One of Japan's most famous
authors, Seishi Yokomizo is best remembered for his
work on the popular Kosuke Kindaichi character. Yokomizo's
first venture into writing occurred at the young age
of 19 when his work was first published in the magazine
New Youth. 13 years later, the writer would
pen his first novel, Onibi, which was published
in 1935. Unfortunately, due to timing with World War
II, the author had trouble getting more of his work
into circulation, although even at this point in time
the author had already had his work adapted for
the big screen starting with Battledore Mystery by
Shochiku in 1938. After the war had passed,
Yokomizo found himself with a large following from
his detective novel work, which resulted in more movies
from Daiei and other studios, including Toho with the
1954 movie Ghost
Man. More than a decade later, the author's
popularity would go through a huge resurgence in the
mid-1970's, brought on by new novels and the film The
Inugami Family (1976). This led into a huge
boom in relation to the Kosuke Kindaichi character,
who was appearing in both movies and on television
as part of the Seishi Yokomizo Series (1977),
named after the esteemed author. His last work on the
character was completed in 1977, called The House
of Hanging on Hospital Hill which Toho made into
a movie two years later. Regretfully, the author passed
away two years after the movie was produced, losing
a fight to cancer. Today, Yokomizo is remembered through
an award distributed by Kadokawa and TBS annually,
called the "Yokomizo Seishi Mystery Award", that takes
unpublished mystery work and releases them in a book
format while TBS adapts the work for TV. |
