Edogawa Ranpo’s The Human Chair and the Social Alien
· Academic Writing
A lack of violence and a bizarre premise make Edogawa Ranpo’s 1925 short story The Human Chair stand out among contemporary crime fiction. The story is framed as a written confession to an affluent female author, which makes it effectively a first-person narrative from the perspective of the criminal. Ranpo depicts a criminal as a social alien as a product of his genetic ugliness, which draws on the early 20th-century Lombrosian idea of a “born criminal”. Ranpo’s depiction of crime here is notable for his framing of the criminal as outcast and crime as their method of achieving human contact that they lack. The criminal is devoid of both societal status and eventually his humanity as he entombs himself inside a chair. This premise serves as both entertainment and social commentary, as it astonishes the reader with the criminal’s perverted acts but also invites them to sympathize with his social situation.
The outsider commits his acts of criminality as a product of his social isolation. In The Human Chair, a born physical appearance is what isolates the criminal. The criminal describes themselves as “ugly beyond description” (2), a label which is creatively expanded on throughout the text through comparison and elaboration. At several points, the criminal compares themselves to vermin: a “hermit crab” (5) and a “worm” (3, 10). While the outsider’s low social class is certainly an element of their isolation, it is lamented in the context of physical appearance: “Had I [the outsider] been born into a well-to-do family, I might have found the power, with money, to ease the torture of my soul brought on by my ugliness,” (2). It is the outsider’s grotesque physical appearance which they note as isolating them from broader society. If the outsider’s isolation was primarily class-related, he would at least be able to find kinship among others among his class. The motivations for the crimes are thus primarily social, not financial. The criminal is depicted as having a thriving business as a furniture craftsman, and although they do endeavor to steal as a component of their crime, their motivation is framed as earning money for the sake of social mobility. In this way crime is connected to the idea of social alienation.
The figure of the criminal is further connected to social isolation when it is revealed that it is is through their stint as a chair that they receive the human connection they lack. Ranpo’s first twist is when he reveals the criminal’s shifting motivation from simple robbery to a more complex desire for human touch. This is framed as “weird” (4) and deviant. “Rather, allow me to proceed with my narrative and tell you of a far greater source of weird joy which I managed to discover,” (5). The criminal goes so far as to call upon other ugly and shunned individuals to follow in their footsteps: “For those who were as ugly and as shunned as myself, it was assuredly wiser to enjoy life inside a chair. For in this strange, dark world I could hear and touch all desirable creatures,” (8). This indirect physical contact is deviant activity from which the criminal derives both fulfillment and sexual pleasure, frequently remarking on his attraction toward female passerby. This act may appear disgusting to readers, but Ranpo’s framing also elicits pity. The criminal in this story is unlike many of his contemporaries in that use violence and are directly opposed by a detective in that he is more of a harmless pervert or pest. Thus it can be gathered that the outsider’s criminal nature evolves from material desires into a habitual practice motivated by a pitiful desire for human connection.
The impact of the crime on the criminal is the total erasure of the self. The criminal’s identity dies as soon as he steps into the chair, upon which he remarks “I felt that I had buried myself in a lonely grave,” (5). Ranpo depicts the criminal’s deviancy as a force which drives the him further into social isolation, using feral characteristics as symbolism for deeper enmeshment into a life of crime. As the outsider exists in the chair, they physically degrade and lose motor function. Ranpo writes, “and gradually I began to crawl instead of walk to the washroom,” (8). Crawling on all fours, and other animalistic behavior demarks the outsider’s loss of humanity and descent into chair-dom. Further, the criminal frequently refers to the devil as an inspiration or point of comparison: “For many months I have hidden myself away from the light of civilization, hidden, as it were, like the devil himself,” (2) and “a weird idea suddenly leaped to my mind. Assuredly, it was the whispering of the devil himself,” (4). All this is to say that the criminal’s existence as furniture is not true fulfillment but rather a shallow existence, where he must perceive the world and human touch through a thick leather screen. His crimes serve only to degrade him and not build any true connection, which is demonstrated by the author’s disgust upon finishing his letter: “That chair on which she had sat from day to day . . . had it really contained a man? If true, what a horrible experience she had unknowingly undergone,” (10). She was not endeared to the criminal like he had hoped; despite his time spent among the affluent and attractive, he is no less an outsider.
Ranpo’s depiction of ugliness as a predisposition to criminality was a popular idea in early 20th century criminology. The idea was spearheaded by Cesare Lombroso’s writings on the “criminal man”, which posited that criminal nature was a born trait associated with savagery and could be identified through physical deformities and ugliness. These ideas were brought to Japan in the late Meiji period through translations of western works. Lombroso’s idea of “the problem of the criminal, who reproduces in civilized times characteristics, not only of primitive savages, but of still lower types as far back as the carnivora,” (Lombroso-Ferrero, 1911, p. 7) was a predominantly genetic phenomenon that he argued created obvious and unsightly deformities in criminals. People carrying these physical characteristics, which Lombroso argued were predominantly nonwhites, are supposedly predisposed to deviant or criminal acts. Ranpo’s writing demonstrates a similar thought as the narrator attributes their isolation to their physical characteristics. Because their appearance leads to their isolation which leads to their criminal acts, as has been established in this essay, Ranpo’s writing makes a similar philosophical case to Lombroso’s writing, although it is more roundabout in Ranpo’s case: it is social rejection due to physical characteristics which lead to the criminal’s acts.
Ranpo’s depiction of social rejection leading to criminality holds up as a relevant social critique today. Similar ideas of “fitting in”, physical attractiveness, and societal outcomes persist in modern cultural discourse, which are most prevalent in the contemporary “incel” and “looksmaxxing” movements, online movements focused on developing and critiquing male attractiveness and sexuality. “Looksmaxxers” argues that physical beauty is a determinant of all manner of things, such as “as a perceived path to romantic success and social mobility, framed as ‘ascension’,” (Sousbois, 2025, p. 1). Edogawa Ranpo’s criminal is motivated by a lack of both of those, which he attributes to his appearance and social ostracization: “[f]or I had always held aloof from all members of the opposite sex because of my ugly face,” (7). The “looksmaxxing” and “incel” communities dub unattractive individuals as “subhuman”, which is a motif throughout Ranpo’s writing: “I am but a worm . . . a loathsome creature,” (10), and “Once back to earth I again found myself a miserable creature, a helpless crawling worm!” (3). This is all to say that Ranpo’s social critique holds up today.
The Human Chair contains none of the thrill of violence or detectivework that its contemporaries do, but still stands as a valuable piece of crime fiction for what it reveals about the criminal and their characteristics as an outsider to society. It is ultimately not concrete fact whether the intention of Ranpo’s writing was to inform, satirize, or simply astonish and entertain, but it is a fact that Ranpo’s dramatization of crime helps to raise for discourse the ways in which social isolation might lead to criminality. It has been established by this essay how Ranpo frames and connects the criminal of his story, the relationship of the criminal to his physical appearance, and his motivations to seek the social connection that he lacks. Ranpo’s work synthesizes ideas of the time and still serves as a valuable piece of media in discourse around beauty and social isolation today.
Citations:
- Edogawa, R. (1956) ‘The human chair’, in Japanese tales of mystery and imagination. Translated by J.B. Harris. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle.
- Lombroso-Ferrero, G. (1911) Criminal man, according to the classification of Cesare Lombroso. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
- Sousbois, O.F. (2025) ‘Incels, looksmaxxing, and the surgical design of the “Chad”-vertised body’, Body & Society, 31(4). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X251363787.