He was later nominated for the First Soji Shimada Logic Mystery Award in Taiwan.

He recalls that just a decade ago, detective stories were hardly popular. "Even now, readers tend to buy detective novels by prominent writers. Emerging Chinese writers need time so their stories become more mature," Wang says.

Computer science graduate Pu Pu (pen name) is another promising talent. He has published two novels, with the one released this year, titled Rules of Guilt (Zui Zhi Faze), already selling 20,000 copies.

"Detective novels are still new to Chinese readers. With more masterpieces from abroad being introduced to the market, the number of readers is increasing. This will certainly spur Chinese writers," says Pu.