a novelist. Mori as a researcher Mori's true career started in 1982 when he became an assistant professor at Mie University. He had found interest in conducting research while he had been studying as a graduate student at Nagoya University, and upon completing his master's thesis, he took a job at the newly established Department of Architecture at Mie University. There, he specialized in rheology (a branch of physics that deals with deformation and flow of matter), and in particular, the studies of viscous-plastics. In 1989, Mori became an associate professor at Nagoya University at the age of 31. He received a Doctorate of Engineering with a thesis on a numerical method for analyzing the flow of viscous plastic. Mori preferred not to become further promoted to professor, stating that he would lose his valuable research time to trivial meetings and other business. In March 2005, he resigned his post to become a professional writer. Mori as a novelist Finally, Mori made his debut as a novelist in April 1996 with The Perfect Insider. He won the very first Mephisto Prize for this, or rather, Editor Karaki says that the prize was established in the first place to make Mori's debut sensational. At this point, he had already written up three other novels, and the truth is that the first piece of work he had completed was Doctors in Isolated Room rather than The Perfect Insider, which was supposed to be the fourth piece in the series. The editor in chief, Hideo Uyama, decided to publish it first since it was the most shocking of the four. Mori gives several reasons, in various interviews, as to why he started to write while working as associate professor. One of the reasons was that he had been saying jokingly that he would become a writer by forty, and another, already mentioned above, was that he wanted to have another source of income for his hobbies. However, the direct cause was that Mori simply wanted to impress his daughter who was a big fan of mystery novels. As a writer, Mori is known among his editors to be prolific and punctual. In fact, he finished his first novel in just a week by sparing a mere three hours at night after a day's work at the university. Although he writes very fast, he admits that he is not a good reader, and curiously,