Akagawa Jiro and his humorous mystery novels

Akagawa Jiro has engaged in a lot of work that has nothing to do with writing, but these various experiences have made his personality have a humorous and smooth side, which is reflected in the book and becomes his characteristic. Akagawa often let the protagonist "talk to himself" in his novels, and made unbearable jokes in times of crisis. This way of writing was very rare before him, so Akagawa's greatest contribution was to develop a mystery novel . In the new genre, someone once commented that "Akagawa's works are the most speculative novels that do not resemble mystery novels".

Akagawa Jiro was born on February 29, 1948 in Higashi-Nakashu, Hakata City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. His father was originally the president of the Kyushu branch of Japan's "Cambodia Film" (Toyoko Film Studio, later renamed "Cambodia"). Affected by it, Akagawa Jiro often watched movies all day since he was a child. This life experience growing up with movies became the source of his later literary creation.

In 1960, Akagawa's father moved to Tokyo to work due to job transfer. As a result, the Akagawa family also moved to Tokyo, and Akagawa Jiro transferred from Fukuoka to study at Taoyuan No. 3 Elementary School in Nakano Ward, Tokyo. During elementary school, Akagawa showed extraordinary talent in literary creation. He first began to create comics, and then began to try to enrich the plot of the comics, and based on this, he conceived the novel. During his junior high school and high school years, Akagawa Jiro spent time at Kirito Gakuen. In the past 6 years, he not only read a lot of literary works, but also began to formally try to create novels, and wrote two novels with more than a thousand pages. During this period, the most influential book on Conan Doyle was Sherlock Holmes , which gave him a strong interest in mystery novels, and he embarked on the "road of no return" for the creation of mystery novels. "Buried the "foreshadowing".

After graduating from high school, Akagawa Jiro initially worked at the Japan Mechanical Society. During the 10 years of this work, he worked and created, and began to submit works to various literary awards and essay writing units. In 1977, years of hard work finally paid off. His mystery novel "School Festival of the Dead" was selected for the TV script competition and released. The following year, his famous work "Ghost Train" won the 15th Popular Books Mystery Novel Newcomer Award. Since then, Akagawa Jiro began his long novel writing journey. In 1980, he won the 7th Kadokawa Fiction Award for his novel "Wife に Holds げ る レ ク イ エ ム".

Akagawa Jiro has been engaged in novel writing full-time for 24 years so far. In the past 24 years, he has created more than 450 works, an average of 18 works per year, with a total printing volume of nearly 280 million copies. In bookstores large and small in Japan, Akagawa Jiro's works can be seen everywhere.

There is no doubt that in the camp of contemporary Japanese novelists, Akagawa Jiro is definitely a prolific writer. For more than 20 years after he resigned from Congwen, he has been writing constantly, and he has reached the heights almost every day. It is said that when Akagawa was young, he could write up to a hundred pages of manuscripts in one night. Nonetheless, Akagawa's creative quality is very high, and the editor can print the manuscript with almost no revisions after getting it.

Akagawa Jiro's literary creation is mainly based on mystery novels. Before writing mystery novels, he was once keen on comics and movies, and also wrote scripts and learned to make movies. For more than 20 years, he has created more than 450 novels with different themes, among which the most influential and most popular is his series of interesting mystery novels. Akagawa's series of mystery novels are bright and smooth, yet witty and humorous, forming a unique creative style and creating a precedent for humorous mystery novels. Therefore, Akagawa Jiro is even known as the originator of humorous mystery novels (or "humorous detective novels "). The main series of mystery novels are: 40 " Tricolor Cat Series " published by Kobunsha, 22 "Vampire Series" published by Shueisha, 19 "Three Sisters Detective Series" published by Kodansha, and 17 "Bride Series" published by Kadokawa Bunko Ministry, 17 " Ghost Series " published by Wenyi Chunqiu, 16 "Sugihara Shuangxiang Series" published by Kobunsha, 13 "Imano Couples Series" published by Tokuma Bunko, 10 "Daguan Police Department Series" published by Kodansha, Kadokawa Shoten Published 6 "Angels and Demons Series", 5 "Gorgeous Detectives Series" published by Tokuwen Bookstore, and 5 "Nanjo Sisters Series" published by Shueisha, etc.

Akagawa Jiro's protagonists are all extremely ordinary characters. Such as the Sven detective who faints at the sight of blood in the tricolor cat series, the young sisters who like to talk about life trivia and gossip news in the three sisters detective group, and the "strange person" in the mental hospital in the gorgeous detective group series, etc. Because his works originate from life and are close to life, he is good at capturing the social issues that the common people care about, and can accurately grasp the complex psychology of contemporary youth. In addition, his writing style is bright and smooth, and the storyline is suspenseful, so his works are almost sold well, especially Popular with young students as well as female readers in general.

Akagawa Jiro is erudite, well-mannered, and especially loves family life. He never smoked alcohol or entered casinos all his life, and he didn't like to hang around in entertainment venues. He devoted himself to literary creation every day. The protagonists in his novels were basically "plus and minus" versions of the characters around him. For example, the prototype of the protagonist Katayama Detective in the three-color cat series is the author's friend, who is tall and thin, shy, mild-mannered, and even fainted at the sight of blood; another example, the protagonists in Akagawa's novels are mostly women, this is because he With two sisters on top, a daughter on the bottom, plus his mother and wife, he can be said to live in a crowd of women, so he seems to be able to write about women with ease and ease. Each of Akagawa Jiro's mystery novels is not lengthy in length, and the overall rhythm is just right. The plot is suspenseful, and the links are closely linked. After reading it, you can't put it down, but you don't feel happy after reading it. The reason for this effect is mainly due to the witty, humorous, lively and easy-to-understand creative style in his works, and the formation of this creative style is mainly due to a special creative method adopted by Akagawa - the video-based creative method . When talking about his literary creation, Akagawa said: "Whenever an image appears in my mind, a line of text will be left on the paper. This way of writing is probably influenced by my love for movies in high school. Escape from reality. I don’t like watching Japanese movies, French movies have a deeper influence on me.”

Not only did Akagawa Jiro's novels sell well, dozens of novels were adapted to the screen or made into TV series, and there was even a three-color cat cartoon. Not only that, in the Chinese-speaking area, Akagawa's works also have a great influence. There are more than 90 Chinese translations of his works. For a period of time, the phenomenon of "Akagawa Jiro fever" even appeared on the Internet, which shows the depth of his influence.

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