was a Japanese author, journalist and editor, best known as a pioneer of science fiction. While at Waseda, Oshikawa played on the baseball team under Abe Isoo, along with his brother. He wrote a prologue for a baseball technique book that came from this trip, discussing how baseball should be considered the same as bushidō in spirit. He was a member of the Waseda team that in 1905 traveled to the U.S. to play American teams, the first time for Japanese baseball.

Influences and later works

Like other early science fiction writers of the period, he was influenced by the stories of Jules Verne, whose technological adventure novels had become popular in translation in the rapidly modernising Meiji era Japan. Specifically, the above-mentioned speculative conception of submarine warfare, based on ramming and making no mention of torpedoes, is shared with Verne (see "Facing the Flag", "HMS Sword").

Later, Kaitei gunkan became the first in a wildly successful, six-volume series set in the Pacific and Indian Oceans: Bukyō no Nippon (武侠の日本 lit. Heroic Japan, 1902), Shinzō Gunkan (新造軍艦 lit. The Newly Built Battleship, 1904), Bukyō Kantai (武侠艦隊 lit. Heroic Armada, 1904), Shin Nippontō (新日本島 lit. New Japan Isle, 1906), and Tōyō Bukyō Dan (東洋武侠団 lit. East Asian Heroic Troupe, 1907). The books remained in print for many years and later got much additional attention through a successful film adaptation.

Oshikawa was enthusiastic about sports, especially baseball, and famously clashed with Inazō Nitobe (one of the main proponents of the "baseball considered harmful" or "野球害毒論" argument).

He has also contributed to the development of the Japanese detective fiction. Some of his stories incorporated elements of ratiocination, sleuthing, mystery and crime within stories of adventure, intrigue, the bizarre and the grotesque – though in his time this did not yet become a distinct genre on its own.

In the detailed list compiled by "The Victorian Bookshelf" project of "Confluence 2000," tracing the early development of "The Scientific Romance and other Related Works",

  • Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction