Keigo Higashino


Keigo Higashino is a Japanese author chiefly known for his mystery novels. He served as the 13th President of Mystery Writers of Japan from 2009 to 2013. Higashino has won major Japanese awards for his books, almost twenty of which have been turned into films and TV series.

Early life

Higashino was born in the Ikuno-ku ward of the city of Osaka in Osaka Prefecture. The logographic letters that make up the family name were initially read as "Tono", but Keigo's father changed the reading to "Higashino".
Growing up in a working class area, Higashino's childhood was challenging because of the lower class to which his family belonged. He attended Koji Elementary School, Higashi Ikuno Junior High School, and Hannan High School. During his high school years he started reading mystery fiction.
Higashino studied Electrical Engineering at Osaka Prefecture University, where he became captain of the archery club. He graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering degree.

Career

Higashino started writing while in high school and university, showing his manuscripts to friends.
In 1981 he began working as an engineer at Nippon Denso Co., and married a high school teacher. He continued to write in the evenings and on weekends, submitting unpublished mystery novels for consideration for the annual Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1983. In 1984 his submission, which drew on his wife's occupation, reached the final round. In 1985, at the age of 27, he won the Rampo Prize for best unpublished mystery for Hōkago, drawing on experiences of the archery club at his former university. He resigned from DENSO in 1986 to start a career in Tokyo as a full-time writer.
In 1998 Higashino published Himitsu, which was converted into a feature film and won the 52nd Mystery Writers of Japan Award for feature films in 1999. Secret was later translated into English by Kerim Yasar and published as Naoko in 2004, with a limited print run. Higashino was inspired to write the story by reading a book in which a young child possessed the memories of someone who died nearby. He tried writing a short story featuring the implications of what would happen in such an instance, "but the ideas didn’t fully materialize. Finally I presented it as a novel and it got picked up." A 1999 Japanese film, Himitsu, was based on the book, as was a 2007 English-language French remake,The Secret, starring David Duchovny.
In 2006 Higashino won the 134th Naoki Prize for Yōgisha Ekkusu no Kenshin , an award for which he'd been nominated five times previously. Suspect X also won the 6th Honkaku Mystery Award and was ranked the number-one novel by Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! 2006 and 2006 Honkaku Mystery Best 10, annual mystery fiction guide books published in Japan. The English edition of Suspect X, translated by Alexander O. Smith, was nominated for the 2012 Edgar Award for Best Novel and the 2012 Barry Award for Best First Novel.
Higashino received the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Prize in 2014 for Inori no Maku ga Oriru Toki, When the Curtain of Prayer Descends), the 10th book to feature Detective Kyoichiro Kaga. He thought that the book was the end of the Kaga series, as he had done what he wanted to do with it.
Higashino is one of the most popular authors in Asia and, reportedly, the most popular novelist in China. Translation rights for his books, like Suspect X, were sold as far afield as China, Thailand, France, Russia and Spain. Both his The Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint were published in 6 languages. His popularity has drawn the attention of Asian academics, with papers and master's theses on his work published in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan, for example, but has also stimulated United States scholars.
Higashino was elected president of the Mystery Writers of Japan in 2009, and served until 2013. From 2002 to 2007 he served on various MWJ selection committees, and fulfilled a similar role for the Edogawa Rampo Award from 2008 to 2013. In 2014 he became a selection member for the Naoki Prize.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, Higashino donated the royalties of 100,000 copies of the reprint of Kirin no Tsubasa, the sequel to Newcomer, to relief efforts in affected areas.
Higashino reportedly avoids publicity as he prefers people not to recognize him on the street.

Contents and style

Higashino admitted in 2015 that his content and style had changed from his earlier writings, in which he treated motivation as the most important element. In a 2011 interview he stated that he wants his "readers to be continually surprised by my ideas.”
In addition to mystery novels, Higashino writes essays and story books for children. His style of writing the latter differs from his novels, and he does not use as many characters as in his novels. Higashino's works often include scientific elements, such as nuclear power generation and brain transplantation. Sports references, such as archery and kendo, ski jumping, and snowboarding, also occur often.
As can be expected, Japanese elements suffuse his novels; for example, in Suspect X a major character works at a bento lunch shop, while a murder is committed with the electrical cord from a kotatsu. Suspect X inverts the classical whodunit structure, as the reader learns early on who the murderer is. Andrew Joyce writes in The Wall Street Journal that Hagashino explores how "feelings of loyalty and the oppressive weight of human relations" are "catalysts for murder and dark pacts between neighbors or co-workers to dispose of bodies." Higashino claims that Japanese people prefer this format, in which the effects of characters' actions and intentions, in terms of emotions such as guilt and anguish, become clearer only towards the end of the story.
While Higashino admits to liking Western writers, he feels most strongly influenced by Japanese authors such as Edogawa Rampo and Seicho Matsumoto. And "so my work naturally has that Japanese sense of old-fashioned loyalty and concern for human feeling.” With regards his Western readers, Higashino wants them "to read my work and come to understand how Japanese people think, love and hate. I want them to be impressed that there is a Japanese person who came up with such unusual stories."

Works in English translation

Novels

;Detective Galileo series
;Police Detective Kaga series
;Other novels
Japanese Mystery Fiction Guide Rankings
Some of his novels have been made into TV drama series and films:
;Japanese films
;Japanese TV dramas
;South Korean films
;French film
;Chinese film