Popular mystery writer Uchida dies

March 18, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese mystery writer Yasuo Uchida, known for the "Mitsuhiko Asami" series, died of blood poisoning in Tokyo on Tuesday. He was 83.

Uchida, a Tokyo native, made an author debut in 1980 with a book titled "Shisha no Kodama" (Echoes of the Dead) after working as a copywriter and head of a television commercial production firm.

The famous character, Mitsuhiko Asami, was featured in Uchida's third novel, "Gotoba Densetsu Satsujin Jiken" (The Gotoba Legend Murder Case), in 1982 for the first time. Readers were attracted by the 33-year-old freelance reporter whose elder brother is head of the criminal affairs bureau of the National Police Agency.

Mitsuhiko Asami mystery-solving episodes are set in different prefectures of Japan, with the series finishing covering all 47 prefectures with an episode on a murder in Okinawa published in 1999.

Many TV dramas were created based on Uchida's novels, and some 115 million copies of his books were published. He won the Japan mystery literature award in 2008. Jiji Press