The Japanese are deadly serious about crime and mystery writing. There are loads of very famous writers, almost all of whom no one in the West has heard of. Masako Togawa is an exception; if you're lucky, you might come across one of the two books that were published in English in the 1980s. Both of them are excellent, addressing social issues in Japan and written with a deft touch that, I presume, exists in the originals. But that's not really why she's in the list.

I had tried to get the rights to 'The Master Key' but we were beaten to it by (I think) Penguin. Fair enough. When it was published, I was asked of I'd like to interview the author as I was doing some freelance reviewing and journalism then. I turned up to meet the interpreter as arranged and we went to meet Masako Togawa. In her suite. At the Savoy. She had ordered a rather splendid afternoon tea and proceeded to vamp me mercilessly with the all the PR skills and none of the bad behaviours of a major diva. We talked about the Japanese love of crime writing - she had won the Edogawa Rampo award (say it quickly...) and disapproved of the Suntory awards which were, she said, so enormous they made writers lazy - and she had very firm views on the lack of recognition of and facilities for transpeople and cross-dressers in Tokyo (this was the 1980s remember). She told me about her television programmes, her magazine and her bars. When I finally left some hours later, she gave me a cassette tape that she said was her most successful recording, a number one album in Japan. When I got home I put it on; it was Masako Togawa singing the Edith Piaf Songbook.  In Japanese. With a Hammond organ.

She died in 2016. The woman who was Japan's answer to Oprah Winfrey, Esther Rantzen and Shirley Bassey in one package published over 30 novels  and is now immortalised in a bar in Tokyo that, from its website, would appear to be doing its bit for the Lesbian population. She would have been 92 this year. And here she is on YouTube. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/pWf0D6USxOY

And here’s her Wiki entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masako_Togawa?wprov=sfti1