Jirou Tanabe

Jirou Tanabe (田名辺 治朗) is a minor character of Hyouka. He is a second-year student of the Kamiyama High School as well as the school's Executive Committee President.

Appearance
Jirou has short black-green hair that has bangs swept to the left side, yellow eyes that has a tinge of green and blue square-framed glasses.

Personality
Jirou is a polite teenage boy who is a little strict.

Plot
Jirou first appears during the events of Kanya Festival when Eru Chitanda asks him, as the school's Executive Committee president, to give the Classics Club more stall space. Jirou tells her he can't just approve a request out of nowhere like that, but if she wanted to ask any other clubs to offer the anthology for sale, that would be perfectly fine. Eru thanks him, and then takes her leave.

Later, he is seen asking Satoshi Fukube to take a box to the gymnasium. Satoshi asks Jirou if he's going to take a look around, Jirou tells him that a lot of things keep popping up for him, but he has been checking out a few random places. Jirou asks Satoshi if there's anything interesting happening and Satoshi tells him about the theft at the Go Club, someone had stolen some go stones and left a note. Satoshi tells him it's probably a hoax by the club members. Jirou tells Satoshi that he actually heard that the A Capella Club had something similar happen. Satoshi asks if there was any written statement, and Jirou tells him that there was a weird note left in its place.

After some time he appears again, attending a magic show with Muneyoshi Kugayama where they both say hello to Fuyumi Irisu and Jirou also greets Satoshi.

Later he informs Mayaka and Eru that Muneyoshi was the artist for a poster advertising the festival, and the manga "A Corpse by Evening".

Finally, he is seen amongst the group of students waiting to catch Juumonji in the Classics Club, he seems to be acting rather bizarre and was unfazed by the completed manuscript suddenly catching fire.

Later in the episode, it is revealed that Jirou was actually Juumonji all along. Houtarou directly confronts Jirou, and uses it as blackmail to get him to sell copies of Hyouka on the school's website. The biggest reason he caused all of those incidents was because he wished for Kugayama to continue drawing an even better manga than "A Corpse by Evening" because he think it would be a waste of talent but Kugayama have no intention to continue drawing because he only did it for fun last year and Jirou couldn't ask him directly so he sent a message to Kugayama through the Juumonji incident which is based on the envisioned plot of "Kudrayavka's Order" mentioned in the afterword of "A Corpse by Evening" and believed he could decipher it.

Later, at the closing ceremony for the festival, Muneyoshi mentions a "strange incident" where he then turns to a perturbed Jirou and says "Nice job!" and smiles, in which Jirou still looks a little disturbed.

Muneyoshi Kugayama
Muneyoshi and Jirou are close friends as they both are engaged in student self-governance.

Fuyumi Irisu
Fuyumi and Jirou aren't really close, but Jirou show some gestures that he likes Fuyumi.

Etymology

 * The name Jirou means "cure" (治) (chi/ji) and "melodious, clear, bright, serene, cheerful" (朗) (rou).
 * Jirou's surname Tanabe means "field, rice paddy" (田) (ta), "name, noted, distinguished, reputation" (名) (na) and "edge, area, vicinity" (辺) (be).