Kiyoshi Kasai (born 1948) is a Japanese novelist and critic. After becoming involved in political activism in the early 1970s, he turned toward a critical examination of revolutionary politics and political thought and lived in France from 1974 to 1976. He made his literary debut in 1979 with "Baibai, Enjeru," which received the Kadokawa Novel Award. His work ranges from detective and supernatural fiction to literary, political, and philosophical criticism. In 2003, "Oidipusu Shokogun" and "Tantei Shosetsuron Josetsu" simultaneously received the Honkaku Mystery Grand Prize in the fiction and criticism/research categories. His representative work, "Baibai, Enjeru," is a detective novel set in 1970s Paris, where the Japanese protagonist Kakeru Yabuki investigates a series of murders beginning with the discovery of a decapitated body. Combining the logic of the classical detective story with phenomenological reasoning and philosophical debate, the novel established the distinctive approach that Kasai would continue to develop throughout the Kakeru Yabuki series.
