Lecture 2005-04
"Tanizaki Jun'ichiro: The Film adaptations of his works"
Mr. Donald Richie

We were favoured with pleasant spring weather for our April meeting, which was well attended by about 90 people. Among them we were happy to have with us the Belgian ambassador, H.E. Mr. Jean François Branders, and Mrs. Branders. We were also very happy to have as our speaker this time Mr. Donald Richie, known to all for his incisive reviews of films and books in the Japan Times. Mr Richie had taken as his subject "Tanizaki Jun'ichiro: The Film adaptations of his works", and said that his paper was a new version of the thesis he had presented at the Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Symposium in Venice in 1955.

Few authors were ever pleased with film adaptations of their work, but even fewer could have been so displeased and disappointed as Tanizaki had been. The principal reason for this was that, unlike most authors, he had written four original scripts and helped direct one production. He had also seen already in 1918 that the cinema was a new art with a great potential for development; he found, he said, in motion pictures an artistic quality that kabuki or shimpa plays rarely achieved; he was referring to films made in the West, which were a lot more interesting than the Japanese plays of those days. From a 1921 essay "Movie Technique" it could be seen that he recognised cinematic technique as a kind of narrative style. In his later writings he sometimes used film images, as when, in Chijin no Ai, he says that Joji, looking at Naomi, saw parts of her body enlarged "like close-ups in a motion picture". And already in his 1918 essay he had written that the close-up of a face greatly increased the effect of the drama.

Typically, Tanizaki threw himself into this new medium. In 1920 he became script consultant for the newly-formed Taisho Motion Picture Studios in Yokohama, and became so involved in the whole production process that he ended up spending more than half of each month there, and his writing of novels suffered as a result. Recognising that foreign films had a better understanding of the nature of this new narrative medium, he expected Japanese cinema to emulate their achievements, and when it did not he lost interest in the cinema. Shindo Kaneto, who was to direct several Tanizaki adaptations, opines that his interest was lost because Japanese filmmakers of that time lacked the technique to close "the gap between his vision and the completed films".

Knowing so much about the potentiality of the cinema, Tanizaki never really had anything good to say about any of the adaptations of his own works; and with good reason. Of the first of these, Shimazu Yasujiro's 1935 version of Shunkin-sho, Tanizaki wrote that had he directed it himself he would have emphasised the contrast between reality and fantasy - a contrast that was noticeably missing from all the later adaptations. With regard to the same film, the noted director Itami Mansaku expressed the opinion that there was no such thing as a perfect screen adaptation of a literary work; what resulted was an entirely new and different creation.

What Tanizaki got in most of his adaptations was nothing like what he wanted. The films were, indeed, new and different, but they were also, as a rule, decidedly inferior as film. They traduced the original, and offered nothing in its place. But there were some exceptions, such as the adaptations of Toyoda Shiro. The 1956 film version of Shozo to neko to futari no onna is a fairly literal adaptation of the novella, and one which transposes its playful spirit into cinematic terms. Of this film, however, Tanizaki seems to have published no opinion. Of some of the other adaptations, his opinion was well known, and the president of Daiei, the late Nagata Masaichi, remembered that Tanizaki did not like anything they did. And not without reason. In its 1959 version of Kagi, not only was the story entirely changed but the advance publicity was so scurrilous that the irate author forced the company to apologise. Daiei apologised to Tanizaki for damaging the artistic quality of his literary work (also expressing deep regret for having insinuated that the heroine of the novel was Mrs. Tanizaki), and pledged that it would take great care not to make similar mistakes in the future. But it did nothing of the sort. In its next adaptation, the 1962 Futen rojin nikki, the company allowed director Kimura Keigo to turn this moving work into a Daiei sex comedy, and permitted such excesses as having the hero bulldoze his formal Japanese garden as a tribute to his fair charmer.

The treatment of Sasameyuki in all three film versions allows us an understanding of the author's exasperation. The 1950 version presented only parts of the story, and, though it insisted on the Osaka accent which is so much a part of the novel, Takamine Hideko, the leading actress, did not sound like an Osakan at all -- as Edward Seidensticker commented in a review of the 1959 version in the Yomiuri Japan News; this second version had a more authentic Osaka dialect, but "a wholly inert script". Donald Richie himself also wrote in the Japan Times in 1959 that the film adaptation was utterly unfaithful to the spirit of the book. Finally, in Ichikawa Kon's 1984 version -- which Tanizaki did not live to see -- unfaithfulness turned into willful disregard. The Osaka dialect was forgotten, new story lines were included, and a general triteness was created by turning the work into what was rightly called a kimono show.

Shochiku were no better. When Hakujitsumu was released in a soft-core porno version the author was so angry that, it is said, he wanted to sue. In a review in the Japan Times in 1964, the critic Mary Evans wrote that the original story had been not so much expanded (which was acceptable) as blown up -- a process which usually disturbed the original outlines -- and commented that the honourable name of Shochiku was not usually associated with such revolting trash. Another version of this work was made in 1981, this time as hard-core porno, shown complete in the West, though Japan got only a censored version. Tanizaki would not have objected to the pornography as such, but he would have objected to the vulgarity, the lack of imagination and the pandering to the supposed tastes of the audience. The blending of reality and fantasy in the story would, he might have thought, have offered the filmmaker an opportunity to show what the cinema could do, but this was not to be.

In a sense, the guilty film companies might be exonerated by something Tanizaki himself wrote. He said that certain works, such as The Divine Comedy, could be neither filmed nor staged. He did not speak of the novel, but the same comment held good. A work like Moby Dick depends on an interior life which animates it but is not showable; all film versions of it are merely about the whale. Movies excel at surface realism, and novels excel at that mysterious inner life with which Tanizaki's work is so imbued. So it is that Yamazaki Toyoko's Bonchi can make an admirable film, whereas Kagi cannot. In this sense, then, Tanizaki's major works are too good to be filmed.

Whether the author would have concurred with this verdict is problematical. In his view the nascent commercial cinema would in time become capable of surmounting this drawback through its combination of fact and fancy, though it in fact did no such thing. Since Tanizaki did not give serious thought to the cinema during his later years, we cannot know what he might have thought now the movies have the kind of technique he so much looked forward to. We can, however, appreciate the irony of a serious scholar of film having most of his works traduced by the movies, and can sympathetically share his disappointment and displeasure at what the commercial cinema did to his work.

There followed a lively question time: one question, about the early film industry in Japan, elicited the comment that important foreign films had often taken a remarkably long time to arrive in Japan; Potemkin, for instance, was a 1925 film but was first shown in Japan in 1951. Another questioner asked why Tanizaki sold the rights to his works if he did not like the adaptations. Donald Richie said that Tanizaki was acting in good faith. He did, however, at one stage think of suing, believing that that might shock his opponents into decent behaviour. Sometimes film versions were made without his even having been consulted, for example a pornographic film of one of his sexy novels was made in Italy in the 1970s (after his death). Another question posed was about whether Tanizaki had ever directed a film himself. He had, but they are all now lost. He directed "The Lasciviousness of the Viper", the script of which has also disappeared. He also directed "Amateur Club" in 1915 about young people on the beach in Kamakura deciding to put on their own kabuki play. This film was made as a comedy so that it would be in touch with the modern Japan. Tanizaki's belief was in the integrity but also the fragility of the original in the face of the commercial possibilities. To the question of what films moved Tanizaki, the answer was that he had not actually ever said which films moved him but he had talked about the ones that stimulated him, for example the Keystone Cops and Charlie Chaplin. Donald Richie went on to say, in response to a question as to whether he had ever met Tanizaki himself during his lifetime, that although it had been physically possible he had not, in fact, met him; but he had been strongly influenced by Tanizaki's work, especially the sublime "Diary of an Mad Old Man"; one of his reasons for giving this paper to the Asiatic Society was to get closer to Tanizaki again.

Dr. Lee Colegrove, in proposing the vote of thanks, commented that as they were walking together to the lecture that evening he had mentioned an article that Donald Richie had written some forty years before. To Dr. Colegrove's amazement, Richie immediately summarized it. The speaker had had many roles -- critic, essayist, novelist, diarist, travel writer, and universal genius. As this evening's lucid talk had demonstrated, Donald Richie was also a born teacher.

The evening concluded with a small reception where wine, soft drinks, cookies and senbei were served and everyone took the opportunity of talking with our speaker and mingling with each other.

Finally, thanks are once again due to the ever-kind Mr. Kadonaga of Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen, who was not only on hand all evening but stayed right to the end helping us to clear up and rearrange the furniture for the next morning's lessons. More people than usual followed his example and we are grateful to everyone who lent a helping hand.