One of the lower profile shows to come out this season was Woodpecker Detective’s Office, a murder mystery series that uses real life literary figures as consulting detectives in late Meiji-era (1868-1912) Tokyo. If it sounds like Sherlock Holmes, that’s because it’s exactly what the premise is and its one of the fresher ways of handling this done to death genre.

(I consider Sherlock Holmes-derivative series, successors, remakes, etc. a murder mystery sub-genre. You can verbally duel me over it. Then I’m going to toss us both off Reichenbach Falls.)

The Holmes and Watson are Ishikawa Takuboku, a popular tanka poet and his long-suffering friend Kindaichi Kyosuke, a poet and linguist who would go on to publish a still popular dictionary. At a glance Ishikawa is a thoughtless, self-absorbed jerk who uses people and gives everyone a reason to keep him at arm’s length while living like there’s no tomorrow. Perpetually broke he begins using his intellect and idiosyncratic way of thinking to play consulting detective to pay the rent.

Kindaichi has known Ishikawa since middle school and due to his gentle, kind-hearted nature often finds himself paying for Ishikawa’s meals or covering his rent, believing obviously lies just to help him out. He’s astute but rather gullible and a touch naïve. He’s the reasonable and normal straight man of the pair.

Swapping out 221B Baker Street in Victorian London for Meiji Tokyo around 1909-10, the pair live in the Gaiheikan boarding house in Hongo, a neighborhood near Ueno Park. After nearly getting evicted by stern maid Kayo, Ishikawa begins his consulting detective work.

While the recently reviewed Sakura War’s Tokyo was primarily set in Ginza, this story splits it’s time between Ishikawa and Kindaichi’s Hongo home and hangout, and Shitamachi.

Shitamachi or “low town” is where the commoners lived and the protagonists spend a lot of time in two very different entertainment districts both for cases and for leisure; Asakusa with its red brick sky scraper and electric lights, and its counterpoint, Yoshiwara. Yoshiwara is the traditional pleasure quarter, which aside from the men’s suits and chain-smoking, is practically unchanged since the days of samurai. God, does this show do early 20^th century chain-smoking justice.

The imagery reminded me of some of the period post cards I poured over for the Sakura Wars articles; I like the ‘living’ quality of seeing them populated with people in traditional and Western clothing riding in street cars and walking the dirt streets of downtown Tokyo. (Though for a major city the streets are practically dead in most scenes.)  Two things that strike me about these recreations of old Tokyo are how short the city is in stature as most structures are one or two stories high, and just how much greenery flourished throughout the city. It’s also very traditional as electricity and modern or foreign influences were still working their way in piece by piece leaving us a city caught somewhere between the old and new. It’s very different from Holmes’ London, but at the same time with just as much personality.

Asakusa and Japan’s first skyscraper, Ryounkaku; it was devastated by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.

Yoshiwara: a place for men of culture.

Rounding out the cast are the other literary figures in Ishikawa and Kindaichi’s circle of friends, some of which viewers of Bungo Stray Dogs and Meiji Tokyo Renka will recognize. For once though, they are more accurately depicted as themselves and perform the roles they would have during this period. For example, Prof. Natsume Soseki of Tokyo Imperial University is visited for a literary critique and esteemed Surgeon General of the Imperial Japanese Army Mori Ogai is consulted for his medical expertise. Character interactions overall were enjoyable to watch as they flowed naturally and the competitive nature of the poets and their different views made for lively conversation and deduction.

Mori Ogai / Rintarou; Ogai was his pen name so he is being addressed correctly here.

Like any good mystery a lot hinges on minuet details which are usually visible to the audience but not obvious. The cases are unusual and seemingly unrelated but Ishikawa believes there is a mastermind behind them all, manipulating events so that the deeds of evil men are brought to light and they pay for their crimes. They touch on issues effecting Japan at the time such as copper mine pollution in the first episode and also take advantage of the period’s unique aspects such as the flying man leaping from the red brick tower, which at the time was the tallest building in Japan. As it the story progresses we also learn more about Ishikawa and the reasons for his seemingly selfish and horrid behavior.

The murders themselves are very bloody and don’t shy aware from unsettling imagery, which is possibly intentionally at odds with the show’s bright and colorful palette. The art style itself and the portrayal of the men’s friendship made the show come across as one meant for a primarily female audience. Maybe it’s the bishonen art style and direction; though Ishikawa and Kindaichi’s relationship is not romantic it’s sometimes lit and positioned like it might be.

I had fun watching this one, I enjoyed it beginning to end and the final mystery resolution was nice. I won’t spoil it, but the pieces were there and it fit. It can be watched on Crunchyroll and Funimation in the US.

That was the review itself. For those more interested in the real life historical sources it draws from I’ve been reading Ishikawa’s Romaji Diary and comparing it against the show. If you’ve already seen the show you’ll probably find this part more interesting than the review.

The series title, Woodpeckers Detective’s Office is a play on Ishikawa’s first name. Takuboku is the Chinese pronunciation of kitsutsuki, or “woodpecker.” In Japanese the show’s title is Kitsutsuki Tantei-dokoro.

A hard time frame is never established but it likely takes place in 1909-10, as Ishikawa began working for the Asahi Shimbun in March 1909. It is nice that they did make use of his past, such as connection with geishas and his time in Hokkaido, as plot points within the story. In real life too, Kindaichi pawned his own things to cover Ishikawa’s rent.

Concerning Ishikawa’s rent; he still owed 119 yen when he left the boarding house in June 1909; Kindaichi was generously kind enough to act as guarantor. At the time yen was pegged at 2.015 to the U.S. dollar, so in today’s currency it would be around $6,300. I can see why Kayo is so grumpy.

Kayo is fictional and not inspired by or based on a real person. Ishikawa mentions the boarding house had five maids, two were named Okiyo and Otsune. Okiyo was described as the prettiest maid, “thick in a sensual way” and with thick eye brows.

The characterization of Ishikawa looks to fall in line with his real personality. He was an egotistical poet that put his literary work before everything but also perpetually trying to handle his responsibilities which in the show were omitted because he was married in real life.

Often physically separated as he bounced around Hokkaido and Tokyo for work, his wife, child and mother lived in Hakodate until June 1909 when they came to Tokyo and he rented rooms for them and himself, leaving the boarding house he had lived in with Kindaichi. The financial burden of taking care of his family along with his own illnesses and lifestyle choices put him under a lot of mental and financial stress for his entire adult life.

The series also doesn’t bring up his developing socialist leanings though that didn’t begin to take poetic form until 1911 which I think is after the series’ period. In the series, it may have been eluded to with his story event-driven desire to delve into more serious writing.

He described Kindaichi as a man with two sides; one was “gentle, good-natured, kind and considerate.” The other was “jealous, weak, and effeminate with petty vanities.” Ishikawa also felt he was inexperienced in dealing with women. Despite this, Kindaichi had actually been to Yoshiwara several times before Ishikawa went for the first time. (Because he was poor, Ishikawa usually frequented a cheaper even less savory less-than-legal unofficial red light district near it in Asakusa.)

The book at the end of the series, Sad Toys, was published posthumously on Jun. 20, 1912.

For Tokyo travelers, the Gaiheikan boarding house was located at 359 Shinsaka, 1 Morikawacho, Hongo, according to Ishikawa’s diary. Today that address is 6-chome-10-12 Hongo, Bunkyo City 113-0033 and there is a marker noting its location. An apartment complex is now at that spot atop the hill. Hongo is a Bunkyo Ward neighborhood on the opposite side of Ueno Park from Ueno Station.

One still standing residence from the show you can visit is Prof. Natsume’s home though it’s no longer in Tokyo. The building shown was his actual home, but not during this time frame. It’s likely they chose to depict it because it’s easy to get imagery for.

The modest house was in Komagome-Sendagi-cho on the other side of Hongo district from Gaiheikan. Natsume lived here from 1903-1906 while on staff at Tokyo Imperial University. Mori Ogai lived in this same house a decade earlier from 1890-1892. Ogai moved out when his mansion, the Kancho-ro, finished construction. (That is now the site of the Mori Ogai Museum and is in the same neighborhood as the Ogai/Natsume rental house.)

Today it is preserved in the park-like setting depicted on the show at Meiji-mura in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture. Meiji-mura collects more than 60 Meiji-era buildings into an open-air architectural park complete with working 1910s Kyoto street cars and a steam engine visitors can ride. If you want to experience the Tokyo of Woodpeckers, minus the murder, that’s the place to do it.

REFERENCES

Romaji Diary and Sad Toys by Ishikawa Takuboku
(This book can be found at Amazon on Kindle here)

Calculator.net was used for USD inflation, 1914 to 2020. 1914 was as close as I could get to 1909. The exchange rate was either a flat 2 to 1 yen to USD or 2.015 to 1, going off Wikipedia, which actually referred back to the Bank of Japan for its numbers in 1910.