In 1939 , two years after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 , Edogawa was ordered by government censors to drop his story , which he had published without incident a few years before , from a collection of his short stories that the publisher '' Shun ' yōdō '' was reprinting . " The Caterpillar " is about a veteran who was turned into a quadriplegic and so disfigured by war that he was little more than a human " caterpillar " , unable to talk , move , or live by himself . Censors banned the story , apparently believing that the story would detract from the current war effort . This came as a blow to Ranpo , who relied on royalties from reprints for income . ( The short story inspired director Kōji Wakamatsu , who drew from it his movie '' Caterpillar '' , which competed for the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival . ) Over the course of World War II , especially during the full-fledged war between Japan and the US that began after in 1941 , Edogawa was active in his local patriotic , neighborhood organization , and he wrote a number of stories about young detectives and sleuths that might be seen as in line with the war effort , but he wrote most of these under different pseudonyms as if to disassociate them with his legacy . In February 1945 , his family was evacuated from their home in Ikebukuro , Tokyo to Fukushima in northern Japan . Edogawa remained until June , when he was suffering from malnutrition . Much of Ikebukuro was destroyed in Allied air raids and the subsequent fires that broke out in the city , but miraculously , the thick , earthen-walled warehouse which he used as his studio was spared , and still stands to this day beside the campus of Rikkyo University
60th Berlin International Film Festival
60th Berlin International Film Festival
Edogawa Ranpo