Keigo Higashino, From Engineer to “King of Mystery Fiction”
In 2012, Japan’s “king of mystery novels” Keigo Higashino wrote for 25 years. This year, he wrote his masterpiece “Masquerade Hotel”. Keigo Higashino said: “I even feel that in the future, I can’t surpass myself anymore.”
Keigo Higashino’s “Masquerade Hotel” writes a reasonable story from the extremely unreasonable. “Masquerade Hotel” uses a new story, a new structure, and a new mission setting to tell the story of the serial murders that occurred in the high-end hotel of “Tokyo Cortesia”. In the book, Keigo Higashino presents the growth process of a mortal and the subtle psychological changes between people from alertness to understanding. Keigo Higashino’s writing is sharp and succinct, and his story structure is very unique.
Reasoning entertainment is not light.
Nowadays , on the big and small screens in Japan, the signboard of “Keigo Higashino” is getting louder and louder. Since 2006, with “Walking in the White Night” as the stunning pioneer, and “The Devotion of Suspect ×” established his position, Keigo Higashino began to flourish. “Higashino Keigo” has successfully connected reasoning and human nature, books and film and television, and is unanimously favored by critics for its thought-provoking world and human nature. He created his own brand of mystery novel entertainment. It mainly depicts human nature, and the reasoning story is very dramatic. The key to its novel is to explore the psychological details of the perpetrator and the special environment in which the tragedy occurs.
Since the end of 2007, his works have been introduced to China one after another. In just a few short years, the sales volume of the Chinese version series has exceeded 1.2 million copies, easily occupying most of the Japanese literature in China. Although he is in his fifties, Keigo Higashino still loves to have a Japanese Rendan moustache on his lips. No matter how you look at it, he is an “old urchin” with a childish cunning.
After graduating from the Faculty of Engineering of Osaka Prefectural University in 1981, Keigo Higashino worked as an electrical engineer. After working for about two years, he used the time after get off work to write mystery novels every day, and sent his finished works to participate in the Edogawa Ranpo Award (the highest award for mystery novels in Japan) three times in a row. In 1985, he won the grand prize with his film “After School”.
Depressed after school
After winning the award, Keigo Higashino resigned from his position as an electronic engineer and immediately went to Tokyo to start his own career as a writer. But unfortunately, since then his works have been included in the shortlist of Japan’s authoritative Yoshikawa Eiji Award and Naoki Award every year, but every time he is not selected.
Until 14 years later, in 1999, he won only one Speculative Writers Guild Award for “Secret” and missed other awards.
”Secret” starts a turning point
”Secret” is a turning point in Keigo Higashino’s writing. This novel was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1999, starring the popular movie star Ryoko Hirosue, and suddenly the popularity of Keigo Higashino’s mystery novels started. Since then, the adaptation of nearly 10 film and television dramas of the same name, such as “The Detective Boys of the Waves” and “Malicious”, has made Keigo Higashino popular.
Later, based on his novel of the same name, the TV series “Walking in the White Night” won 4 major awards of the Japanese Drama Academy Award in one fell swoop. Another novel, “The Devotion of Suspect ×”, ranked first in Japan’s three major reasoning rankings, which is an unprecedented achievement for mystery novelists.
Rigorous, calm + beyond ordinary people’s
imagination Keigo Higashino’s mystery novels are rigorous, calm, and sometimes cruel. There is a rule in the writing of Keigo Higashino’s mystery novels: he explains things clearly in a few words, but he has reservations about the truth, and unconsciously brings the reader into the mystery he designed, and finally the mystery is revealed, all unexpected and unexpected. It seems that there are traces to be found, and it is not abrupt at all. The reasoning novels written by people in science and engineering will not pay too much attention to the consideration of sentences like people who are born in the liberal arts, but reveal the light of rational wisdom and spirituality.
These are beyond the imagination of ordinary people, not like ordinary people who follow the rules, and this writing style is due to his background in science. He often exaggerates the experiences of his relatives and friends and turns them into stories in his works. Keigo Higashino is the youngest son in the family and has two older sisters, one is an airline stewardess and the other is a teacher. As a result, he successively wrote the works “Murder Scene on the Cloud” based on the life of a flight attendant and “The Detective Boys of the Waves” based on the experience of a female teacher. Keigo Higashino had an unsuccessful marriage, and this marriage can also be found in his works: Maejima, the protagonist of his “After School”, was a part-time teacher at a women’s high school, exactly like his wife at the time… a
scientist The difference between Keigo
Higashino and Jin Tianyi, Conan or Ren Saburo, etc. is that Keigo Higashino dares to break the strict genre in the field of reasoning, and strives to open up new horizons of detective dramas. His observation and excavation of the good and evil of human nature have reached the height of sharp pointillism and extraordinary anatomy. Keigo Higashino belongs to the category of “scientists know martial arts”. The strict logical relationship and bold imagination in his speculative novels reflect the way of thinking developed in his career as an engineer. Keigo Higashino really combines childish reverie with the strictness of a scientist.
Keigo Higashino’s “The Devotion of Suspect ×” depicts a deep-seated friendship, excavating the warm humanity beneath the surface of evil, and humble little people have the right to yearn for happiness. Mei Dong in the mystery novel “Magic Night” is known as the “Ultimate Evil Girl” written by Keigo Higashino. The reason for “Ultimate” is that she completely abandons the so-called “conscience” element in human nature, and only seeks to achieve her goals, what? Can be ignored. Keigo Higashino also dares to challenge taboos, such as “Secret”. In addition to describing the evil side, Keigo Higashino also strives to extend his tentacles into the field of human relations. When the soul of the wife lives in the body of the daughter, how should the husband face it? Such taboo topics were developed and interpreted by Keigo Higashino, so the sense of mystery became stronger and stronger.
Higashino is such an astonishing novelist. He can use concise and concise words to integrate social reality into his novels; even, he guides readers to the last page without letting them know what the ending is. The tail is being deceived by him, but he is still willing to be deceived.
Rotating Kung Fu of Eighteen Martial Arts
The core of countless mystery novels lies in solving puzzles. The essence of solving puzzles lies in logic, and the focus of logic lies in trickery.
Countless masters spent their whole lives racking their brains on a question: How to write a trick of the ages?
Although Keigo Higashino’s works also show all kinds of incompetence, he involves a wide range of tricks and a deep surprise, all of which are eye-popping…
Reading Keigo Higashino’s novels will always experience a sense of freshness. In several of his novels that have been very popular, although the forms are peculiar and the narratives are bizarre, the protagonists have a strong moral consciousness of themselves surrounded by a cold legal system. In other words, the author endows the characters with compassion, so that these novels, which originally only satisfy the readers’ curiosity and detective psychology, exude a strong humanity.
”The Code of Famous Detectives” contains a total of 12 short stories by Keigo Higashino, which is like the “Eighteen martial arts” written in the Chinese military book – this novel is more like showing the “eighteen martial arts” of mystery novels. Made jokes and ridicules, but in fact, it is a novel to show the creative concept. The uniqueness of the author is that the two protagonists are sometimes separated from the plot of the novel to ridicule the main points of creation, and sometimes they are different and tit for tat in the novel.
This kind of creative method makes the novel, which itself seems to be flat, add another dimension and appear more three-dimensional. The protagonist participates in the investigation and chats with the readers, like a person on the stage, acting as the host and acting as the role of the stage play. The “I” in the narrative function is the police chief, Kawarahara Fanzo. He considers himself to be a supporting role in the novel. He is responsible for spoilers, misleading, and foreshadowing. The protagonist in the book is a private detective. A crumpled shirt, a unkempt head, and an old cane.” He seems to be unruly, but he is a master detective. He is always the one who reveals the mystery and overthrows the random guesses of “I”.
Keigo Higashino’s novels involve some of the usual modes of mystery novels, but they don’t stop there, but are superior in creative form. Patterns such as secret room killing, Tempest Villa, suicide note, alibi, murder with murder, etc., seem to be common in European and American detectives or Japanese mystery novels – you can even – cite classics for comparison. To attract readers, we must play new tricks, but the “flower” of “Flower” is not the “flower” in “Flowers in the Sky”, but it is necessary to “squeeze” out a wonderful flower after the flowers at home, mountain flowers, and wildflowers are in full bloom. Keigo Higashino has this ability.
Below the iceberg, there is a flame
. Keigo Higashino’s most magical ability is to make the detective in the world become a young female college student in “The Murder in the Hot Spring of the Colleague of Flowers”, and then have an ambiguous relationship with “I”. This made a great breakthrough for a single character, because the author originally let the narrative wander inside and outside the “boundary” of the novel, and echoed the absurd situation of reality with the change of “virtual characters”, which actually expressed the creator’s inner contradiction. . It is necessary to write unfathomable mystery novels, but also not completely out of the public taste, and it is necessary to have icebergs and flames.
Keigo Higashino is a genius writer who has continuously introduced novel topics since his debut more than 20 years ago, and is also one of the few contemporary Japanese mystery novelists whose creation is always at the peak. Keigo Higashino’s creative fields are extensive, beyond the framework of traditional reasoning, with the ability to see through the times, a rigorous and meticulous structure, and a wonderful portrayal of the helplessness and joy of life itself. In addition, Higashino’s ideological depth has been continuously strengthened, but he does not intend to show off pure literature, fully ensuring the entertainment of mystery novels, and trying his best to show the charm of popular fiction writers.
The function of Keigo Higashino’s mystery novels constantly expands the space for intellectual wrestling. It seems that there are endless murder cases, but in fact, is the trick not man-made? As long as it is designed by people, there must be traces left behind, because people are not independent individuals, but people who are inextricably linked with society. Police investigation is nothing more than to complete the basic investigation steps through the victim’s social circle or external means (surveillance video, photos, eyewitnesses).
Keigo Higashino made the icy man burn with flames, “killing” became a mystery that no one knew, and solving the case was a journey back to “truth”, because to reach “the other side of the truth” must break through many falsehoods and go directly to the bottom of the cold human nature . He excavated a kind of pathology or state that was inexplicable and incomprehensible in the depths of human beings. It can be said that there is a flame under the iceberg, and the flame of desire is cast into the iceberg. If you want to say it, you can still rest, and it is also delicious.
Universal means, starting from
coercion Keigo Higashino pushes the unpredictable principles of ordinary people, and the biggest reason in his heart is routines, secrets, etc. – it will make him “small” all the way. Therefore, Keigo Higashino picked the topics and themes that he least wanted to write about and that he was least good at. When the “professional” is turned into a “professional”, new bright spots appear. Since Keigo Higashino is a latecomer, it is not a little bit commonplace!
When challenging unfamiliar fields, we often encounter bottlenecks, and Keigo Higashino often feels stuck. Keigo Higashino said: “I have a lot of difficult areas, and I’m just a person after all. For example, I wrote classical ballet in my novel: To be honest, I’m completely interested in classical ballet, but I don’t want to understand the mystery. , I went to watch it more than 20 times in a year. I forced me to like it, and after I liked it, I became a new expert. An extraordinary new expert.” Keigo
Higashino has become a professional writer since 1987,
It has been exactly 25 years, and he once wanted to be a film director for the “Monster Boy”, and he is no longer interested in film directors. He even thought it would be nice to be a famous novelist. When he was a writer, his compulsion on himself made him gain the confidence to explode infinite energy. His self-confidence stems from his breakthroughs in all directions, and despite his ups and downs, he finally succeeded.
Keigo Higashino’s strength is continuous integration. If you want to integrate, you must attack, attacking an unfamiliar territory. Because each field has its own strengths, Keigo Higashino wants to capture these different advantages in the world.
Therefore, Keigo Higashino’s novels are not purely logical “intrinsic reasoning”, but contain deeper connotations due to extensive connections.
Higasho believes: “‘Benge reasoning’ is very attractive, there is no doubt about it. But there are many people who write orthodox Bengge reasoning. No matter how well they write, they will still be overwhelmed. So I didn’t deliberately write authentically. , I want to come up with some long flavors, my own weird flavors. So, the person I want to write is me, and only me can write unique works.”
Keigo Higashino is not “very theoretically solving puzzles” but It is a combination of many human factors. He feels that reasoning is important, but the most important thing is the unpredictable heart. Reasoning is unpredictable, and the human heart is even more unpredictable. The answer to life and death is not unique. Of course, “Once upon a time, the sea was the water, except that Wushan was not a cloud”, but now he doesn’t have as many erratic answers as he did when he was young.
Uncovering the Unknown and Uncovering
Mysteries Does Keigo Higashino’s genius narrative come from some of his own extraordinary experiences? He told reporters: “I think I remember more about the past than other people. I didn’t think about it at the time, and I experienced it without thinking. Later, when I grew up, I realized that some of the things were quite important, and I realized that there are profound meanings. , that is, only moved and regretted afterwards, these have become the theme of the novel.”
Keigo Higashino’s works like to play the game of time, such as “Fate”, “Parallel World: The Story of Yuan”, “Once upon a Time My Dead Home” and other works Also, using time and memory to trick people, and sometimes returning to the past, sometimes jumping into the future, his sense of the order of time seems to be different from ordinary people!
Keigo Higashino’s grasp of “time is a sword” is indeed shocking. His standpoint is that people will change because of time, and time is like a machete, which can cut out the rotten scars of human nature, but reduce the impact and radiation in space. He excavates this point more than any other writer, and it’s very shocking to read.
In order to write “Fate”, Keigo Higashino spent three months making a timetable. Keigo Higashino teased himself: “I am very good at arranging, formulating my own schedule, and faithfully following the schedule. Higashino is the master of time.” He introduced that the schedule is very important, and it is necessary to ensure important things. . This iron law is the time outlet for Higashino to continuously write mystery novels.
Pursuing in expression, projecting in deformation On the surface,
readers can see that Higashino’s novels focus on tricks, but in fact, he puts his themes in unexpected endings. Keigo Higashino said it well: “If I don’t explore in my head, I will lose my vitality at a certain time.”
”Malicious” is Keigo Higashino’s work with strong motivation, and the motivation is related to the bottomless abyss of malice. Because Dongye knows that a person has a motive, he will have a very clear and shocking action. With a motive, a major case was created. Only every time I am surprised – what is the motive, what kind of monster is it, will the crypt dig. In Keigo Higashino’s “Murder by the Lake”, children are much smarter and more mature than adults, but adults are unreasonable, self-willed, and depraved, and they have no sense of trust in teachers. This is the “powerful bouncing machine” of motivation. a kind of.
As for the genius physicist Yukawa in the “Detective Galileo” and “Precognition Dream” series, it was created by picking some elements from Keigo Higashino, and then continuously integrating the characteristics of other characters. Therefore, no matter which character, there is a projection of Dongye in it, but it is not entirely Dongye!
To sort out Keigo Higashino, a heavyweight mystery novelist, can be said to be fascinating and maddening. His speculative novels make readers unable to stop, and it is this strange combination of rationality, spirituality, magic and sensibility “four natures” that shows its unique literary charm and makes readers fascinated. Many times, Keigo Higashino has combined scientific logic, reasoning and fantasy, perversion, exaggeration, and distortion of human nature. When readers are enjoying and being shocked by its wonderfulness, don’t forget this “old urchin” who stayed in Japan with Rendan’s moustache hiding in the dark and secretly laughing.
