Reading and Watching Ukigumo Through Adaptations

Ukigumo (Novel 1951, Film 1955) is a novel by Hayashi Fumiko(1903−1951) that can be considered the culmination of her later career; it was adapted into a film directed by Naruse Mikio(1905−1969), with a screenplay by Mizuki Yoko(1910-2003). The story follows an agricultural bureaucrat and a typist who fell in adulterous love in French Indochina during the Pacific War. After their repatriation to occupied Japan, they attempt to part ways but are unable to do so, eventually drifting all the way to Yakushima. The work addresses themes such as the memory and recollection of wartime experiences, the rewriting of memory, and postcolonial melodrama. This paper compares and analyzes the original novel, the screenplay, and the film from the perspective of adaptation. The “cinematic body” serves as a metaphor for the sense of community during the military occupation by Imperial Japan, the repatriation period, and the GHQ occupation era, while simultaneously amplifying and portraying the image of female protagonist’s body that was alienated from and marginalized by these experiences. In particular, the bodily representations of illness, pregnancy, abortion, and death show significant differences between the novel’s narrative and the film’s visual expression. In some respects, visual expression brings to the surface meanings that remained in the realm of the unconscious in the novel. In addition, the film visualizes the series of representations embedded within the novel’s text. This can be considered a successful example of film succeeding through a critical interpretation of literature.