Honkaku : Japanese whodunnits that play fair by the reader | Hacker News Reader

Honkaku : Japanese whodunnits that play fair by the reader

theguardian.com

34 pointsoska6 comments

This is essentially a continuation of Knox's decalogue from the golden age of detective fiction[0] (though I would say that rule 9 is pretty discarded at this point).

I think that Golden Age detective fiction is kinda interesting, because it's totally fallen out of style, with loads of author's books just becoming out of print in English. But you can still find prints of translations in Japanese!

I think the popularity of this genre ends up bleeding a lot into other genres as well, leading to very interesting tropes in science fiction or other genres, just cuz readers have higher expectations in getting fooled by the author.

It does lead to "nerdy" shit where the obsession with the mechanics leave you with pretty hard-to-believe characters, but hey, the mechanics are fun!

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Detective_Fictio...

R. Austin Freeman claimed to be the inventor of the "inverted detective story" where all the clues are available to the reader. He started in 1909 with "The Red Thumb Mark" which incidentally damages Francis Galton's assertion that fingerprint evidence required no corroboration. Find these on the Australian Gutenberg site.

See also this piece from 2020, which lists a selection of honkaku and shin honkaku available in English translation :

https://crimereads.com/the-honkaku-and-shin-honkaku-mysterie...

A number of Kosuke Kindaichi movies are available on Netflix (at least, here in Japan!). I thought they’d make a good watch, but I found that there is a huge culture gap, that ends up making them very complex, so I gave up. But that might be an appeal to you, so give it a shot!

What book would be a good introduction to this genre?

I'm certainly no expert but I do enjoy this genre. 東野圭吾https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keigo_Higashino is the latest author I read about who has won Edogawa Rampo Prize.

His writing has a typical feel of the eeriness/melancholy of the Japanese theme of mysterious crimes (from the Chinese translation so I might be biased) and I really enjoy that atmosphere of sorrow and tiny bit of cruelty.

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