Kodō Nomura


Kodō Nomura was the pen-name of Nomura Osakazu, a novelist and music critic in Shōwa period Japan. He also used the pen-name Araebisu for his music criticism. He is famous for his creation of the fictional detective Zenigata Heiji.

Early life

Nomura was born in the rural district of Shiwa county, Iwate prefecture in northern Japan, the younger son of a farmer. As a youth, he loved to read, and one of his favorite works was the Chinese classic Outlaws of the Marsh. He was sent to boarding school in Morioka, where he met Kindaichi Kyosuke, later a noted linguist and Namura's lifelong friend. One year behind him in the same school was future poet Ishikawa Takuboku. He attended Tokyo Imperial University, but left to work as a journalist for the Hochi Shimbun, a newspaper based in Tokyo. He continued to work as a journalist for the paper until it merged with the Yomiuri Shimbun in 1942.

Literary career

While working as a journalist, Nomura began to write popular fiction, notably historical novels, which appeared in serialized form in the literary journal Bungei Shunju. His most famous work was a series of detective stories set in the Edo period called Zenigata Heiji torimono hikae. The first episode appeared in Bungei Shunju in 1931, and, were made. The story won the Kikuchi Kan Prize in 1958.
Nomura wrote other novels, including another detective series, Ikeda Daisuke torimono hikae, but none were as popular as Zenigata Heiji.
Nomura died of acute pneumonia in 1963. His personal fortune was set into a scholarship fund for aspiring writers. He had previously donated his entire library to his home town of Shiwa in Iwate prefecture, where it now resides in a memorial museum erected in his honor.
Nomura's daughter was the novelist Matsuda Keiko.