Kido Okamoto (1872~1939) was born in Tokyo. He started aiming to be a playwright while at a high school. After graduating the school, he joined the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, he wrote stage reviews and reports on society. In 1891, he published Takamatsu-jo (Takamatsu Castle) in the newspaper he worked. Then he published his first play Shishinden in 1896, which was played at the Kabuki-za Theater in 1902. After resigning from the newspaper in 1913, he became a full-time writer. As his father and uncle worked at the British Consulate he became fluent in English from his early stage. This led him to have interests in Sherlock Holmes, and wrote Hanshichi Torimono-cho (The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi), which is said to be the first detective story in Japan and became very popular.