Sherlock Holmes, ah so!

Ann and I were honored over the past few days to host our friends Hiro and Eiko Yazane from Tokyo. When I showed Hiro my Sherlockian library, he said, "Sherlock Holmes -- very famous in Japan!"

Naturally I started searching my shelves for books with Japanese connections.

I have one book written in Japanese. It's a children's adaptation of Maurice Leblanc's L'aiguille Creuse (The Hollow Needle), a novel of about gentleman thief Arsène Lupin that also features the great detective Holmlock Shears. My copy is the 45th printing, from 1975.

Then there's the book I can actually read, Japan and Sherlock Holmes. This is a collection of both new and classic essays by Japanese writers, translated into English and published as part of the Baker Street Irregulars International Series in 2004.

Included are two essays by Japanese mystery writer Rampo Edogawa, one detailing the beginning of the Baritsu Chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars and the other a short essay on Poe and Doyle. I love this passage in the latter essay:

Indeed, Doyle followed Poe's examples but succeeded in popularization of the genre by his plain and good English style and moderate humorous exaggeration in Holmes and Watson's characterization.

Now, the name of Sherlock Holmes is known to many who know neither Poe nor Dupin, nor even the name of Doyle. Today, Doyle is dead but Holmes is alive as an actual person.

How true!