One of the mysteries of interwar Japanese detective fiction is the absence of female authors from the genre. While some women left a mark on the genre as translators and only occasionally writers, their participation was short and had relatively little impact on the genre as a whole. This is male domination especially perplexing considering much evidence that suggests that there was a significant female readership: for instance, many male authors, including Edogawa Ranpo, first encountered the genre when their mothers read translations of Western works to them during their childhood in Meiji. What made literally minded women shy away from writing detective fiction? Were male detective writers misogynists? Since some male authors assumed female pseudonyms to publish their stories, such a hypothesis seems inadequate. This paper examines this curious phenomenon of minimal female participation in detective fiction, and in doing so, sheds light on the question of what it meant to be a (professional) writer in interwar Japan.Ê