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Jinka Katsuo

Pseudonym of Kanji Ōtsuka (1936-2017), author, translator and anthologist who is best known in his native Japan as the country's foremost authority on Jack the Ripper. His translations have included works by Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Philip K Dick, Richard Matheson and C L Moore.

In the 1980s, Jinka flirted briefly with Space Opera in the form of the Space Ranger trilogy, which retold Japanese myth in a Far Future setting. However, this met with remarkably short shrift, even from usually forgiving Japanese sf reviewers, who criticized its small sense of scale and oddly gullible protagonists. His subsequent work has largely revolved around anthologies of Sherlock Holmes and similar "famous detectives", or mysteries written in a liminal space between nonfiction and docudrama, typified by Jigoku no Hono'o Satsujin Jiken ["The Hellfire Club Murder Case"] (1995) (see Horror in SF; Crime and Punishment). [JonC]

Kanji Ōtsuka

born Yokohama, Japan: 23 December 1936

died 22 December 2017

works as by Katsuo Jinka

series

Space Ranger series

works as author/editor

links

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 19:14 pm on 24 April 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jinka_katsuo>