Kochira Katsushikaku Kameari Kouenmae Hashutsujo

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If you can read this in Japanese and LOL, then you are Japanese!

What you find in this series, is almost every aspect of traditional and modern Japanese life depicted in one small police box next to a park in Tokyo.

Actually its a hell of a lot more then that, with everything from simple Japanese "つっこみ” and "ぼけ” to complex workings of Japanese society at both a political and social level.

The cast is huge but grounded on 3 main characters: Yrotsu, Reiko, and Nakagawa.

And really, anything more on this CLASSIC from a beginner reviewer like me would just be letters, so FIND IT AND ... READ IT!!


P.S. Shouldn't be hard to find with it's record-breaking 170 volumes to date...

I find it hilarious that such a "historical masterpiece" (historical: started in 1976 and influenced the whole generation) has no review, until someone write a better one, I will keep this here.

Kochikame starts as a story of Kankichi that does everything a policeman shouldn't do: abuse of authority, harassment, bribe, is always lazy and is quite useless for someone working on a police station. As the story goes, the scale of the scenario become worldwide, alternating from the standpoint of a comedic character working on a local police station to his tries on internet business, coffee making, trading, tourism, fitness ventures... This become possible ... as other more reasonable characters are introduced as the story goes: His chief Daijirō Ōhara who is severe (with reason) to Kankichi, Keiichi Nakagawa (even his last name is cliché), a filthy rich handsome guy who very soon will become a walking moral compas (that have trouble understanding the poor yet stays very humble), Reiko, the "woman version of Nakagawa" but more strict, Maria a transgender in love with Kankichi, the policewomen at the police headquarters that antagonize and openly hate/often serves as rival characters of Kankichi, and the list goes on and on and on... Most of the plot of Kochikame follows a simple yet entertaining pattern : Kankichi is introduced to some new aspect, societal trend, for eg expensive coffee trend (like St*bucks). He starts a business exploiting this idea, in the same time introducing to the reader interesting knowledge about the subject (here, how much coffee cost in ads, why japan's coffee quality is good, how it is harvested...). It's often very successful at the start so Kankichi expends the business while starting a greedy money scheme to make more money (can't spoil :). The greed turns on him and his business fails. Everyone is angry so they exile him and laugh his misery.

Most of the stories are like this. There is a lot of research in every chapter, some absurd comedy, a lot of satire. The characters, even with their flaws, are very likeable. This formula was one of the reason this series continued so long (and of course, the author's tenacity!)

I would recommend as the writing is "children oriented", dives deep on contemporary japanese culture and the other reasons given above