The following is an excerpt from the introduction to "The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi."
"The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi" ("Hanshichi Torimonocho") must certainly be one of the last great, and beloved, works of early 20th-century popular Japanese fiction to find its way into English translation.
This fact, however, in no way reflects any neglect of the work in Japan, where today, nine decades after the first stories in the series were published, it remains in print — in multiple editions, both hardcover and paperback, no less.