Edogawa Rampo burst onto the literary scene in 1920s Japan with a rapid succession of short stories and novels that helped to articulate the cultural logic of “erotic, grotesque, nonsense” in the interwar period. He earned instant notoriety for his startling explorations of Japanese modernity: the lure of illicit or prohibited desires; a fascination with cinema and visual spectacles; the psychology of leisure, and thrill-seeking; and a seemingly inexhaustible wanderlust for the imperial metropolis Tokyo. With instructor Seth Jacobowitz as our guide, this presentation will discuss scopophilia and claustrophilia as two predominant horror themes in Rampo’s fiction writing and their adaptation in the Japanese film and art worlds. We will explore his “Stalker in the Attic” (1926) and the film The Watcher in the Attic (1976) directed by Noboru Tanaka, the omnibus film Rampo Noir (2005), and Suehiro Maruo’s graphic novel The Strange Tale of Panorama Island (2010), among other works.

About the Instructor

Dr. Seth Jacobowitz is a Senior Research Associate at the Dominican Studies Institute at City University of New York. He is the editor and translator of the Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press, 2008) and author of Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture (Harvard Asia Center, 2015), which won the 2017 International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize in the Humanities. His work on Edogawa Rampo and Japanese genre fiction have appeared in Mechademia, Japan Forum, and several edited volumes.

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Please note these are live events - they cannot be watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and time zone the classes are being offered in before registering. All sales are final, and we will not give refunds to people who miss classes because of the time zones, and changes in time from standard to daylight savings. Classes curated by Miskatonic Los Angeles are in Pacific Time. If you are ever unsure, a quick way to check is the Miskatonic website.

About the Miskatonic Institute

Founded by Film writer/programmer Kier-La Janisse in 2010, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies offers classes in horror history, theory and production, with branches in London, New York and Los Angeles, as well as hosting special events worldwide.