Westerners, and Americans in particular, have long enshrined the private detective in a niche of the popular culture. The private eye has long been a staple in fiction, film, and television, going back at least to Sam Spade/Bogart and continuing to the present.

The image of detectives is not so romantic in Japan, however, as this article in the Japan Times explains. The first problem is that the country lacks a licensing system such as those in the United States and other countries. (Fans know that classic detective fiction frequently leans on a plot structure in which the detective runs the risk of physical danger from the bad guys, so for protection has to take action that could get his license revoked.)

Since there is no licensing requirement for Japanese gumshoes, anyone can get into the game—even the yakuza. Complaints to consumer organizations about the shady ops are rising, including dicks who don’t do any work at all yet still demand high fees, or investigators who blackmail their clients with the information they uncover. In fact, the government is not sure how many private detectives are working in the country today. An estimated 5,110 companies are in the business, but that is based on surveys of phone books and street signboards.

Some members of the ruling coalition, including the LDP and New Komeito, are preparing legislation that would institute a licensing system to weed out the unsavory types. The new law also would require that detectives destroy documents and data gathered in the course of business once they wrap up investigations for their clients.

The primary demand for private detectives in Japan is to check into extramarital affairs. (That’s how Jack Nicholson made a living in Chinatown.) I’d guess that background checks of prospective marital partners run a close second. Some people still don’t want any Korean, burakumin, or Ainu blood in the family line, though their numbers are dwindling.

One of my Japanese teachers at university told us a story of her experiences with a private detective. She came from a somewhat prominent family—after graduation, she worked in the Foreign Ministry and traveled with friends overseas, which was a very big deal in the early 60s. (There were restrictions on overseas travel until 1964.) She met and planned to marry an American doctor, so her family hired a detective firm to do a background search on her beau.

She told us about the agency’s performance one day in class. “The agency reported only that he would probably have a good income because he was a doctor,” she laughed. “What a waste of time! We knew that already.”

I almost forgot—one detective novelist does sell very well in Japan, and in fact won the Naoki Prize for fiction about 15 years ago. That is Ryo Hara, whose books are very readable. In a lucky break, I got to read his books while getting paid for it. His publisher hired me to translate excerpts of his fiction into English and write summaries of his novels to pitch them overseas, They weren’t very successful, which is a shame, because the books are good (though a little Chandler-ish for my taste). The best they could do was sell my translation of one of his short stories to a French publishing company, who based their French translation on my English translation instead of the original Japanese. (Not a good idea for producing a faithful translation.) Maybe Hara needed a better translator!