Yoshimura Kosaburo's Tale of Genji

[David Averbach]

The film played in the "Literary Adaptations" series at the Pacific Film
Archive in Berkeley a few months ago, based on a series curated by the
Japan Society (Kyoko Hirano) entitled Literature to Film.  This was the
description, although not very informative.

Hasegawa Kazuo and Kyo Machiko star in this gorgeous adaption of the
eleventh-century epic by Murasaki Shikibu, the "first" modern novelist and
one whose observations are as pyschologically pertinent now as they were in
the Middle Ages (Donald Richie, Japanese Film).  After Rashomon, viewers
were intrigued by the unconventional Japanese period film.  Yoshimura, like
Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, "specialize[d] in that rare genre, the period film
which reflects modern life" (Richie).  His Prince Hikaru Genji is a
legendary aristocrat, one of the mikado's favorite bastard sons and a
seducer who cannot find emotional or spiritual fulfillment.  Joan Mellen in
The Waves at Genji's Door, notes that Murasaki's hero "epitomized what was
best in the Japanese character of the time.  His love of nature, his
constancy, compassion, and effectiveness were the values most admired in
Murasaki's world, [whereas] Yoshimura's Genji is submerged within a world
haunted by fatalism and a Buddhist sense of the transitoriness of life."
The film took the top prize for photography at Cannes. Cinematographer
Sugiyama Kohei also shot the amazing A Page of Madness and Gate of Hell.

Written by Shindo Kaneto, based on the novel by Murasaki Shikibu

Photography	Sugiyama Kohei

Starring		Hasegawa Kazuo
		Kogure Michiyo
		Kyo Machiko
		Okochi Denjiro

130 minutes
color
Daiei
_______________________________________________
David Averbach

University of California at Berkeley
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
104 Durant
Berkeley, CA 94720
FAX: (510) 642-6931

averbach at socrates.berkeley.edu
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