Narrative structure in the blind beast by Edogawa Ranpo

Abstract

This article examines the narrative structure of The Blind Beast by Edogawa Ranpo in order to clarify the work’s distinctive self-narrative features and to reassess Ranpo’s position within Japanese detective fiction. The study demonstrates that The Blind Beast not only embodies structural characteristics found in global detective narratives but also reflects a uniquely Japanese mode of crime fiction associated with the ero-guro aesthetic. The analysis identifies a major structural framework in the text: boundary-based structure. This structural pattern exposes the darker dimensions of Japan’s modernization and the psychological–aesthetic deviations of urban life. Consequently, the article argues that The Blind Beast stands as a representative example of the intersection between non-conventional detective fiction and the ero-guro-nansensu aesthetic in twentieth-century Japanese literature.