Picaresque
|
|
From AsianMediaWiki
User Rating
Nobody voted on this yet
Profile
- Movie: Picaresque
- Romaji:
- Japanese: ピカレスク -人間失格-
- Director: Hidehiro Ito
- Writer: Kota Yamada
- Producer: Masashi Kitagawa, Seiichi Ono, Toshihiro Sato
- Cinematography: Shohei Ando
- Release Date: July 27, 2002
- Runtime: 133 min.
- Language: Japanese
- Country: Japan
Plot
On June 19, 1948, the bodies of Japanese novelist and short-story writer Osamu Dazai and his lover Tomie Yamazaki were found drowned in the Tamagawa Waterworks in Tokyo. They had committed suicide six days earlier. The news made headlines across Japan but it came as no great surprise. Between 1930 and 1937 Dazai had attempted suicide at least three times and he had dealt with the subject in many of his short stories. Born Tsushima Shuji in Kanagi, in northern Honshu, in 1909, Dazai was the tenth of eleven children of a wealthy landowner and politician. He studied French literature at Tokyo University where he first encountered Marxism and began to write stories for magazines. At 21 he begins to live with Hatsue Toyama, a geisha in Aomori, but his first suicide attempt is with Natsumi Tanabe, a waitress at a caf?in the Ginza. It is a double suicide attempt but only Natsumi dies. Dazai begins using drugs and is repeatedly hospitalized because of his habit. In 1939 he marries Ishihara Michiko and begins a new chapter in his life story. He becomes friends with the writer Masuji Ibuse and his wife and the Ibuses support him financially through troubled times. At the end of World War II, Dazai's dark, wry, alienated works touch a nerve in the popular imagination and he becomes the literary voice of the "lost generation". At 32, by now married to Sachiko Mishihara, a high-school teacher introduced to him by Ibuse, Dazai meets Tomie, a young widow who works at a beauty parlour. Her love for him is instantaneous and quickly becomes obsessive. She cannot bear to share him with anyone. When their bodies are discovered, people theorize that it was Tomie who pushed Dazai to his death.
Notes
- Related titles (based on Osamu Dazai novels):
- Shayo (2009)
- Pandora's Box | Pandora no hako (2009)
- Villon's Wife | Viyon no tsuma (2009)
- The Fallen Angel | Ningen Shikkaku (2010)
- Related titles (based on Osamu Dazai's life):
- Picaresque (2002)
- Dazai Osamu Monogatari (TBS / 2005)
Cast
- Kawamura Ryuichi - Osamu Dazai
- Shiro Sano
- Tamaki Ogawa
- Mizuho Shumon
- Nae Yuki - Sachiko
- Tasuku Nagaoka
