I can’t for the life of me remember how I first heard about Teruko Okura, but maybe this ghostly appearance is appropriate to her work. Okura is one of Japan’s first female mystery writers (According to wikipedia, the first to be published in paperback. I have not confirmed this). She also has an amazing literary pedigree. She first studied under Futabatei Shimei, the man credited for writing Japan’s first modern novel, and after Futabatei was sent to Russia, under Natsume Soseki. Yeah, that Natsume Soseki.
Okura moved abroad after marrying a diplomat (whom she later divorced), where she fell in love with the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. Upon returning to Japan, she began writing mystery stories which were extremely well received. Kikuchi Kan praised her first collection as “incomparable” and said “each piece is full of ghastly force.” As with most early mystery writing, the lines between science and the supernatural were always blurry. Sometimes this might feel a bit cliche to a modern reader, but it’s also really, really fun.
The story I’m sharing today, A Wonderful Memento, falls into one of my favorite genres: a scary story about telling a scary story. While technically I guess it’s a mystery story (there’s a detective and everything), it feels almost like a ghost story. The atmosphere is creepy and you just get the sense that there’s something around the corner, waiting to startle you.
This is one of twenty-six of Okura’s stories that are available on Aozora Bunko. These stories are fairly easy to track down in print as well. One of her full-length novels, The Fastest Path of Death, is also available in a digital edition. I haven’t made a concerted effort to track down her other work, but I’m guessing it would require a good bit of library and used book store-hopping. I’m also very curious about the more “literary” works she put out before becoming a mystery writer.
Enjoy A Wonderful Memento!