Viscount Shiro Hamao (1895-1935) was the scion of one of modern Japan's most prestigious families, a public prosecutor and an early advocate of gay rights. In the few years before his early death, Hamao gave up his career as a prosecutor and became a prolific writer of detective fiction. His works give us a vivid picture of interwar Japan, just as the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the 1920s was giving way to the rising tide of fascism in the 1930s.