[1] While studying law at Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō (present day Waseda University) at the turn of the century, Oshikawa published Kaitō Bōken Kidan: Kaitei Gunkan (海島冒険奇譚 海底軍艦 lit.

[3] Like other early science fiction writers of the period, he was influenced by the stories of Jules Verne, whose technological adventure novels had become popular in translation in the rapidly modernising Meiji era Japan.

Specifically, the above-mentioned speculative conception of submarine warfare, based on ramming and making no mention of torpedoes, is shared with Verne (see "Facing the Flag", "HMS Sword").

In the detailed list compiled by "The Victorian Bookshelf" project of "Confluence 2000," tracing the early development of "The Scientific Romance and other Related Works",[4] Oshikawa Shunrō is the only non-Western author mentioned for the pre-1900 period.

As noted by Jeffrey M. Angles in his 2003 Ohio State University dissertation on Japanese popular authors in the early Twentieth Century,[5] Shunro is best remembered in Japan for his important role in developing adventure tales into an independent genre of children's fiction.

Oshikawa entered the publishing company Hakubunkan at the introduction of the author Iwaya Sazanami (1870–1933) and served as a lead reporter for Shaijitsu Gahō (写実画報 lit.

"Bōken Sekai" often contained allegedly true stories of adventure, exploration, military prowess and accounts of "primitive" lands, all of which reflected Japanese nationalism and imperial ambitions.

World of Heroism) with the capital of an entrepreneur named Yanaginuma Kensuke, whose publishing house (Bukyō Sekaisha, later Bukyōsha) concentrated at the time on books of adventure, sports and physical activity for young people.

Possibly because of his death shortly afterwards, that outing seemed to be long remembered by and influence the later work of participants such as the artist Kosugi Misei who had illustrated many of Oshikawa's stories and followed him from his earlier magazine to the later one.