¹ Itō Ken, “Ima made no michi”, in Shinkō bungaku zenshū 6, (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1930), 194-195. Translations are mine unless stated otherwise. For a complete biographical overview of Itō Ken see, Itō Ken kenkyūkai, Itō Ken: Hito to sakuhin (Shizuoka: Itō Ken kenkyūkai, 2001) and Ishihara, Masayoshi, “Haishō, Shanghai, feminizumu - Itō Ken”, in Kindai Shizuoka no senkusha: jidai o hiraki yume ni ikita jūkyūnin no gunzō (Shizuoka: Shizuoka Shinbunsha, 1999), 321-44.

² For studies on detective fiction in Japan see Itō, Hideo, Taishō wo tantei shōsetsu (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobō, 1991); Itō, Hideo, Shōwa no tantei shōsetsu: shōwa gannen–shōwa 20-nen (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobō, 1993); Itō, Hideo. Kindai no tantei shosetsu (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobō, 1994); Kawana, Sari, Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Saito, Satoru. Detective Fiction and the Rise of the Japanese Novel, 1880-1930 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012). Itō Ken was not the only proletarian writer engaging with detective fiction. Other proletarian writers are Hirabayahi Taiko, Hayama Yoshiki, Hayashi Fusao, Murayama Tomoyoshi, among others. See Nakajima Kawataro, “Nihon tantei shōsetsu-shi nōto 2 – puroretaria bungaku no hitobito,” Gen'eijō: tantei shōsetsu senmonshi 1 (no. 10, 1975): 130-136.

³ Kono Kensuke finds this combination in many detective works published in prewar Japan. See Kono, Kensuke, Tantei shōsetsu to Nihon kindai (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2004), 259.

⁴ Takeuchi, Mizuho, Taishūka wo meguru “Kōtsū”, Itō Ken Shanhai yawa ni okeru puroretaria tantei shōsetsu no kokoromi, Nihon bungaku 58, (no. 11, 2009): 53-54. See also chapter 10 “Puroretaria bungaku no ”rinkai“ he: Itō Ken Shanhai yawa ni okeru puroretaria tantei shōsetsu no kokoromi” in her book “Hentai” to iu bunka : kindai Nihon no “chiisana kakumei” (Tokyo: Hitsuji Shobō, 2014).

⁵ Ōmori, Shigeki, “Sasupensu no kōzō to ”Kurain no tsubo“ ”Jenosaido“ no hikaku kōsatsu,” in Nihon tantei shōsetsu o yomu: henkō to chōhatsu no misuteri-shi, edited by Oshino, Takeshi; Morooka, Takuma, (Sapporo: Hokkaidō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013), 233-234.

⁶ During this time in Weimar Germany Marxists thinkers such as Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Bloch shared similar concerns. See for example Siegfried Kracauer, Der Detektiv-Roman – Ein Philosophischer Traktat; Ernst Bloch, “A Philosophical View of the Detective Novel,” and Walter Benjamin, “Kriminalromane, auf Reisen” (Crime Novels, on Travel). Some of these texts were published after the war.

⁷ Hirabayashi, Hatsunosuke, Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke bungei hyōron zenshū vol. 3 (Tokyo: Bunsendō Shoten, 1975), 221.

⁸ Hirabayashi, vol. 3, 402.

⁹ Ibid., vol. 3, 222.

¹⁰ Itō Ken, “Kagakusha no tachiba kara mita bungei (1), (2), and (3)” Bunshō Kurabu, (Febr., March and April 1924).

¹¹ Hirabayashi, vol. 2, 210.

¹² Ibid., vol. 3, 401-404. The numbers are from Hirabayashi's list.

¹³ Itō Ken wrote two books on hentai, Hentai ninjōshi (A History of Abnormal Feelings, 1926) and Hentai sakkashi (A History of Abnormal Writers, 1926). For more on ero-guro-nansensu see Silverberg, Miriam, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

¹⁴ Reportage literature was a new genre evolving among proletarian literature used to expose the crimes of capitalism and imperialism. See for example Aono Suekichi' study Sarariiman no kyōfu jidai (The Panic Era of the Salaryman, 1930) and Siegfried Krakaucer's Die Angestellten (The Salaried Masses, 1930). For a theoretical essay on reportage literature see “Hōkoku bungaku-ron” (Treatise on Reportage Literature, 1930).

¹⁵ Hirabayashi, vol. 2, 45-46. See also Ikeda, Hiroshi, “Tenkō to tantei shōsetsu: Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke botsugo gojūnen ni yosete, Shisō (no. 11, 1981): 172-73.

¹⁶ Itō Ken, “Ima made no michi,” 195.

¹⁷ See for example, Okabayashi, Takatoshi, Shanhai Kōro No Jidai: Taishō Shōwa Shoki No Nagasaki to Shanhai, (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha, 2006), and Fogel, Joshua A, The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China, 1862-1945, (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1996), A. Maiden Voyage: The Senzaimaru and the Creation of Modern Sino-Japanese Relations, (California: University of California Press), 2014.

¹⁸ Zhao Mengyun, Shanhai, bungaku zanzō: Nihonjin sakka no hikari to kage, (Tokyo: Tabata Shoten, 2000), 13.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Wada, Hirofumi, (et al.), Gengo toshi Shanhai 1840-1945 (Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 1999), 10-11.

²¹ The Uchiyama bookstore, opened and run by Uchiyama Kanzō (1885-1959), possessed the largest Japanese book collection in Shanghai. The bookstore was also an important location for Sino-Japanese literary contacts including Lu Xun (1881-1936). See Keaveney, Christopher T., Beyond Brushtalk: Sino-Japanese Literary Exchange in the Interwar Period (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 23-44.

²² Itō Ken, “Shanhai no hitobito ge,” Yomiuri Shinbun, 1927.11.29, 4.

²³ Itō Ken, “Shanhai kikō,” Zuihitsu, (November, 1927): 30.

²⁴ Itō Ken, “Shanhai-teki zakki,” Wakakusa, (December, 1927): 54.

²⁵ Itō Ken, “Shanhai kikō,” 32.

²⁶ Itō Ken, “Shanhai-teki zakki,” 54-55.

²⁷ Itō Ken, “Shinatsū dangi ge,” Yomiuri Shinbun, 1932.2.11, 4.

²⁸ Hailufeng was the first Soviet in China established in 1927.

²⁹ Itō Ken, “Shinatsū dangi ge,” Yomiuri Shinbun, 1932.2.11, 4.

³⁰ Itō Ken, “Shinatsū dangi jō,” Yomiuri Shinbun, 1932.2.9, 4.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Itō mentions prominent journals such as Dongfang zazhi (The Eastern Miscellany) and Wenhua pipan (Cultural Criticism) as well as books by proletarian writers such as Guo Moruo (1892-1978), Jiang Guangci (1901-1931) and Chen Duxiu (1879-1942). See Itō Ken, “Saikin no Chūka Shuppankai,” Shomotsu tenbō 1, (no. 5, 1931), 16-19.

³³ I take the idea of referentiality from Alexander Des Forges who writes: “This city [Shanghai] space is not a haphazard or formless jumble, but a system of relations between recognizable names that direct the reader to other types of presentation: photographs, lithographic, illustrations, maps, guidebooks, lists of city streets and establishments, and newspaper articles, among others. In addition, this attention to the structure of urban space is paired with the frequent mention of markers of time – hours of the day, days of the week, and days of the month – to form a grid of reference that is central not only to each of the novels individually, but also to the development of the genre as a whole, foregrounding referentiality as a key question.” Des Forges, Alexander, Mediasphere Shanghai: the aesthetics of cultural production (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), 57.

³⁴ Itō, Ken, “Kokusai toshi Shanhai no satsujin jiken,” Fujin Kōron, (no. 10, 1933), 223.

³⁵ Itō, Ken, “Mato no himitsu chizu: Hannin no machi (Shanhai), burai no machi (Nankyō), supai no machi (Harubin), Bungaku jidai 2 (no. 6, 1930), 104-108.

³⁶ Fujita, Tomohiro, Gaichi tantei shōsetsuhū Shanhai-hen (Tokyo: Serabi Shobō, 2006), 287.

³⁷ Takeuchi, 45 and footnote 2, 56.

³⁸ Itō Ken, “Tantei shōsetsu no shinhōkō – puro tantei shōsetsu shutsugen no kiun –” Shin-Aichi, 1931.2.2, 3.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Ibid. In addition, proletarian writer Maedakō Hiroichirō offers a similar perspective on his story “Rōdōsha Jō O Burain no shi” (The Death of Worker John O'Brian), “Detective fiction does not necessarily show the criminal. Sometimes it shows only the crime.” Quoted in Nakajima Kawataro, “Nihon tantei shōsetsu-shi nōto 2 – puroretaria bungaku no hitobito,” in Gen'eijō: tantei shōsetsu senmonshi 1 (no. 10, 1975): 136.

⁴¹ Itō Ken, “Kokusai shōsetsu ide yo,” Sōsaku gekkan, (no. 11, 1928), 73-74.

⁴² “Shuka” Henshūbu, “‘Shinseinen’ no kokusaisei to Ajia: imin, shokuminchi, chōyō sakka,” Shuka, (no. 13, 1999): 8. This has been examined by scholars such as Faye Kleeman, who writes about Japanese crime fiction in Taiwan, and Yu Jaejin who analyses detective stories by Korean and Japanese writers in colonial Korea. See Faye Yuan Kleeman, “Body, Identiy, and Social Order: Japanese Crime Fiction in Colonial Taiwan,” Oriental Archive 81, (no. 3, 2013); Yu, Jaejin, “Shokuminchi Chōsen ni okeru zaichō Nihonjin no tantei shōsetsu 1: tantei no tōjō tantei shōsetsu,” Nihon gakuhō 104, (no.8, 2015); and the two other volumes edited by Fujita Tomohiro dealing with Manchuria and Nanyō detective fiction.

⁴³ Besides the thirteen stories, four stories on Harbin and Nanjing are also included.

⁴⁴ Itō continued to write about Shanghai and published a sequence of Shanghai Night Stories titled Shin Shanghai yawa (New Shanghai Night Stories, 1932).

⁴⁵ Takeuchi, 54. Moroka Takuma, for example, mentions that in so-called postwar “fabricated detective” (kyokō suiri) stories the absence of any riddle (nazo) was its main characteristic. This resembles the absence of tricks in Itō Shanghai Night Stories. Moroka, Takuma, “Sōzō suru suiri,” in Nihon tantei shōsetsu o yomu : henkō to chōhatsu no misuteri-shi, Oshino, Takeshi; Morooka, Takuma (ed.), (Sapporo: Hokkaidō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013), 263.

⁴⁶ Hirabayashi writes that Japanese are too bureaucratic to have private detectives. Hirabayashi, vol. 3, 222.

⁴⁷ Takeuchi, 53.

⁴⁸ Maeda Ai writes about a similar type of referentiality in his reading of Yokomitsu Riichi's Shanghai. Maeda, Ai, “Shanghai 1925: Toshi shōsetsu to shite no Shanhai,” Bungaku 49, (no.8, 1981), 1-23.

⁴⁹ Itō, Ken, Shanhai yawa (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1929), 131-132.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 141-142.