Tarō Hirai (平井 太郎 Hirai Tarō ?, Nabari, Mie Prefecture, Japan, October 21, 1894 - Japan, July 28, 1965), better known under his pseudonym Ranpo Edogawa (江 戸 川 乱 歩 Edogawa Ranpo?), Also Romanized like Rampo, he was a novelist and Japanese literary critic, who played an important role in the development of Japanese detective fiction. Many of his novels involve the detective character of Kogorō Akechi, who in his later books was the leader of a group of detectives known as the Shōnen tantei dan (少年 探 偵 団 lit. The group of young detectives?). Ranpo was a great admirer of Western mystery writers, especially Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, its pseudonym is not another thing that the name of Poe pronounced in Japanese. Other authors who influenced him were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose works he tried to translate into Japanese during his days as a student at Waseda University, and the Japanese writer Ruikō Kuroiwa.