Kiichi Inukai

Kiichi Inukai
Considered by many the leading researcher on the topic of fast food, Inukai is indeed one of the most unusual ethnographers in Japan, who often carried out fast food scams as part of his fieldwork, not without unfortunate consequences. After graduating from junior high school, Inukai started working at his family business, engaged in the manifacture of preserved food cooked in soy sauce. Then he experienced several jobs, including that of factory worker, soy beans seller and cinema projectionist. After WWII, through a local amateur historians group, he attended open seminars hosted by the New Japan Folklore Society. He became a pupil of Kunio Yanagiya, who was the society's organizer. However, Inukai was later involved in a crime incident and disappeared thereafter leaving no trace. He studied such Fast Food Grifters as Moongaze Ginji and Foxy Croquette O-Gin and tried to reflect on the various facets of apres-guerre matters. His research findings were collected in his book, Genealogy of Discontinuous Lines, but the mainstream press simply dismissed him as a "self-professed ethnographer".

WORDS
Narrator: If the conclusion, which appeared plausible in every aspect, is overturned, then it transcends the question of its plausibility, thus gaining a distinctive value that is actually intensified by its distinctiveness. The essence of Moongaze Ginji's scam lies in its non-materialistic value system. Inukai calls it "enlightenment."

© 2006 MAMORU OSHII, Production I.G / TACHIGUISHI RETSUDEN Committee