Inspector Japp

Japp has been depicted in seven novels written by Christie, all featuring Hercule Poirot:[1]

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
• The Big Four (1927)
• Peril at End House (1932)
• Lord Edgware Dies (1933), also known as Thirteen at Dinner
• Death in the Clouds (1935), also known as Death in the Air
• The A.B.C. Murders (1936), also known as The Alphabet Murders
• One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940), also known as An Overdose of Death and The Patriotic Murders. This is his last appearance in any work by Christie.

In most of these appearances, Japp is a minor character with minimal interactions with Poirot or involvement in the plot. However, Japp emerges as a major character and partner to Poirot in Lord Edgware Dies. He returns in this capacity in Death in the Clouds and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, before being written out of the series. In number of appearances, Japp is comparable to Arthur Hastings who was featured in eight of the Poirot novels.[1]

Inspector Japp is also briefly mentioned in the Tommy and Tuppence book The Secret Adversary (1922); his card is brought to Julius Hersheimmer at the end of chapter five. In chapter seventeen of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Japp is mentioned by a police superintendent to Poirot as having asked after him. Japp is mentioned by Colonel Weston in Evil Under the Sun (1941), the next book in the Poirot series after his final appearance. Japp is also mentioned in the novel Taken at the Flood (1948) by Superintendent Spence during a conversation with Hercule Poirot.

Japp's career in the Poirot novels extends into the 1930s but, like Hastings, he disappeared from Christie's writing thereafter. A police officer somewhat similar in character (Superintendent Spence) was introduced as a significant recurring character in the later Poirot novels.

Japp appears in Christie's stage play Black Coffee, written in 1929. He remarks to Poirot that it has been a "long time" since they last met, in connection with "that Welsh case", which is not otherwise identified.[2] Japp also appears in Charles Osborne's novelisation of Black Coffee.

Like those of Miss Lemon and Arthur Hastings, the role of Inspector Japp in Poirot's career has been exaggerated by adaptations of Christie's original novels, specifically by the TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, where these characters are often introduced into stories that did not originally feature them.

James Japp, while being a competent detective, is no match for Poirot; he frequently finds himself a step behind the great detective but has developed a grudging respect for the man's abilities over their years together. Japp and Hastings often commiserate on their confusion and inability to keep up with Poirot on cases. At times, Japp cannily plays upon Poirot's ego in order to nudge the detective into taking up cases, but in such ways as Poirot does not seem to realize that Japp is manoeuvring him.

Japp and Hastings are also generally astonished to find that Poirot cannot understand anything typically English (like cricket, which he maintains is utter nonsense).

The role of Japp is played by Philip Jackson in the British TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, where Hercule Poirot's character is played by David Suchet. Before Suchet took on the role of Poirot, he had previously played Japp himself in the 1985 film Thirteen at Dinner, where Peter Ustinov played Poirot. The portrayal of Philip Jackson is considered to be one of the best and most popular portrayals of Japp to date. Jackson portrays Japp as working-class and 'thoroughly British', not very intelligent but an extremely diligent, canny and active police officer with a good but rather dry sense of humour, characteristics which often serve as a perfect foil to Poirot's personality, who is intelligent, elegant, upper-class but rather slow in movements and of a very serious nature.

Philip Jackson is also one of the actors who played Japp in the BBC Radio adaptations of Poirot stories, produced contemporaneously with the Suchet TV series and starring John Moffatt as Poirot. In the radio dramatisations, Inspector Japp was played by Norman Jones in Lord Edgware Dies (1992), by Philip Jackson in The ABC Murders (2000), Death In The Clouds (2003), One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (2004), and The Mysterious Affair at Styles (2005), and by Bryan Pringle in Peril at End House (2000).[3]

Japp is played by Melville Cooper in the 1931 film adaptation of Christie's stage play Black Coffee.

As the chief inspector's name is spelled similarly and pronounced in the same way as the ethnic slur Jap, he was renamed Inspector Sharp (シャープ警部, Shaapu-kebu) in the Japanese anime series Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (NHK, 2004).

In the Professor Layton series of puzzle video games for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS, the fictional Scotland Yard chief inspector Chelmey appears visually and contextually as a comically incompetent caricature of Inspector Japp as played by Philip Jackson.

A retired Japp is played by Kevin McNally in The ABC Murders (2018); the series starts with Japp dying of a heart attack, and a recurring sub-plot is Inspector Crome, Japp's protege, expressing distrust of Poirot as he feels that working with Poirot ruined Japp's career.

• Inspector Japp at the official Agatha Christie website