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Post by dem bones on May 10, 2009 20:15:19 GMT
Edogawa Rampo - Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination [Translated by James B. Harris] (Tuttle, 1989) Holger Jacobs Translator's Preface
The Human Chair The Psychological Test The Caterpillar The Cliff The Hell Of Mirrors The Twins The Red Chamber Two Crippled Men The Traveller With The Pasted Rag PictureBlurb: "Rampo is Japan's foremost writer of mystery and tales of suspense." —The Journal Asian Studies
Japanese Tales Mystery & Imagination, the first volume of its kind translated into English, is written with the quick tempo of the West but rich with the fantasy of the East. These nine blood-curdling, chilling tales present a genre of literature largely unknown to readers outside Japan. including the strange story of a quadruple amputee and his perverse wile: the record of a man who creates a mysterious chamber of mirrors and discovers hidden pleasures within: the morbid morbid confession of a maniac who envisions a career of foolproof "psychological' murders; and the bizarre tale of a chair-maker who buries himself inside an armchair and enjoys the sordid "loves" of the women who sit on his handiwork. Lucid and packed with suspense, the stories of Japanese Tales of Mystery Imagination have enthralled Japanese readers for half a century.Hirai Taro, 1894-1965. He took his pen-name from the Japanese pronunciation of his hero, Edgar Allan Poe, his mad scientist story provided the title for Peter Haining's first anthology, The Human Chair found it's way into 'Linda Lovecraft's notorious Devils Kisses as an example of erotic horror and is the only story to make me wonder who am I sitting on?. And then there's the touching tale of Lieutenant Sunago, whose war injuries have reduced him to what is essentially "a lump of flesh with eyes", a human caterpillar. I've never met up with a copy of Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination but i'm hoping one of you can tell me how the other stories shape up against his three most anthologised stories? Includes: The Caterpillar: For three years Tokiko has been acting as full time nurse to her mute, invalid, war hero husband Lieutenant Sunago, whose arms and legs were blown off in an explosion. Reduced to but a living torso with beautiful eyes, Sunago is reliant upon his wife for everything, and, once she tires of her martyr's role, she increasingly finds herself tormenting him with petty cruelties until one night, as he stares fixedly at a spot on the ceiling, she can take no more .... The Human Chair: Oshiko, popular authoress, is used to receiving manuscripts from her admirers and struggling authors who wish to emulate her success, but this one is different and survives the bin. The author is clearly deranged. He wishes to confide his "dreadful crime" and beg her forgiveness. Despite herself, she can't help but read on ... and on ... until, with mounting horror, she realises just what it is she's sitting on .... Pure class. The Hell Of Mirrors: From childhood the brilliant but unbalanced Tanuma has been obsessed with reflective surfaces and, having finished his education, he sets up a laboratory where he can indulge his passion to his hearts content. A voyeur, he trains a powerful telescope on his neighbours and a concealed periscope through which he spies upon the antics of his maids, one of whom, Kimiko, doubles as his lover. When it comes to his creative side, perhaps his finest achievement is to invent the mirror ball, except his is turned inside out and large enough to contain a man. After several hours spent testing it out, he emerges a drooling maniac. "But how could this come about? Could the mere fact of confinement inside this glass sphere have been enough to drive him mad? .... What in the devil had he seen there?
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Post by Johnlprobert on May 11, 2009 20:49:48 GMT
I've got this! I bought it from Manchester Waterstone's about ten years ago and read it straight away. Consequently can't remember much about it now but those three stories (Caterpillar, Chair, Mirrors) are all classics. I'll see if I can dig the book out.
Whatever you do don't let the quality of these stories encourage you to watch the awful 'art-house wank' movie Rampo Noir, which adapts some of these tales (including The Caterpillar) into an anthology movie in the worst, dullest, most incomprehensible and pretentious way imaginable.
You're much better off watching the utterly bizarro 'Horror of Malformed Men' which is just as daft but a lot more pulpy fun with copious nudity, exploding people and a mad Jesus looky-likey scientist
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Post by marksamuels on May 11, 2009 21:23:45 GMT
Support for Lord Probert from this quarter! Having watched some kind of silent dance-art intro for RAMPO NOIR on You-Tube and then the trailer for HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN, I know which wins out. It's this one: Again, apologies for the ad. No idea how to destroy the evil of it. Mark S.
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Post by dem bones on May 13, 2009 9:16:37 GMT
Again, apologies for the ad. No idea how to destroy the evil of it. Mark S. I'm not sure if i'm allowed to say "Firefox with the AdBlock-plus add on", so pretend i haven't. With no way of telling how accurate Mr Harris's translations are, i'll take it that they're very faithful to Rampo in which case our man is absolutely excellent at creepiness, frustration and quiet perversion, all three of which score very highlly with this reader. It's quite possible that i've become too obsessed with C. Birkin but The Caterpillar strikes me as something he might have written - with a big smile on his face.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 11, 2010 8:26:58 GMT
Having run out of Birkin we've made a start on this & I thought I'd read Lady P the most famous stories first:
The Caterpillar - This one really is horrible. War hero is reduced to s stumpy torso, deaf and without the power of speech. Left alone with him for hours on end, his only way of communicating being the banging of his head on the floor, his wife starts to entertain the cruellest of ideas, which culminate in her putting his eyes out. The now blind remnant of a human being then goes crawling off into the countryside, determined to kill itself.
What I really liked about this story is that the cruelty isn't at all casual or gratuitous, but instead arises from a situation the reader can find sympathy with (I certainly did).
The Hell of Mirrors - After finishing this some time was spent considering what it would be like to be completely encased in one's own magnified reflection. It's a great idea and could be developed in any number of ways (Lovecraft would have had loads of repressed sexual fun with the idea of a multilply reflected naked man - the horror!) but it's probably best left just like this.
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Post by Dr Terror on Sept 11, 2010 9:46:37 GMT
Having run out of Birkin we've made a start on this & I thought I'd read Lady P the most famous stories first: I thought that was 'The Human Chair'.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 11, 2010 10:07:08 GMT
As for Rampo on film, with some reservations I recommend Barbet Schroeder's INJU, LA BÊTE DANS L'OMBRE (2008), an adaptation of BEAST IN THE SHADOWS. But read the novel first.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 11, 2010 13:48:56 GMT
Having run out of Birkin we've made a start on this & I thought I'd read Lady P the most famous stories first: I thought that was 'The Human Chair'. If you read Dem's notes at the start of this thread proper Charlie you'll see he's put that The Human Chair & the two others are 'his most anthologised' so to complete that trio: The Human Chair - Worked beautifully right up until the final paragraph, which rather defused what had gone before. Still, the idea of a chap getting his kicks from people unwittingly sitting on him is definitely original and very creepy indeed.
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Thana Niveau
Devils Coach Horse
We who walk here walk alone.
Posts: 109
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Post by Thana Niveau on Sept 12, 2010 6:32:51 GMT
I love Rampo so far. I'd never heard of him before Lord P suggested him and the pen name alone seduced me. Poe was my introduction to horror and I still have the ancient Tales of Edgar Allan Poe book my mother got me for my birthday at age 8. (It takes a strange lady to think "The Tell-Tale Heart" is an appropriate bedtime story for an 8-year-old, but there you go. I can't thank her enough.) Anyway, these three stories (esp. "Human Chair" and "Hell of Mirrors") are just the kind of weird obsessive madness I love. Rampo doesn't strike me as being worryingly mad himself (unlike Poe or Shirley Jackson), but he captures the obsessive mindset beautifully. I do wish he hadn't undermined "Human Chair" with that unnecessary coda but maybe he didn't know where else to go with it.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 12, 2010 6:59:42 GMT
Rampo doesn't strike me as being worryingly mad himself No? Read some more, and you will start worrying. There is another collection available in English, THE EDOGAWA RAMPO READER. It contains some sick stuff!
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Post by lemming13 on Sept 12, 2010 21:00:16 GMT
Yes, I have the Rampo Reader on my to-read pile, and dip in from time to time, then have to go and fortify myself with a large glass of Bushmills and a dose of Old Harry's Game. I also have the original novel Ring, by Koji Suzuki, waiting for my attention, but at the moment it's Ryunosuke Akutagawa's turn to represent Japan. Not supernatural horror, just a quiet, studied dissection of the dirtier side of human nature. I think the Japanese really excel at the psychological nastiness. And filth, and fluffy cuteness. Puzzling...
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Thana Niveau
Devils Coach Horse
We who walk here walk alone.
Posts: 109
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Post by Thana Niveau on Sept 13, 2010 0:45:59 GMT
I think the Japanese really excel at the psychological nastiness. And filth, and fluffy cuteness. Puzzling... That's a great encapsulation, Lemming! Ryu Murakami's Piercing is one of the most twisted psychological J-horrors I've read recently. Great stuff!
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Post by shonokin on Sept 13, 2010 23:14:45 GMT
It's sad that an author with so much output has had so little of his writing translated. Besides this collection which has been around forever, there are a couple of novels which have been recently translated along with the above mentioned Reader. Moju the Blind Beast and The Black Lizard and Beast of Shadows.
The translation of the collection is meticulous. Harris worked back and forth with Rampo until they both felt the translation was truly perfect.
A few other movies to mention... The Mystery of Rampo, which is very much in the vein of the now popular trend to have the author be a part of one of his written adventures. It is not a splatter horror movie at all, but a great, moody and creepy thriller which unfortunately is out of print on DVD. Probably still findable on aftermarket sales.
The Fiend with 20 Faces is a newer movie based on Rampo's famous detective Kogoro Akechi and villain The Fiend with 20 Faces, but based on a book by a different author, is sort of a steampunk superhero detective story. I liked it quite a lot.
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Post by lemming13 on Sept 14, 2010 20:34:09 GMT
The Watcher In the Attic is another one; just been chuffed to bits to find it available to rent from Lovefilm (since it's a bit pricy to buy), so it's on my ridiculously long rental list. Well, Christmas is coming and I need something to fend off the schmalz. A Japanese perv-fest seems just the ticket.
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