Ōkura Teruko (大倉燁子 , April 12, 1886 – July 18, 1960), born as Mozume Yoshiko (物集芳子) was a Japanese mystery novelist of the Shōwa era. She has often being claimed as the first Japanese female mystery novelist.
Biography
Teruko was born in Tokyo on April 12, 1886 as the middle child to a family of literary scholars. Her brother and her father were both scholars of Japanese literature while her sister would later be known as a novelist and a feminist.
Because of this, she has been surrounded by the literary greats of the Meiji era from a young age. Her parents sent her and her sister to study writing with the novelist Futabatei Shimei (二葉亭四迷, 1864 - 1909). However, in 1908 the Asashi Shimbun sent Futabatei to Russia which left the sisters without a mentor.
Because of this, Futabatei asked a friend of his, Natsume Sōseki, to continue mentoring the Mozume sisters. With this, both of them finally can continue learning to write. During a period between 1901 to 1912, Teruko would publish her works using the name Iwata Yumi (岩田 由美) and Iwata Yuriko (岩田 百合子) while still under the mentorship of Natsume.
Sometime after her apprenticeship, she would marry the diplomat Sawayanagi Masatarō. While stationed in England with her husband, she would discover the works of Arthur Conan Doyle which may have sparked her interest in mystery fiction. After her trip to England however, things went somewhat downhill. Sawayanagi divorced her and during this period, she began to study the art of nagauta. Nagauta (長唄) itself is a type of traditional Japanese music best described as a shamisen accompaniment to kabuki plays. A far distance from the fiction she wrote before.
But then, Teruko found a new mentor in two mystery novelists of the time, Morishita Uson (森下雨村, 1890 - 1965) and Ōshita Udaru (大下宇陀児, 1896 - 1966). With the two of them she started to write in this new budding genre at the time of detective fiction. With her mentoring, she would begin to publish her mystery stories to several publications in the country. Her debut work Dancing Shadow Puppets (踊る影絵) was a collection of strange stories written by Teruko, first published in 1938 and gained popularity, Teruko was advertised as “A comet in the world of detective fiction”. Edogawa Ranpo, a fellow mystery writer had commented on this new and upcoming writer.
「Her first collection of short stories, “Dancing Shadow Puppets” are not full-fledged detective novels. The author’s interests seems to be mainly focused in the horrors dwelling within the abnormal mind. Subjects such as death, psychic phenomena, and women dressing up in men’s clothes stand out. (…) I think the best story in this collection is “Dancing Shadow Puppets” itself, while not all of the stories in the collection are good (…) I will look forward to the day where she continues to work hard and become the Agatha Christie of Japan.」
- Edogawa Ranpo, Review of “Dancing Shadow Puppets” (1938)
With great praise from peers, Teruko continued to write and her popularity steadily grew, she never wrote full novel-length stories but continued writing short “strange” stories as she would put it. Her next hit story would be The Cursed Phantom Dog (呪いの妖犬) in 1951 which I will talk about later down the line.
Unfortunately however, in 1960 she would pass away without becoming the “Japanese Christie” that Ranpo had hoped she would become, since then she fell into obscurity until her introduction in the Bungō Stray Dogs series. Like her nickname, she truly was a comet in the Japanese mystery novel scene.
Literary Work: The Cursed Phantom Dog
The Cursed Phantom Dog(呪いの妖犬,Noroi no yōken) was a short 11-page long story written by Ōkura Teruko published in the “Sea of Tales for Boys and Girls” magazine in 1951.
The story tells the tale of Haruo, someone living in the Mizuno family villa and Michiko, who lives in the Hiramatsu family villa. Haruo one day finds the Hiramatsu family’s grandfather passed out under a rose arch at the Hiramatsu family villa. When Haruo came to invesitgate, the grandfather continued his mad ravings about seeing a horrible black dog with its mouth filled with flames.
Haruo immediately headed home and talked to his brother Shōichi about the situation and the large footprints found nearby. Shōichi immediately knew what was going on and told Haruo about an old legend. In the legend, it is said that back in the day the Hiramatsu family’s patriarch was considered violent and murderous. The dog itself apparently belonged to the patriarch from long ago.
The story is very much reminiscent of a different story but from the English-speaking world. The Cursed Phantom Dogs was not a story purely created by Teruko’s imagination but, is also partially a retelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work “The Hound of the Baskervilles” published in 1902.
This inspiration however does not make Teruko a “bad writer” in any sense. Writers from all over have drawn inspirations and retold stories through a new lens. Teruko’s praise early on into her career showed that her writing skills had merit. However, it is always unfortunate when many important writers like her are forgotten to time.
