The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo

Okamoto Kido was quite ready to admit that his Inspector Hanshichi was inspired by Sherlock Holmes. At the same time, the crafty Hanshichi is an icon of feudal Japan. His career harks back to the mid-nineteenth century world of samurai, courtesans and humble tradesmen. The cries of street vendors hawking sea cucumbers and pampas grass echo through the narrative.Kido began writing the first Hanshichi stories in 1916. The popular success of this detective in Japan was like Holmes' popularity in the west. Neither Conan Doyle nor Okamoto Kido wanted to be known for their detectives, but the public decreed otherwise.Kido was as interested in educating as in entertaining. In his retirement, Hanshichi is constantly attending traditional festivals - when he's not recounting his exploits to the young narrator who passes them on to us. And the stories are rich in historic detail. A young boy disappears on the way to the Confucian school where the sons of shogunal retainers are tested on the classics... A neighborhood is terrorized by a "ghost" who rings the fire bell when there are no fires... A snake amulet salesman leads Hanshichi to the murderer of a dance teacher...Given a few scraps of information, Hanshichi can often imagine what might have happened. On one occasion he reconstructs events by recalling a scene in a Hiroshige woodblock print. But Hanshichi is also quick to admit when he solves a case by "dumb luck."The stories are charming, peopled by colorful characters like lecherous monks, heartless slave traders, conniving kept women, greedy merchants, compulsive gamblers and foolish young people conducting secret affairs.With Inspector Hanshichi, Kido gave the Japanese their own classic detective. Although influenced by Holmes, Hanshichi is his own man, involving the reader irresistibly in his nostalgia for a vanished Japan.

The book came quick and I’m excited to read it! However it came totally ripped up and bent. It’s still legible but definitely a bummer.

PA significant number of Japanese readers are Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, over 50,000 actually. The Conan Doyle stories have been used to teach English in the schools. Inspector Hanshichi is the Japanese Sherlock Hol es and Old Edo is the area that has become Tokyo. This book is beautifully written. We have an extraordinary detective and a time and place every bit as enchanting as Victorian England. You are truly transported just as with the Conan Doyle tales. I feel fortunate to have "discovered" this book and look forward to reading the rest in the series.

I used to watch Okamoto Kido's Hanshichi Torimonocho on television every week in 1960's Yokohama. My understanding of Japanese wasn't perfect but I loved the stories and the character of Hanshichi. Ian MacDonald's translation takes me back to those moments and gives me more insight than I had. The story, the characters, the social environment, the settings, and that period's culture are revealed to an English reader while keeping the literary art intact. Thank you. I hope Mr. MacDonald is working on a second set of Hanshichi stories.

These short stories reveal the life and times of a city and its inhabitants in a time of social and political change. Our guide on this adventure is not the narrator but his "source", the detective Hanshichi, whose knowledge, insights and judgement solve cases with a practicality that is refreshing. These are "whodunits", but the reader doesn't become so absorbed in figuring that out, because there is too much to savour on the canvas of life and social interactions that is painted for us.

I just loved these stories! They mystery coupled with the unusual setting made them particularly engaging. I just wish there were more...

Beautifully translated, these stories about life in Japan in the 19th century are delightful and entertaining.

The only reason this is getting only 4 stars is because I have not had time to finish it. What I have read is fantastic. Once I finish it I will come back and give a better review... Later :) .

I bought this for a school paper. It's an interesting take on the detective genre even though the detective stuff that happens in the stories aren't logical but mainly for entertainment. It's a good read on Japanese society before the Meiji Restoration.

'The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi' is comprised of fourteen tales, all but one (the first) recounted by the retired Inspector Hanshichi himself (by this time, purported to be well over seventy years old), and retold to us by the young narrator. The first tale begins in the 1880s, when the narrator, then a boy of ten, hears of the elderly Inspector Hanshichi for the first time from his Uncle K, with the following thirteen stories being told to the narrator, ten years later, by the detective himself.'I have managed to fill an entire notebook with these detective stories of Hanshichi's. I have chosen those I find most compelling, and I hereby put them before my readers, though not necessarily in chronological order.'After the first story, each one follows a set pattern, beginning with the young narrator paying a visit to the elderly Hanshichi who, we are told, always served 'the choicest tea and most delicious cakes'. Following this brief introduction, the old man begins his tale, and at its conclusion he generally comments on how things have changed since he was a young man.Hanshichi himself is often likened to Sherlock Holmes, and there's no doubt that there are similarities (and Kido' was an admirer of Conan Doyle's work), but there are a greater number of differences between the two detectives. To begin with, unlike Holmes, who has science and technology to aid in solving a crime, Hanshichi relies more on instinct, and in many instances simple luck. Holmes is rational to a fault, whereas Hanshichi, though inclined not to believe that people can be spirited away by gods or demons, is willing to entertain the idea in the absence of any other explanation. Hanshichi is a man of his times, and of his city.The tales themselves are filled with numerous references to sprites, gods, demons, monsters, ghosts, and even vicious river otters and shape-shifting cats. They are infused with insights into the beliefs, manners, and customs of an old, superstitious, and decidedly feudal Edo (now Tokyo) that, by the time Hanshichi reached old age, were becoming as strange and unfamiliar to the people of the city (by then, opened to the West and rapidly undergoing change) as the customs of some far off distant and never-visited land.It is Kido''s ability to transport the reader to mid-nineteenth century Edo with such ease that, for me at least, makes this collection of stories so appealing. The countless references to plays and stories that were popular at the time and Kido''s impressive geographical knowledge of the city as it was, added to his understanding of customs amongst the feudal and common classes of the time, conjure up an Edo that is three-dimensional and, though creepy and at times shockingly dangerous, also incredibly charming and very real. It is a colourful city inhabited by greedy merchants, lecherous monks, duplicitous mistresses, gamblers, vagabonds, and possibly several kappa (water sprites) who are likely to steal your children.The only bad thing about the book... it ended.

It's an excellent study in short (serial) fiction from Japan during the Meiji Period.Inspector Hanshichi has been an inspector in old Edo for decades, solving everything from mysteries to murders. Well-known and respected, he has the support of younger men under his wing. It is one of these men to whom the Inspector recounts the greatest mysteries he has faced.Combining Japanese myth with mayhem, murder and mischievousness, this collection of 14 short stories is a fantastic look at life in Japan's capital nearly 200 years ago. Incorporates elements of the supernatural, history and fine arts.If you love Rampo Edogawa or Sherlock Holmes, you'll devour CCoIH with relish.