Shinzo Katayama Adapts Yoshiharu Tsuge’s Manga Universe for Big Screen; Man’s Private World on Full Display

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:23 JST, December 19, 2024

“Ame no Naka no Yokujo” (“Lust in the Rain”), a film based on four short manga by the one and only Yoshiharu Tsuge, opened in theaters on Nov. 29.

Manga legend Tsuge is known for his surrealist art and storytelling. Director Shinzo Katayama, who also wrote the screenplay, revealed a surprising goal for making a film adaptation of Tsuge’s works: “I tried to make a love story,” the director said.

The film is based on manga by Tsuge, including the titular work, which is so lascivious as to have been storyboarded straight from a man’s fantasy.

“[The four manga] may appear similar to each other, but they are all different,” Katayama said. “I wondered how I should arrange them to present them with thrills and excitement. I then came up with the idea of arranging them by moving various elements of the story back and forth little by little.”

Soaked in rain and covered in mud, a man has a sexual encounter with a woman he runs into at a bus stop. Waking up from what turns out to have been a strange dream, struggling manga artist Yoshio (played by Ryo Narita) becomes attracted to Fukuko (played by Eriko Nakamura), a beautiful widow, and an unquenchable desire begins building up inside him.

Chasing, being chased and mutually desiring — the idyllic relationship between man and woman depicted in the film is evocative of the zeitgeist in the 1970s and 1980s, when the original manga was published. It also reflects the fantasies and unrequited love of Yoshio, who is very shy.

“Yoshio’s personality is close to that of the average man [in Japan] today. [When the time comes to make a move], they run away. To shut yourself up in your own small universe may be something very common to today,” Katayama said.

After working as an assistant to South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, Katayama made his debut as a director of the feature-length film with “Misaki no Kyodai” (“Siblings of the Cape”). He won a number of domestic film awards for that film and his second feature-length film “Sagasu” (Missing), thereby becoming one of the promising next-generation directors whose new works are highly anticipated.

One of the reasons he decided to accept the offer to direct this production was that it would be filmed in Taiwan.

“There are landscapes evocative of Japan’s past. I also like that they look a bit exotic,” he said.

The magnanimous atmosphere creates a good harmony with the mystical universe depicted in the film. Furthermore, memories of wars that happened at the location lead to a big move in the latter half of the story.

Ecstasy and fear coexist. Like a dream, the story has a multilayered structure and is penetrated with the private world of man.

“By depicting that, I can probably cause people who see this film to feel a connection with the timeless and universal parts,” Katayama said.