Unimaginable Things

IONAL RY unimaginable things: The Feminist Noir of Natsuo Kirino aboveNatsuo Kirino For over half a century, the Mystery Writers ofAmeri ca has been presenting the Edgar Allan Poe award for Best Novel, but since 1954 (when the first was given toCharlotte Jay for Beat Not the Bones), the win ner has only rarely been a book in a language other than English. This is not surprising. One could naturally expect that voters in the MWA would be biased toward their own publishers and colleagues, of course, but thegenre of the mystery in all its formswas largely birthed in anglophone cultures; also, there is always the argument that it is hard to judge the literaryquality of a book after ithas been reshaped through translation. Nonetheless, a few remark able novels managed to get nomi nated as finalists for theEdgar over the years, probably because they altered theway writers thought of the genre, opening up possibilities tomake the crime novel fresh. Itwas not until 1965 that the first trans lated novel was nominated. Hans Hellmut Kirst's TheNight of the Gen erals did not win, despite its huge success,which led toamajor motion picture starring Peter OToole and Omar Sharif. In 1971, however, the Swedish couple PerWahl?? andMaj Sj?wall became the only foreign language novelists to win a best novel Edgar with The Laughing Policeman. Umberto Eco received an Edgar nomination in 1984 for The Name of theRose, then, a decade later, Danish author Peter Pteeg was nominated forSmilla's Sense ofSnow, building on theScandinavian incur sion of Wahl?? and Sj?wall and accelerating what has been called "the Nordic crime wave" (see WLT, Nov. 2009, 9-11). Last year, Swedish authorKarin Alvtegen's Missing was nominated. None of the skilled practitio ners of the crime novel in French, such as Georges Simenon, has ever been nominated, despite the strong 3 January February 2010i9 Crime & Mystery traditions of crime writing in that country and the deep appreciation of Poe's works. Japan, however, which also has a literaturewith a strong Poe influence, managed a best novel nomination in 2004 for Out, by Natsuo Kirino. Poe was a great influenceon theyoung Junich iroTanizaki and other bohemian lit erary dandies of the early twentieth century,while mystery and detec tive novels have flourished there at least since Taro Hirai took the pseudonym Edogawa Rampo (say it slow and think "Edgar Allan Poe"), publishing his firstmystery story in 1923. Yet a quick look at online booksellers reveals a relatively small number of Japanese crime novels in English translation. Translator JohnApostolou has remarked that the total number of Japanese crime novels that are translated into Eng lish is probably equivalent to the number of crime novels published in Japan inamonth.1Works byAki mitsu Takagi and Seicho Matsumoto have been published by Soho Press; Miyuki Miyabe, RyuMurakami, and Asa Nonami by Kodansha; and Sei shiYokomizu by Stone Bridge Press. Shizuko Natsuki has been published by Ballantine, and Masako Togawa by Pantheon. Perhaps these are a wedge for, not just Japanese, but other Asian crime novels to enter the English markets. However by any measure, these are only a handful of the mysteries available, and we can imagine it would be even fewer ifit had not been for the impact ofNat suo Kirino's success with Out. Natsuo Kirino is thepen name ofMariko Hashioka (b. 1951),who graduated with a law degree from Seikei University. She began writing at age thirtybut did not make her major debut until shewas inher for ties. Influenced bywriters as diverse as Flannery O'Connor, Anne Tyler, Hayashi Fumiko, and Reinaldo Are nas,2 she began as a romance writer but decided there was reallynomar ket for romance novels in Japan, an interesting factgiven that romance novels outsell every other typeof fic tion in theUnited States. "Also/7 she said, "romance novels weren't really what I wanted to do as a writer. I'm fascinated by thepsychological aspects of crime. When a person is cornered, they do unimaginable things."3 In Kirino's grittyportrayals of contemporary society, it is women specifically who are cornered and do unimaginable things. Out cen ters on fourwomen who work in a "bento box" factory

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