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Mimi Okabe, Manga, Murder, and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japanโs Lost Generation, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023. 216 pgs.
Has any national psyche (if such a thing even exists) ever attracted so much curiosity as
โThe Japanese Mindโ?
Almost since time immemorial, the non-Japanese world has excitedly speculated on the โisland mentalityโ of the Japanese, the philosophies of the samurai, retinas scarred by the bombing of Hiroshima and myths of Tokyo streets filled with vending machines that dispense young girlsโ worn underwear. These images are novel, exotic, exciting and at times even erotic and naturally take hold in the popular imagination of outside observers but have very little relevance to the lives of real Japanese, who would be the first to admit that they are far more mundane than the legends would have you believe. Thereโs a horrible othering to this that can border on xenophobia because it often implies that the Japanese, operated by some kind of hivemind; a single entity with little independent influence or spontaneity.
Letโs take, for example, crime. Various thinkers and essayists have tried to shed light on Japanese attitudes to art via reference to the grisly murders seen in Japan throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Of course, there is real validity in connecting media output with the tragedies that surround it; In the late 1980s, the serial murders conducted by โThe Otaku Murdererโ Tsutomu Miyazaki created an unmistakable mistrust of geeks and geek culture.The Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack of 1995 on the Tokyo Metro shook the nation with the fact that not only could the public no longer feel safe in their daily operations, but, unbeknownst to them a destructive cancerous cult of fanatics had been festering within their society, even in their own neighbourhoods and top universities.
These events should rightly be considered earth-shattering. However, with many arguments that attempt to pin artistic choices to the general zeitgeist, causation is at best implied even when the correlation of the events seems to make intuitive sense. Imagine an academic assuming that the classic detective series Columbo was intimately influenced by the JFK assassination, which took place only three years before it began. Such an observation would be valid on the one hand, while superficial and flimsy on the other. It would fail to look into the core creative juices of the show and may gloss over what it accomplishes.
All of this preamble is to establish the layer of thin ice that writer Mimi Okabe walks upon inย Manga, Murder, and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japanโs Lost Generation and to celebrate its various successes. It is a book in which Okabe examines the trends in detective manga through a socio-economic lens, or rather uses detective manga to examine how the acceptable image of young boys has changed throughout the years. It contains an exploration of Japanese trends and culture in a way that is sensitive and diligently informed. Okabe is not claiming zeitgeist as a causative agent but rather she is matching zeitgeist with zeitgeist and maps a chronology through which the boy detectives of mystery manga transition from the wide-eyed model students as seen in the works of Edogawa Ranpo and Osamu Tezuka, the rebel boy detective of Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo, and finally to the sociopathic antiheroes of both Death Noteโs Light Yagami and Moriarty the Patriot.
Of these examples, particular attention should be paid to the role of Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo, which Okabe positions as a significant turning point in the portrayal of boys in Detective Manga, particularly concerning social class and economic despair. First published in 1992, the manga serves as a clear indicator of how much attitudes and prospects had changed. Whereas boy detectives had once been tall, handsome, and smartly dressed, Kindaichi lives world grounded in cynicism where schools function as prisons and where social strata have calcified to the point that even a genius boy detective canโt necessarily eke out a living or attract any sort of celebration for his talents. Thereโs a sense that the myth of meritocracy can no longer be upheld, and social critique will fill the vacuum it leaves.
Whatโs more is that in Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo we see the development of a creeping moral ambiguity as killers are no longer simple, bloodthirsty psychopaths, but rather complex characters whose motives are giving a humanising analytical light. Itโs difficult to overstate how big of a shift this was and to forget how radical and unpopular sympathising with criminals may have been to a society recently shaken by truly monstrous killers.ย ย ย ย
And itโs this change of focus that could have contributed to the eventual rise of the Antihero, and the โmonstrous millennialsโ of Death Note, in particular, which centres around a seemingly perfect student who leads a double life in which he discreetly and effortlessly slaughters his enemies with a demonic notebook. The universal intrigue created by Death Note can be seen in its remarkable international success, which can best be shown by the fact that The Simpsons recently dedicated an entire episode to a Death Note parody, borrowing the Japanese animators that originally brought it to life.
Of course, the antihero has itself become somewhat of a worldwide phenomenon, with (Breaking Badโs Walter White, etc) but how the antihero came to be accepted by the West and within Japanese society should be regarded as distinct issues. Light Yagami is a cathartic critique of a particularly Japanese phenomenon: the young, gifted and disenfranchised men who have pushed through a strict, emotionally cold upbringing to find themselves with a honed intellect but a strange sense of being disconnected, or even above,ย humanity.
But Okabeโs projection for males and their role models is sadly applicable to many boys and young men around the world. More specifically, Death Note, in particular, sets a paradigm for a form of young male the internet refers to as โan edge lordโ; a teenager who has become so consumed by nihilism and despair as to revel in a โcoolโ kind of antisocial bluntness. It isnโt hard to see an eventual overlap with the incel movement, the internet manosphere, and other pitfalls that lost young men find themselves falling into. โThe black pillโ, as it has been labelled.
We must all grapple with the issue thatโs at the heart of Manga, Murder, and Mystery: what does it mean for young boys (and youth generally) that the heroes of our media have become so cynical and nihilistic? What does that say about the lack of direction and hope for their future?
While this is undoubtedly a lofty and important question, it is impossible to dwell on too seriously knowing that Japanese detective manga has once again subverted our expectations in the form of Oshiri Tantai, Butt Detective! which hit Hong Kong cinemas in 2020. Children are delighted: itโs a detective with a bum for a face! Despite its ridiculous premise, Butt Detective is at its core an idealistic by-detective romp that has captivated young audiences and its international success might suggest the pendulum of cultural trends is swinging back again to the model of boy detective as a hero and perhaps indicates that the boy detective genre is so fatigued and self-serious at this point that it has become ripe for parody. Or at least it reminds us that detective stories are inherently fun.
On the topic of these cultural shifts, another cause for fanfare is that the otaku, once confined to basements and internet forums, finally has a seat in academia. Okabe shows us a legitimate style and model for discussing something as rambunctious and low-brow as manga, which even today attracts a certain amount of undeserved stuffiness and dismissal. However, this is to an extent a double-edged sword. There has always been something baked into the DNA of manga that would respond to the magnifying glass of academic analysis with a raised middle finger and a can of spray paint.
Analysing detective manga as a product of socioeconomic trends is entirely valid and valuable but I suspect that Okabe and any proud otaku reader will be biting their tongues throughout the book because the academic tone stifles us all from gushing about how these Manga are so awesome or kakkui; values that may sound superficial but which are nevertheless intrinsic to the construction and soul of manga.
Of course, these were never Okabeโs stated goals, and her skill as a writer, her knowledge and her gushing love of detective manga are unquestionable. However, implied somewhere by the negative space of Manga, Murder, and Mystery is an entirely different book that Okabe might have written if not confined by the dreary limits of academic writing, with its sterile objectivity and repressed decorum and can enthusiastically geek-out into what tickled the brains of the featured mangaka to create the inspired, clockwork-like logical games they created or the sheer spontaneous lunacy of hybridised detective manga such as Death Note and Majin Tantei Nลgami Neuro.
And thatโs the book of Okabeโs I would personally love to read next; the otaku might well have found a seat in academia but maybe the question never should have been whether manga would ever raise itself to the standard in which it was considered high-brow enough for academia. Perhaps the question we should have been asking all along is whether the academic tone is too rigid and lifeless to be worthy of discussing something as vibrant and cool as manga.
How to cite:ย Beale, Liam. โWalking on Thin IceโMimi Okabeโs Manga, Murder, and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japanโs Lost Generation.โย Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 29 Nov. 2023,ย chajournal.blog/2023/11/29/manga.
Liam Beale is a writing tutor and video game developer. He currently runs the mystery anthology series โNoir in Hong Kongโ and is incredibly active within the Hong Kong visual novel community.