Edogawa Rampo - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Director Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men from 1969 incorporates plot elements from a number of Rampo stories. Noboru Tanaka filmed Watcher in the Attic as part of Nikkatsu's Roman porno series in 1976.

• The manga group CLAMP used Edogawa as one of the inspirations for the series Man of Many Faces (1990–1991).

• In the manga (1994 onward) and subsequent anime (1996 onward) Detective Conan, the protagonist Shin'ichi Kudō, chooses the pseudonym "Conan Edogawa," taking parts of the names of the British detective novelist Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampo as he frantically attempts to make up a name to cover up his identity after he shrinks into a young boy. He lives with his best friend, whose father is a detective named Kogorō. Conan's mother also occasionally uses the fake name Fumiyo, a reference to the wife of Edogawa's character Kogorō Akechi.

• Akio Jissoji's films Watcher in the Attic (1992) and Murder on D Street (1998) are both adaptations of Rampo's works. In both these movies Kogorō Akechi is played by actor Kyūsaku Shimada.

• In 1994, a film entitled Rampo inspired by Rampo's works was released in Japan (The film was retitled The Mystery of Rampo for its American release). Rampo himself is the lead character of the film and is portrayed by actor Naoto Takenaka.

• The 1997 film Grosse Pointe Blank features a scene in which the main character, assassin Martin Q. Blank, attempts to drop poison into his target's mouth through a hole in the ceiling, the same method used in Stalker in the Attic.

• The 1999 film Gemini is loosely based on a Rampo story.

• The manga (2002–2007) and 2008 anime Nijū Mensō no Musume, or The Daughter of Twenty Faces, use Rampo's characters Kaijin Nijū-Mensō (The Mystery Man of Twenty Faces) and in a smaller role, Kogorō Akechi.

• Some of Rampo's stories were later turned into short films in the 2005 compilation Rampo Noir, starring the well-known actor Tadanobu Asano.

• Barbet Schroeder's 2008 film Inju: The Beast in the Shadow is an adaptation of Rampo's 1928 short story.

• The horror manga artist Suehiro Maruo had adapted two of Rampo's stories: The Strange Tale of the Panorama Island (2008) and "The Caterpillar" (2009).

• In 2009 the Japanese Google homepage displayed a logo commemorating his birthday on October 21.