Today in beautiful meta-humour, the butt of our jokes is an actual butt. Well, his head is a butt. The rest of him is, presumably a normal human body?

Japan’s Oshiri Tantei is the story of a Sherlock Holmesian detective. He’s a deep thinker. He solves crimes. He’s the subject of a children’s picture book series. Oh, and his head just also happens to be a butt. Does this impact on his ability to do his work? No. Does this mean we should take him less seriously? No. Why is his head a butt then? We still don’t know.

The most popular children's book series in Japan is Oshiri Tantei ("The Butt Detective") about an anthropomorphic derriere who solves crimes pic.twitter.com/gPI4Aq5yut

— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 28, 2017

Each title in the series after the first one begins with the word ププッ ("Pu Pu!"), which literally means "Fart, Fart!"

— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 28, 2017

The Butt Detective (sometime referred to as Detective Butt) is the hero of a popular Japanese children’s book series. Though the series has been around for some time, it’s gaining worldwide attention this week after a series from tweets from Japanese historian Nick Kapur.

It’s hard to imagine a world where children can read a book about a butt detective without getting lost in a sea of laughter at the first page, but by all accounts the whole thing is really quite serious. It’s nice to think that there are children out there who can take a step back, look at a butt solving crimes and go “Yes. This is not a thing that is distractingly funny.”

Unfortunately I was never that child. I was the child who paired up with a friend in the computer room and carefully coordinated so we could make KidPix say “I C U P” aloud. Jokes aside (sort of), I am frankly a little butt bit worried about what this is going to to children’s understanding of anatomy. In the same way that Catdog both thrilled and disturbed me as a child, I have a A Few Very Specific Questions:

What happens at toilet time?

I’ve given this scenario a lot of thought over the years for Catdog reasons — though their situation was the opposite (two mouths, no butts). Unless the head-butt is vestigial and non-functional (which is unlikely, given that it is literally at the top of the body), then there’s no two ways around it. There must be a two way gastrointestinal tract at play and, assuming things are symmetrical, the what happens below… happens above. At the same time.

Where does he speak from? Where does he eat?

Maybe he speaks from his butt? Anatomically, it is feasible that there is some kind of vocal cord arrangement within the head colon, but then he would essentially have to speak in controlled farts. This Which doesn’t really lend itself well to the interrogation techniques that are so integral for the profession of detective. It’s more likely that he has a mouth in his abdomen, halfway between the two systems, leading to a shared stomach which then splits off into two sets of intestines, up and down.

Does he buy underpants?

If your face is a butt and your butt is a butt, but you don’t wear underpants on your face butt, why would you wear them on your butt butt?

What is at the back of his head/butt?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say… nothing. It is just a smooth back, maybe with a normal head of hair (you can see in the pictures he has quite a smart haircut). Just because he has (presumably) two butts, it doesn’t mean he has two urinary systems. Lets just assume his kidneys and all that are in the usual place, and that the head is pretty much exclusively butt.

Where is his brain?

It has to be in his head! The butt has eyes, and the eyes connect to the optic nerves — also known as cranial nerve II. Cranium as in head. They run in close quarters to the brain, and so it goes to measure that the brain is housed within the head butt (further supporting the hypothesis that the back of his head is just like a usual head).

Phew. Glad we got to the… erm… bottom of all that. Anyway. No ifs or butts. We need this in Australian libraries.