Detectives and Lost Empires: Reimagining Holmes through Japanese Game Narratives

This presentation offers a critical examination of Japanese video games that adapt and reinterpret the Sherlockian detective archetype, focusing on Dai Gyakuten Saiban (2015–2017) and Eikoku Tantei Mysteria (2013) as primary case studies. By situating classic British detective tropes within hybridized Neo-Victorian and Neo-Meiji cultural milieu, I show how these games evoke a complex nostalgia for Japan’s imperial past while mediating profound revisions of gender roles, imperial legacies, and cultural identities. By reimagining canonical figures such as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, these games foreground the agency of female and Japanese characters, producing what may be conceptualized as “playable counter-histories” that critically interrogate and destabilize dominant Anglo-European cultural scripts. This presentation shows how Japanese developers mobilize visual novel and mystery genres as transnational spaces of cultural negotiation where competing memories and desires come together in playful, affective and politically meaningful ways.