Kate: In our last conversation, we discussed conspiracy theories.
Mystery shows and conspiracy theories have a love-hate relationship. The forensics part of the show requires some level of rationality. But the mystery (or perhaps the lone detective against "the Man") part of the show desperately wants to rush down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. The Mentalist struggled with this during its run. Is the approach in Japanese mysteries similar?
Eugene: A show like Partners is a cut-and-dried police procedural that mostly does "cozy" mysteries. But almost every season has a two-parter about secret government or corporate factions warring with each other. Nothing that affects the average civilian, except when somebody on the losing end tries to blow up something in retaliation.Kate: Partners seems entirely relatable: two detectives with differing approaches solve a crime! Where do Japanese mysteries fall on the American mystery scale? Bones? Blue Bloods? Castle? Elementary?
Eugene: Thanks to literary evangelists like Ranpo Edogawa, Conan Doyle and the Golden Age writers had a lasting influence on the genre in Japan. Writers are quick to pick up on trends and take them in new directions. Shows in the CSI vein are standard fare, as are series that follow the Numbers formula, like Galileo (a physicist as the consulting detective) and Mr. Brain (a neuroscientist). The titular character in Ataru is basically Monk with the knob turned up to eleven on the autistic scale.
The private detective as epitomized by Ranpo Edogawa's Kogoro Akechi is as popular a cultural touchstone in Japan as Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock Holmes is huge too. The boy detective in the bestselling Case Closed series goes by the name of Conan Edogawa. Holmes of Kyoto is about an antiques appraiser who gets caught up in various crimes. There's a Moriarty character to boot.
Eugene: Actually, conventional Hollywood police procedurals like Blood Bloods and the Law & Order franchise tend to be remarkably restrained in this respect. But if it wants (as in Black List or NCIS: LA) Hollywood can always fall back on its Wild, Wild West roots in a way that Japanese productions can't, unless they go the historical route.
The Edo period Onihei has big "shootouts" in almost every episode, only with swords. Action-oriented anime like Burst Angel, No Guns Life, Ghost in the Shell, and Cowboy Bebop borrow heavily from the noir and western genres, and skirt this problem by cooking up fantastical post-apocalyptic reasons for why everybody is running around packing serious heat. This summary of Burst Angel from Wikipedia sums it up well:
In the near future, due to an unusual rise in criminal activity, it has become legal to possess firearms in Japan so lawful citizens can protect themselves. At the same time, the government established the Recently Armed Police of Tokyo, whose methods are exterminating criminals rather than arresting them.
Black Lagoon simply moves the entire setting to Southeast Asia. Back in the mostly real world, the antics of the patrol officers in the classic anime series You're Under Arrest aren't always terribly realistic, but the show doesn't take itself seriously on purpose.Kate: But the police do supply their own shows and storylines?
Eugene: Police in a Pod is a realistic look at daily life in a koban or police box, so what the lead characters do most of the time is closer to social work than crime fighting. Interestingly, patrol officers carry revolvers but detectives are issued guns only on a case-by-case basis (almost never). An officer pulls her gun just once in the first season of Police in a Pod and doesn't shoot (it turns out the perp is holding a prop gun).
The criminal defense attorneys in a series like 99.9 are more critical of prosecutors and the justice system than the police. As a rather amusing contrast, in Hero, which is about the prosecutors, the police and the defense lawyers barely show up at all. Of course, the unspoken premise of Hero is that the police can't be trusted to properly investigate a serious crime. Though the "bad cop" as a villain is hardly off limits. The serial killer in Gourmet Detective Goro Akechi (note the name) criticizes the competency of the Japanese police (and then the show goes out of its way to make the cops look as incompetent as possible, which really strains credulity after a while). If Danny Reagan were in charge, the series would end after one episode.
Partners has done a couple of episodes about cops going rogue, but at least everybody is smarter.
Onihei is about a police captain during the Edo period. The series doesn't shy away from the fact that the police used torture to extract information from suspects. But it's also clear that we're not to think less of them for doing so. It's just what they did back then. As a rule, when it comes to civil servants, bureaucrats and politicians are more likely to be cast as villains than the police.
Kate: Harking back to Danny Reagan, a show like Blue Bloods reflects and responds to negative attitudes about the police. Do the Japanese have negative attitudes about the police? I rarely encounter any in manga—except one very funny short story where a character tricks a policeman. And then the mangaka apologizes for mocking the police.
Eugene: Because of the koban system, people come into contact with the police on a regular basis for reasons unrelated to crime and punishment. As in Police in a Pod, the koban in Midnight Diner is right around the corner and is treated as a normal part of the neighborhood.
Kate: Of course, mysteries have a purely cerebral component as well! Many so-called cozies are exercises in exactly how to kill one’s neighbors and all the clever ways to get away with those murders.
Eugene: Police-centered series compare well to their British counterparts. Partners is structured similarly to Inspector Morse. Though this brings up a problem that can also plague the British genre, namely high body counts. Daniel Pinkwater once quipped that the way you know whodunit on Inspector Morse is that all the other suspects are dead. Though shows like Partners usually stick to the cozy formula of one murder per episode.
1 comment:
The fighting between different government factions makes sense in light of Japan's history. During the build up to Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Navy and Army were at such odds that they would assassinate officials of the other. To say nothing of the Warring States period.
For the most part, the Japanese don't seem to do really hardboiled and noirish type mysteries. There are exceptions. They tend to mix it with sci-fi like in No Guns Life or Cowboy Bebop.
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