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Paper short abstract

This paper examines prewar Japanese detective fiction through the coexistence of honkaku (orthodox), logic-centered mystery and henkaku (unorthodox) narratives centered on mysterious phenomena. It highlights the genre’s links to Western detective fiction, especially the influence of Edgar Allan Poe.

Paper long abstract

The genre of modern Japanese detective fiction, following a transient boom driven by adaptations of Western detective fiction and original works by Kuroiwa Ruikō in the late Meiji period (particularly around 1890), entered a period of maturity from the late Taishō to the early Shōwa era (the 1920s–1930s). This mature phase centered on the magazine Shinseinen (New Youth, 1920–1950) and Edogawa Ranpo. During this period, a fandom of detective fiction readers emerged, and lively debates about the genre took place, involving both readers and writers. The central question was what detective fiction actually is. This debate arose because so-called henkaku (unorthodox) detective fiction—emphasizing fantasy and the grotesque—was more prevalent than honkaku (orthodox) detective fiction, which focused on puzzles and rational deduction.

This paper first traces discussions on the definition of detective fiction, beginning with Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke’s Tantei shōsetsu dan no shokeikō (Various Trends in Detective Fiction Circles, 1926), which laid the groundwork for later debates. It then examines the arguments of writers such as Kōga Saburō, who in the 1930s strongly asserted that detective fiction should be defined exclusively as novels centered on logical puzzle-solving, thereby provoking major controversy. The paper also considers Ranpo’s position within these debates. While Ranpo showed a degree of sympathy toward Kōga’s emphasis on logic, he identified artistic potential in the fantastical and grotesque detective fiction that Kōga sought to exclude, arguing that an ideal detective novel must combine logical structure with artistic quality.

Finally, the paper examines the influence of Edgar Allan Poe on modern Japanese detective fiction as revealed through these debates. Ranpo frequently invoked Poe, from whom his pen name was derived. After outlining the reception of Poe in Japan from the Taishō period onward, the paper focuses on Hisao Jūran’s detective story Kohan (By the Lake, 1937), in which logic and fantasy coexist in an apparently self-contradictory manner. By analyzing its relationship to Poe’s “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1844), the paper offers a concrete examination of Poe’s influence on modern Japanese detective fiction.

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This paper examines the Hungarian translation and reception of Japanese detective fiction, focusing on works by Edogawa Ranpo, often called the father of the genre, and Matsumoto Seichō, associated with its reform. It also addresses the transmedial nature of these works.

Paper long abstract

Japanese detective fiction was underrepresented in Hungary during the Cold War period. In the large-scale scholarly project of the 1970s, the Világirodalmi Lexikon (Lexicon of World Literature), among the several hundred Japanese authors listed, includes only one writer explicitly identified as a crime novelist—Yokomizo Seishi. Moreover, in the more than twenty-page section on Japanese literature, the only reference to popular fiction reads: “Lighter popular literature developed under the influence of A. C. Doyle, E. Poe, and others; a few genuinely talented writers also produced light entertainment, such as Kosakai Fuboku and Koga Saburō.”

Does this marginalization stem from the political situation of Hungary at the time—namely the view that “the crime novel is a characteristic genre of democratic and industrial societies” (Kálai 2016)—or is it simply because these works were not part of the Japanese literary canon either, and therefore reached foreign readers to a lesser extent? This paper addresses this question.

To my knowledge, only the works of two detective novelists reached the Hungarian readership during this period: Edogawa Ranpo, often called the father of the genre and a leading advocate for the canonization of detective fiction in Japan, and Matsumoto Seichō, who reformed the genre by linking detective fiction to social realism. The media in which these works appeared are also telling. Although from the 1960s onward an increasing number of Japanese short stories were published in literary journals, detective fiction tended to appear instead in daily newspapers or in general magazines devoted to crime fiction. To this day, these works have not been included in Japanese literary anthologies, nor have they been the subject of sustained literary analysis. The primary aim of this paper is to address this gap.

As is often pointed out, transmediality is an important characteristic of detective and crime fiction (Kálai 2014; Deczki 2023). This is demonstrated by the fact that the works of both Ranpo and Matsumoto Seichō were adapted into radio plays in Hungary. This paper also addresses the film adaptation of one of Seichō’s works, which received far greater attention in Hungary than his literary works.

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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the translation and reception of Japanese science fiction (SF) in Cold War Hungary. Focusing on the reception of Abe Kōbō’s works, it examines how Japanese SF functioned simultaneously as imaginative escapism and as a vehicle for ideological discourse.

Paper long abstract

The genre of science fiction (SF) emerged in the 1960s in both Japan and Hungary, albeit under different ideological and institutional conditions. In postwar Japan, following the launch of the SF fanzine Uchūjin ([Cosmic Dust] 1957) and the founding of S-F Magazine by Hayakawa Publishing (1959), SF developed into a fully established literary genre. Influenced by European and American SF, writers such as Hoshi Shinichi, Komatsu Sakyō, and Tsutsui Yasutaka - the “three masters” of Japanese SF – played a central role in shaping the genre’s early directions.

While in Japan SF quickly expanded into popular media such as manga and anime, in Hungary the genre was framed primarily as “serious” literature. Editor and writer Péter Kuczka was instrumental in the institutionalisation of SF through the Kozmosz Fantasztikus Könyvek [Cosmos Fantastic Books] series (1969–1987) and later the magazine Galaktika ([Galaxy] 1972–1995). Drawing on Darko Suvin’s concept of science fiction as “cognitive estrangement,” the genre was culturally legitimised within socialist Hungary. At the same time, in order to align with socialist cultural policy, popular American science fiction was largely excluded, and translation choices were carefully filtered (Szélesi 2019).

Within this framework, several works of Japanese SF were translated into Hungarian, including texts by Hoshi, Komatsu and Tsutsui. Among these authors, Abe Kōbō occupied a prominent position. Regarded in Hungary as a “progressive” writer due to his political affiliations, Abe functioned as a key mediating figure through whom Japanese SF became accessible to Hungarian readers. His novel Daiyon kanpyōki (Inter Ice Age 4) was published in the Kozmosz Fantasztikus Könyvek series as early as 1969, while selected works by Japanese SF writers appeared in Galaktika and related literary venues.

Following a brief comparative overview of the emergence of science fiction in Japan and Hungary, this paper focuses on the translation and reception of Abe Kōbō’s works in socialist Hungary. Drawing on contemporary newspaper and magazine reviews, I examine how Abe’s texts were framed for Hungarian audiences and how they served simultaneously as imaginative escapism and as narratives that could be mobilised to support socialist ideological discourse.

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Paper short abstract

This paper investigates the trends and historical background of literary translation from Hungarian into Japanese in the Cold War Era, specifically from the 1960s to the 1980s, focusing on the activities of Kōbunsha Publishing, and on children’s books translated from the 1960s.

Paper long abstract

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Japanese readers encountered Hungarian literature primarily through the works of Molnár Ferenc. Molnár’s play Liliom was staged in Tokyo in 1927, which likely contributed to his popularity in Japan.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Japanese translations of poems by nineteenth-century literary classics such as Petőfi Sándor and Arany János were also published. After the Second World War, and during the 1950s, the pioneering work of Imaoka Jūichirō (1888–1973) and Tokunaga Yasumoto (1912–2003) made early twentieth-century Hungarian classics available in Japanese as well (overview of Hungarian literature translated to Japanese in Kume 2009).

The Hungarian authors translated into Japanese up to the 1950s form an unquestioned core of the Hungarian literary canon, and it is not surprising that they were among the first to be translated. In this presentation, I focus on which Hungarian literary works were published in Japan from the 1960s to the 1980s, when the most significant authors of the literary canon were already at least partially accessible in Japanese.

From the 1960s, Kōbunsha Publishing played a crucial role in introducing then-contemporary Hungarian literature to Japanese readers, primarily through the series Gendai Tōō Bungaku Zenshū (Collected Works of Modern East European Literature), published between 1966 and 1969. The Hungarian volumes of this series contained works written mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, thus contemporary in a strict sense, addressing events and social tensions of the recent past. Kōbunsha continued to publish Hungarian novels in the 1970s and 1980s (although fewer ones), also with a strong social focus. I will introduce the works selected for Japanese translation and explore the possible reasons of this selection, as well as the source languages of the translations.

It was also in the 1960s that Hungarian children’s literature found its way to Japan. I will look into why the 1960s and 1970s are considered a golden age of children’s literature and illustration in Hungary (based on Révész 2018), and present several representative examples of this genre, which was introduced to Japan at a relatively early stage.