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  • Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Dueling Pocket Monsters ed. by Ashley Pearson, Thomas Giddens, and Kieran Tranter
  • Thomas E. Simmons (bio)
Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Dueling Pocket Monsters, edited by Ashley Pearson, Thomas Giddens, and Kieran Tranter
Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018. 276 pp., ISBN 978-1-138300-26-2 (cloth). US$140.00.

Western attempts to decode Japanese legal culture have often floundered. Previous scholars observed a dissonance between legal texts and social practices in Japan. Distracted by low crime and a general aversion to litigation, these scholars found Japanese culture to be one of lawlessness. In fact, Japanese culture is particularly invested in substantive and procedural legislation.

Meanwhile, recent academic interest that applies a law and humanities lens on comic books has fallen short by ignoring manga. The interrogation of law through comics, which has developed in the last decade or so, has been almost exclusively concerned with Anglophone traditions. The three co-editors of Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture aim to redress both shortcomings. Their collection contains seventeen brisk essays.

In these essays, the various scholars successfully locate recurring legal themes and concerns in manga as well as in film, fiction, video games, and fan culture. The crime-fighting robots and dueling pocket monsters referred to in the book's subtitle (i.e., Tetsuwan Atomu [Astro Boy] and Pokémon, respectively) each receive a chapter of their own. The essays are grouped under four subtitles, the first dealing with justice, the second, with "the legal subject," the third with image problems, and the fourth with law and justice specificities in everyday Japan. The origins of the collection can be traced to a Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia conference in 2015. [End Page 191]

The collection's utility to academics is somewhat compromised by its wide-ranging themes and approaches. Some essays focus on a particular Japanese popular culture element like depictions of kōban (Japanese "police boxes"—diminutive police stations). Some are descriptive, some literary, some social. Some essays simply cover aspects of law: two essays consider the regulation and criminalization of yaoi (a fictional genre concentrating on male-male love and marketed to female audiences). Professor Yuichiro Tsuji writes on constitutional copyright concerns of doujinshi (derivative texts like fan-illustrated manga). While informative and probing, especially for comparative legal scholars, the more aesthetically and culturally oriented readers will likely skip over the more technical legal studies. Still, each scholar has something to say and the quality of the analyses is evenly accomplished.

The two most gainful essays strain aesthetics, humanities scholarship, and thematic criticism through legal concerns. Much—but not all—of the book investigates law and justice through the medium of comics. This sort of cross-disciplinary approach is particularly productive and fulfills the promise of the collection's title, emphasizing the placements of law in Japanese popular culture. The first such noteworthy attempt contrasts Grant Morrison's Batman, Incorporated against Jiro Kuwata's Batmanga. The second considers Japanese capital punishment in manga. Each is encapsulated below.

Tim Peters's essay unpacks a comparative assessment of Batman, Incorporated and Batmanga. His chapter is playfully titled "Holy Trans-Jurisdictional Representations of Justice, Batman!: Globalization, Persona and Mask in Kuwata's Batmanga and Morrison's Batman, Incorporated." It tracks the transnational flow of Batman comic renditions, from 1960s American silver-age comics to 1960s Japanese manga, then whipsaws back to modern American Batman comics, specifically those by the legendary Scottish author Grant Morrison. Peters considers the cultural resonance of Batman's mask and persona in Western and Japanese popular culture.

Peters emphasizes how the popularity of both American comics and Japanese manga have been globalized, not simply in a hegemonic sense (particularly American) but in a range of indigenous ways as they are read by and blended with a variety of cultures. Thus, hybridized commodities cross and recross the Pacific Ocean repeatedly. As they do so, a process of indigenization can be observed.

Jiro Kuwata reimagined Batman in 1966 and 1967 in response to the craze ignited by the campy, color-drenched American television series. Kuwata's...

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