Today, in a writing group, I saw news that Keigo Higashino had died.

My first reaction was disbelief. I immediately searched to confirm it. Only then did I learn that he had died of colorectal cancer in the early hours of July 23, aged 68, and that the news had not been formally announced until today.

After seeing the news, I posted on WeChat Moments. It was also the first time I really looked closely at what Keigo Higashino himself looked like.

I had known the name for almost 20 years, but never carried his face in my mind. What came first were scenes from Galileo, Journey Under the Midnight Sun, The Devotion of Suspect X, and The Miracles of the Namiya General Store: familiar television and film actors, and the people he wrote about struggling between good and evil, love and crime.

I do not remember the author’s face. But I remember the people he created.

That contrast suddenly made me realize that a creator may not be remembered by their own face, yet can reach very far through their work.

Nearly 20 years ago, I met his stories first

My first encounter with Keigo Higashino’s work was probably the 2007 Japanese television series Galileo.

I liked Japanese dramas very much then, particularly detective stories, suspense, and mysteries, and rarely missed a show of that kind. Galileo was excellent, but at the time I did not know it was adapted from a Higashino novel and paid little attention to the original author.

Later, the name “Keigo Higashino” kept appearing behind different television series, films, and stories. Gradually I remembered the person.

I must have watched quite a few screen adaptations of his work. Most of the actors were Japanese performers I knew, and the mysteries themselves had a strong narrative pull, making it easy to immerse myself, even to enter something like a flow state.

I am a typical “visual media first” person.

Rather than pick up a novel directly, I find it easier to enter a story through a television series, film, or animation. If that does not satisfy me, I then look for the original book.

It is the same with the fantasy novels I read now. Usually I watch the animation first, then follow the novel when the animation is not enough. I only really returned to reading substantial amounts of fiction in the last five or six years.

Over the past year, because I joined shared reading activities and had friends who wanted to read together, I began engaging more seriously with Higashino through the written words themselves. Once you enter his novels, you discover how readily they draw you into the plot and make you feel present in the scene.

He never wrote only about the answer to the mystery

I am a little “insensitive” to language itself.

When reading, I do not closely analyze how beautifully a sentence is written or how cleverly a word is chosen. I care more about whether a work lets me enter its story and walk along with its characters.

Higashino’s work does this very easily.

Reading his mysteries is a little like watching Detective Conan, but more interesting than simply solving a case. The case is only the entrance. What lies deep within the story is often complicated human nature.

He writes not just about culprits and solutions, but about the choices people make in extraordinary circumstances.

Behind a crime may lie love, protection, sacrifice, and helplessness.

Revealing the truth does not mean everyone is released from suffering.

The law may offer an answer, while the questions of human nature remain unresolved.

I may not remember every detail of every case, but after finishing, I often feel I understand human nature a little better.

A good mystery provides more than “who did it.” It also lets us see why a person reached that point.

68 years and 106 books

Since the pandemic, every year seems to bring the sudden loss of someone familiar, or someone whose work I know.

Such news naturally makes me reflect on the relentlessness of time. I may not feel intense grief that lasts a long time, but there is a definite sense of loss: another familiar name has gone.

Higashino was 68 when he died, an age that still feels somewhat early.

68

years old: a little too early

106

books: reaching far beyond him

From his debut, After School, published in 1985, to a new work planned for August 2026, there were 106 books, excluding coauthored works.

That number made me realize how vast a world of work one person can create in a finite life.

I never met him. Until now, I did not even know what he looked like. Yet his stories had already entered my life through a television series nearly 20 years ago.

A person need not be present for their work to reach far on their behalf.

Creating is a way of backing up who I am now

I am a creator too.

I paint, write, read, take photographs, and keep recording my observations of AI, the world, and everyday life.

What I hope to leave is not some grand intellectual legacy. Honestly, after dying, a person will not know how others judge them. I do not care very much about being remembered by a great many people after death.

What I want more is to preserve the observations I make about the world, life, and myself in each year and each stage.

It might be a painting, an article, a photograph, or a response to a book.

It might also be a passage published on the internet.

These things need not be seen by many people or become celebrated works. To me, they are more like a backup of myself.

They show that, at this stage, I once looked this way, thought this way, and lived this way.

In the past, I made these records mainly to preserve myself, without connecting them very well to a market. This was not entirely self-indulgence. It was closer to a personal archive.

Now that AI is here, I am beginning to ask: can personal observations be reorganized and given greater reach? Can I find real needs first, then connect my paintings, writing, photographs, and thoughts with others? Can material that began as a personal backup gradually become products or services valuable to someone else?

For me, then, AI means more than improving creative efficiency.

It may give one person’s private observations an opportunity to connect with other people, needs, and markets.

But it is fine if that transformation into value has not yet happened.

Before market value appears, the act of recording already means something.

People leave; their works keep traveling

Keigo Higashino has gone, leaving 106 books and countless people he created.

Those characters will continue appearing before readers in different countries, languages, and age groups. They will continue helping some people understand the complexity, darkness, helplessness, and warmth of human nature.

People eventually leave. But as long as the works are still being opened, the world someone once observed has not entirely disappeared.

Thank you for writing those stories.

And thank you for reminding me to observe more, express more, and leave a little more behind while my mind is still clear.

If I suddenly kick the bucket one day, that is all right too.

At least, somewhere in this world, a backup of me will still exist.