Juuji Asane (born 1986) is a Japanese novelist specializing in puzzle-centered detective fiction. Born in Nagano City, he graduated from Shinshu University’s Faculty of Science and completed a master’s degree in its Graduate School of Science and Technology in 2010. He studied evolutionary biology before working for the city of Azumino and writing fiction alongside his municipal duties. His Aka no Joo no Satsujin won the sixteenth Bara no Machi Fukuyama Mystery Literature Newcomer Award, selected by Soji Shimada, in 2023 and became his published debut the following year. The novel follows municipal advice officer Azusa Rokuhara, who witnesses a fatal fall. Her detective husband’s investigation intersects with strange cases brought to her office, drawing on Asane’s municipal work and the landscapes of Matsumoto and Azumino. He has described a shared attraction in scientific research and detective fiction: finding compelling mysteries and explaining them logically. His first novel after the award, Sennen no Whodunit, moved to a radically different setting. People awakening after a thousand years of cryogenic sleep discover a murdered companion and further bodies, combining exploration of a future world with the search for a killer. In his 2026 novel Shuredinga no Misshitsu, a landslide isolates a research institute where leaking hydrogen sulfide makes the surrounding rooms lethal. A girl and her attendant remain inside a negative-pressure room, creating a dilemma in which opening the door to rescue them could itself endanger their lives.
