was a Japanese author of popular fiction active during the

Shōwa Shōwa most commonly refers to: * Hirohito (1901–1989), the 124th Emperor of Japan, known posthumously as Emperor Shōwa ** Shōwa era (昭和), the era of Hirohito from 1926 to 1989 * Showa Corporation, a Japanese suspension and shock manufactu ...

and

Heisei The was the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Akihito from 8 January 1989 until his abdication on 30 April 2019. The Heisei era started on 8 January 1989, the day after the death of the Emperor Hirohito, when hi ...

periods of Japan.

Early life

Saitō was born in Ota-ku, Tokyo. In 1944, he moved with his mother to her hometown of

Fujisawa, Kanagawa is a Cities of Japan, city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 439,728 and a population density of 6300 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Fujisawa is in the south-central part of Kan ...

. He started writing

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

s from junior high school. In high school, he was a classmate of

Shintaro Ishihara was a Japanese politician and writer, who served as the Governor of Tokyo Metropolis, Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012. Being the former leader of the Far-right politics, radical right Sunrise Party, later merged with Toru Hashimoto's Japan ...

, and assisted him in the creation of the literary circle ''Shonan Bungei''. After graduating from

Tokyo University The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

with a legal degree, he went to work as a bureaucrat at the

Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...

city hall, continuing to write novels on the side. With his legal background and Tokyo University credentials, he was often offered more lucrative posts within the central government, but he always refused as this would rob him of time to write.

Writing career

In 1966, Saitō was awarded the 12th

Edogawa Rampo Prize The , named after Edogawa Rampo, is a Japanese literary award which has been presented every year by the Mystery Writers of Japan since 1955. Though its name is similar to the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, which has been presented by Mystery Writers of ...

for his

mystery novel Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a re ...

He followed on this with several best-selling mystery series, creating the "Tarot Himeko series", the "Inspector Edogawa Murder-Travel series", and the "Inspector Kobayakawa series", which were the basis for several popular

television series A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming plat ...

. Saitō is known for his tremendous creative speed, at times producing several hundred pages of work a week, or completing a novel within the span of a month. In particular, the ''Tarot Himeko'' series exceeded 80 novels from 1985 to 1992, and is also credited with creating a revival in the

fortune-telling Fortune telling is the spiritual practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115–116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle ...

industry and the sales of

tarot card Tarot (, first known as '' trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a set of playing cards used in tarot games and in fortune-telling or divination. From at least the mid-15th century, the tarot was used to play trick-taking ca ...

s in Japan.

Death

Saitō died on 15 June 2024, at the age of 91.斎藤栄さん死去、91歳代表作に「奥の細道殺人事件」など
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saito, Sakae 1933 births 2024 deaths People from Ōta, Tokyo 20th-century Japanese novelists 21st-century Japanese novelists Japanese mystery writers Edogawa Rampo Prize winners University of Tokyo alumni