East Wind Coming

by Yuichi Hirayama

  The clearest influence of Doyle on Edogawa’s work is in his juvenile detective series. Akechi is its hero, but there is another group of heroes, the “Boy Detectives!” Their captain is Kobayashi Yoshio, Akechi’s teenage assistant, and all the members of the group are boys in their early teens. Of course, the group is a reflection of the Baker Street irregulars. However, Edogawa changed one point: The Irregulars were street urchins, but members of the Boy Detectives were boys from decent homes who could ask their parents without hesitation to buy books. Readers of these books could easily identify with the Boy Detectives, and it was the fashion for boys to play the “Detective Game.” The series won great success, and is still available in bookshops today.

  As Edogawa did, early Japanese detective story lovers (Edogawa called them “Tanteishousetsu no Oni,” or “demons of detective stories”) read the Canon in English. Most of them belonged to the educated middle class. Okamoto Kido (1872-1939), who created “Hanshichi Torimonochou” (“The Casebook of Hanshichi”), was a playwright of Kabuki. “Torimonochou” is another genre of the Japanese detective story, a series of short detective stories situated in the world of the Samurai. Okamoto had a deep knowledge of English literature, and it is said that he was the best customer of the Maruzen foreign bookshop of Tokyo. He himself wrote that he bought The Strand Magazine, and read the Canon in English.

  Another famous “Torimonochou” writer, Nomura Kodo (1882-1963), when he was a high school student, asked his teacher of English to use the Canon as a textbook. Later, Nomura studied law at Tokyo Imperial University and became a director of the Houchi Shinbun Newspaper.

  The largest influence of the Canon on Japanese detective stories is the use of a “Dr. Watson” as a companion of the great detective. Conversations between the detective and his friend make a good way to explain what is going on to readers. The device is a brilliant creation, and most detective writers followed it. For Akechi Kogoro of Edogawa Rampo’s works, young Kobayashi Yoshio is his good assistant, who acts as “Dr. Watson” or “Wiggins” in Edogawa’s novels for adult readers. Yokomizo Seishi (1902-1981) created his detective Kindaichi Kosuke, accompanied by Inspector Todoroki or Inspector Isokawa. Yokomizo’s other detectives, Yuri Rintaro and Mitsugi Shunsuke, might be influenced by Jacques Futrelle’s Professor Van Dusen, “The Thinking Machine” -- Mitsugi is a newspaperman, as is Hutchinson Hatch, who reported Professor Van Dusen’s cases.

  The clearest examples are those of the “Torimonocho” genre. Detectives in “Torimonocho” are usually called “Okappiki” or “Goyoukiki,” private assistants of “Doshin” official inspector samurais. The “Goyoukiki” worked as policemen, but because they were not samurais, they could not be given official positions. “Goyoukiki” also had their assistants, called “Shitappiki,” and they acted as “Dr. Watson” in the “Torimonocho” stories.

  The most famous team of “Okappiki and Shitappiki” would be Heiji and Hachigoro, created by Nomura Kodo. His series “Zenigata Heiji Torimonohikae” is the longest and the most famous “Torimonocho” series ever published in Japan. He wrote 383 short stories and novels over 27 years, and the series was broadcast on television in 888 episodes using the same actors, Okawa Hashizo (Heiji) and Hayashiya Chinpei (Hachigoro).

  At the beginning of most of these stories, Hachigoro visits Heiji’s house and tells Heiji about rumors or new cases. One is reminded of the beginning of “The Blue Carbuncle,” in which Dr. Watson visited 221B. Hachigoro’s reporting news compared to Holmes always asking Watson to read the newspaper aloud. This device begins the cases easily and effectively for readers. (In this connection I may add that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru said he was a fan of the Zenigata Heiji series. His father-in-law, Count Makino Shinken, was one of the founding members of the Baritsu Chapter of Tokyo, the first Sherlockian society in Japan.)

  In the late 1950s, a drastic change occurred in Japanese mystery writing. The era of “the great detective” ended. Matsumoto Seicho (1909-1992) and others of the new generation of mystery writers began new “realistic mysteries.” In their novels, ordinary policemen or newspapermen acted as the investigators. They had no special talents, but their consistent hard work solved cases. That contrasted with old traditional mysteries and Sherlock Holmes. Traditional private detectives were criticized as “puppets” or “paper dolls,” and they rapidly disappeared.

  However, such “realistic mysteries” were inherently limited, with no puzzles or detections. By the 1970s, a revival of puzzle mysteries and “great detectives” occurred. There was, naturally, a demand from readers who had only had the chance to read translations of such mysteries. Geneijou magazine published reprints of traditional pre-World War II puzzle mysteries. Yokomizo Seishi’s writing also became popular - his paperbacks selling more than a million copies - and many puzzle or “great detective” films were made.

  “Great detectives” have returned to Japanese mystery writing. Under such conditions, The Japan Sherlock Holmes Club was constituted in 1978. The time of the “Great Detective” has come again.

  Now in Japan, the genre known as “mystery” has a different scope than the American or British term. It includes horror novels, psychological thrillers, spy novels, love and romance tales, and science fiction. In fact, it may be translated most accurately as “fiction to read for pleasure.” The “detective story” is just a part of the “mystery” genre. However, there is still a group of puzzle novels, and in 2000, The Puzzle Mystery Writer’s Society was founded. Thus, the tradition of the “great detective” and unsolved puzzle stories still survives.

  (Japan and Sherlock Holmes, The Baker Street Irregulars, 2004)

  The Sherlockian Articles

  by Hirayama Yuichi & John Hall

  The Sporting Achievements of Mr. Sherlock Holmes

  Watson’s earliest assessment of Sherlock Holmes’s limits include mention of his expertise at singlestick, boxing, and fencing, and at other times in their association Watson had occasion to remark upon Holmes’s knowledge - or lack of knowledge - of various sports. Our intention in this article is to survey the range of sports in which Holmes was involved, and to provide some account of his skill or success. This note will not consider ‘games’ or ‘pastimes’ as opposed to sports, although we know from cases such as “The Red-headed League” that Holmes could and did play cards. Nor will it look at such diversions as horse racing, although we know that Holmes was quite knowledgeable on that topic, as is shown in “Silver Blaze.”

  Our intention here is to deal solely with sports requiring more active participation. Even here, some pursuits must be excluded on the grounds that Holmes’s proficiency in them cannot positively be attributed to any purely sporting inclination. In this category we must include horsemanship and the driving of a carriage, as in Holmes’s day those were basic skills for any reasonably well-to-do man, just as driving a car is nowadays. Admitted, there were some people who rode or drove for pleasure rather than from necessity, just as there are now, but the indications in Holmes’s case are so vague as to prevent our taking a view as to whether Holmes’s skills in these areas were mainly recreational or otherwise. (Anne Jordan has advanced the theory that Holmes earned a living in his early days in practice, when cases were few and far between, by driving a cab, and this may well explain his proficiency in that area.)

  Similarly, the revolver practice noted in “The Musgrave Ritual” and “The Dying Detective” may well have been the consequence of a professional, rather than a sporting, interest. However, David Landis has pointed out that Holmes did not actually favor firearms, nor did he use them regularly in his work, so there may be some grounds for thinking that the revolver practice was initially recreational. It would, of course, have come in handy on those fairly rare occasions when Holmes did go armed on a case.

  On the same grounds we must rule out any detailed consideration of Holmes’s cycling proficiency, though we know from �
��The Missing Three-quarter” that he could certainly ride a bicycle. It must be said that cycling does not immediately suggest itself as a skill which the would-be detective would diligently seek to acquire, and here again we may possibly feel justified in seeing Holmes’s ability as having been acquired for fun (or as near thereto as Holmes as capable of reaching) in his childhood. Perhaps there are grounds for postulating some long cycling tour on the Continent at some stage in Holmes’s youth?

  “The Missing Three-quarter” does give us a pointer to the one sport which can decisively be eliminated from any list of Holmes’s skills, namely rugby, for no man with an interest in rugby would have been puzzled, as Holmes was, by the telegram from Mr. Cyril Overton. (Watson had, of course, played rugby in his younger days. We know from “The Sussex Vampire” that he had indeed played with ‘Big Bob’ Ferguson, who was himself a three-quarter, and Watson thus must have known what the telegram meant. He probably derived considerable satisfaction from Holmes’s temporary and uncharacteristic discomposure.)

  June Thomson has read the fact that Holmes was unfamiliar with rugby and thus, presumably, other team sports as meaning that he could not have gone to a public (i.e. a private) school, as games would there have been compulsory. William Hyder makes a similar observation with regard to Holmes’s knowledge of the violin. And WS Baring-Gould has suggested that Holmes learned his fencing from a private tutor.

  This is all very tempting; it seems so logical. And yet Holmes was a proficient boxer, something we shall consider in more detail in a moment, and if indeed he did attend a public school he may well have used the obligatory gym sessions to practice in the ring. There is surely a case for suggesting that Holmes originally became interested in boxing because he was compelled to do something in those gym sessions and the team games did not appeal. Perhaps there was even some element of self-preservation in the choice of boxing at this stage, a reaction to bullying by more extroverted pupils which produced not merely proficiency in the ring, but also that sympathy with the underdog which is so evident in Holmes throughout this career. Proficiency in boxing would very effectively have prevented his being censured as a milksop by the muddied hearties of the rugger field. The use of the (unarguable) evidence that Holmes was not a team player to show that he had a private tutor must be regarded as doubtful.

  Indeed, it seems clear that Holmes’s remark, again in “The Missing Three-quarter,” that his “ramifications stretch out into many sections of society, but never. . . into amateur sport,” is intended as a summary of his professional experience rather than as a general disclaimer of any interest in sport whatsoever. That much is obvious from the general tenor of the remark, itself, from his next phrase about amateur sport being “the best and soundest thing in England” (for how could a man say that who knew nothing of it?) and from various other canonical references.

  Some of those other references are tantalizingly vague, such as Holmes’s recollection, in “The Gloria Scott,” that Donnithorpe had “excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens,” and “remarkably good fishing.” It may have been that Holmes was speaking in a very general sense here, doing no more than assess the estate’s sporting potential just as any other reasonably affluent man of the time would do. Or possibly he was looking at the sporting possibilities of the estate with the expert eye of a man whose ancestors had been ‘country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class,’ as Holmes put it in “The Greek Interpreter.”

  The remark does have some implications for a study of Holmes’s early years. It is surely unlikely that a man who had spent all his early youth in a town, whether his ancestors had been country squires or not, would have spoken with such assurance. Moreover, Holmes never mentions his father, so it seems impossible that the two of them had been close, and thus may have visited the countryside together from a base in town, the father passing on his knowledge to the son. The logical conclusions are surely that Holmes’s childhood was spent in the country, and that he had taught himself to shoot and fish.

  We hear nothing more as to duck shooting, although it is possible that Holmes’s marksmanship with a revolver may have owed something to his youthful fowling expeditions. The mention of a bearskin rug, onto which Dr Thorneycroft Huxtable fainted in “The Priory School” as being part of the furnishings at 221B, must be regarded as inconclusive. “The Priory School” is generally regarded as a late case (1900 or thereabouts) and that would mean that the rug could have come from almost anywhere, although one possibility must certainly be that Holmes shot the unfortunate bear on his travels during the Hiatus.

  We do hear of fishing again in “Shoscombe Old Place,” where Holmes and Watson “did actually use [their] fishing tackle in the millstream,” and had a dish of trout for supper as a result. The fishing expedition had been intended primarily to provide a cover, an explanation for their presence in the area, but there are surely indications of some degree of skill in that dish of trout for supper, although Watson annoyingly fails to make it clear whether it was Holmes or the good doctor himself who accounted for most of the catch.

  At the opening of “The Greet Interpreter” Holmes and Watson have a discussion on various topics, one of which is golf clubs. It is not clear whether the talk referred to the institution or the instrument - probably the latter-- but it is reasonable to suppose that a man must have at least a basic knowledge of golf in order to discuss any aspect of the subject intelligently. But we hear no further mention of golf from Holmes.

  There is no mention at all of tennis. We know that Watson possessed a pair of tennis shoes, which he wore during the burglary of Charles Augustus Milverton’s house, and it is reasonable to suppose that Holmes had provided himself with similar, if not identical, footwear on this occasion. However, even if Holmes had been wearing shoes specifically designed for tennis, that does not prove that he had any interest in the game apart from-- the shoes’ noiseless maneuvering during clandestine operations.

  Holmes could swim, as is clear from “The Lion’s Mane” and he did so as a hobby in his retirement, so it is possible that he had also been keen on this sport earlier in his life, though again there are no other mentions of it. Swimming is perhaps something more easily learned in youth than in old age, and we may see this as another skill which Holmes had acquired during his relatively lonely childhood in the countryside. It is interesting to speculate as to where, if anywhere. Holmes might have practiced swimming in London. Many of the public baths had swimming facilities, but these would perhaps have been a trifle too public for the ascetic Holmes - a circumstance which bothered others, indeed, for the Bath Club in Dover Street was opened in 1892 precisely so that gentlemen residing in the capital might have somewhere suitable, and more exclusive, where they could swim. Even at that relatively late date, Holmes is unlikely to have joined the Bath, for he was definitely not a clubman - the Diogenes Club, noted in “The Greek Interpreter,” appealed to him precisely because it catered for those who felt at home nowhere else. The most tempting possibility is some private establishment, for we know that Holmes had a weakness for the Turkish bath, and many of the better class of these also had swimming facilities. Or as an alternative, we may perhaps see Holmes as abandoning swimming altogether during his time in London, and returning to a youthful interest in it when once he had retired to the Sussex coast.

  At the very outset of their acquaintance, in A Study in Scarlet, Watson made a list of Holmes’s limits which included the observation that Holmes was ‘an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.’ Holmes refers to two of these three sports in “The Gloria Scott” when he says that at university he had “few athletic tastes” apart from fencing and boxing. And Watson mentions these same two again in “The Five Orange Pips” when he recalls that his list in A Study in Scarlet had included the note that Holmes was a “violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.”

  Let
us first look at how Watson came to know of Holmes’s proficiency in the early days. One possibility is that he had actually seen Holmes participating in the sports noted, and that is not unreasonable. We know that Holmes had fought three rounds with the professional, McMurdo, at Alison’s rooms four years prior to The Sign of Four, so the bout would have been in 1883 or perhaps a year or so after, when Watson was (on the evidence of Holmes’s attitude in “The Speckled Band”) part of the team at 221B, and it seems quite likely that Watson would have gone along to see his friend box. And similarly Watson may have seen Holmes take part in fencing and singlestick bouts.

  Another possibility is that Holmes had displayed some evidence of his prowess at 221B, cups or trophies, or perhaps equipment, and that Watson had very naturally inquired as to Holmes’s interest in the sports concerned. Watson does not mention any such paraphernalia, but that is not conclusive proof that none existed. Some reconstructions of the sitting room at 221B have displayed a pair of boxing gloves on the wall, and, although there is no canonical evidence that such was the case, by the same token there is nothing in Watson’s accounts to suggest that it was not. And it may perhaps not be too fanciful to suggest that the patriotic ‘VR’ in bullet holes mentioned in “The Musgrave Ritual” might have been inspired by the ‘V’ shape of a pair of fencing foils over the fire, but this is pure speculation.

  The third and last of the most likely possibilities is that Watson’s list was based on anecdotal evidence only. It would be perfectly natural for the two men to engage in conversation in the early days, equally natural for Watson to ask what Holmes’s hobbies and interests might be. However, this is perhaps the least satisfactory possibility, for Watson does make a point of referring in A Study in Scarlet to Holmes’s reticence as to himself.