Ken Asamatsu

Ken Asamatsu (born 1956) is a prolific Japanese horror writer and editor who played a key role in popularizing the Cthulhu Mythos with a Japanese audiences. His Lairs of the Hidden Gods anthologies, in turn, have brought Japanese Lovecraftian Horror to the English-speaking public.
Asamatsu encountered the legacy of H. P. Lovecraft when he visited Providence, Rhode Island, as a teenager and read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. “I was stunned by the way it pulled me in, and its superb structure,” he later told an interviewer. “I felt that Lovecraft would be my mentor and guide in literature for the rest of my life.”The Lovecraft EZine, "The Cthulhu Mythos in Japan," by Justin Mullis, January 9, 2013.
Asamatsu and his friends published a Lovecraft-related fanzine while still in high school. Realizing that not all of Lovecraft's fiction was available in Japanese, Asamatsu and his friends launched a project to translate the missing stories. Later, working for the publishing house Kokusho Kankokai, he helped oversee an official complete translation of Lovecraft’s work.
In 1986, Asamatsu published his first novel, Makyo no Gen’ei, a Lovecraftian tale of the downfall of an aristocratic Japanese family who made a deal half a millennium ago with the entity Kushiruu--a Japanese rendering of Cthulhu. While referred to in English as Echoes of Ancient Cults, it has not been translated; his Kun-Yan no Joo (1993), however, is available in English as Queen of K'n-Yan (Kurodahan Press, 2008).Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Summary Bibliography: 朝松健" English-speakers can also read Asamatsu's collection of interconnected Mythos stories dealing with World War II, Kthulhu Reich (Kurodahan Press, 2019).Amazon.com, "Kthulhu Reich."
Asamatsu has published two Mythos-related anthologies, Hishin (1999) and Hishinkai (2002). The latter, which also includes essays on Lovecraftian topics, was published in English as a four-volume series called Lairs of the Hidden Gods, with introductions by Robert M. Price.
==Selected Bibliography==
===As Author===
====Novels:====
*Makyo no Gen’ei (1986)
*Kun-Yan no Joo (1993)
**Queen of K'n-Yan (English translation, 2008)
====Collection in English:====
*Kthulhu Reich (2019)
====Short Stories in English:====
*"The Plague of St. James Infirmary" (2005)
*"Spherical Trigonometry" (2010)
*"Downtown Pharmacy" (2011)
*"A White Camellia in a Vase" (2012)
*"Glimmer in the Darkness" (2014)
*"The Continent of Madness" (2015)
*"Genesis: Dark Birth—Shining Death" (2018)
*"The Living Wind" (2018)
*"The Crimson Cloak" (2019)
===As Editor===
====Collections:====
*Hishin (1999)
*Hishinkai (2002)
====Collections in English:====
*Lairs of the Hidden Gods
**Night Voices, Night Journeys (2005)
**Inverted Kingdom (2005)
**Straight to Darkness (2006)
**The Dreaming God (2007)
==References==
Category:Expanded Mythos Authors