Keigo Higashino, a bestselling Japanese mystery writer whose works were widely translated, died July 23, the New York Times reported. He was 68. Higashino published more than 100 titles, many of which were adapted into movies in his Japan and abroad. His final novel, Eternal Memory, is being published today by the Tokyo publishing house Bungeishunju.
Higashino was the first Japanese author to be nominated for an Edgar Award in the U.S. and a Dagger Award in Britain. His English-language breakthrough was a translation of The Devotion of Suspect X (2005), which was an Edgar Best Novel finalist in 2012, and later adapted into films in Japan, China, South Korea, and India. Newcomer (2009) was nominated for a 2019 Dagger.
His books, which have sold about 109 million copies in Japan--in addition to several co-written works--have been published in 41 countries and territories and translated into English, Chinese, Korean, and French, according to his Japanese publisher Kodansha.
Higashino's characters "were often regular people such as schoolteachers, young children and pawnbrokers, who perpetrated or suffered acts of violence hidden by their mundane lives," the Times noted.
"I always have a defense attorney, a prosecutor and a judge within me, and perhaps even a defendant," Higashino said about his detached writing style, which never allowed any single character to dominate the narrative, in a 2006 interview with the Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. "This mind-set prevents me from writing solely based on one side's perspective."
One of the earliest international film adaptations of his works was The Secret, a 2007 English-language French production starring David Duchovny that was a remake of a 1999 Japanese movie based on his novel.
Higashino graduated from Osaka Prefecture University (now Osaka Metropolitan University with a degree in electrical engineering, and worked for Denso, a Japanese manufacturer of automotive parts while writing in the evenings and on weekends, he told the Wall Street Journal in 2011. He decided to become a full-time writer in 1985 when his debut novel, After School, won the Edogawa Rampo Prize from the Mystery Writers of Japan.
In 2023, the Japanese government awarded him the Medal with Purple Ribbon, an honor for individuals who have contributed to art and academia. The Times noted that in his acceptance remarks, he said he still aimed to entertain his readers and to encourage them to read: "The feeling is similar to climbing a mountain. I believe that if I just keep moving forward, I will eventually reach the top."