Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: The Black Lizard

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Edogawa Rampo's stories give us a Japanese version of Sherlock Holmes. New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding traces the way detective fiction chimed with the modernising of Japan, when the ability to reason and think problems through logically was celebrated, when cities were changing and other arts mourned a lost rural idyll. In The Black Lizard, the hero Akechi Kogorō plays a cat and mouse game with a female criminal who has kidnapped a businessman's daughter.

Christopher Harding is the author of The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives and Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 - the Present (published in the US as A History of Modern Japan: In Search of a Nation, 1850 – the Present). He teaches at the University of Edinburgh. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can use their research to make radio programmes.

You can find him discussing other aspects of Japanese history in the playlist Free Thinking explores Japanese culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spq He presented an Archive on 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ww32 and a series about Depression in Japan also for Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cv0y4 and a series of 5 Essays for BBC Radio 3 called Dark Blossoms about Japan's uneasy embrace of modernity https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b01kb2

Producer: Ruth Watts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:42.9	I'm Chris Harding, and in this essay episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast,
0:48.8	I'm going to talk about one of the writers I think you should make space for on your bookshelves.
0:50.5	Edogawa Rampo.
0:56.9	With the BBC Sounds app, you can find some of your favourite shows with ease.
1:02.2	For example, you can tap the search button at the bottom right and type in Classical Fix.
1:08.9	This will take you straight to the podcast where we aim to open up the incredible world of classical music to everyone.
1:13.2	Featuring some famous faces, including the comedian James Acaster.
1:16.2	Listen to it, it feels like all the grimes coming off you.
1:18.0	The musician, Nadine Shah.
1:20.0	Right now I'm on some adventure.
1:21.4	And many more.
1:26.6	Download the BBC Sounds app to start listening to Classical Fix and many other podcasts.
1:34.7	From a port in Osaka, a rusty old freight ship steams slowly out into the night.
1:40.4	Countless such vessels ply the waterways around Japan, but this one is different.
1:48.0	It is the floating layer of a master criminal known as the Black Lizard. Inside, the ship is luxuriously appointed. Bright chandeliers hang from pure white ceilings. Persian rugs adorn the floor.
1:56.0	On a sofa, dressed in black silk and dazzling jewelry, lies the black lizard herself.
2:03.0	She ought to be enjoying herself. She has succeeded in kidnapping the beloved daughter of a wealthy
2:08.8	businessman, extracting from him as ransom a priceless gem, the ancient mesmerizing star of Egypt,
	...

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