The crisis of Japanese detective fiction in the 1930s: Identity and institutions

Abstract

 The article investigates the causes of the profound crisis that struck the Japanese detective genre ( tantei shōsetsu 探偵小説) in the 1930s. Existing historiography predominantly views this crisis through the prism of external ideological factors, namely the intensification of militarism and censorship in pre-war Japan. This study focuses on the systemic internal contradictions within the literary field itself. The authors aim to show that the genre’s decline was also very seriously influenced by the coincidence and mutual reinforcement of two interconnected processes, which have not been previously analyzed within a unified framework. First, it was a protracted crisis of genre identity, rooted in the historical hybridity of the detective fiction, which led to a theoretical schism between proponents of “orthodox” ( honkaku 本格) and “unorthodox” ( henkaku 変格) schools. It is further emphasized that the strategy of genre hybridization, which initially allowed the detective story to establish itself in the literary market and ensured its commercial success in the 1920s, paradoxically turned into a cause of ideological disorientation and loss of internal unity within the writing community in the following decade. Second, it was a complete institutional collapse and the sequential failure of the entire ecosystem of specialized magazines ( Shin Seinen 新青年, PROFILE ぷろふいる, Spy シュピオ). Based on a comparative-historical and institutional analysis of 1930s texts and periodicals, the authors demonstrate how the original syncretic nature of the genre, which had been the key to its success in the 1920s, became the direct cause of its ideological disorientation in the following decade. Concurrently, using the three key magazines as examples, various scenarios of institutional collapse are demonstrated: financial (for the small-scale PROFILE), adaptational-marginalizing (for the commercial Shin Seinen), and voluntary (for Spy, which implemented the practice of jishukisei 自主規制, “self-restraint”). The conclusion is drawn that it was precisely the mutual overlap and synergy of the identity crisis and the infrastructure crisis, and not just external political pressure, that predetermined the depth and systemic nature of the decline of the Japanese detective genre on the eve of World War II.