Concept

Monsieur Moto

Résumé
Mr. Moto is a fictional Japanese secret agent 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 detective. 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, later reprinted as Welcome Back, Mr. Moto. In Marquand's novels, the character calls himself I.A. Moto, and some other characters believe this to be a fairly obvious alias, since "moto" is usually the second part of a Japanese surname, as in Hashimoto. Though Mr. Moto is shrewd, tough and ruthless against his enemies, to most people in most situations he appears to be a harmless eccentric who sometimes calls himself stupid. The main characters in the novels are Westerners who encounter Mr. Moto in the course of their 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.
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