Japanese crime mystery novels, once under-represented in English-speaking countries, are gaining popularity in Britain.
Leading the charge is mystery writer Kotaro Isaka, whose works have been shortlisted twice in three years for Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) awards.
In May 2024, his novel Ax (The Mantis in English) was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award, which honours outstanding mysteries, including espionage and adventure fiction. Established in 2002 to honour James Bond author Ian Fleming, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger is one of 13 Dagger awards presented.
Four of the six finalists in this category this year were US authors, with Missouri-born Jordan Harper winning for his Hollywood-set novel Everybody Knows.
British publisher Pushkin Press, known for producing Japanese works by mystery writer Seishi Yokomizo and others, won the CWA Daggers award in the publisher category this year, further boosting the presence of Japanese mystery novels.
“It is very rare for an Asian work to be a finalist in the Steel Dagger category,” said book reviewer Matsukoi Sugie about The Mantis, which is about a henpecked salesman living a double life as a skilled assassin.
“Ever since I started reading mysteries, I saw the Daggers as an amazing award from a distant land. It feels like a dream come true to be shortlisted [again],” Isaka said.
Sugie noted that the setting for The Mantis is “very acceptable” in Britain and praised the work for its humanism and vivid foreshadowing, which are hallmarks of Isaka’s writing.
However, in an era of global content consumption through things like streaming platforms, foreign titles in the mystery genre are becoming more widely accepted.
Last year’s Dagger awards saw two unexpected Japanese nominees in the Crime Fiction in Translation category: Kaoru Takamura’s Lady Joker and The Tattoo Murder by Akimitsu Takagi.
Lady Joker is inspired by the real-life corporate extortion case of the Ezaki Glico confectionery company in the 1980s, and offers a bleak portrait of post-war Japan.
In contrast, The Tattoo Murder is a legendary whodunit of the “locked-room” variety, featuring a crime where the perpetrator enters and leaves the crime scene undetected.
Pushkin’s commissioning editor Daniel Seton believes interest in Japanese mysteries in Britain is only going to grow. “Japan has such a rich crime-writing culture – there is still so much more for British readers to discover, and we aim to help them do so,” Seton said.