Honkaku Mystery Best 10: The Best over the Years

While we are all impatiently waiting for the release of new "Honkaku Mystery Best 10" 2022 ratings, here is a thing I decided to share with you. This is the ranking of the best book-length honkaku detective writers of Japan, as determined by the results of "Honkaku Mystery Best 10" since the entry of 1997 (that is, based on the publications between January 1996 and October 2020).

The methodology was as follows.

• I took the data of "Honkaku Mystery Best 10", as, out of the four main ratings, this one is the most honkaku-leaning, frequently providing the results drastically differing from the remaining thre in the terms of more classical and deductive content.
• I considered only the writers who appeared in the top-10s more than once (non-flukes); surely there might be some who had only one great novel that took the top place and could thus surpass those more stable but less successful who managed to get to the bottom of Top 10 year after year, but I would be hesitant in adding them until their success is repeated. The total number turned out to be 47 people.
• Among those, I added 10 points for each novel or short story collection that grabbed the first place some year, 9 points for a second-place entry, and thus until getting a 10th place, which provided one point. The sum is the final score.

Without further ado, here is the diagram of the results:

The final ratings!

Some random observations are in order:

• The absolute winner overall is Maya Yutaka, who got 81 points over 10 books, four of which got number one! In sheer number, Shimada Sōji (26) was equal to him, and both Arisugawa Alice (73) and Ashibe Taku (57) surpassed (12 books each), but neither of them was able to stay so consistently beside the top. Meanwhile, he was apparently never translated into a Western language... Arisugawa and Ashibe complete the top 3.
• Noridzuki Rintarō (52) at fifth place was the highest positioned entry who was never chosen "Person of the Year" by the rating compilers (the Person of the Year prize was given from 1998 to 2015 only).
• Of the top ten, additionally Yonezawa Honobu (53) on the 4th place, Mitsuda Shinzō (51) on the 6th, Utano Shōgo (37) on the 9th, Nishizawa Yasuhiko (36) on the 10th were apparently never translated. This is five of ten!
• Atsukawa Tatsumi (31) on the 13th place is the highest-rated newcomer, among those who only started scoring in the 2010s or later. His four books scored in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. He is closely followed by Aosaki Yūgo (27) on the 16th place (four books scored in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017) and Shirai Tomoyuki (26) on the 17th place (five books scored in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021).

An alternate rating could be imagined, with the previous score divided by the number of books that got to the rating, to achieve an 1-10 ranged "average score" for a single book by an author in the list. In this case, the top three changes as follows: Imamura Masahiro (9.50), who got just two books, but with gold and silver score, respectively; Noridzuki Rintarō (8.67), out of six books by whom four were first or second winners; and, Mitsuda Shinzō and Shizaki Yū (8.50), who were equally stable, but one over six, the other over two books, which would probably score more for Mitsuda.

Appended are the whole charts for your perusal.