Portrayals of Police and Crime in Japanese Anime and Manga
ALL THE EVIL OF GOOD: PORTRAYALS OF POLICE AND CRIME IN JAPANESE ANIME AND MANGA By Katelyn Mitchell Honors Thesis Department of Asian Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill April 23, 2015 Approved: INGER BRODEY (Student’s Advisor) 1 “All the Evil of Good”: Portrayals of Police and Crime in Japanese Anime and Manga By Katelyn Mitchell “Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the idea of duty, are things that, when in error, can turn hideous, but – even though hideous, remain great; their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, persists in horror…Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than [Javert’s] face, which revealed what might be called all the evil of good” -Victor Hugo, Les Misérables Volume I, Book VIII, Chapter III: “Javert Satisfied” Abstract This thesis examines and categorizes the distinct, primarily negative, portrayals of law enforcement in Japanese literature and media, beginning with its roots in kabuki drama, courtroom narratives and samurai codes and tracing it through modern anime and manga. Portrayals of police characters are divided into three distinct categories: incompetents used as a source of comedy; bland and consistently unsuccessful nemeses to charismatic criminals, used to encourage the audience to support and favor these criminals; or cold antagonists fanatically devoted to their personal definition of ‘justice’, who cause audiences to question the system that created them. This paper also examines Western influences, such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Victor Hugo’s Inspector Javert, on these modern media portrayals. It also examines the contradictions between these negative, antagonistic characters and existing facts and statistics – Japan’s low crime rate and generally high reports of civilian satisfaction with the police.
[Show full text]