Ah, so …
Khan -> Kan -> Ahn?
Non sequiturs aside, how about YEAR OF THE DRAGON, where Mickey Rourke is the NYPD captain tasked with stopping John Lone’s shady operations in Chinatown – which means a pre-BIG-TROUBLE-IN-LITTLE-CHINA Dennis Dun, as undercover cop Herbert Kwong, gets sent in and soon uncovers inside info about the next big drug shipment?
Yeah, how about it?
I hear it was awful.
I also heard that about the remake of IRONSIDE, which had Kenneth Choi – maybe best known as Jim Morita, from the CAPTAIN AMERICA movie – as the police captain.
James Hong played a Honolulu private eye in BLACK WIDOW, the Debra Winger flick about a woman accused of marrying and murdering a string of rich husbands.
Sab Shimono was one of the Honda executives getting pitched on MAD MEN, and Doctor Roy Tam in THE SHADOW, and he’s done everything from a Cheech and Chong movie to playing ‘Painless’ Kumagai – the foul-mouthed coroner plainspokenly making his case against Harrison Ford in PRESUMED INNOCENT.
I think that counts – but if it doesn’t, I see his lengthy IMDB profile includes a role as Inspector James Matsuoka. (Heck, you can find almost anything in there: he’s a Corporal, he’s a Lieutenant, he’s a Colonel, he’s a General, he’s a Governor, he’s an Emperor…)
Jim Ishida has enough no-nonsense bearing that he’s always playing a cop in general, or a sheriff in particular, and everyone else from the Coroner to the Medical Examiner to – on MURDER SHE WROTE – Inspector Ota. And you’ll undoubtedly be watching him work his not-putting-up-with-any-crap schtick this year, since it’s 2015 and he’s going to fire an aging Marty McFly via the fax machines that are as ubiquitous as flying cars.
Tom Choi played Captain Bill Choi on Southland after playing a Sheriff on The Shield and a police officer on everything from Women’s Murder Club to NCIS:LA, plus a government agent on Criminal Minds, and 24, and Bones.
Okinawan-born Tamlyn Tomita played Coroner Miwako Nishizawa on all those episodes of LAW AND ORDER: LA, and while I’m still not sure whether government official who studies evidence to deduce the cause of death before testifying as an expert witness counts for the OP, it still doesn’t matter, because a quick look at IMDB shows her other roles run the gamut from Doctor Grace Yakura to Detective Sharon Matsumoto.
(It also shows she was a Homeland Security Agent on NCIS:LA, and a Special Agent on THREAT MATRIX, and so on – oh, and Daniel-san’s love interest in KARATE KID II.)
The castmembers on HAWAII FIVE-O of course got mentioned, but not Keo Woolford’s recurring role as Detective James Chang, the dick who’d love to bring down McGarrett. (And, at that, no mention yet of Jason Scott Lee’s recurring role as Detective Kaleo.)
Joey Miyashima has made a virtual career out of playing law-enforcement types, going from Police Assistant Wong on the small screen to Sheriff Kikuchi on the big one (and playing a whole bunch o’cops in between) – but who does everyone remember him as? Principal Matsui in the High School Musical movies.
Tzi Ma was Detective Harold Ng on NYPD BLUE before he was Commander Michael Chu of the organized-crime unit on FINNEGAN, but after he was Detective Eddie Pak on YELLOWTHREAD STREET; his other roles run the gamut from Inspector Chang on JAG to Agent Kwan on AGENTS OF SHIELD.
Juilliard grad James Hiroyuki Liao is of Taiwanese ancestry on his father’s side, and Japanese ancestry on his mother’s side, and is probably best known for all the years he’s spent on UNFORGETTABLE as Detective Jay Lee.
Although I can’t be positive when I was researching for my piece, “The First (Female) Action Hero” http://maggieameanderings.com/2014-Feb-2.htm, I came across:
Anna Mae Wong who played the lead in the TV series “The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong.” It was the first time an Asian-American actor played the lead on a TV show. That’s the lead, not a supporting role. It was 1951, so a decade and a half before George Takei as a supporting actor on “Star Trek.” Yet people act like Takei was the first. (I even had to send a correction to the PBS show “Pioneers of Television” because they got that one wrong.)
Unfortunately, all the footage of the show was destroyed. But from what I’ve read of it Mme. Lui-Tsong was an art gallery owner who was also an amateur private detective.
But as I’ve never seen the show and the descriptions of it are very brief, unless there’s someone who remembers actually watching the show, there’s no way to confirm that she was an amateur private detective.
Switching gears entirely – but not really – there’s “The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo”, starring Malaysian-born Irene Ng as the lead, with a supporting role for Pat Morita as her grandfather the retired SFPD Detective: the idea is that she works as an intern at the local police department and plays talented amateur sleuth to solve the crimes that baffle the cops; the show ran for four seasons.
I don’t think it’s switching gears. The OP said “detective” and there’s a long history of amateur sleuths. Who thinks that Jessica Fletcher wasn’t a detective in “Murder She Wrote”?
I caught “The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo” back when it aired and thought that it was exactly the kind of show I would have loved as a kid.
At that, Linda Park – Hoshi Sato, on ENTERPRISE – was one of the amateur sleuths on WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB, and after playing Assistant Coroner Quo on LIFE qualified yet again for this thread by playing Chief Inspector Zhang on CASTLE.
Sessue Hayakawa of course earned an Oscar nomination for playing Colonel Saito in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, but his most recent role before that was Inspector Kito in the 1955 drama HOUSE OF BAMBOO, with Robert Stack gunning for Robert Ryan (as a would-be Harry Lime) in post-WWII Tokyo.
Freda Foh Shen, who appears as Lucy Liu’s mom on the aforementioned ELEMENTARY, was DCI Janet Cheung on CRACKER long before she was Detective Maggie Conrad in PRIMAL DOUBT, but I’m not here to talk about that.
Rather, I’m here to mention that she course achieved film immortality by working the drive-thru at the Chinese restaurant in DUDE WHERE’S MY CAR – the movie where Keone Young exasperatedly ends the stoner version of Who’s On First by explaining our heroes’ tattoos to them. And he’d been Detective William Wu, in FEAR, before that; and he’s been everything else from a private investigator in a Danielle Steel movie to a police chief on JAG; and he voiced Storm Shadow on GI JOE, as well as the Silver Samurai on the X-MEN cartoon, which doesn’t count but is still awesome.