Shimizu's book was published in 2016 and talks about The Ashikaga Case which was one of the serial murders involving 5 young girls between the age of 4 and 8 who were murdered in two neighbouring cities i.e. Ashikaga City in Tochigi Prefecture and Ota City in Gunma Prefecture. The sloppy investigation, the unknown truths behind the DNA testing and a bid by the authorities to cover up the mistakes led to an innocent man being sentenced for the crime which took place in 1990 before he was finally vindicated in 2010.
On the other hand, "Chase" talks about how a freelance journalist (Ootani Ryohei) and TV station's assistant director (Honda Tsubasa) work together to find the truth behind an unresolved serial murder case involving young girls which took place 27 years ago. To date, although there is no official statement from the production crew of "Chase", its joint producer Shinomiya Takashi posted some tweets on 30 December addressed to Shimizu where he revealed that the intention of making this drama was to draw attention to the unresolved cases in a bid to find out the truth and that he had read Shimizu's book before. However, he admitted that they might have gone overboard in their overzealous attempt to do so and hoped to have the opportunity to speak to Shimizu directly on the matter.
Sources: Nikkansports / Huffington Post Japan
3 comments:
What the... so it was plagiarism? And he had read the book and produced the drama knowing of such a source but didn't bother to credit/message the writer to get permission to adapt? For shame. The writer and publisher should take action.
The tweets probably didn't go as far as admitting that it was plagiarism. The only things clear from the producer's tweets were:
- They read the original book
- They wanted to draw attention to such cases where justice was not served
- There were no official links between the book and the drama
It doesn't look like the author nor the publisher would be keen on an adaptation work so it could be that the drama's crew went ahead to do something similar where the key details or references to the real cases were not evident. The author and publisher haven't gone as far as to call this drama a rip-off YET so it remains to be seen how the drama's side reacts to resolve this before they do something.
Honestly speaking, it would have been better to use words like "loosely based on" or "inspired by" rather than be exposed in this manner. Whether you are indeed guilty of plagiarism, it has already put this drama in a bad light and things certainly don't look well for Part 2 which is supposed to be shown later this year if this scandal drags on.
Amazon Prime should suspend this drama until the production resolves this with the author. There is no excuse for adapting a work without credit, especially since the producer admitted to reading and being influenced by the book, and the similarities are there for the world to see (and judge). It's all very well to trot out some sort of "noble" intention about wanting to draw attention to the cases, but if the production were really so keen, it could have worked something out with the author.
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