All the Evil of Good: Portrayals of Police and Crime in Japanese Anime and Manga

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Mitchell, Katelyn
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

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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. This research will contribute to the growing field of Japanese cultural studies, examining a number of influential anime and manga as well as how they both affect and reflect society’s opinions. With civilians’ images of police currently undergoing major changes, this research will help in understanding the role fiction plays in defining the relationship between a country’s people, its laws, and its law enforcement.

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Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Visibility	Actions
	Thesis	2019-05-17	Public	Download