Sakae Saitō

nihongo|Sakae Saitō|斉藤栄|Saitō Sakae|extra=born 14 January 1933 is a Japanese author of popular fiction active in Showa and Heisei period Japan.

Biography

Saitō was born in Ota-ku, Tokyo. In 1944, he moved with his mother to her hometown of Fujisawa, Kanagawa. He started writing novels from junior high school. In high school, he was a classmate of Shintaro Ishihara, and assisted him in the creation of the literary circle "Shonan Bungei". After graduating from Tokyo University with a legal degree, he went to work as a bureaucrat at the Yokohama 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.

In 1966, Saitō was awarded the 12th Edogawa Rampo Prize for his mystery novel "Satsujin no Kifu" ("Murder of the Chessman"). 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.

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 industry and the sales of tarot cards in Japan.