Writer Soji Shimada

By Du Guodong

Known for his clever character-driven plots and straight mental analysis, leading Japanese crime writer Soji Shimada was in Beijing over the weekend, much to the delight of his fans.
 
Meeting readers at the 2010 Beijing Book Fair and launching his novel Vertigo that has recently been translated into Chinese, Shimada thrilled the audience with insights into both his life and writing style.

Considered representative of modern Japanese detective novelists, Shimada is a well-known logic mystery writer who is often compared to Arthur Conan Doyle for his perfect balance between plots and analysis.

Vertigo was first published in Japan in 1995 and is taken as Shimada's representative work. The novel is a blend of mystery and illusion, telling a nail-biting story of the rebirth of the dead and the doom of the world.
 
Saturday marked the author's second trip to China and during Vertigo's launch ceremony, he explained his fascination with China and its endless possibilities of intrigue and mystery that make perfect settings for crime novels.
 
"I especially admire the Silk Road and before the end of my life I will visit Dunhuang [a major stop on the ancient Silk Road] to experience this most remote and interesting place," Shimada said.

Throughout his career, Shimada has written more than 100 mystery books and won many accolades in Japan. He is acclaimed as one of the best detective writers in the country.
 
His first novel The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is a bizarre tale of serial murders and was nominated for the Edogawa Rampo Award in 1980. It was translated into English in 2004.
 
Since his debut work, Shimada has continued to create compelling detective novels and in recent years, he actively experimented with logic mystery books and now hopes to promote them to a broader audience. 

A bloody murder in a bedroom followed by policemen and detectives racking their brains on small clues of evidence are trademarks of traditional detective stories. Shimada's works are nothing like his Western counterparts, instead he combines seemingly irrational and illogical plots with unexpected endings and little social consciousness. Shimada knows how to construct a good murder mystery and create an intricate puzzle, based on his own in-depth knowledge as an astrologer. 

Shimada explained that mystery novels more "Asian" in style, like those in Japan, are sure to increase in worldwide popularity in the near future.
 
He said that in contemporary China, mystery fiction is not a well-developed genre with few detective novels produced. China is expected to catch up with Japan and produce excellent works as the demand from readers, especially young people, increases, according to Shimada.
 
"It is the era of Asia at present, the most dynamic continent in the world and there will be a sound development of logic mystery, with the outcome dependant on the youth of today," Shimada told the Global Times.
 
"One of the purposes of my trip to China is to discover writers who have potential for logic mystery novels."
 
Shimada added that there is no place more suitable than China for the creation of logic mystery novels.
 
He explained that detective fictions were initiated in the West, succeeded by Japan and the momentum is likely to be overtaken by countries such as South Korea, Thailand and China.

He added that detective stories are declining in Europe and North America and have been replaced by a growing number of adventure novels like Harry Potter and the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar.
 
Since first becoming available in China more than 20 years ago, Shimada novels have continued to attract mystery lovers with the author acclaimed as one of the gods of the logic mystery genre.
 
Taiwan established the Soji Shimada Logic Mystery Award in 2009 to honor excellent detective stories from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan every two years.
 
"Shimada's novels are so attractive and spur you on to read them the moment you pick them up," mystery novel fan Zhang told the Global Times at the launch ceremony. "As soon as you have finished, you push them into the hands of your friends and force them to read immediately!"
 
Born in 1948 in Hiroshima, Japan, Shimada currently lives in Los Angeles to escape his familiar environment in Japan, trying to draw inspiration for his work. He said that his next move would be to China.