Adaptation of First-Person Narrative Literature: Revisiting Kazoku Gēmu

Home , A Scene at the Sea, Jian (era), Keiho, Last Scene, Literary adaptation, Something Like It

Adaptation of First-Person Narrative Literature:

Revisiting Kazoku gēmu (1981) and The Family Game (1983)

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Xiyue Zhang, B.A.

Graduate Program in East Asian Studies and Film Studies

The Ohio State University

2019

Thesis Committee:

Shelley Fenno Quinn, Advisor

Margaret C. Flinn, Advisor

Richard Torrance

Kirk Denton

Abstract

The Family Game (1983) is a Japanese film directed by Morita Yoshimitsu 森田

芳光 (1950-2011). Recognized as one of important works in the history of Japanese film, it represents the alienation of Japanese family and satirizes examination-oriented education in 1980s. The film is based on the novel Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム (lit., “The

Family Game”) by Honma Yōhei 本間洋平 (1948-) published in 1981. In the scholarly discussion of The Family Game, the fact that the film is an adaptation has been virtually ignored, which results in the inaccurate assessment of the film. The thesis is a comparative study of Morita’s The Family Game and Honma’s Kazoku gēmu. It first analyzes the narrative style and character development of Kazoku gēmu and identifies the novel as a boku novel with unique narrative style and character development. It then examines The Family Game as an adaptation and explores the challenges of adapting unique first-person text. The exploration of the two works shows that the adaptation of first-person narrative literature can be challenging, and a clarification of adaptation can help deepen understanding of both the source text and the film adaptation.

ii Dedication

To My Love,

Zhaoqin Wang (1991-2007)

iii Acknowledgements

It is the moment for farewells. I thought there was no way for me to finish this project, but I eventually conquer my fear and reached this point. Heartfelt gratitude must be expressed before saying goodbyes.

The first person deserving of my deep gratitude is Professor Shelley Quinn, my advisor in East Asian Studies, who has supported me in every possible way in the past three years, helping me get through one of the darkest periods of my life. I would also like to show my sincere gratitude to Professor Margaret Flinn, my advisor in the Film

Studies Program, who has been a great guide to the world of film studies and a reliable supporter of my graduate study. I also want to show my appreciation to Professor Richard

Torrance and Professor Kirk Denton who offered constructive feedback to my research, and to Professor Naomi Fukumori who always provided kind advice and help.

I would also like to thank my fellow students and friends at the Ohio State

University, who have supported my life in a foreign country with friendliness and warmth. I thank my fans whose cheer brighten my life. I thank my mother, Yuanyuan

Yao, who brought me to the world and always encourages me to be who I am. I thank my father, Xiaolin Zhang, who taught me the importance of education and devotes all he has to me. I thank my grandparents, Hui Zhang and Yi Meng, for their genuine love. Last,

iv I would my deep gratitude and yearning to my love who rests in peace, Zhaoqin Wang, the one who helped me find myself and gifted me with the most precious memories. I could have reached here if I had never met you.

Writing a thesis is a process of thinking, of the research, of my experience, and of myself. Along the way, I questioned the value of this project, questioned my arguments, and questioned myself. I was confused as to whether I was fit for academic study. Now, I think I am able to say I am passionate about my research and want to explore more. Life is as challenging and demanding as writing a thesis, but I will not escape anymore. I want to go forward, step by step, for aforementioned people owed a great debt of gratitude from me, for myself.

It is the moment for farewell. I am departing, to tomorrow.

v Vita

July 2012…………Changchun Experimental High School, Changchun, China

June 2016…………Bachelor of History, World History, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

Fields of Study

Major Field: East Asian Studies and Film Studies

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

Vita ...... vi

Table of Contents ...... vii

List of Tables ...... x

List of Figures ...... xi

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Theoretical Framework ...... 4

Major Literature on the Film The Family Game ...... 4

Literature Review ...... 5

Analysis...... 8

Major Critical Literature on the Novel Kazoku gēmu ...... 11

Methodology and Outline ...... 14

Chapter 2: Revisiting Honma’s Kazoku gēmu ...... 16

Honma and His Literary Career ...... 18

A “Ippatsuya” Writer ...... 18

vii

Changing Readership and Literary Aesthetic in Japan of the 1980s ...... 22

Introduction of the novel Kazoku gēmu ...... 27

Synopsis ...... 29

First-Person Narrative and Focalization ...... 31

A Boku Novel ...... 33

Boku as the Narrator: Focalization, Witness Role, and Unreliability ...... 38

A Fixed Internal Focalization ...... 39

Boku as a Witness ...... 40

An Unreliable Narrator ...... 43

Characterization ...... 47

Direct Characterization ...... 48

Indirect Characterization ...... 50

Highly Stylistic Speeches ...... 51

Description of Details ...... 53

Emotional Landscape ...... 56

Chapter 3: Revisiting The Family Game as an Adaptation ...... 63

Re-treating Adaptations as Adaptations ...... 65

The Problem of Fidelity ...... 65

The Mode of Engagement ...... 67

Morita’s Ideas about his Adaptation ...... 70

Creating a “Home Drama” ...... 70

viii

Morita’s Cinematography ...... 73

Introduction of the film The Family Game ...... 77

Synopsis ...... 79

The Family Game as Adaptation: Challenges and Solutions ...... 82

Challenges of First-Person Narrative ...... 83

Challenge from a Boku Narrator ...... 84

Challenge from Indirect Characterization ...... 88

Solutions: Narrative, Landscape, and Symbols ...... 89

Re-creating the Narration ...... 91

Showing Landscape ...... 95

Carving Symbols ...... 98

Chapter 4: Conclusion ...... 104

Works Cited ...... 108

Appendix A: The Publication of Honma Yōhei ...... 114

Appendix B: Adaptations of the novel Kazoku gēmu ...... 116

Appendix C: Filmography of Morita Yoshimitsu ...... 118

List of Tables

Table 1: Characters of the novel Kazoku gēmu...... 27

Table 2: Characters of the film The Family Game ...... 78

Table 3: An Illustration of the “Landscape-Conversation” Pattern in The Family Game 96

List of Figures

Figure 1: Characters and Network in the Novel Kazoku g ēmu ...... 28

Figure 2: “Landscape-Conversation” Pattern in the novel Kazoku gēmu ...... 56

Figure 3: The “Landscape-Conversation” Pattern in Chapter “Autumn” and “Winter” .. 57

Figure 4: Footage of The Family Game - The Opening Dining Scene (00:00:30) ...... 90

Figure 5: Footage of The Family Game – A Night View of Danchi (00:10:35) ...... 94

Figure 6: Footage of The Family Game Using the Kitchen (00:45:44) ...... 99

Figure 7: Footages of The Family Game – “Twilight” (00:24:59-00:25:03) ...... 102

Chapter 1: Introduction

Sitting in a line along a long, rectangular table, a family is having dinner. Neither father nor mother, older brother nor younger brother interacts with each other. They look down at their own bowls and move their chopsticks to reach the food in the distance. The camera pans through the family dinner rapidly and fades into a black background with the title “Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム” at the center. Throughout its twenty-second opening scene, the Japanese film The Family Game (1983), directed by Morita Yoshimitsu 森田

芳光 (1950-2011), suggests alienation and abnormality in the modern Japanese family.

The characters of The Family Game are members of the dysfunctional Japanese middle-class Numata 沼田 family, consisting of the father Kōsuke 孝助 (Itami Jūzō

伊丹十三 1933-1997), the mother Chikako 千賀子 (Yuki Saori 由紀さおり 1948-), the older brother Shin’ichi 慎一 (Tsujita Junichi 辻田順一), and the younger brother

Shigeyuki 茂之 (Miyagawa Ichirōta 宮川一朗太 1966-).1 The film follows the arrival of an extremely strange tutor, Yoshimoto Shō 吉本勝 (Matsuda Yūsaku 松田優作

1 The actor Tsujita who played the character of Shin’ichi only has one work, The Family Game, and his biography is not available.

1949-1989), who is hired to help the younger son pass his high school entrance examination. The Family Game won a series of Japanese film awards in 1983 and was released overseas officially in 1984. Being a low-budget affair that used a mere eighteen production days, the success of The Family Game has long been attributed to two people:

Matsuda, a legendary Japanese actor who was active in the late Shōwa 昭和 period

(1926-1989); and Morita, an influential director in Japanese film history. In addition to

Matsuda’s skillful acting and fame, Morita’s talent as a director and screenwriter has been recognized as the major reason for the success of the film.

While Morita made The Family Game, The Family Game also made him. When the film was released to the United States in 1984, the chief film critic for The New York

Times, Vincent Canby (1924-2000), wrote, “It's risky to make predictions on the basis of just one film, but The Family Game is so rich that Mr. Morita would seem to be one the most talented and original of Japan's new generation of film makers.” In December 1985, after Morita had made seven feature-length films, Japanese film critic, historian, and theorist Satō Tadao 佐藤忠男 recognized The Family Game as Morita’s best work (60).

In the discussion of the success of The Family Game, the fact that the film is an adaptation has been virtually ignored. The Family Game is based on the novel Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム (lit., “The Family Game”) by Honma Yōhei 本間洋平 (1948-).2

2 Since the novel has not been translated into English, also to distinguish it from the film adaptation, the novel is referred to by its romanized title in this project.

Kazoku gēmu was first published in 1981 and received the Fifth Subaru Prize for

Literature (Subaru Bungaku Shō すばる文学賞). From the perspective of the older brother Shin’ichi, the novel tells the happenings following the arrival of the new tutor,

Yoshimoto 吉本, during the preparation for his younger brother’s high school entrance examination. By 2018, the novel had been adapted into one film and three television drama series.3 However, the influence of the novel Kazoku gēmu appears to be weaker than that of its adaptations. Although credited as the “original work,” or source text,

Kazoku gēmu along with its author Honma, is completely overshadowed by the success of the film adaptation and is missing in the discussion of the film The Family Game.

Criticism and academic studies of the film rarely address the source text. The film is thus treated less as “an adaptation,” than as an original film creation by Morita.

3 See Appendix B for more details on the adaptations of Kazoku gēmu.

Theoretical Framework

Major Literature on the Film The Family Game

The Family Game as a significant work of the Japanese film industry has attracted a series of scholarly discussions across the past thirty-years. In general, the literature on

The Family Game has highlighted three areas: (1) the film’s satire of the contemporary

Japanese family and education system as well as postmodern Japanese society; (2)

Morita’s feature cinema techniques and unique approaches to the topic of the Japanese family—often in comparison with that of Ozu; (3) interdisciplinary research using the film from perspectives other than that of film studies.4 Few of the studies of The Family

Game focus only on the film without referring to the source text and its author. These three areas are not isolated but interwoven with each other. This section first reviews major literature on the film and then analyzes the inadequacies of previous studies.

4 An example of interdisciplinary research using The Family Game is Maeta Hisanori 前田久徳’s article “Kazoku Gēmu" ron: shienema · riterashi no kokoromi”. He utilized a method so called as “cinema literacy” and treated The Family Game as a case to examine the feasibility of interpreting a film as a literary work, so as to argue that the approach of interpreting cinema is similar to that of interpreting literature (18–28).

Literature Review

Keiko I. McDonald’s article of “Family, Education, and Postmodern Society:

Yoshimitsu Morita’s The Family Game” is one of major essays analyzing the film’s representation of Japanese society.5 McDonald argues that The Family Game “represents the unique mode of approach to the family” and is a satire of “postmodern” Japanese society targeting “affluent, middle-class nuclear family life in the city and nose-to-the- grindstone education systems” in postwar Japan generally (“Family” 55).6 In the later version published in 2006, McDonald specifies that The Family Game explores Morita’s powerful satirical bent and tools (“Satire” 138). Another major article focusing on the same issue is Aaron Gerow’s book chapter of “Playing with postmodernism: Morita

Yoshimitsu's The Family Game (1983).” Integrating Japanese and English criticism and research of The Family Game, Gerow re-examines the film with an emphasis on the film's postmodernist features. Gerow claims that Morita plays with words and interpretations that framed his social critique of postmodernism and extended far beyond the film. A noticeable point here is that Gerow referred to the novel of Honma and built up a brief comparison between the depiction of the main characters Yoshimoto and

Shin’ichi in the film and the novel respectively (246–47). Gerow’s article appears to be

5 The concept of “postmodern” is not defined in the article. 6 In general, “postwar Japan” refers to Japan after the end of the Second World War from 1945 to present.

5 the first and only article that discusses both the film and the source text, but it has not treated the film as an adaptation in much detail.

The representation of a middle-class Japanese family in The Family Game draws further discussion. For example, in the book chapter of “A Woman's Place in the Kitchen of Knowledge,” Marie Thorsten Morimoto demonstrates how The Family Game represents food, knowledge and woman as well as a sexual division of labor, and how those filmic representations show the structural conditions of postmodern Japanese society (260–72).7 Timothy Iles’s article of “Families, Fathers, Film: Changing Images from Japanese Cinema” also reviews the film’s presentation of a modern Japanese family.

Iles addressed the film text used in The Family Game to present the alienation of the

Numata family and the ineffectuality of modern, urban fathers (194–99).

More research regards Morita’s use of cinema technique and textuality in The

Family Game. One focus is Morita’s cinematography. Chinese film scholar Hong Qi 洪

旗 translated the screen play of The Family Game into Chinese and reviewed the film in the Chinese cinema journal World Cinema (Shi jie dian ying 世界电影). Hong analyzed the film language and techniques and argues that Morita uses a distinct approach that could be concluded to be, “you xu ru shi 由虚入实 (lit., ‘from unreality to reality’)”

(61). Whereas mainstream Japanese directors try to use reality to support a fictional story,

7 In Morimoto’s article, “postmodern Japanese society” refers to a “knowledge-intensive society” (260– 61).

Morita designs many images far away from reality in The Family Game, such as the family’s sitting in a line when they dine and incoherent narratives that bring a feeling of alienation and lead the viewer to reflect upon what reality is (Hong 61–62). Shin

Eunkyung 申恩暻 examines the concept of “landscape (fūkei 風景)” and discusses the use of landscape in The Family Game. Associated with setting and space, landscape is part of mise-en-scene. Shin argues that Morita’s intentional use of landscape functions as both a support to represent the characters’ emotions and consciousness and a place to interreact with the viewer.

Another focus is The Family Game’s affinition to Japanese director Ozu Yasujirō

小津安二郎 (1903-1963)’s films about family. Satō compared Morita’s meal scene in

The Family Game with that of Ozu and argued that Morita makes use of the Ozu style to indicate a contemporary Japanese family with weakened bonds of kinship, which is

“subtly different from the Japanese family Ozu described” (60). Taking Ozu’s feature film I Was Born, But… (1932) as a reference, Adam Knee offers a more detailed comparison between Morita and Ozu, and argues that Morita calls into question the continuing pertinence of the familial image propagated by traditional Japanese films about home and family by “wreaking havoc on generic expectations and overturning cinematic traditions” (40).

Analysis

Although considerable research has been carried out on The Family Game, no single adaptation study exists which analyzes the film as an adaptation. Published research treats The Family Game as a film but not as an adaptation and most research does not even indicate that The Family Game is an adaptation. Ignorance of the source text is a long-standing feature of the scholarly discussion of The Family Game.

Lack of reference to the source text in analyses of the film adaptations is not hard to understand. First, working as both the director and screenwriter, Morita revises the story of the source text greatly and utilizes a style markedly different from it. For instance, the opening dining scene mentioned above (which is widely discussed) and the food fight scene, also frequently evoked, are not present in the source text but instead are features added to the film adaptation. Given that the novel Kazoku gēmu has not been translated, language poses another obstacle to non-Japanese speakers accessing the source text.

In Japan, while there is a considerable amount of adaptation, the Japanese film industry does not have a convention of differentiating between original works and adaptations. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) gives separate awards for original screenplays and adapted screenplays, in order to identify the different accomplishments of the screenwriters. The Writers Guild of America also has different awards for original works and adaptations. However, even today, Japanese film awards do not evaluate original screenplays and adapted screenplays separately. The Family

Game won Morita three awards of “Best Screenplay” and one award of “Screenplay of the Year,” even though the film is an adaptation.

The balance of power between authors is another factor in determining the influence of the source text. For an adaptation, there are at least two authors: the film director and the author of the source text. Famous authors like Shakespeare often outweigh their adaptors, while reputable film auteurs such as Hitchcock can dominate the process of adaptation without difficulty. If the film director is an established auteur, little known novelists can be easily eclipsed.

Honma is one such little-known authors. The novel Kazoku gēmu is his first publication as well as his most well-known work. As an author, Honma only has two published books, Kazoku gēmu and a collection of two short stories, and his remaining works are merely several short essays and stories.8 In contrast, Morita is one of the major directors in the history of the Japanese film industry, a recognized auteur. Even though

Morita was “a thirty-three-year old [young director] directing his fifth commercial feature” (McDonald, “Family” 55), his film Something Like It (1981) had won him a position as a promising “new blood director.” The Family Game was also supported by

Matsuda, one of the major film stars of the 1980s in Japan. The imbalance of power also contributes to the lack of attention to the source text.

8 From his first entry in the Subaru Prize for Literature of 1981 to his last story published in the magazine Subaru in 1992, Honma was engaged in writing for around eleven years. See Appendix A for a list of Honma’s publications.

The lack of attention to the source text and not taking account of the film’s nature being an adaptation result in inaccurate assessment and analysis of the film. In the introduction she wrote for Post Script’s 2008 special issue celebrating “the contribution

Japan has made to the popular culture dimension of cinema,” McDonald recognized manga 漫画 (“comics”) as one of frontrunners of Japanese popular culture changed the tendency of favoring bungei-eiga 文芸映画 (lit., “film from literature”) and addressed

Morita’s The Family Game as an example: “one such achievement would be Yoshimitsu

Morita’s The Family Game (Kazoku gemu, 1983) based on Yōhei Honma’s manga of the same title” (“Introduction” 10–12). As introduced above, Honma’s Kazoku gēmu is a novel. The manga referred by McDonald is likely to be Suzushiro Seri 鈴城芹 (1976-)’s comics Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム serialized from 2004 to 2014. Morita’s The Family

Game is supposed to be a bungei-eiga.

Morimoto argues that the film connects violence with educational competition.

Violence becomes the younger son’s analgesia for his pain under the exam system, while the older son becomes increasingly polite at the same time that his scores go down

(Morimoto 265). However, except the final food fight, the older brother in the film does not show any violence. Similar to the depiction in the source text, the older brother is always gentle and polite—he is, “the good one.” The source text delves more into the use of violence: the bully received by the younger brother is much more violent, and the older brother used to bully his classmates in his middle school.

Regarding characterization, Hong argues Morita intends to characterize the tutor

Yoshimoto as a person distinct from the stereotyped Japanese represented by the Numata family, so as to satirize the negative features existing in the personality and psychology of modern Japanese people, such as insincerity and complacence (63). However, the characterization of Yoshimoto as alien to mainstream Japanese society and Numata family as a stereotyped Japanese family is the same as that in the source text. Morita’s opinions are shown more through his original characters and plots not existing in the source text. Knee suggests that the tutor Yoshimoto in the film represents denial and defiance of the context and values of the Numata family’s life (45), but Gerow points out that is truer of Honma’s source text than of the film and the significance of Yoshimoto is ambiguous in the film (246–47). The absence of adaptation studies is an important lacuna in understanding of The Family Game.

Major Critical Literature on the Novel Kazoku gēmu

Research on the source text itself is limited. Although, Kazoku gēmu is a prize- winning work as well as the source text of the film The Family Game and several popular drama series, it has not attracted further attention as a literary work. The major literary criticism regarding the novel Kazoku gēmu is contributed by the nomination committee of the Fifth Subaru Prize for Literature. With the announcement of the result of the Fifth

Subaru Prize for Literature, members of the nomination committee expressed their thoughts about the prize-winning works. Contentious characters and their relationships, distinct narrative style of a first-person narrator being a witness as well as the ironic

11 treatment of the modern Japanese family and education are major features of Kazoku gēmu, according to the comments of the nomination committee members.

Among these features, the ironic depiction of the family and of education attracted wider discussion. Education critic Saitō Jirō 斎藤次郎 (1939- ) states that

Honma’s Kazoku gēmu depicts an archetypal family of contemporary Japan where the air is stale owing to the force of habit and conventions as well as the accumulation of the sediments of life, and represents the question of how to solve the sense of emptiness felt towards self and family (116–20). The founder of Japanese Analytical and Clinical

Psychology, Jungian psychologist Kawai Hayao 河合隼雄 (1928-2007), analyzes

Kazoku gēmu in detail to discuss the issue of family, children, and parents as well as the social system from the perspective of educational psychology (Tasōkasuru 278–89).

Kawai also cites Kazoku gēmu in his discussion of violence and physical punishment

(Rinshō 53–54) along with the issue of school bullying (Rinshō 227–28).9

There is less research regarding the text of Kazoku gēmu. One major critical article is Kondō Yōko’s “Kazoku gēmu ron” (lit., “Discussing Kazoku gēmu”) published in 1990. It analyzes the text of the novel and refutes the idea of dissociating the film The

9 Due to limited availability, an important journal article focusing on Kazoku gēmu published in 1986 has not been reviewed here. See Nagai Hirokatsu. “Kazoku no genshō-gaku - Honma Yōhei ‘Kazoku gēmu’ o megutte,” Toyama joshi tanki daigaku kiyō, vol. 21, Mar. 1986, pp. 52–61.

Family Game with the novel Kazoku gēmu. The popularity of the adaptation of 2013 has brought attention back to Kazoku gēmu, though relevant research is still limited.10

10 Two new pieces of research on Kazoku gēmu also have been found. Undergraduate thesis “Analisis Kritik Sosial Dalam Novel Kazoku Game Karya Honma Youhei (An Analysis of Social Issues in Honma Yōhei’s Kazoku gēmu) analyzes Honma’s criticism of social issues in Japan in the 1980s. The author argues that the major theme of Kazoku gēmu is the problems in family education, and a minor theme is the wrong response to school bullying (Ummah 122). From the author’s mistake of identifying the tutor’s name as “Yoshimoto Kōya 吉本荒野” (Ummah 122) which is the same as the new television drama adaptation of 2013, possibly the author is under the huge influence of the new drama series. Another piece of research is a translation report that translates excerpts from Kazoku gēmu into Chinese. The author states that this research is inspired by the drama adaptation of 2013 (Tang 1).

Methodology and Outline

This research project aims at helping fill the gap in the literature on the film The

Family Game and the novel Kazoku gēmu and deepening the understanding of both the film and the novel. First, the study focuses on the text of Kazoku gēmu and analyzes it as a literary work. Using narratological methodologies, I argue that the case of the novel

Kazoku gēmu explores narrative technique in the first-person novel. Even though first- person novel is common, Kazoku gēmu uses other three narrative techniques - fixed internal focalization, a narrator-witness, an unreliable narrator - which creates unique effects on the storytelling and characterization. By analyzing the narrative techniques used in Kazoku gēmu, the case study evaluates Kazoku gēmu as an important work in modern Japanese literature.

Second, the research project connects the film The Family Game with its source text and re-considers it as a literary adaptation using theories of adaptation. By revisiting

The Family Game as an adaptation, it also focuses on narration and considers why The

Family Game appears to be a work that extremely distinct from its source text. The comparative study of the film and its source text tries to answer following questions: why the film does not adopt the first-person perspective featured in the source text? how the film makes references to the source material? How does the film develop its narrative and

14 focalization, and what effects is the film striving for? What alternative messages do the differences try to convey?

The remaining chapters of the thesis proceed as follows. The Chapter Two is a close reading of Honma’s Kazoku gēmu. Given Honma is a little-known author, the chapter first introduces Honma and his literary career as well as Japanese literature of early 1980s. The chapter then analyzes the first-person narrative used in Kazoku gēmu.

Proposing Kazoku gēmu as a “boku-novel (boku shōsetsu 僕小説)”, the chapter next analyzes the effects of a special boku narrator and the use of a fixed internal focalization in the novel as well as their influences on the characterization in the novel. Chapter Three is a comparative study of The Family Game and its source text. The chapter begins by laying out the framework for an adaptation study and looks at Morita’s ideas about The

Family Game and adaptation. It then analyzes the challenges from the special narrative style and characterization of the source text, the solutions applied by the adaptor to those challenges, and Morita’s creative ideas highlighted by the comparison of the film adaptation to its source text.

Chapter 2: Revisiting Honma’s Kazoku gēmu

This chapter offers a close reading of the novel Kazoku gēmu. Through a detailed literary analysis focusing on its narrative style and characterization in the novel, I recognize Kazoku gēmu as an important literary work in modern Japan. One element that distinguishes Honma’s Kazoku gēmu from its film adaptation, The Family Game, is its use of first-person narrative. It is a distinct example of a first-person novel of contemporary Japanese literature, and the narrator’s use of the less formal male first- person pronoun “boku” 僕 has further ramifications on the interpretative possibilities that the narrative allows, or so, I will argue. A preference for the self-referential pronoun boku over a number of other possible first-person pronouns was a literary tendency in

Japan of the 1980s.

Before undertaking a literary analysis of Kazoku gēmu, the first section offers an overview of Honma’s literary career and contextualizes it in the history of modern

Japanese literature to assist an understanding of both Honma as an author and his works.

An introduction to the story of the novel Kazoku gēmu along with a synopsis allows non-

Japanese readers to become acquainted with this work. My literary analysis focuses on two aspects of Kazoku gēmu: narrative style and characterization. The narrative analysis

16 focuses on the use of a first-person narrative and the reading experience it creates.

Building on the hermeneutic possibilities fostered by the use of the boku pronoun, I characterize Honma’s Kazoku gēmu as a “boku novel”. The analysis of characterization discusses how the narrative style affects the characterization. Close attention is attached to the indirect characterization in the novel which includes characters’ highly stylistic speeches, the description of details, and the use of emotional landscape.

Honma and His Literary Career

Given that Honma is a little-known author with limited information available about his life, an introduction to the background of the novel as well as Honma’s literary career is important for understanding both Kazoku gēmu and Honma. This section first outlines Honma’s literary career and his oeuvre. It then contextualizes it in the history of contemporary Japanese literature and illustrates circumstances impacting Honma’s literary career.

A “Ippatsuya” Writer

Judging from his career as a writer, it is unsurprising that Honma is called 一発

屋 ippatsuya (literally, “flash-in-the-pan” or “one-hit wonder”).11 The word ippatsuya is commonly used to describe stars (or celebrities, media personalities, performers etc.) who are only active for a certain period of time (“Ippatsuya,” def. 3).12 To be sure, Honma’s

11 This word is found in the online reviews of Kazoku gēmu: “Honma Yōhei ended as a flash-in-the-pan author with this novel [Kazoku gēmu]” (“Kazoku gēmu”), “It [Kazoku gēmu] is totally a flash-in-the-pan work but launched a big shot” (Soutaso@yoshi) and etc. 12 The word ippatsuya has two other meanings based on Digital Dai-ji-sen Japanese Dictionary: a person who bets everything in one game or a baseball player who always aims for a home run or who occasionally hit home runs (“Ippatsuya”).

18 career as a writer lasted merely ten years. More specifically, reviewers use the word to refer to the fact that his debut novel Kazoku gēmu is his most renowned work.

Due to the shortness of his literary career, there is little information about

Honma’s life. Honma’s real name is Karakida Kunio 唐木田邦男. He was born in

Nakano City of Nagano Prefecture on November 9, 1948. He completed his undergraduate education in the Department of Economics of Ibaraki University and became a salaryman in Saitama Prefecture.13 The debut of Honma as an author was as the recipient of the Fifth Subaru Prize for Literature. Honma’s Kazoku gēmu emerged as the winner among nine hundred and forty-five submitted works (“Subarubungakushō”) and launched Honma’s career as a writer.

Subaru is a junbungaku 純文学 (lit., “pure literature”) magazine of Shueisha,

Inc., one of the biggest Japanese publishers. The Subaru Prize for Literature is one of four prizes awarded by Shūeisha to support new writers. Although the competitors are newcomers, the Subaru Prize carries great weight owing to the relatively high selection criteria and competitive environment.

Winning the Subaru Prize is a good beginning for new writers like Honma. His

Kazoku gēmu got published as a separate volume (tankōbon 単行本), and Subaru as well as Shūeisha established a long-term relationship with him.14 From 1982 to 1992, Honma

13 See the brief biography of Honma published with Honma’s debut on Subaru, vol.3, no.12, p.8. 14 Tankōbon is a Japanese term referring to an independent book that opposed to magazines or other multiple-volumes publications.

19 published five short stories and four essays in Subaru and Seishun to dokusho 青春と読

書, another literary magazine published by Shūeisha. In addition, in the juvenile magazine Shōgakkō yonensei 小学校四年生 published by Shōgakukan Inc., Honma’s name is found as the writer in rensai yomimono 連載読み物 (lit. “serial readings”), 4-

Nen 3-kumi kurasu nōto 4 年 3 組クラスノート and 4-Nen 3-gumi suketchibukku 4 年

3 組スケッチブック, from 1986 to 1988.15 His two short stories, “Seremonī セレモニ

ー” (1989) and “Katarushisu カタルシス” (1990), got published as tankōbon in

November 1990. In 1992, Honma published his last short story “Kanashimi no shinfonī

悲しみのシンフォニー” in Subaru and wound up his literary career.

Honma’s acceptance speech for the Subaru Prize predicts and explains the shortness of his literary career. In this speech, he talks of his ideas about creating works based on his experience in relation to the music of the British rock band The Beatles.

Honma rejected the music of The Beatles in the beginning but came to enjoy it after more than one year had passed. Honma concludes that his rejection is because the music of The

Beatles was beyond his “standards of value” (kachi shakudo 価値尺度) regarding music, and his appreciation came from the extension of his standards of value (Honma, “Jushō”

9). In other words, people may be uncomfortable and hostile to things that differ from

15 Due to the limited availability of the magazine, the contents of those two serial readings have not been reviewed. However, since the dates of the two works match Honma’s career, and no other writers use the pen name “Honma Yōhei 本間洋平”, the two works in Shōgakkō yo-nensei are possibly Honma’s works. Further study is needed.

20 their understanding. At the end of his award acknowledgment, Honma wrote, “I think that what is truly awesome is not just when something transcends the standards of value held by a person, but when that something has enough power to change the person and make him or her have a new understanding” (“Jushō” 9). Honma had reached his goal by creating Kazoku gēmu, one work during the span of his literary career. While Honma kept writing after the success of Kazoku gēmu, such a literary aim may explain his relatively low rate of productivity as a writer.

Honma’s low productivity can also be associated with his identity as an “amateur writer.” In his essay “Omote to ura” published in January 1982, Honma reveals his thoughts about becoming a professional author. Commenting on the television drama series Shin Hissatsu shigotonin 新・必殺仕事人 produced by TV Asahi and released in

1981, Honma argues that the lives of present-day people usually have front sides and back sides, like the hero of the drama series but more complicated. The front side refers to one’s job or career or the thing that is the basis for earning one’s living, and the back side refers to the things that relieve stress and bring release (Honma, “Omote” 9).

Honma’s life also matches the pattern of “front and back”: his job as a salaryman is the front and writing novels is the back. If writing novels became his “front world,” other things would come to occupy his “back world” (“Omote” 9). Based on this essay, at least by January 1982, Honma was not a full-time writer, and moreover, he hesitated to become one.

Nine years after receiving the Subaru Prize, Honma was invited to write for a forum organized by Subaru discussing the lives of awardees. Honma reflects upon his literary career in this essay:

It has been almost ten years since I received the Subaru Prize for Literature. For me, it is an old story that is mind-boggling. In the meantime, I have gotten some awareness about [writing] novels and my virtues and defects. Speaking of if I acquired some skills or not, the answer is no. Even so, the reason that I have not given up on this job may be my indecisiveness. Or perhaps just due to a little lack of ability to ascertain my own limits. (“Jushō o meguru” 145)

After publishing “Kanashimi no shinfonī,” Honma disappeared from public sight. Even when Kazoku gēmu got adapted again in 2013, Honma did not express his opinions about the new adaptation publicly.

Changing Readership and Literary Aesthetic in Japan of the 1980s

Based on his literary career, the reason that Honma got recognized as an ippatsuya writer might be because he neither became a professional author nor had other blockbusters. The success of Kazoku gēmu might appear to be an accident. However, chance has nothing to do with its success. A contextualization of Honma’s literary career in Japan of the 1980s is crucial here.

Literary critic Akiyama Shun 秋山峻 (1930-2013), who was a member of the selection committee of the Fifth Subaru Prize for Literature, discusses his reason for nominating Kazoku gēmu in his commentary “Omoshiroi no ha ii ga... 面白いのはいい

が (‘It’s okay to be interesting, but…’)”. Akiyama points out that there appears to be a trend that everyone wants to write something entertaining. On the one hand, it is fine for novels to be entertaining; on the other hand, if the pursuit of entertaining novels becomes a trend, badly written but entertaining works would become more desirable and popular.

Akiyama then argues that “under such pressure, novels become nothing more than a form of entertainment serving an increasingly thriving consumption culture” (“Omoshiroi no”

13).

What Akiyama discusses is the decline of junbungaku (lit. “serious literature”) and the rise of popular literature (taishū bungaku, lit. “mass-literature”), in the late Shōwa period in Japan. From the mid-1970s, distinctions between junbungaku and taishū bungaku have become increasingly irrelevant, and taishū bungaku has largely evolved into generic components which are “being reconfigured in an emerging category that came to be called entāteinmento bungaku (“entertainment literature”)” according to

Stephen Snyder’s “Contemporary Japanese fiction” (761–62). Emerging writers often go beyond the boundaries between serious and popular literature, move freely between junbungaku and taishū bungaku, or combine elements of various genres; writers such as

Murakami Ryū 村上龍 (1952-), Murakami Haruki 村上春樹 (1949-), and Yoshimoto

Banana 吉本ばなな (1964-) build careers transcending traditional literary genres and inaugurate “the notion of the bungaku aidoru (literary idol) that has shaped publishing practices and readership in the past three decades” (Snyder 762).

Akiyama’s remark shows a negative attitude towards changing readerships and literary aesthetics and the appearance of entertainment literature. Although Subaru is a magazine committed to the publication of junbungaku, the entries of the Fifth Subaru

Prize for Literature seem to reveal such a trend away from it, which explains why

Akiyama discusses it in his commentary on the prize-winning works. As Honma’s acceptance speech mentions, Honma has an extremely high expectation for himself: that is, to write “something that has enough power to change the person and make him or her have a new understanding” (“Jushō” 9). It is hard to say whether Honma has a commitment to junbungaku or not. At least it is clear that his main motivation for writing is not pure entertainment.

Based on this context, Honma’s remarks on his own limits as an author can be understood in a different way. Treating writing as his “back world” where he can “relieve stress and bring release” (Honma, “Omote” 9), the changing readership of Japanese literary world challenges his literary aesthetic and principles and makes writing less and less relaxing. While creating works that are interesting and entertaining becomes a vital skill for a professional writer, Honma might treat his inability to follow the trend as a limit and become pessimistic about his literary career.

The change of theme in Honma’s works implies his confusion. Overall, the oeuvre of Honma explores the human predicament in Japan of the 1980s from a perspective of the young generation growing up in late Shōwa period. Similar to Kazoku gēmu, his second work of fiction Kasetto rūmu カセット・ルーム, published in 1984, depicts the

24 impact of a dysfunctional family on a person’s emotional growth. However, his later three works, published after Honma’s discussion of his own limits, treat romantic relationships as the subject. His tankōbon of Katarushisu published on November 1990 that consists of two stories using romantic relationships as the subject to discuss issues such as human relations, narcissism and one-child family, while the publisher simply promoted it as “a comical ‘ren’ai gēmu 恋愛ゲーム (lit., “love game”)’ from the author of Kazoku gēmu”

(“Shūeisha no hon” 233). It might not be a coincidence that Murakami Haruki’s Noruwei no mori (“Norwegian Wood”), “an atypically realistic romance, [that] established

Murakami’s credentials as a best-selling writer” (Snyder 762) was published in 1987.

In his last work “Kanashimi no shinfonī,” Honma gives up his preferred first- person narrative style and represents his thinking about modern life bound by social norms through an unrequited love. It is unknown whether Honma had determined to stop his literary career, but probably the creation of “Kanashimi no shinfonī” led him to make up his mind. His resistance to the changing readership and literary aesthetic can be considered as essential reason for Honma’s ippatsuya career. In this way, neither the shortness of Honma’s literary career nor the absence of subsequent bestsellers in

Honma’s oeuvre should be the criterion for evaluating his contribution. The evaluation of one individual’s contribution should be built upon his/her work instead of on established reputation or influence. Furthermore, led by the changing readership and literary practice, scholarship of contemporary Japanese literature attaches more importance to reputed authors such as bungaku aidoru, while little known authors are omitted from

25 consideration. Attention to works of little little-known authors like Honma can support a clearer picture of both Japanese literature and society.

Introduction of the novel Kazoku gēmu

The story of Kazoku gēmu follows the Numata family, a middle-class nuclear family with a heterosexual couple and their two sons living in a danchi 団地.17 In addition to the narrator, Shin’ichi, the older son, six characters appear in this mid-length novel that can be categorized in reference to textual prominence (See Table 1). There are three major sites in the novel: Shin’ichi and Shigeyuki’s room, the danchi, and the middle school where Shigeyuki studies and from which. Shin’ichi graduated.

Textual Prominence Characters Major Shigeyuki, the younger son, third-year middle school student. Yoshimoto, the tutor, a seventh-year undergraduate student. Less Major Mrs. Numata, the mother, a housewife Mr. Numata: the father, an owner as well as the major labor of a small automobile repair workshop. Minor Tsuchiya 土屋: a classmate of Shigeyuki from Shigeyuki’s primary school who bullies Shigeyuki; The P. E. teacher: Shigeyuki’s home room teacher.

Table 1: Characters of the novel Kazoku gēmu.16

16 The novel does not assign first names to characters other than the brothers. This project follows the practice used by McDonald, who uses “Mr./Mrs.” to refer to the parents of the two brothers. 17 Danchi refers to a large apartment or housing complex.

The novel Kazoku gēmu has five chapters: “Spring (Haru 春)”, “Summer (Natsu

夏)”, “Autumn (Aki 秋)”, “Winter (Fuyu 冬)”, and “Spring Again (Futatabi haru 再び

春)”. As these chapter titles show, the story tells the happenings in the Numata family over around one year. To be specific, the story is across one academic year in Japan, which begins in April.

Figure 1: Characters and Network in the Novel Kazoku g ēmu

Synopsis

In spring, to help Shigeyuki get into a better high school, the Numata Family welcomes a new tutor, Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto is the sixth tutor hired for Shigeyuki. His predecessors have been driven away by Shigeyuki's misbehavior. Judging by Yoshimoto’s education and Shigeyuki’s past performance, Mr. and Mrs. Numata do not expect

Yoshimoto to change Shigeyuki, though Yoshimoto himself is very confident. Mr.

Numata then proposes that he will pay fifty thousand yen if Shigeyuki’s grade in English should increase from twenty-six points to sixty points, and twenty thousand yen for every extra ten points.

Yoshimoto instructs Shigeyuki from spring to summer. To make Shigeyuki follow his instruction, Yoshimoto even beats him. Knowing Yoshimoto uses extreme methods like physical punishment, Mrs. Numata tries to prevent these beatings but fails due to her own weakness. She appeals to her husband to stop Yoshimoto’s violent instructions.

However, since Mr. Numata agrees with Yoshimoto’s approach to instruction, Mrs.

Numata no longer attempts to alter Yoshimoto’s pattern.

By autumn, the two brothers have changed greatly. On the one hand, Shigeyuki’s academic performance goes up with an unbelievably rapid speed. Even in the subject of

English, which Shigeyuki is not good at, he reaches a grade of sixty-four points on a scale of one hundred. Mr. Numata gives Yoshimoto the bonus that he promised and expects

Shigeyuki to have better grades. On the other hand, Shin’ichi’s grades drop due to his abandonment of his coursework.

In winter, by the time for submitting applications to high schools, Shigeyuki has a competitive grade for School B, but he prefers to go to the weaker School C so as to avoid Tsuchiya and other students who bully him. Asked by Mrs. Numata, Yoshimoto tries to persuade Shigeyuki to go to School B but fails. Mrs. Numata then asks him to talk with the homeroom teacher on her behalf for the purpose of changing Shigeyuki’s high school application. Shin’ichi goes with him and witnesses Yoshimoto's fight with

Shigeyuki at the school.

By the next spring, Shigeyuki gets admitted to School B, and Yoshimoto finishes his mission and leaves for his annual overseas travel. The new semester starts, whereupon

Shin’ichi almost suspends his high school study, and Shigeyuki also stops going to school again. The two brothers’ performances eventually enrage their father. To pacify his father's anger, Shigeyuki proposes to spend another year on the high school entrance examination to get into School A. Mrs. Numata disagrees with Shigeyuki’s proposal and argues that it does not make sense to give up School B, which took so much effort to get into, and to prepare all over again. However, Mr. Numata accepts it and goes back to work. After that, when back in their room, Shigeyuki asks Shin’ichi if he can go back to school for their mother’s sake, while she cries outside their room. Concerned about his family, especially his mother, Shin’ichi goes back to his desk, reviews his blank schedule notebook for the past one year and loses himself in thought.

First-Person Narrative and Focalization

In his criticism of the trend that novels have grown increasingly entertaining,

Akiyama also demonstrates his reason for nominating Kazoku gēmu. He argues that

Kazoku gēmu is not just an “interesting” novel about the fiercely competitive entrance examinations. What Akiyama points out in particular is its uniqueness of the narrative style:

What I am interested in actually is such an incoherent style. There is an imbalance as a novel. The lens of this novel that looks at the world is slightly distorted. There is something somewhat unnatural. Such impalpable distortion is what I expected. Then, anyway, the novel has the details of life [which I also expected] (13-14).

Another member of the nomination committee, novelist Inoue Mitsuharu 井上光晴

(1926-1992) also recognizes the unusual narrative style of Kazoku gēmu. The story is not from the perspective of the younger brother—the one who interacts with the tutor—but from that of the older brother, who is outside of that relationship (Inoue 9).

The narrative style of the novel Kazoku gēmu is complicated. Integral to it is the use of first-person narrative. In first-person narrative, typically the narrator “is a character in the situations and events recounted” (Prince, A Dictionary 31). In the case of Kazoku gēmu, there is a single narrator, the older brother Shin’ichi. Shin’ichi refers to himself by

31 the first-person pronoun boku, the pronoun one would expect a young student who is male to use when speaking somewhat informally. The use of boku in Kazoku gēmu not only indicates a first-person narrative, but also forms a style.

This part first discusses the issues regarding the genre of Kazoku gēmu. I recognize Kazoku gēmu as a “boku novel” - novel of first-person narrative using the pronoun of boku. By identifying Kazoku gēmu as a “boku novel,” this section tries to differentiate it from novels using other first-person pronouns.18 Then, it analyzes the narrative style of Kazoku gēmu with a focus on the first-person narrative. I argue that the use of “boku” contributes to a growing sense of intimacy between narrator and reader, and then that the first-person narrative offers a stylistic foundation for the diegesis of

Kazoku gēmu.

18 Japanese language has a large number of alternative words to refer to oneself depending on politeness, rank, intimacy, and gender (Jorden and Noda 59). In addition to boku, there are first-person pronouns such as watashi/watakushi 私, jibun 自分, ore 俺 and atashi あたし.

A Boku Novel

It is hard to describe Kazoku gēmu in terms of genre. Whether Kazoku gēmu is a genre fiction or not, the nomination committee of the Fifth Subaru Prize for Literature had various opinions. The novelist and the Dean of The Japan Art Academy Kuroi Senji

黒井千次 (1932- ) first labeled Kazoku gēmu as a sort of jukensei shōsetsu 受験生小説

(lit. “test taker/student novel”) (11). Based on Kuroi’s remark, it can be defined as a genre that depicts the life of modern preparatory school students. Whereas generic jukensei shōsetsu tend to focus more on romance as a theme, Kuroi likes Kazoku gēmu’s focus on gakuryoku to seiseki 学力と成績 (lit. “academic ability and scholastic marks”) that preparatory school students really suffer from (11).

Novelist and awardee of the Akutagawa Prize, Takubo Hideo 田久保英夫

(1928-2001) mentioned that Kazoku gēmu is somewhat of a jukensei shōsetsu as an ironic treatment of the modern Japanese family and education, though its depiction of the relations between the two brothers and the tutor make it more than a generic jukensei shōsetsu (12). On the one hand, it is difficult to determine if jukensei shōsetsu is an established literary genre or not. If a general theme of jukensei shōsetsu is preparatory school students’ romance, jukensei shōsetsu can be considered as a mere variant of senshun shōsetsu 青春小説 (lit. “a youth novel”) which depicts youth people’s lives.

Indeed, Japanese novelist and literary critic Takahashi Gen’ichirō 高橋源一郎 (1951- ) who was invited to write a critical commentary for the new edition of the novel Kazoku

33 gēmu identifies it as a senshun shōsetsu (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 193). On the other hand, the genre of jukensei shōsetsu cannot cover the contents of Kazoku gēmu completely. The brothers in Kazoku gēmu are preparatory school students undergoing examination- oriented education like those of jukensei shōsetsu, but they also suffer from a dysfunctional family, which is normally not part of the genre.

From the perspective of family, Kuroi claims that Kazoku gēmu can also be considered a kind of modern katei shōsetsu 家庭小説 (lit “family novel”) (11). In the context of Japanese literary history, katei shōsetsu refers to a literary genre that takes family life as its material and was developed in the Meiji period (1968-1912) (“Katei

Shōsetsu”).19 According to Kuroi, the story and characters of Kazoku gēmu are also melodramatic: characters in the Numata family are stereotyped, and the development of the story is conventional (11). The story that an unusual tutor who raises the grades of his student is also criticized by Takubo as conventional, and he identifies Kazoku gēmu as a jukensei shōsetsu (11). In this way, it is not accurate to judge Kazoku gēmu as a modern katei shōsetsu.

Referring to another concept raised by Takubo, I propose Kazoku gēmu as a “boku novel.” Takubo notices that three of the five nominees for the Fifth Subaru Prize for

Literature use the first-person pronoun boku in their works, while the authors are all in

19 Scholar Ken K. Ito identifies katei shōsetsu as a “Meiji melodramatic novel” since “the most prominent novels of this period functioned as melodrama: they attempted to excavate stark moral polarity from the messy realities of human relations” (605).

34 their early thirties. He then suggests that there is a tendency for writers of this generation to use boku style. In addition to boku, watakusi and watashi are two other Japanese first- person pronouns that are more formal than boku. Neither watakusi nor watashi is gender specific, whereas boku is traditionally a masculine pronoun.20

Four of Honma’s novels use boku style, and only his last novel, “Kanashimi no shinfoni-,” uses the third-person pronoun kare. Given that Honma uses watashi in his essays, it seems clear that his use of boku is deliberate. The first-person narrators in the four novels are all male, while their ages range from middle teens to middle thirties.

Therefore, the use of boku is not always linked with a young male student. From the fact that Honma uses watashi in his essay writing, the use of boku is more than an indication of a first-person narrator.

An author well-known for his use of boku is Murakami. Nakano Osamu argues that Murakami’s use of boku evokes a unique mood: “Because of the similar, albeit amorphous qualities of the first-person narrator in the majority of the stories, there emerges what seems to resemble a single, though colletive, voice for ‘boku’” (Rice 3).

Nakano asserts that Murakami’s boku belongs to “the political protest movement generation of the late 1960s and has suffered psychological damage… and has the long- standing but undirected disaffection of a personality type, of someone who was never

20 Based on Japanese: The Spoken Language of Eleanor Harz Jorden and Mari Noda, watakushi is a polite, formal one, while watashi is slightly more casual (59). Nowadays, young females sometimes use boku in “specific situations not associated with traditional Japanese femininity” (Jorden and Noda 59).

35 fully socialized into society” (Rice 3). From this aspect, Honma’s boku is different from that in Murakami’s fictions. Honma’s boku albeit suffers psychological damage, but more from social issues such as exam wars, alienated human relations. The issues discussed by

Honma are more realistic and concrete.

In her book discussing Murakami’s storytelling, Nihei Chikako addresses the concept of “boku novel” based on the I-novel tradition in Japan.:

According to Jay Rubin, since the use of the more polite first-person pronoun watashi in the realm of narrative is strongly associated with the watakushi shōsetsu (I-novel) or realist novels, a staple traditional genre of Japanese literature since the Meiji era, Murakami’s use of boku, a casual and unpretentious pronoun, plays a part in distancing his work from the “long-established fixture of serious Japanese fiction” (9).

Nihei argues Murakami’s boku novel is different from Japanese I-novel tradition:

The I novel is a product of Japanese intellectuals’ reinterpretation of European literary naturalism, in which Japanese writers emphasised individuals’ internal voices by disclosing the embarrassing “truths” about their private lives in order to illustrate the dark side of society… Unlike the protagonists of I-novels, Murakami’s protagonists hardly “confess” their inner feelings or disclose embarrassing details about their private lives. They do not cry out to complain about society or people around them. They are rather calm and “conforming (9).

In this sense, Honma’s use of boku is still distinct from that of Murakami. As aforementioned, Honma shows a pursuit to pure literature. Even though he uses a more casual pronoun, it does not indicate that he intends to distant his work from literary tradition and get close to the mass. Simply judging from Kazoku gēmu, Honma’s boku novel has a close bond with traditional I-novel: while “rather calm and ‘conforming’”

(Nihei 9), the narrator talks about his life and discloses his inner feelings, and complains about family the society.

Honma appears to have his own artistic objective by using the pronoun of boku, I want to argue. Takubo comments on the use of boku style that: “The pronoun of boku not just often offers a novel perspective, but also keeps an impression of juvenility if compared with other pronouns such as watashi or kare. In particular, I noticed works showing such immature mentality this time” (10). While narrators that go by boku are not necessarily young, boku style offers a nuance suggesting an immature state of mind. Such immaturity is shown through the way that the narrator perceives the world.

What is more, boku offers a perspective that is more personal and private when compared to watashi. The use of boku is not merely connected with gender and age, but also politeness and rank. As aforementioned, boku is used when speaking more casually.

It means the narrator speaks with less politeness. One interpretation of the lesser politeness is that the narrator puts the reader on equal footing socially. The use of boku effectively invites the reader into the private domain or the inside world of the narrator. In this way, a close link is established between the narrator and the reader, which fosters the reader’s trust of the narrator and of the world described by the narrator.

Boku as the Narrator: Focalization, Witness Role, and Unreliability

Bertil Romberg, the author of Studies in the Narrative Technique of the First-

Person Novel, defines a first-person novel as “a novel that is narrated all the way along in the first person by a person who appears in the novel, the narrator” (4). Kazoku gēmu has only one narrator, boku - the older brother Shin’ichi - who narrates throughout the whole novel. Therefore, it can be recognized as a first-person novel according to Romberg’s definition.

As a first-person novel, the narrator in Kazoku gēmu is unique on the basis of the following features: a fixed internal focalization, role as narrator-witness, and unreliability as narrator. This section first identifies these three features in the narrative style of

Kazoku gēmu and then analyzes the effects of such a narrative style. I argue that the potentially different nuances that the various first-person pronouns confer complicate first-person narrative theory in provocative ways.

A Fixed Internal Focalization

Before introducing internal focalization, the clarification of two other concepts of

“point of view” and “focalization” is necessary. A certain perceptual and psychological point of view is adopted in the presentation of all narration; and the point of view has three main types: unrestricted, internal, and objective (Prince, Narratology 50–51). Then,

“focalization” is the focus of the narration, according to Gérard Genette (189). Genette suggests that focalized narrative is narrated with internal focalization furtherly (189).

Internal focalization is a type of focalization whereby information is conveyed in terms of a character’s conceptual or perceptual point of view (Prince, A Dictionary 45).

Internal focalization has three types in the assessment of Genette: (1) fixed where everything passes through one narrator; (2) variable where the focal characters vary or;

(3) multiple where the same event may be evoked several times from the perspective of different characters (189–90). In fixed internal focalization, the narration is through only one character’s perspective, that is, only one character is the focalizer, and “a rendering of situations and events in terms of one and only one point of view” (Prince, A

Dictionary 31).

The novel Kazoku gēmu applies a fixed internal focalization in a rigorous way.

Shin’ichi is the only focalizer throughout the whole story. Genette claims that “internal focalization is rarely applied in a totally rigorous way...the very principle of this narrative mode implies in all strictness that the focal character never be described or even referred to from the outside, and that his thoughts or perceptions never be analyzed objectively by

39 the narrator” (192). The very principle noted by Genette is applicable to the novel Kazoku gēmu. The older brother Shin’ichi is the narrator as well as the focalizer: he can rarely analyze himself objectively and no one describes him other than himself.

However, what makes the narrator of Shin’ichi special is his identity as a

“witness.” Despite the fact that Shin’ichi is the narrator along with being the focalizer, he is not the protagonist. The center of the story is his younger brother Shigeyuki as well as the tutor Yoshimoto. While the protagonist is Shigeyuki, “the information provided is limited to the perceptions, feelings and thoughts of a narrator” (Prince, A Dictionary 41), that is Shin’ichi.

Boku as a Witness

The novel indicates boku’s identity as a witness from the early beginning of the novel:

ぼくは窓に向いた机の前で、その夕暮れ時の光景を、一部始終眺めていた。弟は罵倒のなかで抵抗することなく、ただ身を縮め、仁王立ちした級友たちの間から、時にはにげようとした。が、すぐ砂場の中央に戻され、砂の海に倒された。踏みつけられた百足のように、弟は脱げそうになったスボンを押え、はいまわった。砂が皮膚を覆い、その上から靴裏で擦られ、さらに血が新しい砂を付着させ、傷口を広げていったにちがいない。

Sitting in the front of the desk facing the window, I am looking at the view of twilight, from the beginning to the end. Being abused, the younger brother does not resist, but only shrinks his body, and sometimes attempts to escape from the classmates standing firm around him. But, he is immediately turned back to the center of the sandbox, and knocked down to the sea of sand. Like a centipede getting tramped down, the younger brother holds down his pants that are about to slip off, and crawls around. His skin is covered by sand, and then rubbed by the shoe soles. The blood further brings new sand to the wounds. There is no doubt that the wounds are spreading (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 4).

In this paragraph, the narrator boku witnesses his younger brother getting bullied. The paragraph indicates that the younger brother is the focus and the narrator is the witness.

For most of the novel, boku is narrating the things he witnesses instead of what he engages in.

Such “boku as a witness” has three effects. First, only limited information is offered regarding the protagonist. For example, Shigeyuki’s school life is not depicted in the novel, though there are two characters of Tsuchiya and the P. E. teacher that relate to

Shigeyuki’s school. Shin’ichi has awareness of these two characters because of his own perceptions: Shigeyuki’s homeroom teacher used to be his P. E. teacher at middle school; he witnesses Tsuchiya’s bully Shigeyuki through the window of his room. However, since he and Shigeyuki do not study at the same school, he offers little information about

Shigeyuki’s school life.

As a witness, Shin’ichi mostly depicts two things: the view from his window and

Shigeyuki’s actions. Both two things are related to Shin’ichi’s own life. Shin’ichi’s desk is in front of the window and next to Shigeyuki’s desk according to Shin’ichi’s description (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 154). Sharing a small living space with his younger brother, Shin’ichi becomes a witness of Shigeyuki’s actions whether he wants or not.

Moreover, because Shin’ichi has been enjoying looking at the view through his window since his elementary school (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 18), he is a witness of the landscape of the danchi and the surroundings through his window.

The second effect of “boku as a witness” is the lack of information about the narrator. For example, the excellence of Shin’ichi is first told through others’ mouths and implied rather than narrated by himself. Mr. Numata often says Shin’ichi is excellent because he is studying at School A, the best high school, though readers having no idea how excellent Shin’ichi is. Since Shin’ichi is not the protagonist, he rarely talks about himself. It is until Shigeyuki asks Shin’ichi what rank a student had to be to get into

School A when Shin’ichi was at middle school, the readers have any specific awareness of Shin’ichi’s excellence. Since Shin’ichi says only the top five students could get into

School A (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 128-129), he was at least among the top five in his class when he was a middle school student.

In contrast, Shigeyuki’s grades and rank are shown directly from the very beginning of the story, thus the readers have a direct impression of Shigeyuki’s image as a “bad student”. Also, the readers know about Shigeyuki’s naughtiness from Shin’ichi’s depiction of his actions such as tossing the pieces of shōgi 将棋 to the celling deliberately (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 8), scrawling on the textbooks in class (Honma,

Kazoku gēmu 22), not returning home right after school to avoid tutoring session

(Honma, Kazoku gēmu 30). In a similar way, the actions of Yoshimoto are also narrated in a direct way with many details. As a result, the images of Shigeyuki and Yoshimoto are more impressive which lead the readers to treat these two characters as the focus of the story, though the ending implies that Shin’ichi is actually the protagonist.

The third effect of “boku as a witness” is a peripheral point of view. Since “the action is viewed from the periphery rather than from the center” (Prince, A Dictionary

41), the narrator could offer a mere narrative of a character’s actions. Shin’ichi can offer a detailed description of Shigeyuki’s actions but nothing about Shigeyuki’s mental activities. For instance, Shigeyuki’s usuwarai 薄笑い (lit. “smirk/a thin smile”) is often mentioned by Shin’ichi which becomes Shigeyuki’s symbol. For the omniscient author, there might be other ways to describe Shigeyuki’s “usuwarai” from the center. However, for Shin’ichi, a witness, it is unnecessary to find other ways to describe Shigeyuki

“usuwarai”: on the one hand, all he can see from the periphery is the usuwarai; on the other hand, what he wants to see is the usuwarai. The immaturity of boku decides

Shin’ichi could rarely be a reliable narrator.

An Unreliable Narrator

An introduction of “implied author” is essential to understand the concept of

“unreliable narrator.” According to Wayne Booth, “implied author” can be defined as “the implicit image of an author in the text, taken to be standing behind the scenes and to be responsible for its design and for the values and cultural norms it adheres to” (Prince, A

Dictionary 42). The implied author of a text is distinguished from its real author because a real author can create texts with different implied authors and an implied author can have more than one real author (Prince, A Dictionary 43). An implied author of a text is also distinct from its narrator “who is dramatized or undramatized and reliable or unreliable” in reference to Booth (Genette 188).

An unreliable narrator refers to “a narrator whose norms and behavior are not in accordance with the implied author’s norms” (Prince, A Dictionary 103). In other words, the narrator is a fictitious character who diverges from an implicit image of the author. In

Kazoku gēmu, Shin’ichi is a high school student who is raised in a dysfunctional family.

Even though the novel offers little information about Shin’ichi’s past, his narratives reveal his own values and norms. With the use of a fixed internal focalization, it is unsure whether his narrative is reliable or not.

However, it becomes clear as this novel goes on that the narrator is not completely objective. There is an episode in which Shigeyuki receives a love letter from a girl in a classroom next door. Yoshimoto finds the love letter because of a hint offered by

Shin’ichi and reads it out loudly. The girl who writes the love letter thinks Shigeyuki is a person of rare quality, though difficult to understand: Shigeyuki dares to call a classmate who yawns in class to pay attention; and he does not make excuses for himself like other boys (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 99).

Even though the love letter might also be subjective, it tells a picture of Shigeyuki that is different from the narrative of Shin’ichi. Shin’ichi strongly opposes the girl’s comments on Shigeyuki:

嘘、冗談、本気なのかなあ。僕は思いもかけぬ内容に苦笑した。ハンサムって、得だよなあ。でも、知らない者には、そう見えるのかも、しれませんね。そう、そういう解釈、あってもよいわけだ。本気だとしたら、凄い誤解。いや、世の中、よくあることさ。

Really? Not joking? Seriously? The unexpected content forces a wry smile out of me. It seems like [Shigeyuki] is handsome and very good. However, people who know little [about Shigeyuki], might see him in this way. Yes, it is fine if this kind of interpretation is right. If meant seriously, it’s a terrific misunderstanding. No, it’s usual in this world (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 100).

Shin’ichi questions the truthiness of the love letter as well as the person who writes the love letter. For Shin’ichi, it is the girl who is not objective. However, Shin’ichi can rarely be objective either. As a witness, he is unable to enter Shigeyuki’s internal world; as a character, he has his personal judgment about Shigeyuki.

Shin’ichi’s narrative about himself is not reliable as well. It is not to say that

Shin’ichi tells lies about himself. The information selected and revealed by Shin’ichi is unreliable. A storyline of the novel is the rapid increase of Shigeyuki’s grades along with the drop of Shin’ichi’s grades. Indeed, the readers know nothing about Shin’ichi’s dropping grades until the later part of Chapter “Autumn”:

「おい、慎一、最近、油断してるんじゃ、ねえか。ぼやぼやしてると、茂之に、追い抜かれるぞ」ソファに腰かけたぼくを見ながら、父は話題の鋒先をぼくに向けた。今学期当然のことながら、ぼくの成績はかなり下降していた。

“Hey, Shinichi, these days, I think you are, off guard. If keeping fooling around, you will be passed up by Shigeyuki.” Sitting on the sofa, my father directs the brunt of topic at me. A matter of course during this semester, my grades have been dropping greatly (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 118).

Shin’ichi thinks the drop of his grades is “a matter of course”, which indicates he is not surprised at this change. He knows that it is his neglecting of school works that results in the drop of his grades, but he omits such change in his narrative. Since Shin’ichi does not reveal such change, the readers assume that he is as excellent as before. Therefore,

Shin’ichi’s narrative is not fully trustworthy as a basis for the readers to understand him and other characters.

Based on the discussion above, as a boku novel, the narrative of Kazoku gēmu utilizes a series of narrative techniques including fixed internal focalization, a witness- narrator, and an unreliable narrator. By treating the younger brother Shigeyuki as the focus, boku appears to be the narrator but not the protagonist. However, the deeper the reader go into the novel, the reader might realize that boku is the real protagonist. While the focalizer is his younger brother, the novel talks about his own concern, predicament and confusion about a dysfunctional family, parenthood and brotherhood, dominant academic meritocracy in Japanese society, and his own future. The immatureness and casualness indicated by the pronoun of boku lead the reader to trust the narrator and the world he depicts, although boku is not reliable. Boku appears to be impersonal and calm, while his depiction is filled of his emotional thoughts towards his younger brother. Such narrative techniques are used throughout the novel and makes the narration delicate but obscure.

Character Development

Characterization refers to “the set of techniques resulting in the constitution of character” (Prince, A Dictionary 13). The complication of Kazoku gēmu’s narrative style results in complex characterization. There are direct and indirect characterization according to Prince: characterization is direct more or less when “a character’s traits are reliably stated by the narrator, the character herself, or another character”; it is indirect when “deducible from the character’s actions, reactions, thoughts, emotions, etc.” (A

Dictionary 13).

As aforementioned analysis of Kazoku gēmu’s narrative, the middle-length novel is fully composed of Shin’ichi’s statements and observation. This section examines the use of direct characterization and indirect characterization in the novel and how the aforementioned narrative techniques affect the characterization. The analysis shows that the novel relies more on indirect characterization which allows the reader to image and have their own images of the characters. Within indirect characterization, the use of emotional landscape is a noteworthy feature which connects the novel with the film adaptation.

Direct Characterization

The novel has only one fixed internal focalizer of Shin’ichi, thus most of the characters’ traits are stated by Shin’ichi in the first place. An example is Shin’ichi’s narration about his mother and the motherhood in his family:

母は弟に関して自分が一番の理解者だと思っている。しかし、弟が生まれた頃から、父の仕事の手伝いで忙しく、ほとんど構ってやれなかった。そのため、弟を理解しようとすることより、常に庇うことを優先させてきた。その方が、手っ取り早く簡単な方法だからである。弟はぼくより、過剰な放任と過剰な愛情の中で、育ってきたのだった。

My mother thinks she is the one who understands my younger brother best. However, from the time my younger brother was born, she becomes busy with helping my father’s work, and could hardly take care of my younger brother. For that reason, her priority is protecting my younger brother rather than understanding him. It is because that way is quicker and easier. My younger brother is brought up with excessive noninterference and excessive love, more than me (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 12).

In this except, Shin’ichi characterizes Mrs. Numata as a mother who spoils her younger child without true understanding and identifies her younger brother as a child growing up with “excessive noninterference and excessive love”. He appears to narrate his observation on his mother and younger brother as a witness since his younger brother’s birth.

However, as noted above, Shin’ichi is not a reliable narrator but an immature boku who perceives other characters with a lack of objectivity. As a result, his statements about other characters’ traits are not all reliable. Shin’ichi is merely two years older than

Shigeyuki, which indicates both two of them do not receive enough caring when they

48 were young. His narration about his mother’s motherhood is rather a description but his own judgement based on his observation. He appears to distant himself from his younger brother and mother based on this except, which leads his statement to be less reliable.

Another instance is Shin’ichi’s statement about his relationship with his younger brother. Regarding his relationship with Shigeyuki, Shinichi describes it as follows:

「ぼくはますます弟とは異なる人間になることを自覚していったし、弟もぼくと無関係なところで存在するようになっていた」

I was increasingly realizing that Shigeyuki and I were going to be different people, and Shigeyuki also had come to exist in a space with no connection to me (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 6).

Shin’ichi characterizes his relationship with his brother as existing in separate worlds.

From the perspective of Shin’ichi, Shigeyuki turns to be nothing to him. His narration of his younger brother being bullied seems to back his statement: as an older brother, he is looking at his younger brother getting bullied without taking any actions (Honma,

Kazoku gēmu 4). Given his observation is full of details, he appears to be a place close enough to offer support to Shigeyuki, while what he does is just being a witness.

However, as aforementioned episode of the love letter (Honma, Kazoku gēmu

100) illustrates, Shin’ichi is neither a reliable narrator nor an impassive observer after all: there is a tension between him and Shigeyuki. His relationship with Shigeyuki is more complicated than that narrated by himself. Based on his description of his mother’s motherhood which is analyzed above, he at least is watching Shigeyuki’s growth (which

49 he is still doing) and comparing the love he receives with that of Shigeyuki. His indifference to help Shigeyuki might be attributed to his dissatisfaction with his younger brother – a child who enjoys “excessive noninterference and excessive love” (Honma,

Kazoku gēmu 12). In this way, although stated by a narrator, the characterization is not completely direct due to the unreliability of the narrator. The novel appears to use such characterization deliberately to confuse the readers.

Indirect Characterization

In addition to direct characterization established in Shin’ichi’s statements, the novel also offers material for indirect characterization. In the novel, Shin’ichi’s narrates what he sees and what he thinks. In addition to his statements of his and other characters’ traits, there are his descriptions of other characters’ actions, including what they do and what they say, which implies the characters’ traits. Kazoku gēmu shows a delicate use of indirect characterization composed of highly stylistic speeches and detail description.

Highly Stylistic Speeches

An important part of indirect characterization is the highly stylistic speeches of the characters. Given Shin’ichi is not retelling or paraphrasing but only recording the content of the conversation, characters’ speeches offer much more reliable clues for the analysis of the characters’ traits.

For example, Mr. Numata’s way of speaking is causal with not only colloquial but also vulgar language. Words used frequently by the father include “baka 馬鹿 (lit.,

‘idiot’)”, and “yarō 野郎 (lit., ‘asshole’).” As for the younger brother, Shigeyuki, he always speaks with a stammer. For instance, being asked by Yoshimoto which subject he likes, Shigeyuki answers: “ま、まあ、ふ、普通、です w…well…noth…nothing special” (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 13). Takahashi analyzes the styles of characters’ speeches in his commentary: Shigeyuki who stammers, hesitates, and has trouble telling his heart;

Mr. Numata uses the dialect of Tōkyō with a trill and speaks without thinking; Mrs.

Numata aligns herself with typical middle-class idioms and ideas (Honma, Kazoku gēmu

193). The highly stylistic speeches enhance the authenticity of the characters.

Tang analyzes the stylistic colloquial language in her research of translating

Kazoku gēmu (11–14). Except the speaking styles of the Numata family, Tang notices that the speech of the tutor Yoshimoto is also stylistic. Similar to Mr. Numata, Yoshimoto also prefers vulgar language and the use of intensive vulgar language becomes a feature of his speaking (Tang 12). Tang asserts that such speech characterizes Yoshimoto as a figure who is aggressive and short-tempered like Mr. Numata (12).

I argue that Tang’s evaluation is not accurate because she does not consider that

Yoshiomoto’s use of vulgar language is conditional. Yoshimoto only uses vulgar language to Shigeyuki during the tutor session, while keeps polite during his communication with others. In fact, he is rather short-tempered but calm judging from his interaction with the parents. When Yoshimoto first gets in touch with the Numata family, Mr. Numata despises Yoshimoto’s education background:

「ところで、Z 大学へ七年、いってるんだって？いったい何、やってるんだい」 … 「まったく、Z 大学で、七年じゃ、……親が泣いてるだろう」家庭教師は弱く笑い頭をかいた。

“By the way, you said, have been University Z for seven years? What the hell are you doing?”… “Indeed, seventh-year at University Z... probably your parents are crying.” The tutor laughs weakly and scratches his head (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 16).

Confronting Mr. Numata’s impolite judgement, Yoshimoto neither resist nor accept. He keeps his manners as a tutor facing his employer. Facing Mrs. Numata’s request of changing the Shigeyuki’s high school application on behalf of her, Yoshimoto also does not refuse but complains to Shin’ichi about Shigeyuki’s indecisiveness (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 139–40). The use of vulgar language towards student is his approach of education, rather than evidence illustrating his personality. The way of speaking itself is not enough to evaluate characters’ personality.

Description of Details

The novel shows a considerate amount of detailed description regarding characters. Shin’ichi as the narrator offers a close observation on other characters’ actions. Therefore, even for characters who appear only for limited space, detailed description of their actions allows the reader to know about their characters and personalities. The character of the father, Mr. Numata, is almost established by indirect characterization. Based on Shin’ichi’s narration, Mr. Numata is an owner of a small automobile repair workshop and he is out of home most of the time. Since Shin’ichi is merely narrating what he witnesses, Mr. Numata almost only appears during the dinner time at the dining table. Shigeyuki’s detailed description of his father’s actions by the dining table is the major source for the reader to deduct Mr. Numata’s character.

Here take two dining scenes to illustrate the detailed description regarding the father:

父は酔った顔を左右に振り、所在無さそうに飲み直している。昼間は作業場をはいまわり、顔や手を油で黒くし、夜になると、酒でそれらを赤い色に染めるのだった。鼻の凹みや、爪と皮膚の境目には、落し損ねた油がまだ付いている。父は時々唇を歪めては、歯の隙間から空気を入れ、その音を大きく響かせていた。

My father shakes his drunk face from side to side and keeps drinking like he is with nobody. Working in the workshop all day, his face and hands are stained with oil, and then colored red by alcohol once night comes. Again, spoiled oil drops and attaches to the dent on his nose, as well as the borderline between his nails and skin. Sometimes my father twists his lips to let air get through the slits between his teeth and make a loud sound (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 14).

風呂が沸いてないのか、作業服のまま酒を飲んでいる父が、煙の中にいた。父は朝の格好で出かけ、夕方その格好で帰って来るのだ。母が着替を勧めても、父は立ち上がろうとせず、一点を凝視して動かない。ぼくがはいって行くと、その眼をわずかに動かしぼくを一瞥した。

Maybe because the bath is not ready, my father is drinking in the smoke, with his working clothes on. He goes out in the morning in that appearance and comes back in the evening without changing. My mother advises him to change clothes though, my father does not try to stand up. He stares at one point and does not move. As I enter the kitchen, his eyes only moves a little bit and glance at me (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 41).

These two excerpts describe Mr. Numata’s appearance and actions in detail. Judging from

Shin’ichi’s narration, these excerpts highlight his father’s addiction to drinking and neglect of his family. However, these two excerpts also reveal important details about his father’s work and mental condition. Even though Mr. Numata owns a repair workshop, the stains on his clothes and skin show that he is also the major labor of the workshop.

Dealing with machine and oil, his work is laborious and messy. In the second except, his refusal to change clothes and ignorance to Shin’ichi can be also illustrated as the representation of his exhaustion. The work exhausts his energy and he is even too tired out to move his eyes. From those excerpts, the reader can deduce that Mr. Numata is not just an inefficient father and husband who is rude and fails to understand his children and wife, but a hard-working man who devotes all his energy and time to work. Such detail description allows readers to deduct the traits of the characters which forms indirect characterization.

Considering the narrative techniques used in the novel, the characters constituted by the detailed description are not solid at all. First, as a witness-narrator, Shin’ichi must

54 be present as a witness or participant to offer his observation. Even though Shin’ichi’s description is detailed, that is, his observation is close, it is not enough for the reader to have a full image of a certain character. For that reason, the reader has no direct way to know about things that happen out of Shin’ichi’s view, such as Shigeyuki’s school life,

Mr. Numata’s work life, and Yoshimoto’s private life. The confined perspective prevents the reader to get more information about the characters.

Second, owing to the use of a fixed internal focalization, the reader could hardly get other characters’ emotions and thoughts directly. The detail description is more on characters’ actions and reactions because Shin’ichi does not know what other characters are thinking and feeling. Mr. Numata’s actions analyzed above is an example. The reader is like Shin’ichi who has to guess and deduce based on given information all the time.

Shin’ichi is surprised to see his father in the kitchen and guesses that it is possibly because the bath is not ready (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 41). Considering his father does not want to change clothes and even move. I as a reader deduce that it is because he is too tired out. Nevertheless, neither Shin’ichi nor the reader know the true thoughts and emotion of Mr. Numata at that moment. Another instance is Shigeyuki’s aforementioned usuwarai. Shigeyuki appears to like usuwarai if simply judging from Shin’ichi’s description, but Shigeyuki’s usuwarai (disagreeable smile) is solely an external action while his internal action is unclear.21 In this way, while the novel uses a lot of detailed

21 In her discussion of translating usuwarai, Tang finds that it is hard to translate usuwarai into a specific meaning if referring to the context (8–10).

55 description, it also offers imagination space for the reader to form their own images of the characters.

Emotional Landscape

Besides highly stylistic speeches and detailed description, a hidden component of indirect characterization in the novel is through the description of landscape. The description of landscape is significant in Kazoku gēmu. In his comment on the novel,

Takahashi discusses his finding of a “landscape-conversation” pattern: the description of landscape and conversation appear by turns and form a pattern (See Figure 2).22

Takahashi illustrates his argument with a listing of f chapter “Autumn” and “Winter” (See

Figure 3).23

Landscape (The introductory part) Conversation Landscape Conversation Landscape

Figure 2: “Landscape-Conversation” Pattern in the novel Kazoku gēmu

According to Takahashi, the bold parts refer to the content that shows the narrator’s attention to the outside space such as the landscape of danchi or the behaviors of his younger brother. The bold parts are written in highly literary words and

22 Figure 2 is translated from Takahashi’s illustration, see Honma, Kazoku gēmu, 191. 23 Figure 3 is based on Takahashi’s illustration, see Honma, Kazoku gēmu, 189-191. The illustration sketches the content of chapter “Autumn” and “Winter”. Given the access to the source text is limited, Figure 3 enhances Takahashi’s illustration with more details to help the reader who has no access to the source text understand the listings.

Figure 3: The “Landscape-Conversation” Pattern in Chapter “Autumn” and “Winter”

expressions, while the remaining parts feature conversations in spoken language of different styles. By identifying the description of landscape as “landscape” and the parts governed by spoken language as “conversation”, the “landscape-conversation pattern” comes out (See Figure 2) based on Takahashi (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 191).

Structurally, the description of landscape introduces the time and location of the narration and connects plots. For example, the opening description of the landscape in danchi after the summer vacation indicates that the time is early autumn and the narrator is in his room (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 87). The description of landscape then functions as the connection between parts. However, judging from Figure 3, the description of landscape apparently functions as a tool to achieve the author’s other artistic objectives, that is, to express the emotion of characters or so I argue. In particular, the constitution of

Shin’ichi’s character relies on his emotional description of landscape. As the narrator who is the focalizer, Shin’ichi rarely gives speeches and describes himself directly. Also given that Shin’ichi is an immature boku narrator, his statements about himself are not reliable as well. Shin’ichi’s narration of the landscape becomes an important source for the reader to deduce his emotions and thoughts so as to know his character.

Here I want to refer to Shin’s discussion about the landscape in the film adaptation. Shin proposes several possibilities regarding the function of landscape used in

The Family Game and one of them is “jōcho-teki kankaku to shite no fūkei 情緒的感覚

としての風景 (lit., ‘landscape as an emotional sense’)” (58–61). According to Shin, since landscape is presented through one subject’s perception, it reflects the subject’s feeling and consciousness (59). Although Shin is discussing the landscape in the film adaptation, the description of landscape in the novel also matches Shin’s definition. The landscape is thus a key connecting the novel with its adaptation, which is discussed in

Chapter Three. Since Shin’ichi is a narrator with a fixed internal focalization, his description of the landscape is certainly processed through his perception, which reflects his feelings and consciousness. Shin’ichi’s emotional description of landscape can also be identified as indirect characterization.

A useful example is Shin’ichi’s narration of “the dessert in the brochure” (See

Figure 3). Shin’ichi’s narration is after the end of talk about the love letter and the coming of the silence in the room and followed by the speech of Mr. Numata who just returns (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 105–07).

ぼくはまたパンフレットを開いた。パンフレットには淡い茶色がかったシェルピンクの砂の上に、首の付根から血を流した駱駝が腹這いになっている。歩くことができない不必要な駱駝は、砂漠の真中であろうとも即座に屠られる。暴れないように背中を押えた男たちの顔や手脚は、髪の毛と区別がつかないくらい濃い褐色で、たように固まり、鮮紅の色だけ残し水分を失っていく。かなり離れた後方で、群れをなした役に立つ駱駝たちが、その光景を眺めている。血を流した駱駝の側には、錆びたナイフが置いてあり、太陽の光を反射することなく、砂についたしみか、何かの小さな影のように映っている。

I open the brochure. In the brochure, there is a camel on the shell pink sand that turns to be light brownish. Bleeding from the base of its neck, the camel comes to lie on its stomach. Even in the center part of the dessert, the camel that unable to walk and needless, is going to be killed. Men press its back to prevent it from going wild. Their faces, hands and feet are settled multiply as dark brown that is indistinguishable from the color of hair, losing the moisture and leaving only the scarlet. Far behind, there are camels which play no role of a herd looking at that view. On the side of the bleeding camel, there is a rusty knife. Adhered by sand or so, it reflects no light of sun but some small shadows (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 106).

Different from his description of nature landscape of the dessert early in the chapter

(Honma, Kazoku gēmu 97–98), the landscape or the view depicted here focuses on a camel that unable to work and waits for its death. Even in the center part of a dessert, a camel that unable to walk is unwanted burden. In Shin’ichi’s description, the camel’s situation is in despair: unable to walk and pressed by men, it has no way to escape; there are other camels but none of them will help it. The men who are going to kill the camel appear to be killers: their dark brown skins are close to scarlet, the color of blood.

Based on the story, Shin’ichi is merely narrating what he sees in the brochure.

Shin’ichi does not state his personal thoughts about this landscape. However, the reader can deduce his feelings based on the emotional description. Shin’ichi might put himself into the dying camel. No longer be able to get good grades, he is unwanted and useless.

His fellow, that is, his younger brother Shigeyuki, does nothing but watching his ending.

Even in the hardest time of his life, he is going to be abandoned because the loss of his value. In this way, the regular description of landscape offers a window for the reader to know about the inner world of Shin’ichi, which is an important part of indirect characterization.

Based on the discussion of the characterization in Kazoku gēmu, I want to put up one question: who is the real protagonist? On the one hand, because Shin’ichi is a witness-narrator and puts the focus on his younger brother, Shigeyuki is seemingly the protagonist. The development of the story centers on him. On the other hand, the novel offers a regular description of the landscape precepted by Shin’ichi, which reveals

Shin’ichi’s thoughts and feelings. Even though Shigeyuki is the focus, lacking the access to his inner world, the reader has to deduce the character of Shigeyuki based on his actions, speeches as well as Shin’ichi’s unreliable statements. In contrast, the reader can get in touch with Shin’ichi’s inner world through Shin’ichi’s emotional description of the landscape.

To answer this question, a more detailed analysis of the novel is necessary, and possibly there is no certain answer for this question. In narrative literature, the reader’s engagement begins in the realm of imagination and “is simultaneously controlled by the selected, directing words of the text”, and reader can re-read or skip ahead (Hutcheon

23). As a novel relying on a fixed internal focalization and indirect characterization,

Kazoku gēmu offers a broad space for imagination with less controlling. And as the reader

61 re-read and feel, they can have different answers for the question. The delicate use of multiple first-person narrative techniques makes the novel more literary and less entertaining; and then makes the adaptation of the novel demanding. The next chapter discusses the difficulty of adapting Kazoku gēmu and evaluates Morita’s adaptation.

Chapter 3: Revisiting The Family Game as an Adaptation

The film The Family Game is the fifth feature-length film of Morita. It is a production of Nihon Āto Shiatā Girudo 日本アート・シアター・ギルド (ATG,

“Japanese Art Theater Guild”) in cooperation with Nikkatsu Satsueijo にっかつ撮影所

(“Nikkatsu Film Studios”) and Nyū Senchurī Purodyūsāzu ニューセンチュリープロデ

ューサーズ (NSP, “New Century Producers”).24 While the film became a huge success of Morita’s career and ATG as well as a significant work in Japanese film history, its production took only eighteen days and a low budget of thirty-eight million Japanese yen

(“Morita Yoshimitsu kantoku ga hatsu no hōmudorama”).25

It has been acknowledged that The Family Game is a successful film, but rarely do people consider whether it is a successful adaptation or not. First, the source text and its author are less influential than the film adaptation and Morita. Second, Morita emphasizes his contribution as the director in discussing his film adaptations. Most

24 English glosses of the companies’ names are from the video recording of The Family Game released in 2006. 25 The specific budget is unclear. In another interview on 1989, Morita said the budget for The Family Game was seventy million yen (Tsuchiya).

63 importantly, the film adaptation appears to be distinct from its source text judging from its narrative. As aforementioned discussion in Chapter Two, the first-person narrative of

Kazoku gēmu is unique for its use of a fixed internal focalization, an immature and unreliable boku narrator who is a witness. The emphasis on indirect characterization in the novel also leads its adaptation to film challenging. This chapter examines how The

Family Game adapts the narrative style and characterization of the source text into the mode of showing, and film makers’ artistic objectives behind the adaptation.

This chapter first offers a groundwork for an adaptation study of The Family

Game. It first defines the concept of “adaptation,” and then examines the problem of fidelity in adaptation study, and last introduces the mode of engagement theory put up by

Literary theorist and critic Linda Hutcheon. Then, the chapter offers a review of Morita’s ideas about his adaptation of Kazoku gēmu and about adapting literary works. The third section introduces the story and characters of the film along with a synopsis for a basic understanding of the film. The last part of the chapter is devoted to the analysis of the examination of the film as an adaptation. It first reviews the challenges raised from the distinct narrative style of the source text and then explores how the adaptor’s solutions of adapting a special first-person text.

Re-treating Adaptations as Adaptations

Literary adaptation refers to the transfer of literary works to other media such as comics, films, stage plays or films. In the film industry, literary works have long served as one of the major resources for the film production from the very beginning. Film adaptation of a literary work is a creation situated where literature meets film, and the boundary between them gets blurred. Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation, suggests that an adaptation can be a product of specifically intersemiotic translation from one sign system to another; and can also be a process in which one appropriates, possesses and filters another’s story through one’s own sensibility, interests, and talents (16–18). In this way, film adaptation of literary work can be defined as a product of adapting one language system to another, or a process of adapting literary story to film.

The Problem of Fidelity

A traditional stance treats film adaptation as a derivative of its source text.

However, given an adaptation might use its source text in whole or in part or merely storylines, characters, or even concepts, the process of literary adaptation is rarely a direct transfer of elements from a literary text. Film theorist Robert Stam points out conventional adaptation criticism’s hostility towards film adaptation because of: (1) a

65 historical assumption that “older arts are necessarily better arts”; (2) “the dichotomous thinking that presumes a bitter rivalry between film and literature”; and (3) the iconophobia which is deeply rooted in “cultural prejudice against the visual arts” (3–4).

Hostility towards adaptations results in a moralistic and judgmental ideal of

“fidelity” which is discredited theoretically by Stam:

When we say an adaptation has been “unfaithful” to the original, the very violence of the term gives expression to the intense sense of betrayal we feel when a film adaptation fails to capture what we see as the fundamental narrative, thematic, or aesthetic features of its literary source. The notion of fidelity gains its persuasive power from our sense that (a) some adaptations are indeed better than others, and (b) some adaptations fail to “realize” or substantiate what we most appreciated in the source novels (14).

Hutcheon also addressed the problem of fidelity to the source text in adaptation criticism that the source text should not be “the criterion of judgment or the focus of analysis” (6).

Through those opposing remarks towards “fidelity criticism,” I want to clarify that the purpose of examining The Family Game as an adaptation is not driven by such an ideal of

“fidelity.” My comparison of The Family Game and its source text is not intended to prove the film is “unfaithful” to its source text. I agree with the idea of “treating adaptations as adaptations”: adaptation is not a mere reproduction of its source text but a process of adjusting and altering the source text, and making it suitable to the media of film with “many different possible intentions” of the adaptor(s) (Hutcheon 6–7).

However, if it is biased to shadow adaptations with their source texts, neglecting the adaptations’ relations with their source texts is also a problem. As previously stated,

The Family Game is rarely viewed as an adaptation, which actually satisfied the idea of

“treating adaptations as adaptations” (Hutcheon 6). It is not just treated as an adaptation but even an “original” work. What is more, the intertextuality between the film and its source text leads the film to eclipse its source text. If the source text should not be “the criterion of judgement or the focus of analysis” (6), adaptation should also not be the basis for evaluating its source text. In particular, in a case like The Family Game, when a little-known author encounters a famous auteur, treating an adaptation as an adaptation not only refers to respecting its nature as a creative production, but also its relations to its source text. Re-treating an adaptation like The Family Game as an adaptation brings the credits back to its source text from the perspective of authorship studies and supports a deeper understanding of both the film and its source text from the perspective of adaptation studies.

The Mode of Engagement

Detaching adaptation from the idea of fidelity, Hutcheon theorized the phenomenon of adaptation from three “distinct but interrelated perspectives”: (1) “an announced and extensive transposition of a particular work or works” if as “a formal entity or product”; (2) both appropriation and salvaging involving (re-)interpretation and then (re-)creation if as “a process of creation”; or (3) “a form of intertextuality” if “from the perspective of its process of reception” (7–8). Three modes of engagement are then raised based on different emphases: (1) telling where engagement begins with imagination and “is simultaneously controlled by the selected, directing words of the text

67 and… unconstrained by the limits of the visual or aural”; (2); showing where engagement is through “direct perception—with its mix of both detail and broad focus”; (3) interacting where engagement is through (but not just because of) “the more immediate kind of immersion it allows” (Hutcheon 22–27).

Hutcheon then argues that different modes of engagement have its own specificity and “has at its disposal different means of expression – media and genres – and so can aim at and achieve certain things better than others” (24). I do like to quote

Hutcheon’s illustration of the differences between the modes of engagement for further reference:

In the telling mode—in narrative literature, for example—our engagement begins in the realm of imagination, which is simultaneously controlled by the selected, directing words of the text and liberated—that is, unconstrained by the limits of the visual or aural. We can stop reading at any point; we can re-read or skip ahead; we hold the book in our hands and feel, as well as see, how much of the story remains to be read. But with the move to the mode of showing, as in film and stage adaptations, we are caught in an unrelenting, forward-driving story. And we have moved from the imagination to the realm of direct perception—with its mix of both detail and broad focus. The performance mode teaches us that language is not the only way to express meaning or to relate stories. Visual and gestural representations are rich in complex associations; music offers aural “equivalents” for characters’ emotions and, in turn, provokes affective responses in the audience; sound, in general, can enhance, reinforce, or even contradict the visual and verbal aspects. On the other hand, however, a shown dramatization cannot approximate the complicated verbal play of told poetry or the interlinking of description, narration, and explanation that is so easy for prose narrative to accomplish. Telling a story in words, either orally or on paper, is never the same as showing it visually and aurally in any of the many performance media available (23).

The mode of engagement theorizes the uniqueness of adaptation on the one hand, indicates the bond between adaptation and its source text on the other. Adapting a literary

68 work to a film transports the story or telling of the source text to a different mode of engagement. The specificity of each engagement mode makes the process of adapting rather a direct transportation. Adaptation expresses the verbal text of a literary work by means of visual and aural representation. Instead of emphasizing the uniqueness of adaptation, this chapter focus on the process of transporting and examines how The

Family Game transports and represents the source text to fit the engagement mode supported by the form of film.

Morita’s Ideas about his Adaptation

Being both the director and screenwriter, Morita is the major adaptor of Kazoku gēmu. His ideas about adapting the novel as well as his thoughts on adaptation can facilitate the understanding of his approaches of adapting. This section reviews Morita’s talks and interviews regarding The Family Game and his cinematography and explores

Morita’s ideas about adapting.

Creating a “Home Drama”

From the beginning, Morita as the director-screenwriter claimed his dominant position in the production of the film The Family Game—the film was promoted as an adaptation of Kazoku gēmu, but Morita’s remarks show a tendency to emphasize his originality and to attribute the success of The Family Game to himself. In an interview published before the release of The Family Game, Morita talks about his intention in making the film:

Before, I used to proclaim that I would be a world-famous director by my fifth work, and I am still conscious [of that pronouncement]. Family drama is a genre that I have long wanted to take on as a challenge. Although I am not director Ozu Yasujirō, by means of family drama, I can make an internationally recognized work without spending too much money (“Morita Yoshimitsu kantoku ga hatsu no hōmudorama”).

Hōmu dorama ホームドラマ (lit. “family drama”) is a genre in Japan on the theme of the daily lives of a family or everyday events happening at home (“Hōmu Dorama”). The director Ozu mentioned by Morita is an internationally reputed director who is renowned for family drama. Based on this remark, it seems that Morita initially decided to make a family drama. The positive overseas reception of Ozu’s hōmu dorama indicates a high popularity of the genre of Japanese hōmu dorama. The evidence is that Morita merely wanted to make a hōmu dorama, and Kazoku gēmu was just such a vehicle for doing so.

Morita talked about the genre of hōmu dorama in a later interview, published on

September 1983:

It seems that home dramas—given that I’ve only been seeing them on TV—aren’t available as films these days. So, I wanted to create a fantastic work in the medium of film, some kind of challenge to television. I thought that home drama would be the best for that purpose (Morita, “Shinario wa sanryū, kantoku sureba...” 121).

Morita’s remark here indicates two points: first, the genre of hōmu dorama had a domestic market; second, there was a lack of works belonging to the hōmu dorama genre in the Japanese film industry. The genre of hōmu dorama had both domestic and global markets, but twenty years after Ozu’s passing, directors rarely took on the challenge of creating hōmu dorama, which left a vacuum.

In a talk with Kawasaki Tōru 川崎徹 (1948-) on October 1983, Morita relates that it was the staff of Nikkatsu Satsueijo who introduced the novel Kazoku gēmu to him and reveals more about his motivation for making the film:

Morita: Reading that [Kazoku gēmu], the first thing that came to mind was the helicopter in the last scene. Somehow it all started from there. The mother and kids taking a nap while the helicopter drones overhead—that image was the beginning. Of course, that doesn’t appear in the novel. Kawasaki: It came to mind for no reason? Morita: Yes, for no reason. It has no logic to it, you know. Because that last scene was in my mind, I wanted to make the film. A midday nap and a helicopter—whatever does it mean? I thought that if I followed through from there in assembling the whole, quite an interesting puzzle would result (151).

Based on these remarks, Morita first read the novel Kazoku gēmu and decided to make a film because of an image inspired by the reading experience, though the image is not relevant to the novel. One cannot help but notice that Morita’s emphasis on his

“originality”—what motivated him to make the film—was something not in the source text.

In response to the question regarding the relationship of his adaptation and the source text, Morita claims: “It’s like I drew only on the mood [of the source text]. In the case of The Family Game, an edgy tension was expressed, and it was that feeling alone that I thought to make use of” (Morita and Kawasaki 151). It might be proper for Morita to claim that he merely drew on the feeling depicted in the source text in his adaptation.

However, since he assigned a lot of weight to creating a hōmu dorama, as mentioned above, it can be assumed that the representation of the family in Kazoku gēmu attracted his attention as well, or at least offered him an opportunity to make a hōmu dorama.

Morita’s Cinematography

In fact, Morita’s discussion of his idea of the “eigateki 映画的 (lit., “the cinematic”)” offers clues to his “avoidance” of the influence from the source text. Morita argues the essences of cinema are concepts such as the use of camera (angle or scale), lighting, sound, and editing; being cinematic is to organize those concepts in a logical way that in accordance with the director’s intent (Morita and Kawasaki 152). Although adaptation is built on another text, what the source text offers is merely raw material. To be cinematic or to make a film, a director has to consider elements such as lighting, sound, camera angles, and editing. Morita appears to be asserting that the success of The

Family Game is not derived so much from the source text but from his skills as a director.

Morita’s ideas about his own scenario also reveal that he attaches much more importance to cinematic elements. While Morita received several awards as the screen writer of The Family Game, he described himself as “a third-rate writer”:

I have an idea that I can make a better movie when the script isn’t mine. After all, I think my scenarios are the product of a third-rate writer…But as a director, I am more than top rate so I can conceal my faults (laughter). If I collaborate with a top-rate writer, I have a feeling a really awesome film can result (“Shinario wa sanryū, kantoku sureba...” 122)..

For Morita, what makes his works unique and impressive is his directing skills. The ideas might be derived from another text, but the final images shown on the screen are generated through his directing.

In fact, such ideas of Morita about adaptation is supported by the theory of adaptation, which advocates “treating adaptations as adaptations” (Hutcheon 6).

However, I could barely agree with his opinions because treating a film adaptation as an adaptation does not mean neglecting the source text’s contribution. The use of camera, editing, and lighting, etc., are crucial, but writing and story are important components of a film as well. Even if one assumes that writing and story are less important than other components and only focuses on cinematography, The Family Game is not Morita’s independent film. In the production of The Family Game, there are influential stars such as Itami and Matsuda who almost have dominant power on their own characters, respected cameraman Maeda Yonezō 前田米造 (1935-) and other staff who contributed to the film as well. Morita is the director, but not the only one who actively engaged in the production of The Family Game.

Morita’s treatment of the source text demonstrates the balance of power between authors which is discussed in Chapter One. After adapting works of well-known authors such as Natsume Sōseki 夏目漱石 (1867-1916), Watabe Jun’ichi 渡部淳一 (1933-

2014), Yoshimoto Banana, Miyabe Miyuki 宮部みゆき (1960-), Morita’s ideas about his adaptations changed seemingly. In his interview published in 2009, upon being asked about whether he adapted the source text subjectively so that his adaptation would appear to be greatly different from the source text, Morita said: “No, I am influenced [by the source text]. I take a serious view of [my] impression of the source text in particular. In terms of directing and editing, I try to make something distinct”(Osaka and Utsunomiya

102). It is unsure what led Morita to change his view about adaptation. Whether it is because he began to care more about the source text after the production of The Family

Game, or because he became more cautious in front of auteurs with similar or more influence than he, the fact is he expressed differing attitudes towards the source text over time, while his later adaptations are still like The Family Game which appear to be greatly different from their source texts.

It is also noticeable that Morita’s speeches show no ideas about satire and criticism of social issues, albeit The Family Game is recognized as a funny satire of modern Japanese society. By considering the place of critical function in Morita’s career,

Gerow asserts that “Morita never lived up to expectations that he would become the new social satirist of Japanese cinema”, given most of Morita’s work “consists of romances and commercial star vehicles that have received little critical praise” (247). Morita’s discourse shows that “The Family Game was another in his ‘catalog’ of films, one aimed at awards and one that helped him make his infamous declaration, through advertisements he took out in film magazines in 1984, that he was a ‘pop director’ (ryūkō kantoku 流⾏監督)” (Gerow 247). The consideration of Morita’s attitude to social criticism might explain why The Family Game is a comedy with a much more optimistic ending, unlike the source text which is much more realistic and pessimist.

Here I want to iterate that revisiting The Family Game as an adaptation is not to negate Morita’s contributions as a director or to simply return the credit to Honma.

Admittedly, the director plays an important role in the production of a film, but it does

75 not mean he is the only one deserving accolade and a distinguished reputation. Film production often consists of teamwork, and every individual involved contributes to it.

While others’ contributions can be very difficult to recognize, the concrete existence of the source text makes it easier to discuss as a counterbalance to the director’s dominant position as the only auteur.

Nevertheless, the project would not discuss the issue of authorship further in order not to lose the focus. Judging from Morita’s ideas, he attaches importance to cinematography, which is the use of visual and aural text. Given Kazoku gēmu is a novel featuring complicated narrative techniques and indirect characterization, it is not surprised that Morita thought he only borrowed a feeling from the source text (Morita and

Kawasaki 151). I would rather believe that Morita made considerable efforts to transport the source text from telling mode to showing mode, or to adapt a challenging text. The following sections first introduce the story and characters of The Family Game for the reference of the reader who has no access to the film and then examine the challenges of adapting Kazoku gēmu and Morita’s treatments so as to explore the possibilities of adapting first-person text using unique narrative techniques.

Introduction of the film The Family Game

The film The Family Game, which has the same title as the source novel, follows the Numata family’s life in a danchi where they hire a new tutor, Yoshimoto, to help their younger son Shigeyuki to prepare for his high school entrance examination. However, since fifteen more original characters appear in the film than in the novel, it is not as easy to summarize despite the similar storyline. To facilitate the reader’s understanding of the film’s story, this section first outlines the characters that appear in the film based on the settings to which they are most attached. Then, a synopsis of the film The Family Game is offered.

Besides the home of the Numata Family in the danchi, four other major settings are established in the film: the middle school where the younger brother Shigeyuki is enrolled, Nishitake 西武 High School, the high school in which the older brother

Shin’ichi is enrolled, the home of Yamashita Mieko 山下美栄子, who is Shin’ichi’s classmate, and the home of the tutor, Yoshimoto.

Characters that appear in the film The Family Game can be then divided into several groups based on the settings in which they appear (see Table 2). The original characters who only appear in the film are underlined. With the establishment of more

77 settings and a broader focus, those original characters are added to fill blanks left by the source novel.

Group Main Characters Numata Family Shigeyuki, the younger son; Shin’ichi, the older son; Chikako, the mother; Kōsuke: the father; the neighborhood wife. Shigeyuki’s Male Classmate: Tsuchiya Yū 土屋裕; School and Class Female Classmates: Kikuchi Yasuko 菊池保子, who appears to be in love with Tsuchiya; Uemura Masami 樹村雅美, a beautiful and talented female student; Tagami Yuriko 田上由利子 who sometimes helps Shigeyuki to avoid bullying; Hamamoto Michiko 浜本道子 whose nickname is “[the] ugly girl,” whose academic performance is poor; Home room Teachers: the P.E. teacher, the English teacher; the teacher of Japanese.26 Nishitake High Shibata Tomoyuki 芝田友幸, a male student who is interested in School, Mieko as well; The English teacher, the home room teacher. Shin’ichi’s School and class Yamashita Mieko; Mieko’s older sister; Mieko’s parents. Family Yoshimoto Shō: the tutor; Yoshimoto’s girlfriend.

Table 2: Characters of the film The Family Game

26 All three teachers are home room teachers according to Morita’s scenario (Morita, Shinario kazoku gēmu 20–21).

Synopsis

Shigeyuki is a third-year middle school student who prepares for his high-school entrance examination. He often misbehaves and finds excuses to escape from school. At school, Shigeyuki is bullied by a group of male students led by Tsuchiya. He is also looked down upon by his home room teacher because of his terrible academic performance. Mr. Numata and Mrs. Numata hire several tutors to support Shigeyuki’s studies, and Yoshimoto is the latest.

Upon his first visit to the Numata family, Yoshimoto knows about Mr. Numata’s expectations for Shigeyuki as well as for Shigeyuki’s older brother Shin’ichi, who is an excellent student of whom Mr. Numata feels proud. Yoshimoto meets Shigeyuki and kisses Shigeyuki’s face, which amazes Shigeyuki. Then he finds out that Shigeyuki’s overall rank is ninth from the bottom in his class. Yoshimoto has dinner with the Numata family at the end of the first tutoring session. After dinner, he is invited by Mr. Numata to have a private talk in Mr. Numata’s car. Mr. Numata proposes to offer an extra bonus for

Shigeyuki’s rise in the class standings: ten thousand Japanese yen for every time that he moves up in the ranking.

Yoshimoto begins to tutor Shigeyuki in the Japanese language. Since Shigeyuki does not obey his instructions, Yoshimoto slaps Shigeyuki’s face. Nose bleeding,

Shigeyuki escapes to Mrs. Numata. Yoshimoto comes out from the room also and claims that Shigeyuki’s nosebleed is caused by overexcitement. Mrs. Numata talks to Mr.

Numata about her concern about the new tutor, but Mr. Numata agrees with Yoshimoto’s approach.

Under Yoshimoto’s special style of instruction, Shigeyuki’s grades improve rapidly. Yoshimoto not only pushes Shigeyuki to study; he also teaches Shigeyuki how to win a fight against bullies. Feeling cautious about Shigeyuki’s improvement, Tsuchiya warns Shigeyuki not to get elated and to aspire to Nishitake High School, where Tsuchiya plans to go. Shigeyuki expresses a preference for the lesser ranked Jingun 神宮 High

School.

Mrs. Numata goes to school and discusses Shigeyuki’s choice of school with the home room teacher. Although the home room teacher suggests Jingun High School, Mrs.

Numata asks about the possibility of going to Nishitake High School, which is the expectation of Mr. Numata. Under pressure from Mr. Numata, Mrs. Numata requests that

Yoshimoto persuade Shigeyuki to change to Nishitake High School. Yoshimoto questions

Shigeyuki regarding why he does not discuss his own choice with the home room teacher himself, and then slaps Shigeyuki in the face. Shigeyuki slaps Yoshimoto back, but he gets slapped again.

Since Shigeyuki fails to change his choice of high school by the deadline, Mrs.

Numata asks Yoshimoto to talk with the home room teacher on her behalf. Yoshimoto goes to Shigeyuki’s school. Since the home room teacher insists that only students or their parents can change the choice, Yoshimoto finds Shigeyuki and pushes Shigeyuki to

80 change his choice of school to Nishitake High School. Finally, Shigeyuki gets admitted to

Nishitake High School, while Tsuchiya ends up going to a private school.

To celebrate, the Numata family invites Yoshimoto to have dinner. Even though

Mrs. Numata shows appreciation of Yoshimoto’s help, Mr. Numata argues that his children are smart by nature and asks Shin’ichi—who recently has been skipping classes—to learn from Shigeyuki. In response to Mr. Numata’s remarks, Shin’ichi relays his intention of not going to college, which irritates Mr. Numata. As Yoshimoto pours wine on the table and starts throwing food, Mr. Numata quarrels with Shin’ichi more and more intensely. Mr. Numata finally accosts Yoshimoto about his misbehavior but then

Yoshimoto knocks the wind out of him with a punch to the belly. After knocking down everyone else, Yoshimoto upends the dining table and leaves.

The Family Game as Adaptation: Challenges and Solutions

As explained in the end of Chapter Two, Kazoku gēmu is a novel with less directing text, which leaves a wide space for the reader’s imagination. However, film adaptation uses the mode of showing which offers an unrelenting, forward-driving story in the realm of direct perception with a mix of both detail and broad focus (Hutcheon 23).

The differences between the two modes of engagement and the uniqueness of the novel’s narrative style determine that the transition of Kazoku gēmu’s telling mode to showing mode is difficult. This comparative study of The Family Game and its source text addresses the challenges of adapting a first-person novel using special narrative techniques and reviews the film’s approaches to handling those challenges.

Challenges of First-Person Narrative

Comparing the synopsis of The Family Game with that of its source text, it is obvious that the film has a storyline that is similar to that of the source text. Even though the story is seemingly different, in fact, the basic storylines of the two works are almost the same. First, the film adaptation follows the basic storyline of the novel, that a nuclear family finds a weird tutor to improve the younger son’s grades in preparation for a high school entrance examination. Next, similar to the source novel, the story of the film adaptation begins with the arrival of the new tutor, goes forward with the younger son’s improvement and the older son’s falling behind, and ends with the departure of the tutor.

Why does the film appear to be greatly different from its source text despite the similar story? A crucial reason is the change of narrative style. As argued in Chapter Two,

Kazoku gēmu is a typical first-person novel with three features: (1) fixed internal focalization: Shin’ichi is the focalizer and the only narrator; (2) narrator as a witness:

Shin’ichi is not the focused object; (3) and an unreliable narrator: Shin’ichi as the narrator is immature and not reliable. The film, however, in addition to a third-person perspective, changes the narrative perspective in three ways: (1) external focalization; (2) the absence of a narrator; (3) no fixed point of view. In short, the film uses a narrative style almost opposite to that of the novel.

An essential issue regarding Morita’s adaptation is why he chose such a different narrative style. First, it is important to define the concept of a “first-person” film. In general, a first-person film may refer to a film using first-person narration—the film

83 follows a specific character’s experience and gets into the story via that character’s narrative. First-person films also may conform to different subtypes depending on the narrators. Based on Manfred Jahn’s idea, though a narrator is not necessary to a film, two kinds of filmic narrators exist: the off-screen narrator (or voice-over narrator), who is unseen but utters narrative statements such as narration, description, comments; and the on-screen narrator (F4.2.1). In addition, although infrequent, there is a first-person film using the camera for narration that offers only the point of view of the protagonist

(Hutcheon 54).

Challenge from a Boku Narrator

The three aforementioned features of the source text’s narrative style make the adaptation of the novel to a first-person film difficult. The first issue is where to situate the narrator of the source text. To illustrate the challenges raised from a first-person boku narrator with a fixed internal focalization, let examine the possibility of first-person adaptation in three hypothetic cases. There is a premise that the first-person narration is narrated by Shin’ichi or through Shin’ichi’s experience.

The first hypothetical situation follows Shin’ichi’s narration but does not make use of any narrators. The adaptation using first-person narrative would appear to be similar to the novel’s narration in which Shin’ichi’s experience forms the medium for entering the thoughts of other characters. However, there are two problems in doing so.

First, even though Shin’ichi of the source text is a first-person narrator, he is a witness rather than the subject. Second, the source text uses a fixed internal focalization, which

84 means the narration is based on Shin’ichi’s perceptual point of view. Using the mode of showing, film adaptation is supposed to offer “direct perception” (Hutcheon 23). If adapting Shin’ichi to a first-person narrator, the film adaptation has to first represent

Shin’ichi’s perceptual point of view and then uses Shin’ichi’s view to tell a story centered with Shigeyuki and the tutor.

For the second case, Shin’ichi is assumed to be an on-screen narrator, or a temporarily off-screen narrator. According to Jahn’s definition, an on-screen narrator refers to “a narrator who is bodily present on screen, talking to the (or an) audience, shown in the act of producing his or her narrative discourse” (F4.2.1). If the narrator is not permanently on-screen, it is a temporarily off-screen narrator (Jahn F4.2.1). In this way, Shin’ichi as the narrator is on-screen to tell the story of his family to the audience.

On-screen narrator is a technique of documentary film, which is uncommon in fiction film. Chinese director Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 (1970-)’ s 24 City (Er shi si cheng ji 二十四

城记, 2008) is a film using multiple on-screen narrators. The film appeals to such documentary technique to create a realistic representation of the past and memory. For the case of adapting Kazoku gēmu, it is unnecessary to adapt Shin’ichi to an on-screen narrator if without a strong pursuit to realism.

In the third situation, Shin’ichi is presumed to be a permanent off-screen narrator.

An off-screen narrator, also named voice-over narrator, refers to “an unseen narrator’s voice uttering narrative statements” such as narration, description and comment (Jahn

F4.2.1). Shin’ichi of the source text functions as such an off-screen narrator - he narrates

85 what he sees at home. In fact, The Family Game makes use of an off-screen narrator. The film begins with an off-screen narration that “the whole family is making rattling sound and it is very noisy” (00:00:24-00:00:31).27 However, the offer-screen narrator is

Shigeyuki instead of Shin’ichi.28 I do want to clarify that Shigeyuki is present in this scene as he is having dinner with his family though, he is not an on-screen narrator because his presence on screen is not narrating to the audience. Although the film only uses the off-screen narrator once, it implies that Shin’ichi is an unwanted narrator in the eyes of the adaptor.

Some might ask why Shin’ichi as the narrator of the source text turns out to be unwanted in the film adaptation. According to Gerow, “Shin’ichi [of the source text] is much like the camera of classical cinema, constantly using lenses to observe people with an analytical perspective that discerns their thoughts and emphasizes narratively important actions” (246–47). Although Gerow draws an analogy between Shin’ichi’s narration in the source text and the camera of a classical film, I would argue that

Shin’ichi is less an omniscient narrator in the novel that he is a narrator-witness.

Shin’ichi’s access to other characters is even narrower than a classical camera, which leads his role to be an obstacle for the mode of showing which is with broad focus.

27 The quotation of the lines in the film appears in this chapter is translated from the Japanese text by the writer. The Japanese text: “家中が、ビリビリ鳴ってで、すごくうるさいんだ”. 28 The film does not identify the off-screen narrator though, the voice is the same as that of Shigeyuki who appears later in the film. Also, Morita’s scenario confirms the off-screen narrator is Shigeyuki(Shinario kazoku gēmu 1).

Returning briefly to the analysis of the source text’s narrative style discussed in

Chapter Two, the story is narrated by Shin’ichi who is a “narrator-witness.” On the one level, situations and events recounted in the source text are limited to Shin’ichi’s appearance; on the other level, Shin’ichi rarely narrates situations and events where

Shigeyuki does not appear, because he is not the center of the story. A result of positioning him as a “narrator-witness” is exposure to a limited number of characters and settings in the novel, which is unwanted for a film showing more details and broader focus.

Furthermore, even if Shin’ichi were established as the off-screen narrator, the unreliability of his narrative would be another challenge. As Stam claims, film is a multitrack medium that can play with words (written and spoken), music, sound effects, moving photographic images, whereas a literary text is a single-track medium (17). The multiplicity of tracks makes an unreliable narrative challenging. In the source text, the readers perceive other characters through Shin’ichi’s point of view, or his narrative, or the single track of words. Since Shin’ichi is the only source of information, the readers are not likely to notice his unreliability. Even if the readers might realize that he is not fully objective, the truthiness of his statements or judgments is also confusing. Shin’ichi is not telling lies. Instead, the unreliability of Shin’ichi’s narrative is related to his immaturity.

For a film comprised of multiple tracks, the creation of a similarly unreliable narrator or character is intractable.

More importantly, the representation of an unreliable narrator is not necessary.

Again, the story of the source text centers with Shigeyuki rather than Shin’ichi. The immaturity and unreliability of Shin’ichi are deduced from a textual analysis of

Shin’ichi’s narration instead of being identified in the novel. As quoted earlier, the engagement with film adaptations in the showing mode begins with the realm of direct perception (Hutcheon 23). If without special artistic objectives, it is important for a film to offer space for the viewer’s direct perception, that is, a mix of both detail and broad focus. Considering production circumstances like the lack of funding and time, it is reasonable to avoid a narrator like Shin’ichi.

Challenge from Indirect Characterization

Apart from establishing a first-person narrative through the boku narrator

Shin’ichi, a possibility of adapting the novel to a first-person film is setting Shigeyuki as the narrator or establishing a narration through Shigeyuki. As noted on the previous pages, the film uses Shigeyuki as the off-screen narrator. Here comes the question why the film adaptation does not use a first-person narrative centering on Shigeyuki. The reasons can be found in the characterization of the source text.

As was pointed out in Chapter Two, Kazoku gēmu relies more on indirect characterization: first, Shin’ichi’s statements about characters are relatively few and not reliable; then, the majority of Shin’ichi’s narration is composed of conversations, the description of details such as other characters’ actions, and his emotional description of

88 landscape. The emphasis on indirect characterization makes it difficult for the reader to know about the inner world of characters other than Shin’ichi.

As aforementioned, a first-person film usually follows a specific character’s experience. Since it gets into the story via that character’s narrative or perception, it is crucial to have a clear idea about the character’s inner world. For the adaptor, to set a first-person narration focusing on Shigeyuki means it is necessary to figure out the thoughts and emotion of Shigeyuki, which are not represented directly in the source text.

For example, Shigeyuki’s narration in the opening scene that “the whole family is making rattling sound and it is very noisy” (00:00:24-00:00:31) is original in the film adaptation, which shows Shigeyuki’s thoughts on his family. In this way, it is much more perplexing than using a first-person narrative focusing on Shin’ichi.

Solutions: Narrative, Landscape, and Symbols

While Kazoku gēmu might be a boku novel, it is difficult to create a “boku film” as explained in the last section. A third-person perspective is an easier choice considering the challenges posed by adaptation. What is more, it allows an “authorial control of intimacy and distance, the calibration of access to characters’ knowledge and consciousness” (qtd. in Hutcheon 55). Through a third-person narrative, Morita gains an authorial control of the story and freedom to create his own “family game.”

This section first illustrates how Morita changes the first-person narrative of the source text to a third-person narrative and then explores how the adaptor transports the

89 source text of telling mode to showing mode by focusing on the use of landscape and symbols. I argue even though Morita uses a third-person narrative to shun issues posed by the first-person narrative of the source text, he also makes reference to the source text creatively, which can be considered as good solutions for adapting such first-person text.

Figure 4: Footage of The Family Game - The Opening Dining Scene (00:00:30)

Re-creating the Narration

In general, the film adapts the first-person narrative of the source text to a third- person narrative by not using narrator. Although Shigeyuki appears to be an off-screen narrator in the opening scene of The Family Game as aforementioned, he is the only narrator and his role of narrator functions merely once. Detaching the narration from a specific character, the film uses external focalization consistently.

External focalization refers to that “what is presented to be limited to the characters’ external behavior (words and actions but not thoughts or feelings), their appearance, and the setting against which they come to the fore” (Prince, A Dictionary

32). Only in the opening scene involving Shigeyuki’s narration, the film uses both internal and external focalization. Shigeyuki’s narration is his internal voice, but on the screen is the dining scene of the whole family including Shigeyuki seen from an external narrator (See Figure 4).

The consistent use of an external focalization in the film apparently makes the adaptation distinct from its source text though, it actually has effects similar to the use of actually has effects similar to that of a fixed internal focalization. In the source text, the use of a fixed internal focalization causes an emphasis on indirect characterization. For characters other than Shin’ichi, the reader has to deduce their traits from their speeches and Shin’ichi’s detail description of their actions and reactions, as explained in Chapter

Two. In the film, owing to the consistent use of external focalization, the viewer also has

91 no way to get into characters’ inner world and could merely guess at that world based on the visible details.

Here comes the clue to Morita’s solution of the complicated narrative style in the source text. Gerow compares Shin’ichi of the source text to a classical camera (246), while Takahashi also feels that Shin’ichi plays a role of camera (Honma, Kazoku gēmu

191). In the source text, the fixed internal focalization is established on the narrator of

Shin’ichi and all other characters are observed and narrated by an external narrator. In the film, although there appears to be no narrator, all the characters are presented by the camera, which can be identified as an author-observer. The camera, or the author- observer, replaces the boku narrator of the source text. In this way, the film cuts the role of narrator without damaging the story established by the first-person narrative of the source text.

Liberating the narrative from a specific character’s point of view, the third-person narrative allows broader focus. In the source text, the home is the only major stage of the story. The landscape of danchi is the outer space of the narrator’s window. It is because

Shin’ichi as a narrator-witness primarily narrates the life of Shigeyuki, and the home is one of few places shared by the two brothers. The film, however, has the flexibility to include more settings and characters comes in. Judging from the outline of characters (see

Table 2), a considerable number of original characters appear in the film, such as Miyoko and her family, Shigeyuki’s classmates, the neighborhood wife, and Yoshimoto’s girlfriend. All those original characters are related to characters’ personal life: Miyoko is

92 from Shin’ichi’s social life; Shigeyuki’s classmates are related to Shigeyuki’s school life; the neighborhood wife interacts with Mrs. Numata; Yoshimoto’s girlfriend is part of

Yoshimoto’s private life. In other words, those original characters exist in the places where Shin’ichi has no access or does not want to talk or is limited to disclose restricted by his role as a narrator-witness.

Moreover, by applying a consistent external focalization, the film maintains the mood of the source text. According to Morita, the moods of the two works resemble each other—he claimed that he used his feeling of an edgy tension expressed in the source text

(Morita and Kawasaki 151). Given that The Family Game is a comedy with deliberate use of humor while the source text is close to a realistic tragedy, the “mood” could barely refer to the tone of the story. I assume that the “mood” is related to the effects of indirect characterization through actions, appearance, and speech. In the source text, the reader observes the Numata family through Shin’ichi’s point of view. In the film, the use of external focalization allows the viewer to be the observer or observe like Shin’ichi of the source text. Following the designated pace of the author-observer, the audience grows to know about the characters without getting into their inner space. Therefore, the distance or alienation between the characters and the audience is a shared feature of the film and its source text, which also connects the two works.

In short, through a comparison of the narrative styles of the film and that of the source text, we see that the film re-creates the narration by replacing the first-person narrator with a fixed internal focalization of the source text to a third-person author-

Figure 5: Footage of The Family Game – A Night View of Danchi (00:10:35)

observer with consistent external focalization. The liberation from a first-person boku narrator simplifies the process of adapting and helps the adaptor to gain an authorial control of the film and be more creative. Even though the adaptor’s authorial control regarding the settings, characters and the story makes the film look distinct from its source text, the use of external focalization allows the adaptation to resemble the source text at least in the aspect of mood.

Showing Landscape

As described in Chapter Two, Takahashi finds a “landscape-conversation” pattern in the structure of Kazoku gēmu. The description of landscape and content dominated by conversations appears by turns and forms a unique reading experience (See Figure 2, 3).

Takahashi feels that such approach to structure is similar to that of film. If defining the literary description of landscape as long-length camera rotation, the remaining parts can be identified as a mix of short-length shots. In this way, Takahashi argues that Honma’s approach of sometimes connecting short shorts with long-length camera rotations resembles that of France film director François Truffaut (1932-1984) (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 191).

The “landscape-conversation” pattern also can be found in The Family Game (See

Table 3). Similar to Takahashi’s illustration, if identifying the scenes involving verbal expressions as “conversation” and other parts solely presenting the characters’ actions and appearances as well as the settings as “landscape,” it is apparent that “conversation” and “landscape” appear by turns in the film.

Based on current evidence, it is even impossible to judge whether Morita noticed the pattern or not. Given Honma’s approach to the description of landscape is more filmic than literary, it is untenable to claim that Morita uses that pattern on purpose. The

“landscape-conversation” pattern in the film is not exactly the same as that of the source text as well. Nevertheless, I would assume that Morita caught the significance of the

95 description of landscape in the source text and thus treated it as a structuring principle when adapting Kazoku gēmu.

Time Scale Setting Description Shigeyuki discusses high school 00:04:04- Medium Shigeyuki’s Class application with his home room teacher 00:04:29 Close-up and gets reproached 00:04:30- Extreme The tutor stands on the boat facing 00:04:34 Long Shot the viewer & the river review Tokyo Bay 00:04:35- Medium The tutor stands on the boat backing 00:04:41- Long Shot to the viewer & the danchi 00:04:42- (Caption: the tutor – Yoshimoto Shō) 00:04:44 00:04:45- Shigeyuki concentrates on refilling a Close-up Shigeyuki’s Room 00:04:52 mechanical pencil 00:04:53- Extreme The tutor is walking 00:04:56 Long Shot The warehouse area in the front of The tutor walks to the danchi; he asks a 00:04:57- Medium the danchi passer-by whether the place lives the 00:05:05 Long Shot Numata family 00:05:06- Close-up Shigeyuki’s Room Shigeyuki plays with the pencil 00:05:11 The tutor waits for elevator. He asks a 00:05:12- Medium neighborhood woman if the place lives The Apartment 00:05:37 Close-up the Numata family; a child joins waiting; the tutor walks to the stairs

Table 3: An Illustration of the “Landscape-Conversation” Pattern in The Family Game

Here I want to use the night view of danchi that appears in both the film and its source text to illustrate my point (see Figure 5). The scene in the film is a direct shot of the danchi at night. The correlated representation in the source text is Shin’ichi’s description of people’s returning to the danchi at night:

居住者たちが三々五々帰って来る。夜とともにそれぞれの部屋は人間でいっぱいになり、朝とともに彼らを吐き出し、団地は日々脹んだり萎んだりするコンクリートのポンプである。人々はそのなかで、一日一日を消化するために生きている。

Residents come back in twos and threes. Their rooms are filled with humans as the coming of night and spew them out with the arrival of morning. Danchi is a concrete pump that expands and shrinks day by day. People live inside it for the digestion of every day (Honma, Kazoku gēmu 18).

The two description of danchi’s night are seemingly different, because the film uses an angle that looking at the danchi from an external space, while the novel uses an angle from inside from the danchi – through Shin’ichi’s window.

The two kinds of presentation of the danchi’s nightscape share similar effects. In the first place, the use of landscape also indicates the time and location. Structurally, they also function as the connection between parts. In the film, a night view of the danchi is given after the first tutoring session and followed by the dining scene of the Numata family with the tutor. In the source text, this ends the first visit of the tutor and is followed by the second tutoring session. In addition, although the night view is shown from an external angle which is different from that told through Shin’ichi’s point of view description, it also conveys the emotion and thinking of the author-observer.

Shin argues that the danchi in the film is deserted and appears to be lonely, which reflects the tutor’s perception of the danchi. However, what is indicated in this scene is that the tutor is in the internal space of the danchi having dinner with the Numata family.

For that reason, this single presentation of landscape is not an “emotional landscape” through the tutor’s perception but the author-observer’s emotional perception or so, I

97 argue. As explained earlier, the film replaces Shin’ichi with an author-observer, that is,

Morita. The landscape of the source text reveals Shin’ichi’s emotion and becomes a major way to know about Shin’ichi’s character.

Therefore, the landscape in the film is adapted to a significant component that not only expresses the characters’ emotion and feelings but also Morita’s authorial opinion.

The danchi at night in the eyes of Shin’ichi is filling with people, while is still wild in the eyes of Morita: most of the room is dark which indicates the absence of residences (See

Figure 5). The home is no longer the primary location associated with the night. With industrialization and urbanization, people spend less time at home. On the one hand, people work and study overtime under the pressure posed by the economic and educational system; on the other hand, home is no longer a place for release and relaxation, but a place full of alienation and stress.

Carving Symbols

Through the aforementioned approaches, the film first establishes a narration that easy to be shown and caught without hurting the basic story and mood of the source text, and then shows the story with a good, creative use of “landscape” which connects the film to its source text. However, merely basic images and story can rarely support a third- person narrative that is required to have more detail and broader focus. The solution used here is focusing on symbols, that is, transporting symbolic, iconic detail of the source text.

A quick instance is the dining scenes in the film. The film is well-known for its extensive use of dining scenes. Kondō argues that the film emphases on the “shoku fūkei

食風景 (lit., “the landscape of eating”)” due to the prevalence of dining in the film (2).

Truly Kazoku gēmu is not “shoku bungaku 食文学 (lit., ‘food literature’, or ‘eating literature’) as asserted by Kondō, it also features dining scenes. Shin’ichi as a first-person witness-narrator has limited access to other characters’ spaces such as his father’s

Figure 6: Footage of The Family Game Using the Kitchen (00:45:44)

99 workplace or his parents’ room. Thus, kitchen as a public space where characters get together and interact with each other appears frequently in Shin’ichi’s narration. The kitchen and dining room then become two of important symbols of the novel.

The adaptor transports the symbols from the source text to the novel and enriches them with his authorial ideas. The dining scenes and the use of the kitchen are richer than those of the source text. The example I would like to discuss here is not the representation of a family sitting in a line and eating on their own, but a scene set in the kitchen (see

Figure 6). In this scene, Shin’ichi purchases a record and shares it with Mrs. Numata, who is in the kitchen. In the source text, Shin’ichi reveals an attachment to Mrs. Numata and a complicated emotion towards Shigeyuki because this younger brother receives more attention and love from their mother. Nevertheless, since Shin’ichi is a first-person witness-narrator, such emotions are hidden behind his memory of his mother.

The film transports Shin’ichi’s emotion into the setting of kitchen. Without the presence of Shigeyuki and other characters, the kitchen becomes a private space which allows Shin’ichi to interact with his mother actively. He concentrates on his mother’s telling of her memory and the smile on his face exposes his pleasure. However, upon

Shigeyuki’s return home, the kitchen turns back to a public space again. Shin’ichi ends his interaction with Mrs. Numata and leaves kitchen quickly, which changes the kitchen back to a more private space, Shigeyuki takes up Shin’ichi’s former position and occupies

Mrs. Numata like a winner. The obscure brotherhood represented in the source text is shown with clear visual images in the setting of kitchen.

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As discussed above, the film carves the symbols of the source text and uses them creatively to represent the source text’s obscure representation of emotion and relations.

In addition to such an approach making heavy reference to the source text, Morita makes the symbols his through authorial control from the use of a third-person narrative. A significant example is the use of “twilight” in the film. In the source text, Shin’ichi often narrates activities at twilight, because twilight is a time when a day is going to end, and people come back to their homes from school or work. In the film, the symbol of twilight is represented in two ways: the first is the landscape of twilight; and the second is the

Japanese word of “twilight” – yūgure 夕暮れ (See Figure 7).

As previously mentioned, the showing of the landscape of twilight is a use of the source text’s description of landscape. Restricted by the narrow focus, the source text only involves the twilight view of the danchi. In contrast, Morita offers a broader view regarding twilight from Shigeyuki’s school, the train, Tokyo bay to the huge industrial area. What is represented in the film is not merely the twilight of a danchi, but the middle-lower living space of Tokyo. Furthermore, Morita uses “twilight” in a symbolic sense. “Twilight” is visible not just in the landscape, but on Shigeyuki’s notebook (See

Figure 7). In the film, Shigeyuki fills his notebook with the word yūgure pages after pages (00:24:20-00:25:19). The screen is fill with “yūgure” which appeals to the advantage of using visual images – a direct perception that is straightforward and can be impressive.

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Figure 7: Footages of The Family Game – “Twilight” (00:24:59-00:25:03)

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McDonald asserts that Shigeyuki’s repetition of the word yūgure shows his rebellion to the examination-oriented education system (“Family” 62). Regardless of the critical function of “yūgure”, the adaptation of “twilight” of the source text offers a crucial clue to get Morita’s approaches to adaptation. The process of adapting unavoidably requires transporting the information of the source text to the film. The crux of adaptation is the process of selecting and showing of the information. The adaptor has to first select information and then consider how to show the selected information with filmic text. Since difference modes of engagement have their own “specialty” (Hutcheon

24). The aforementioned analysis displays that Morita has an accurate understanding of the crux. His approaches of adaptation not only re-create the source text creatively, but also utilizes the specialty of film.

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Chapter 4: Conclusion

Film adaptation is common. Endless stories have been adapted into films and shown on the big screen in the past decades. Film adaptation is also unique. It bridges different mediums and forms and challenges adaptors’ skills. Even though adaptation in film industry has been a ubiquitous practice, people’s attitudes to film adaptation are ambiguous. Some adaptations are criticized by reason of their “infidelity” to the source text, while some shadow the source text by reason of their “originality.”

The Family Game is a typical case of the latter condition. While it is an adaptation of the Kazoku gēmu, it has been widely considered as an “original” work with less attention paid to its source text, as explained in Chapter One. The lack of attention can be attributed to following reasons. First, by using different narrative style, the film appears to be different from its source text. Second, the author of the source text is much less influential than the director of the film. Third, director-screenwriter Morita himself tends to deny or downplay the influence of the source text. Last, Japanese film industry does not value the distinction between adaptation films and original films. Those reasons make

The Family Game an interesting case on understanding the practice of adapting literary works.

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This project set out to offer a comparative study of The Family Game and Kazoku gēmu from an interdisciplinary perspective. The part of literature study on Kazoku gēmu was designed to disconnect the novel from its adaptations and examine it as an independent literary work. It identified Kazoku gēmu as an important literary work using a series of first-person narrative techniques. The literary analysis also revealed that

Kazoku gēmu is a text challenging for adaptors for its use of several narrative techniques.

A complicated use of narrative techniques leads Kazoku gēmu to be more literary and less entertaining, which helps understanding the public reception of the novel.

The part of film study on The Family Game was undertaken to connect the film to its source text and assess filmic approaches of adapting. It first confirmed that The

Family Game makes a heavy reference to its source text. This part has also shown that

Morita’s approaches to adaptation not only solve the challenges posed by the unique narrative style of the source text, but also offer him authorial control of the film. More importantly, clarifying the influence from the source text is useful for delineating

Morita’s divergences from the novel in the film, where he carves out his own authorial vision in terms of cinematography and social issues in Japanese society.

The findings of the project provide insights for further understanding of Kazoku gēmu, The Family Game as well as the question of how to access an adaptation and its source text. First, adaptations should not be treated as the base of evaluating a literary work. Setting in the domain of imagination, literature offers experience different from that of watching a film. Simply comparing the story and characters of a novel with its

105 adaptations might prevent from understanding literary techniques using in the novel such as narrative technique.

Second, treating an adaptation as an adaptation is not equal to treating an adaptation as an original film. The lack of distinguishing an adaptation from its source text can result in inaccurate assessment of both the film and its source text. Highlighting the differences between the film and its source text, in fact, facilitates the understanding of the adapters’ ideas and objectives. In short, a clarification of adaptation can deepen understanding of both the source text and the adaptation.

Since the study is limited to a focus on narrative and approaches of adaptation, it did not include a detailed examination of Honma’s and Morita’s authorial vision reflected in Kazoku gēmu and The Family Game. I would like to offer some insights based on my reading of both the two works for further discussion. In general, Kazoku gēmu reveals

Honma’s realistic criticism and pessimistic visions of social issues of modern life: family becomes a role-playing game where members are doing what they have to do; highly gendered-division of labor ties mothers to home wasting their potential and attaches fathers to work, thus losing their chance to understand their families; children grow up without their own visions of the future; society is like a role-playing game and everyone has to follow certain model roles.

In Morita’s The Family Game, “the family game” is a game between the tutor and the Numata family. The problem of education is the examination-oriented system and grade-based evaluation. The film reveals an optimistic authorial vision: the alienation in

106 modern Japanese family is true though, it is not incurable. A careful comparison of the film and its source text would be of great help in identifying Morita’s authorial vision.

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---. “Shinario wa sanryū, kantoku sureba...” Shinario, vol. 39, no. 9, 1983, pp. p120-123.

---. The Family Game. Nikkatsu Film Studios, New Century Producers, and Japan Art Theater Guild, 2006.

“Morita Yoshimitsu kantoku ga hatsu no hōmudorama ‘Kazoku gēmu’ ni iyoku.” Yomiuri shinbun, Evening edition, 28 Feb. 1983, p. 11.

Morita Yoshimitsu, and Tōru Kawasaki. “Taidan/ Morita Yoshimitsu vs Kawasaki Tōru: Omoshiro-sa wa Amida kuji.” Omoide no Morita Yoshimitsu, Kinema Junpōsha, 1985, pp. 137–53.

111

Nihei Chikako. Haruki Murakami : Storytelling and Productive Distance. Routledge, 2019. www.taylorfrancis.com, doi:10.4324/9780367266653.

Osaka Naoki, and Tōru Utsunomiya. “Special Interview Morita Yoshimitsu ・Eiga kantoku--Eiga no deki o kimeru no wa gensaku yori mo chīmuka da.” Shūkan Tōyō keizai, vol. Tokudai-gō, no. 6229, 2009, pp. 102–04.

Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

---. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Mouton, 1982.

Rice, Martha Emma. Murakami Haruki: The Problem of Genre. Ohio State University, 1995.

Romberg, Bertil. Studies in the Narrative Technique of the First-Person Novel. Norwood Editions, 1979.

Saitō Jirō. “Katei no kūhaku, kodomo no jihei.” Tobira no mukō no kodomotachi, Nihon Editā Sukūru Shuppanbu, 1982.

Sato Tadao. “Rising Sons.” American Film: A Journal of the Film and Television Arts, vol. 11, Dec. 1985, pp. 58–62.

Shin Eunkyung. “‘Kazoku gēmu’ (1983) : ‘fūkei’ (-scape) wo chūshin ni.” Bandaly, vol. 16, Mar. 2017, pp. 53–71.

“Shueisha no hon kōhyō hatsubai-chū.” Gunzō, vol. 45, no. 5, May 1990, p. 233. Google Books, doi:10.11501/6047879.

Snyder Stephen. “Contemporary Japanese Fiction.” The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature, edited by Haruo Shirane et al., Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 760–67. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.1017/CHO9781139245869.082.

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Soutaso@yoshi. “Review of ‘Kazoku gēmu’ (1982) by Yōhei Honma.” Dokusho Mētā, 13 Feb. 2013, https://bookmeter.com/books/1750614.

Stam Robert. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, edited by Alessandra Raengo and Robert Stam, Blackwell, 2005.

“Subarubungakushō jushō-saku kōho-saku ichiran 1 - 42-kai.” World of Literary Prizes, 19 Oct. 2018, http://prizesworld.com/prizes/novel/subr.htm.

Takubo Hideo. “‘Boku’ shōsetsu.” Subaru, vol. 3, no. 12, Dec. 1981, pp. 12–13.

Tang Yuyao. “Jia zu you xi” (jie xuan) ri yi fan yi shi jian bao gao (Translation report of the Japanese novel: “The Family Games”). South China University of Technology, 2017.

Tsuchiya Yoshio. “[Ashita no kao] (62) Morita Yoshimitsu hitto shinakya make (rensai).” Yomiuri shinbun, Tōkyō evening edition, 18 Jan. 1989, p. 1.

Ummah, Listi Athifatul. Analisis Kritik Sosial Dalam Novel Kazoku Game Karya Honma Youhei (Honma Yōhei ni yoru “kazoku gemu” ni aru shakaihihan no bunseki). Diponegoro University, 8 Dec. 2017. eprints.undip.ac.id, http://eprints.undip.ac.id/58608/.

“Yoshimitsu Morita.” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0605741/. Accessed 3 June 2019.

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Appendix A: The Publication of Honma Yōhei

Book

Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム (“The Family Game”). Shueisha, 1982.

Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム (“The Family Game”). Shueisha, 1984.

Katarushisu カタルシス (“Catharsis”). Shueisha, 1990.

Story

“Tōsensaku ‘kazoku gēmu’ 当選作「家族ゲーム」 (‘Prize Winner ‘the Family Game’).” Subaru, vol. 3, no. 12, Dec. 1981, p. 16～85.

“Kasetto rūmu カセット・ルーム (‘Cassette Room’)” Subaru, vol. 6, no. 2, Feb. 1984, pp. 58–106.

“Seremonī セレモニー (‘Ceremony’).” Subaru, vol. 11, no. 8, Aug. 1989, pp. 14–69.

“Katarushisu カタルシス (‘Catharsis’).” Subaru, vol. 12, no. 7, July 1990, pp. 48–97.

“Kanashimi no shinfonī 悲しみのシンフォニー (‘Symphony of Sadness’).” Subaru, vol. 14, no. 3, Mar. 1992, pp. 121–41.

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Misc.

“Jushō no kotoba 受賞のことば (‘Award Speech’).” Subaru, vol. 12, Dec. 1981, p. 9.

“Omote to ura 表と裏 (‘Front and Back’).” Seishun to dokusho, no. 75, Jan. 1982, pp. 8–9.

“Deodoranto sayō デオドラント作用 (The Effect of Deodorant).” Subaru, vol. 7, no. 6, June 1985, pp. 190–91.

“Fōramu subaru [machi no kao - chikadō] tokai no kaori フォームすばる「町の顔――地下道」都会のカオリ (‘Forum Subaru [Face of the Town – The Underpass] Scent of the City’).” Subaru, vol. 10, no. 4, Apr. 1988, pp. 18–19.

“Jushō o meguru wanpointo essei fāmu kurashi 受賞をめぐるワンポイント：ファーム暮らし (‘One Point about Winning Award – Farmer Life’).” Subaru, vol. Supplement, Dec. 1990, p. 145.

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Appendix B: Adaptations of the novel Kazoku gēmu29

“Kazoku gēmu (1) Ochikobore wa bun nagure! Watashi no koishita mōretsu katei kyōshi 家族ゲーム (1) 落ちこぼれはブン殴れ！私の恋したモーレツ家庭教師 (lit., ‘The Family Game (1) Dropout should be punched! The enthusiastic tutor I fall in love with.’)”. Recorded television drama episode. 2-hour special, an entry in the Geijutsu-sai 芸術祭 competition of 1982 (Furusaki and Nichigai Asoshiētsu 164).30 Directed by Ikehiro Kazuo 池広一夫 (1929- ), written by Nakajima Takehiro 中島丈博 (1935- ), performances by Kaga Takeshi 鹿賀丈史 (1950-) [the tutor Yoshimoto], Kishimoto Kayoko 岸本加世子 (1960-) [the older sister], Itō Yasuomi 伊藤康臣 (1967-) [the younger brother], Hana Hajime ハナ肇 (1930-1993) [Mr. Numata], Minamida Yōko 南田洋子 (1933-2009) [Mrs. Numata], Asahi National Broadcasting Co., Ltd (ANB), 8 November 1982.

The Family Game (Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム). Film. 106 min. Directed and written by Morita Yoshimitsu, performances by Matsuda Yūsasaku [the tutor], Itami Jūzō [Mr. Numata], Yuki Saori [Mrs. Numata], Tsujita Junichi [the older brother] and Miyagawa Ichirōta [the younger brother]. ATG, Nikkatsu, and NSP, June 1983.

Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム. Recorded television drama series. Six episodes. Directed by Yoshida Akio 吉田秋生 (1951- ) and Maeda Hideki 前田英樹, written by Tsutsui Tomomi 筒井ともみ (1948- ), performances by Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi 長渕剛 (1956-) [the tutor Yoshimoto], Matsuda Yōji 松田洋治 (1967-)[the younger brother], Miyoshi kei’ichi 三好圭一 (1966-) [the older brother],

29 Information of the drama series below refers to multiple sources including official websites, published records, and Terebi dorama dētabēsu (“Kazoku gēmu (1)”; “Kazoku gēmu II”; “Kazoku gēmu supesharu aniki no kateikyōshi wa hana no joshidaisei na no da”; “Kazoku gēmu II”; “Kazoku gēmu (1)”; Fuji Television Network, Inc; “Kazoku gēmu”). 30 Geijutsu-sai refers to the National Arts Festival held by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

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Shirakawa Yumi 白川由美 (1936-2016) [Mrs. Numata], Itō Shirō 伊東四朗 (1937-) [Mr. Numata], TBS television, 26 August - 30 September 1983.

“Kazoku gēmu (2) 家族ゲーム (2)”. A special 2-hour television drama episode. Directed by Ikehiro Kazuo, written by Nakajima Takehiro, performances by Kaga Takeshi [the tutor Yoshimoto], Kishimoto Kayoko 岸本加世子 (1960-) [the older sister], Itō Yasuomi 伊藤康臣 (1967-) [the younger brother], Hana Hajime ハナ肇 (1930-1993) [Mr. Numata], Minamida Yōko 南田洋子 (1933-2009) [Mrs. Numata], Asahi National Broadcasting Co., Ltd (ANB), 12 March 1984.

Kazoku gēmu II 家族ゲーム II. An eleven-episode television drama series. Directed by Yoshida Akio, Maeda Hideki, Yamada Mamoru 山田護, and Yanai Mitsuru 柳井満 (1935-2016), written by Tsutsui Tomomi, performances by Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi [the tutor Yoshimoto], Nitani Yurie 二谷友里恵 (1964-) [Tonomura 殿村 family’s daughter], Matsuda Yōji [Tonomura family’s younger son], Miyoshi kei’ichi [Tonomura family’s older son], Shirakawa Yumi [Mrs. Tonomura], Orenarudokuma オレナルド熊 (1935-1994) [Mr. Tonomura], TBS television, 20 April - 13 July 1984.

“Kazoku gēmu supesharu aniki no kateikyōshi wa hana no joshidaisei na no da 家族ゲームスペシャルアニキの家庭教師は花の女子大生・なのダ (lit., ‘The Family Game Special: My older brother’s tutor is a beautiful college girl’)”. A special television drama episode. Directed by Yoshida Akio, written by Tsutsui Tomomi, performances by Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi [the tutor Yoshimoto], Takagi Saya 高樹沙耶 (1963-)[new tutor], Matsuda Yōji [the younger brother], Miyoshi kei’ichi [the older brother], Shirakawa Yumi [Mrs. Numata], Itō Shirō [Mr. Numata], Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, Inc. (TBS), 5 April 1985.

The Family Game (Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム). A ten-episode television drama series. Directed by Satō Yūichi 佐藤祐市 (1962- ) and Iwata Kazuyuki 岩田和行, written by Mutō Shōgo 武藤将吾 (1977- ), performances by Sakurai Shō 櫻井翔 (1982- ) [the tutor Yoshimoto], Kamiki Ryūnosuke 神木隆之介 (1993-) [the older brother], Uragami Seishū 浦上晟周 (1999-) [the younger brother], Itao Itsuji 板尾創路 (1963-) [Mr. Numata], Suzuki Honami 鈴木保奈美 (1966-) [Mrs. Numata], Fuji Television Network, Inc, 17 April - 19 June 2013. https://www.fujitv.co.jp/b_hp/kazoku-game/index.html.

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Appendix C: Filmography of Morita Yoshimitsu31

Independent 8mm Film

POSI-?. 1970. 20 min.

Hex. 1970. 3 min.

Sky. 1970. 3 min.

Eiga 映画 (“Film”). 1971. 40 min.

Seaside. 1971. 3 min.

Eating. 1971. 3 min.

Midnight. 1971. 5 min.

Light. 1971. 15 min.

Mother. 1971. 3 min.

Tenki yobō 天気予報 (“Weather Report”). 1971. 30 min.

31 The list is based on Japanese film database (“Morita Yoshimitsu”), IMDb database (“Yoshimitsu Morita”) and “Morita Yoshimitsu Filmography” of Gerow (250–52). The drama series Morita directed and works he engaged as an actor are not included.

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Nude. 1971. 30 min.

Film. 1971. 3 min.

Denwa 電話 (“Telephone”). 1971. 5 min.

Enkinjutsu 遠近術 (“The Art of Perspective”). 1972. 90 min.

Kinkō shindan 健康診断 (“Physical Check-up”). 1972. 20 min.

Kōjō chitai 工場地帯 (“Industrial Belt”). 1972. 35 min.

Tōkyō kinkō chitai 東京近郊地帯 (“Tokyo Suburban Belt”). 1973. 35 min.

Kaiga kyōhitsu 絵画教室 (“Painting Class”). 1974. 30 min.

Shojō shumi 処女趣味 (“Girl’s Taste”). 1974. 30 min.

Suijōki kyūkō 水上機急行 (“The Steam Express”). 1976, 80 min.

Raibu in Chigasaki ライブイン茅ヶ崎 (“Drive in Chigasaki”). 1978. 85 min.

Gekiteki Dokyumento repōto ’78-’79 劇的ドキュメントレポート '78-'79 (lit., “Dramatic Document Report ‘78- ‘79”). 1979. 59 min.

Long Feature Film

No Yōna Mono の・ようなもの (“Something Like it”). September 12, 1981. 103 min. N. E. W. S. Corporation (Director-Writer).

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Shibugakitai: bōizu andō gāruzu シブがき隊：ボーイズ & ガールズ (“Come on Girls”). July 10, 1982. 78 min. Toei Company, Ltd. (Director-Writer).

Maruhon: uwasa no sutorippā （本）噂のストリッパー (“Top Stripper”). September 15, 1982. 67 min. Nikkatsu Corporation (Director-Writer).

Pinku katto: futoku aishite fukaku aishite ピンクカット：太く愛して深く愛して (“Pink Cut: Love Hard, Love Deep”). January 21, 1983. 68 min. Nikkatsu Corporation (Director-Writer).

Kazoku gēmu 家族ゲーム (“The Family Game”). June 4, 1983. 107 min. ATG (Director-Screenwriter).

Sannenme no uwaki 三年目の浮気 (“The Third-Year Affair”). July 8, 1983. 75 min. Nikkatsu Corporation (Writer).

Tokimeki ni shisu ときめきに死す (“Deaths in Tokimeki”). February 18, 1984. 105 min. NSP (Director-Screenwriter).

Mein tēma メイン・テーマ (“Main Theme”). July 14, 1984. 101 min. Nikkatsu Corporation (Director-Screenwriter).

Sorekara それから (“And Then”). November 9, 1985. 130 min. Toei Company, Ltd. (Director-Screenwriter).

Sorobanzuku そろばんずく (“All For Business”). August 23, 1986. 109 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Director-Writer).

Uhohho tankentai ウホッホ探検隊 (“The House of Wedlock”). October 18, 1986. 105 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Screenwriter).

120

Baka yarō! Watashi, okottemasu バカヤロー！私、怒ってます (“You Idiot! I am Mad”). October 15, 1988. 94 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Executive Producer- Writer).

Kanashī iro ya nen 悲しい色やねん (“Love and Action in Osaka”). December 10, 1988. 102 min. Toei Company, Ltd. (Director-Screenwriter).

Ai to heisei no iro-otoko 愛と平成の色男 (“Man of 24 Hours”). July 8, 1989. 96 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Director-Writer).

Baka yarō! 2 Shiawase ni naritai バカヤロー! 2 幸せになりたい (“You Idiot! I Want to be Happy”). July 8, 1989. 98 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Executive Producer-Writer).

Kicchin キッチン (“Kitchen”). October 29, 1989. 106 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Director-Screenwriter).

Baka yarō! 3 Henna yatsura バカヤロー! 3 へんな奴ら (“You Idiot! Strange Guys”). October 20, 1990. 94 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Executive Producer-Writer).

Oishī kekkon おいしい結婚 (“Happy Wedding”). May 18, 1991. 109 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Director-Writer).

Baka yarō! 4 You! Omae no koto da yo バカヤロー! 4 YOU! お前のことだよ (“You Idiot! 4: I’m Talking about You”). September 14, 1991. 97 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Executive Producer-Writer).

Mirai no omoide: Last Christmas 未来の想い出 Last Christmas (“Future Memories: Last Christmas”). August 29, 1992. 118 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Director- Screenwriter).

Menkyo ga nai 免許がない (“I’ve No License!”). February 11, 1994. 102 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Writer).

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(Haru) （ハル） (“Haru”). March 9, 1996. 118 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Director-Writer).

Shitsurakuen 失楽園 (“Lost Paradise”). May 10, 1997. 119 min. Toei Company, Ltd. (Director-Screenwriter).

Kiriko no fūkei キリコの風景 (“You Alone Can’t See”). July 25, 1998. 105 min. Nikkatsu Corporation (Screenwriter).

39 Keihō dai-sanjūkyū-jō 39 刑法第三十九条 (“Keiho”). May 1, 1999. 133 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Director-Screenwriter).

Kuroi ie 黒い家 (“The Black House”). November 13, 1999. 118 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Director).

Karafuru カラフル (“Colorful”). October 7, 2000. 98 min. Mūbīterebijon (Screenwriter).

Mohōhan 模倣犯 (“Copycat Killer”). June 8, 2002. 123 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Director- Screenwriter).

Ashuro no gotoku 阿修羅のごとく (“Like Asura”). November 8, 2003. 135 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Director-Screenwriter).

Umineko 海猫 (“The Seagull”). November 13, 2004. 129 min. Toei Company, Ltd. (Director).

Mamiya Kyōdai 間宮兄弟 (“The Mamiya Brothers”). May 13, 2006. 119 min. Asmik Ace, Inc. (Director-Screenwriter).

Sausubaundo サウスバウンド (“Southbound”). October 6, 2007. 114 min. Kadokawa Pictures, Inc. (Director-Screenwriter).

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Tsubaki sanjūrō 椿三十郎 (“Tsubaki Sanjūrō”). December 1, 2007. 119 min. Toho Co., Ltd. (Director).

Watashi dasuwa わたし出すわ (“It’s on Me”). October 31, 2009. 110 min. Asmik Ace, Inc. (Director-Writer).

Bushi no kakeibō 武士の家計簿 (“Abacus and Sword”). December 4, 2010. 129 min. Shochiku Co., Ltd. And Asmik Ace, Inc. (Director).

Bokudachi kyūkō A resshadeikō 僕達急行 A 列車で行こう (“Take the ‘A’ Train”). March 24, 2012. 117 min. Toei Company, Ltd. (Director-Writer).

Video Movies

Baka yarō! V Henna yatsura バカヤロー! V エッチで悪いか (“You Idiot! V: What’s Bad About Sexy”). February 21, 1994. 95 min. Bandai Visual/Emotion (Writer).

Baka yarō! V 2 Watashi, mondai desu バカヤロー! V 2 私、問題です (“You Idiot! V 2: I’m a Problem”). October 22, 1994. 101 min. Bandai Visual/Emotion (Writer).

Maru’ura tōsatsunannpadō （裏）盗撮ナンパ道 (lit., “Sneak pictures to pick up”). March 8, 1996. Nikkatsu Corporation (Writer).

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