Manga, Murder and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japan's Lost Generation - Paperback

by Mimi Okabe (Author)

Little is known about the boy detective in Japanese detective fiction despite his popularity. Who is he, and what mysteries does he unveil about cultural understandings of youth in Japanese society?

Manga, Murder and Mystery answers these questions by exploring the figure of the shonen (boy) detective in commercially successful manga series such as Detective Conan, The Case Files of Young Kindaichi, Death Note and Moriarty the Patriot. The book explores how these popular works tackle the crisis of young adult culture within the socioeconomic climate of Japan's 'lost decade' and Heisei era, broadly speaking. Mimi Okabe shows how detective manga materialized in a nation undergoing a state of crisis and how the boy detective emerged as a site of national trauma to address perceived youth problems but in thematically different ways.

Author Biography

Mimi Okabe is an award-winning instructor and is currently a clinical assistant professor in the Asian Studies program at SUNY Buffalo, USA. She has published several papers in international journals as well as book chapters on Japanese media and culture.