Okamoto Kidō

Okamoto Kido (1872–1939) was a Japanese playwright, novelist, and journalist. The son of a samurai-turned-interpreter at the British Legation in Tokyo, he grew up between two worlds — learning Chinese poetry from his father and English from British diplomats, sneaking into kabuki performances as a boy, and listening to foreign ghost stories told by his uncle.

He spent twenty-four years as a newspaper reporter, covering the Sino-Japanese War and reviewing kabuki for the Tokyo dailies. In 1911, after years of quiet failure, his play The Mask Maker's Story made him famous overnight. He went on to write 196 plays and became the first playwright named to Japan's Imperial Arts Academy.

But he is best remembered for his detective: Inspector Hanshichi, an aging Edo-period investigator who lovingly recounts his old cases. Inspired by reading Sherlock Holmes in the original English, Okamoto published 68 Hanshichi stories between 1917 and 1937 — Japan's first detective fiction series, steeped in nostalgia for old Tokyo and the supernatural folklore of its neighborhoods.

He died of pneumonia in 1939. His stories have never gone out of print.