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Before the Second World War, Japanese crime fiction was considered as a genre of fiction that was popular, exaggerated and playful. Seicho Matsumoto, however, was an unconventional writer with distinct techniques which made his crime fiction more realistic and refined than others. Therefore, “Seicho’s Revolution” is well known in Japanese literature. The term “revolution” indicates that Seicho Matsumoto thoroughly reformed Japanese crime fiction.
Since the publication of his first crime fiction Points and Lines in 1958, Seicho Matsumoto has created a new trend in Japanese crime fiction, “crime fiction with a social consciousness”. The study begins with a literature review of the history of Japanese crime fiction as well as the emergence and features of crime fiction exhibiting a social consciousness. Next, two masterpieces of Seicho Matsumoto’s early works, Points and Lines and Vessel of Sand, are examined, to discover his unique writing techniques, such as putting the emphasis on the motives behind the crimes and also bringing social issues into the stories.
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