刑
刑 – Xing2 – Punishment
刑事 – Xing2 Shi4 – Punishment Matter — Criminal, Penal
But it appears that 刑事 means Detective, for some reason, in Japanese. We spent part of this weekend watching スケバン刑事 – Sukeban Deka — Delinquent Detective, and the sequel. They’re both pretty old movies about teams of Japanese schoolgirls who fight crime using weapons you’d imagine schoolgirls would have handy, like yoyos and origami cranes and marbles. Despite how AWESOME that sounds, they just weren’t that good. It is interesting to find out that they’re making a new movie, coming out later this year. I guess Japan is just as out of new ideas for movies as the US.