Mr. Moto
| Mr. Moto | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Your Turn, Mr. Moto |
| Created by | John P. Marquand |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Secret agent, spy, detective |
| Nationality | Japanese |
Mr. Moto is a fictional Japanese secret agent and detective created by the American author John P. Marquand. He appeared in six novels by Marquand published between 1935 and 1957. Marquand initially created the character for the Saturday Evening Post, which was seeking stories with an Asian hero after the death of Charlie Chan's creator Earl Derr Biggers.
In various other media, Mr. Moto has been portrayed as an international law enforcement agent. These include eight motion pictures starring Peter Lorre between 1937 and 1939, 23 radio shows starring James Monks broadcast in 1951, a 1965 film starring Henry Silva, and a 2003 comic book produced by Moonstone Books. The graphic novel Welcome Back, Mr. Moto by Rafael Nieves and Tim Hamilton published by Moonstone Books in 2008 (originally published in 2003 as a 3-issue comic book miniseries) portrays Mr. Moto as an American of Japanese descent helping Japanese-American citizens after World War II.
In Marquand's novels, Moto calls himself I. A. Moto. Mr. Moto, though capable of ruthlessness and deadly violence, appears at first to be a harmless eccentric. The main characters in these novels are Westerners who encounter Mr. Moto in the course of their own adventures in exotic lands and gradually come to realize what a formidable character he is.
In the first five novels, set in the era of expansionist Imperial Japan, Mr. Moto is an agent of the empire. In the final novel, set in the 1950s inside Japan, he is a senior intelligence official in the pro-Western Japanese government.
He is physically described in Think Fast, Mr. Moto:
Mr. Moto was a small man, delicate, almost fragile. … He was dressed formally in a morning coat and striped trousers. His black hair was carefully brushed in the Prussian style. He was smiling, showing a row of shiny gold-filled teeth, and as he smiled he drew in his breath with a polite, soft sibilant sound.
This basic description carries through most of the novels, with a slightly different description in Right You Are, Mr. Moto, set 20 years later than the other novels. In this novel he is described as “middle aged,” and his hair as being “grayish and close-clipped.” In two novels, Marquand describes Mr. Moto's build as "chunky".
...
Wikipedia