Fiction. Edward Seidensticker, translator of many works of twentieth-century Japanese literature and author of several books on Japan, brings to life three stories from Okamoto Kido's A Record of Hanschichi's Arrest. The opening story is set in 1861, just before the shogunate's overthrow and the rise of Tokyo where a severed alien head is found. Through Hanschichi, a fictional okappiki (police officer) detective work, glimpses of old Edo are marvelously exposed.