Wrong and Crime: The Filmed “Translation” of Japanese Detective Fiction in the Post-Cultural Revolution Period

Abstract

During the late 1970s and the early 1980s there was a fad for Japanese detective fiction in China. Especially the realistic detective novels by Seichō Matsumoto and Seiichi Morimura had such a great vogue that some of them were even filmed. But interestingly enough almost all the Chinese detective films put a greater emphasis on the theme of “law” than the Japanese original texts. The aim of this article is to outline the process of cultural transformation or more literally “translation” in filming the novels Ningen-no-shōmei and Suna-no-utsuwa and examine the social role the films played in the historical contexts of the post-Cultural Revolution period.