RP377 Writing the Unexpected

 RP377 Writing the Unexpected

With his deep understanding of horror and the grotesque and his talent for unexpected plot twists, Edogawa Rampo took the Japanese mystery genre to terrifying new territories. Born Hirai Taro, he published his first story in 1923 under the name Edogawa Rampo— a play on the name Edgar Allan Poe. Rampo gained success by combining the suspense-filled style of Western mystery stories with his own bizarre imagination.
In his story “The Human Chair,” for example, Rampo describes an ugly chair maker who craves human contact and designs a luxurious sofa for a hotel. He alters the inside of the sofa so that he himself can climb inside. The sofa is then taken to the hotel with its maker hiding just beneath the surface. In the hotel, guests sit on him unaware that the chair is in fact hiding a man. The sofa is eventually sold to another household, where a young woman lives. The story itself takes the form of a letter being read by a young female writer, and as she reads on, it becomes more and more apparent that the chair she is sitting on is hiding the twisted chair maker beneath its surface. Though the story doesn't end here (there is one more delicious twist before the reader turns the final page), it shows just how smoothly Rampo is able to manipulate his readers' most basic emotions of fear and dread.
Another story, “The Red Chamber,” focuses on a group of men who come together to tell horror stories. One new member begins by revealing that he is a murderer and has killed 99 people but has done so in a way so ingenious that the police will never catch him. He tricks people into deadly situations by lying or suggesting actions that will certainly cause their deaths. He sees himself as the perfect murderer, and in the end tricks a servant into killing him, thus bringing his total murders to 100. Once again, though, there is in fact one more twist in the story before the final sentence. It's important to remember that even when you think the story's over, Rampo always has a final surprise up his sleeve.