the lady killer

Masako Togawa, author, actress and chanteuse, was born in Tokyo in 1933 and it appears she will be rounding age eighty in March of this year.  (Imdb.com cites a birth year of 1931, but Wikipedia counters with 1933 -- whichever may be true, continued health and happiness to her.)  Among Togawa's novels is the mystery The Lady Killer, nominated for Japan's Naoki Prize when it first came out in 1963.  This is a twisted tale, and one that I found especially enjoyable since I'm a fan of things Japanese -- I kept visualizing it as a Japanese new wave film like Pale Flower or Crazed Fruit.  And an old 1989 item from the L.A. Times notes how The Lady Killer was once slated for filmdom, but it doesn't seem that this ever came to be:

Lewis B. Chesler, executive producer and creator of pay-TV's "The Hitchhiker," has purchased film rights to 1963 Japanese novel, "The Lady Killer" by Masako Togawa, a highly controversial and erotic thriller that dealt with role of women in that society. Screenwriter Robert J. Avrech ("Body Double") will adapt the book, and Carl Schenkel ("The Mighty Quinn") will direct. "Crimson Cabaret," the title of the film version, will film in Japan and possibly Hong Kong this spring. . . .

Well, that's a shame.  The 1985 Dodd Mead American edition was translated from the original Japanese by Simon Grove, who seems to have done an excellent job in keeping the cultural backdrop and tone of early 1960s Tokyo while also maintaining the intrigue of the plot.