Mystery fiction is an immensely popular genre in Japan, and one that women writers have been involved with from the beginning. Recognition has not been commensurate with their contributions, though, and only recently have women contributions to the genre been accorded serious critical interest. Building on this current scholarship, this chapter looks at five women writers of mystery fiction, from the interwar period to the present: Ōkura Teruko, Miyano Murako, Togawa Masako, Miyabe Miyuki, and Minato Kanae. Through a mix of short stories and novels, I examine the interaction between these writers and the mystery fiction genre, which has often involved a critique of both society and the medium itself.

Introduction

Few genres in Japanese literature have enjoyed the appeal and longevity of mystery fiction. From its modern appearance in the Meiji period through Taishō and Shōwa tales of the erotic and the grotesque to current iyamisu (or gross-out mysteries), mystery fiction and its subgenres have maintained an enthusiastic readership for well over a century. And while the current state of mystery fiction is exemplified by a wide range of writers and readers, its official history is somewhat less representative, having been written as a predominantly male line of descent. Studies of the genre, for example, have long held prominent positions for figures like Edogawa Ranpo, Yokomizo Seishi, Ayukawa Tetsuya, and Matsumoto Seichō, and it is only in the last several decades that critics have begun to pay serious attention to contributions by women. The correction is a welcome one, for as might be surmised, women have been actively writing mystery fiction for as long as their male counterparts.

Readers of mystery fiction will of course be familiar with its basic structure, which rests on a formula that Pierre Macherey describes as being “a product of two different movements: the one establish[ing] the mystery while the other dispels it” (Macherey 2006, 38). With the revelation of the concealed mystery “the work’s solution … entails its disappearance, hence the work is sustained only by the question to which it must provide an answer” (Macherey 2006, 26).