Taro the Dragon Boy (film)

When I wrote about the children's book, Taro the Dragon Boy by MATSUTANI Miyoko, I was aware of the 1979 film; but I'm too much of a miser to pay the 25 Euros that a DVD cost back then. Happily the price went down to something more affordable, and I thought I'd write another post comparing film and book.

To recap a little of what I wrote in the earlier post, the book combines folk tale elements to make a larger adventure story. Taro is a lazy, greedy, thoughtless child raised by his poor and self sacrificing grandmother in a mountain district of Japan. He is also strong, brave and good natured, spending his time playing with his friends, the animals of the surrounding forests. (Here he is teaching them sumo wrestling.)

When a friend is kidnapped he sets out to rescue her, and success in this leads to a further search, to find his mother, who had been transformed into a dragon.

The most striking thing about the film is how closely it follows the book. Most film adaptations diverge significantly from their source material, with close correspondences mostly found only in the earlier scenes; but Taro the Dragon Boy stays close to the original from beginning to end. The story makes a slightly different impression in the different media. Both are episodic; but while the two larger plot arcs that the book divides into are still present in the film, the story seems to flow forward more easily and the division is not so strongly felt.

The visual style of the film is strongly influenced by the traditional ink wash painting that Japan learnt from China.

The background landscapes are all done in this style, and while the characters are drawn in a more typical animation style, their colours are also toned down to fit the scenery.

You probably anticipate that a story that starts with a lazy and thoughtless protagonist will have moral lessons about the value of hard work and consideration for others. In a sense, it does. Here is Taro after working for months for a manipulative landowner, taking the pay she reluctantly offers him, as much rice as he can carry (which he then distributes to poor villagers).

But the account of the hero's growth does not feel moralising. We are not invited so much to condemn the earlier version of the character as to share his realisation of the harshness of the world he lives in and desire to change it.

The Great Kidnapping: Rainbow Kids

大誘拐 (daiyuukai, The Great Kidnapping, 1979) is a crime novel by TENDOU Shin (天藤 真, 1915-83); and as you can probably guess from the cover, it's a comedy. Although kidnapping is such a horrible crime in real life, it is often used for comedy (the O. Henry story, "The Ransom of Red Chief" for instance, or the Bette Midler film Ruthless People). This one fits into a familiar pattern in kidnapping stories: a victim more forceful than the captors effectively becomes the boss of the gang. Rainbow Kids in the post title is the "English title" added to the book (although it doesn't have an English translation), and refers to the name that the gang give themselves (they call each other by the code names Wind, Thunder and Rain, when they remember). There is a 1991 film of the book, directed by OKAMOTO Kihachi (岡本 喜八).

Three young small time crooks leave prison planning to make some real money. The leader Kenji (健次) is thinking of a kidnapping, to the alarm of the others, who remember horrible news stories of child kidnappings gone wrong. No, he assures them, the target is not a child, but an old woman, YANAGAWA Toshiko (柳川とし子, known as Toji, apparently an old fashioned honorific for a woman running the affairs of  a wealthy family). She is the head of a Wakayama family that controls a vast extent of forest land. Unknown to the kidnappers, they have picked an ideal time, as she has taken it into her head to go for a walk every day through a different part of the Yanagawa lands, accompanied only by her maid Kimi.

When the kidnappers, after various misadventures, finally succeed in capturing her, it immediately becomes clear who is going to be in control, when she insists on them letting Kimi go.  Soon, instead of heading to the hideout they had prepared, they are staying on the farm of one of Toshiko's loyal former servants. Their plans are thrown out much more drastically, when she hears how little (in her opinion) they were planning to ask for ransom. She insists on a huge sum, far greater than any previous ransom; and the gang agree, very unwillingly (how are they even going to carry a sum like that). Soon the case developes into a game of wits between the old lady directing the gang behind the scenes and the wily police chief, who had got his start in life from Toshiko's support when he was a child, and is fiercely devoted to her. As each side challenges the other, the whole of Japan and the world outside are drawn into the spectacle.

This is not a black comedy. There is no violence and no real villains. Most of the characters rise to the challenges presented them. The humour is mostly in the characters (particularly Toshiko, always gentle and courteous, but sure to get her way) and the situation, not so much in actual jokes or comedy set pieces. The tricks that the kidnappers use to outwit the police are reminiscent of the "caper" style of crime file (like Ocean's Eleven), but the book also reminds me a bit of earlier comedy adventures like John Buchan's John Macnab.

The film is very close to the book, in both substance and tone.  The main differences are only simplifications and minor omissions. Occasionally a scene is very slightly more slapstick than the book, but this is rare. One minor difference of tone is the music. Okamoto sets a lot of scenes to upbeat pop music; and this sounds a lot more like 1990 than 1979 to me. It's no classic, but I thought it was a very successful adaption, definitely worth seeing if you get the chance.

The Burmese Harp

ビルマの竪琴 (birma no tategoto, The Burmese Harp, 1940) is a 1946 children's book by TAKEYAMA Michio (竹山道雄, 1903-1984), which ICHIKAWA Kon (市川 崑) made into a film with the same title in 1956. There is an English translation, Harp of Burma by Howard Hibbett, first published by Tuttle in 1966. The story follows a group of Japanese soldiers in Burma in the last days of the second world war and in the time between their surrender to the British and their return to Japan a year later.

Apart from an introductory chapter, the story is told by an anonymous member of the group, narrating as a representative, not so much telling us his own personal feelings and observations as what the whole group saw and felt. In fact very few of the soldiers are characterised individually and only one is named, the central character Mizushima (水島). Apart from Mizushima, the most important character is the calm and serious captain, who had been a music teacher in civilian life and now keeps the soldiers in spirits with choral singing.

Mizushima is a private (first class) who has discovered a passion for music in this setting, constructing a Burmese harp. 

You know, I think if you collected together the instruments that soldiers have, it would make an interesting museum. Wherever soldiers go, if they have any free time, someone is sure to make an instrument. Some of them are specialists; and it's astonishing what good instruments they can create, making do with the materials available. In the wind section, you go from flutes made by cutting reeds and bamboo and boring holes in them all the way to proper trumpets made by putting together pieces of broken machinery. In the percussion section, I've seen everything from the skin of a dog or cat stretched over a wooden frame to drums made by stretching some kind of skin over an oil drum. They said it was tiger skin, but, well, I don't know about that. Anyway it made an incredible, reverberating noise, and was the pride of that troop.

Mizushima is the troop's scout and goes ahead of them in Burmese clothing to check that they are not going to run into British soldiers. In one village, the Japanese find themselves surrounded by Gurkas and British and Indian soldiers, waiting in ambush in the jungle outside. Pretending to still be celebrating the feast they had been enjoying, the Japanese keep singing their traditional songs, as they push the cart with their ammunition out of the village. A moment before they turn from singing to attack the enemy, the captain stops them. The British soldiers are singing the same songs. (In the nineteenth century, there was a westernising movement in music education, that brought many British songs to Japan with new texts, as well as Japanese compositions in a western style.) The threat of fighting passes, and they find that the war is over and Japan has surrendered.

Nearby a different group has not surrendered so easily. The captain is asked to help and sends Mizushima to try and convince the hold outs to accept defeat. Transported across the country to a prisoner of war camp in Mudan, they wait for him to return; but when months pass without sign of him, it becomes clear that something has gone wrong, particularly when they find that the survivors of the group he was meant to convince had in the end surrendered and are being treated for their injuries in a nearby hospital.  Unable to find out more, they have to assume that Mizushima is dead; but then the captain, driven by his guilt at sending him on the mission, begins to suspect that maybe a buddhist monk they have seen could be the surviving Mizushima. The soldiers fluctuate between belief and rejection, as various clues make the identity seem more or less likely. Meanwhile the captain starts teaching a parrot, the brother of the one that the monk always carries on his shoulder.

Stroking the parrot, he said, "There, there, we've all been ignoring you, haven't we? From now on we'll look after you properly. In return, you can learn some Japanese."

The parrot shook itself with happiness. It clacked its hard bill and stuck out a cold rubber like tongue and pecked the captain's hand.

What the captain had started doing was really strange. He would divide up the food he received three times a day, then he would say, "Oy, Mizushima," and when the parrot repeated it, he would let it feed from the palm of his hand. Then he would say, "Come with us" and when the parrot repeated that he would give it a share of meat from his side dish. Finally he would say, "Home to Japan."  

They send the parrot to the monk; but although he receives it, he seems unwilling to admit that he is Mizushima, appearing only as a silent watching figure outside the camp. Only when they have finally embarked on the boat home do they learn from a letter what had kept him in Burma.

The narration, despite the serious subject matter, mostly runs along calmly and cheerfully. Some bits are even like a children's adventure story. In particular an episode in a cannibal village, wisely dropped from the film, reads as if it came out of a nineteenth century adventure. The book and film are sometimes described as anti war; and they're certainly not pro war. It might be better to see them as depicting people coming to terms with being the losers in a mistaken war and working out what they should be doing with their lives now.

The film is very close to the book. There are hardly any scenes or dialogue which are not taken from it. The main difference, except for some abbreviation, is that Mizushima's narrative is inserted into the story earlier. As Takeyama comments, the central part of the book is structured like a detective story, except that the mystery is only important for the soldiers' feelings. Since the narrative is so even paced, readers are probably willing enough to read first the troops' account, then Mizushima's; but a film viewer has different expectations.

Howl's Moving Castle

I wrote earlier about the Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic of English children's literature, The Borrowers. It's not the only English book they have adapted. MIYAZAKI Hayao himself adapted the Diana Wynne Jones novel Howl's Moving Castle (1986) to make a film with the same title ハウルの動く城 (Hauru no ugoku shiro, Howl's Moving Castle, 2004). I never came across Diana Wynne Jones as a child, and only got to know her children's books as an adult. Better late than never, I've read almost all of them. She seems to have written an incredible number of very good books. Although all of them are fantasy, and all contain some humour, they do quite different things. Howl's Moving Castle is certainly likely to be somewhere  on any list of her best books, though there are quite a few that I like more: The Power of Three (1976) which starts with what seems to be a conventional fantasy with elf like figures, then develops into something else; Charmed Life (1977) an Edwardian world in which magic is part of everyday life; Drowned Ammet (1977) a conventional but well realised fantasy world, as backdrop for a story of political resistance turning to terrorism; The Magicians of Caprona (1980) a sequel to Charmed Life, set in an Italy modeled on the warring city states of the renaissance (and the Elizabethan dramatists' perceptions of them); The Time of the Ghost (1981) a horror story really, narrated by a disconnected and helpless ghost watching the approach of terrible events; Witch Week (1982) set in a world where witches are common but persecuted, mixing the comic adventure of fictional boarding schools with the fear of authority and social pressure of a real boarding school; Archer's Goon (1984) a science fiction flavoured comedy fantasy set in an English provincial town, secretly ruled by feuding wizards.

Howl's Moving Castle is another world in which magic is an only slightly uncanny part of everyday life. In this case, the land of Ingary is meant to resemble a world in which fairy tales like those of the Brothers Grimm are real. The technological level and character of society feels like the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, the time when such stories were first seriously collected. Sophie, the eldest daughter of a hat-maker, is convinced that she is destined for an uninteresting life (it is the youngest child that succeeds in fairy tales), resigned to working for ever in the hat shop. All this changes when a witch whose emnity she has somehow attracted turns her into an old woman. Unable to bear the thought of her family seeing her like this she secretly leaves home and sets out across the moors above the town.

There she ends up seeking shelter in the wandering castle of the wizard Howl, feared as a monster who eats girls' hearts. Howl turns out to be not quite as bad as his reputation, but with enough bad qualities (vain, irresponsible, evasive) to irritate Sophie. Sophie's transformation, though, has given her an opportunity to change her own character. Previously she had defined herself as a dull, shy and unconfident person. Now as an old women she feels quite ready to boss people around and is generally more free of the anxiety she had as a young woman.

The story is an adventure story of course: Sophie is trying to break Howl's contract with his fire demon Calcifer, who in exchange will restore her youth; Howl is trying to escape from the Witch of the Waste, the same witch who turned Sophie into an old woman. But it is a very domestic adventure: Sophie finds a new family in Howl's castle and secretly falls in love with Howl.

Miyazaki's version of the story departs from the original far more than The Borrowers or Kiki's Delivery Service. Like most adaptations, it starts close to the original, then gradually diverges. The major change of setting is that the feel of society is now somewhere around 1900. Instead of "what the fairy tale world would be like if it were a real working society" we have "what the Edwardian age would be like if it had magic". For the most part this means only the trivial loss of some whimsical humour, but it also means that we no longer have the idea that Sophie is trying to live down to her archetype, as she sees it. The change of setting is not so great that the film cannot take over most of what is in the book, even in odd little details. For instance:

At that moment two empty cake racks were pulled away at the other end of the room, and an apprentice stuck his head through from the back somewhere. "Thought I heard your voice, Lettie," he said, grinning in the most friendly and flirtatious way.

The other major innovation is that the country is at war in the film. In the book there are a couple of points where we see that Howl's services are wanted by the kingdom for essentially military purposes; but this is just background, and there is no war actually taking place. When the film was being prepared, the Iraq War started, and it unsurprisingly took a grip on Miyazaki's imagination. While the book Howl is avoiding serving the king chiefly for self preservation, film Howl becomes an antiwar figure. This, combined with the aesthetic of Japanese animation, seriously changes his character. Book Howl is selfish and self dramatising and tries to push those in his household around (generally without much success). Film Howl has excessively gentle looks, voice and manners.

The two stories really go there separate ways once the war becomes a major element of the plot, crossing each other's path intermittently for the rest of the film. Occasionally whole scenes are taken over (the transfer of the castle to a new home, for instance), but more often little details are used in a new way. Making room for the war, most of the subplots are stripped out. Losing the subplots (mostly involving Sophie's sisters) is probably not such a bad thing. One gets the feeling that Jones was very fond of how the parts of a complicated plot worked together and enjoyed seeing all the elements working out more than most readers. None of these subplots are bad or unenjoyable, but their real value is more in showing us Sophie's character and its development, which Miyazaki handles in a different way. We also lose Howl's background in Wales. Probably many readers will not miss it. In the book it really only throws a little more light on Howl, as someone fleeing a dull, unhappy background who has decided to invent himself as a new character.

In contrast to the book, the film becomes less complex towards the end. That includes one horrible over-simplification in the final scene, where the war is done away with in a couple of sentences; but on the whole the increasing simplicity is a gain, especially since the war plot never seemed properly integrated. As often, a key scene is something not in the original, but takes its inspiration from a different episode. In the middle of the book, Sophie and Howl's apprentice Michael (a teenager in the book) are trying to catch a falling star in the marshes outside town. The episode starts as comedy, then takes a different tack.

Michael was stalking the star with soft steps, both arms out to catch it. Sophie could see him outlined against the star's light. The star was drifting level with Michael's hands and only a step or so beyond. It was looking back at him nervously. How odd! Sophie thought. It was made of light. It lit up a white ring of grass and reeds and black pools round Michael, and yet it had big, anxious eyes peering backward at Michael, and a small, pointed face. ...

Sophie tried to say to Michael, Do stop, it's terrified! But she had no breath left to speak with.

"I only want to catch you," Michael explained. "I won't hurt you."

"No! No!" the star crackled desperately. "That's wrong! I'm supposed to die!"

"But I could save you if you'd let me catch you," Michael told it gently.

"No!" cried the star. "I'd rather die!" It dived away from Michael's fingers. Michael plunged for it, but it was too quick for him. It swooped for the nearest marsh pool, and the black water leaped into a blaze of whiteness for just an instant. Then there was a small dying sizzle. When Sophie hobbled over, Michael was standing watching the last light fade out of a little round lump under the dark water.

"That was sad," Sophie said.

Suspicion

疑惑 (Giwaku, Suspicion) is a 1982 novella by 松本清張 (MATSUMOTO Seichou), first published, according to the Japanese Wikipedia page, as 昇る足音 ("The sound of footsteps on the stairs"). It comes printed with a second novella, which I haven't read yet. It was made into a film (also called 疑惑) in the same year, 1982; and as this was being shown near me earlier this week, I hurried to read the story before seeing the film.

The novella follows the trial of a woman accused of murdering her husband. ONIZUKA Kumako (鬼塚球磨子) had been a bar hostess in Tokyo, with yakuza connections and a criminal record; but she had risen in the world by marrying the rich Hokuriku businessman SHIRAKAWA Fukutarou (白河福太郎). Shortly after her marriage she had had his life insured for a huge sum. When one night the couple drive off the dockside of the local harbour and only Kumako swims out of the wrecked car, the police suspect that it was no accident, particularly after finding a spanner in the car, which Kumako might have put there as a tool to break the glass to get out.

The novella follows the case in a distanced way, either through the eyes of the local crime reporter, whose reports have made the story a sensation even in the national press, or with the general distanced view of public knowledge. We start some time after the actual crime, shortly before the trial, watching the attempts to find legal representation for Kumako, whose reputation from the press coverage makes lawyers unwilling to take her case. Finally she receives a court appointed representative, a specialist in civil law, from whom nobody expects much.

The style is generally very dry and factual. Only rarely does Matsumoto attempt vivid description, more of places than of people (who generally get a few traits, which are then repeated on each appearance). The dryness actually works very well, especially at this length, giving the work something of the feel of a documentary. That does make the ending a bit problematic. There's a too predictable "Oh the irony" ending, whose shape you can make out from about half way. I was really hoping that that wasn't where Matsumoto is heading, but it was. That's perhaps a matter of taste. The detection part of the story is quite solid, and the depiction of a trial being swayed by the judgement of the press is well done.

The film is directed by NOMURA Yoshitarou (野村 芳太郎), who made many films based on Matsumoto's books. I was not very enthusiastic about his version of YOKOMIZU Seishi's Yatsu haka mura in an earlier post; but I think this works quite well. There are two main differences between book and film. Firstly Kumako becomes the main character. Now in the book, Kumako is a very compelling figure; but we never see her at first hand, only through the eyes of public opinion or reports of others. This is clearly part of Matsumoto's deliberate narrative technique; and it neatly supports a major theme of the story, the judgement of public opinion. The idea of making a major character who never appears is possible in film too: KUROSAWA did it in Stray Dog. But of course this is a little harder in a courtroom drama. The change has consequences. In the book, readers will probably be ready enough to think that Kumako is a bad person, as far as they can judge; but the film makes her more complicated. The second major change supports that emphasis on Kumako's character. The lawyer is a man in the book, a woman in the film, a divorced mother, whose child is in the custody of the father and his new wife. The diligent, strict, self supporting lawyer is played as a contrast to Kumako, who is given to tantrums and relies on manipulating men. The film speeds through the earlier parts of Matsumoto's story to get to the introduction of the lawyer, transferring some elements forward (a little implausibly, sometimes) to the point where she can play a role in their discovery.

The deductions in the book come more or less whole through to the screen, but the actual arguments are downplayed and replaced by more dramatic revelations, which also have the effect of making the case less ambiguous than Matsumoto left it. The direction does still have some of the problems common in films by lesser Japanese directors. Like the book, the film generally has something of a documentary style, which it does quite well; but the acting of many minor characters is stagey in a way that jars with the rest of the action.

The Borrowers

Mary Norton's 1952 novel The Borrowers is a classic of British children's literature. The book and its sequels have been read by generations of children now, and adapted for television and film many times. One such adaptation is a recent Studio Ghibli film, 借りぐらしのアリエッティ (Karigurashi no arietti, The Secret World of Arrietty, 2010).  Ghibli is the studio of MIYAZAKI Hayao (宮崎駿), who directed many of Japan's best animated films. Arrietty is directed not by Miyazaki, but by YONEBAYASHI Hiromasa (米林 宏昌). Still, Miyazaki was one of the writers of the screenplay. As with other Ghibli films where Miyazaki was screenwriter, but not director, the story is better constructed, but perhaps less imaginative. I suspect that as director he can change his mind more and follow his own ideas, even when it's too late to work them into the story properly.

The Borrowers is a story of little people. Borrowers live under the floorboards or behind the panelling of human's houses. They take small amounts of human food and put unwanted or unnoticed little objects to new uses for their furniture and tools. Little people stories are popular in Japan: I wrote earlier about INUI Tomiko's 木かげの家の小人たち (Kokage no ie no kobitotachi, The Little People in the House in the Tree's Shadow, 1959) and SATOU Satoru's だれも知らない小さな国 (Dare mo shiranai chiisana kuni, A Little Country No-one Knows, 1959). The Borrowers itself had been translated into Japanese in 1956; and it's easy to imagine that it had an influence, particularly on the character of Inui's family (who are after all English fairies, thought living in Japan).

When I saw the film, it had been decades since I read the book; and my impression was that the two were quite similar. The only difference I noticed while watching was that the boy had been made older, so that he looked the same age as Arietty, allowing viewers to see it as a kind of romance. On rereading the book, I found that the film actually makes lots of changes of plot and detail, though both the outline and the ideas are still largely derived from the book.

My memories of the book were quite vague, so rereading brought some surprises. In particular, it's very well written, in a particular way – with a love of small, accurate detail. This is the kind of thing that appeals to some children and not others, I think. It's certainly less common in recent children's books. Conveniently, the children it does appeal are probably going to be the kind of children who like stories about tiny people hiding in human's houses. The careful detail is partly in the dialogue, partly in the description of the little world the characters live in, and the things they adapt to their needs. I also had no memory of the elements of satire in the story, which comes from a more class conscious age (and is set somewhere around 1900, where class was even more an issue). Here is Arrietty's mother talking about the other borrower families that had once live in the house.

'Who were the Overmantels?' asked Arrietty.

'Oh you must've heard me talk of the Overmantels,' exclaimed Homily, 'that stuck-up lot who lived in the wall high up – among the lath and plaster behind the mantelpiece in the morning-room. And a queer lot they were. The men smoked all the time because the tobacco jars were kept there; and they'd climb about and in and out the carvings of the overmantel, sliding down the pillars and showing off. The women were a conceited lot too, always admiring themselves in all those bits of overmantel looking-glass. They never asked anyone up there and I, for one, never wanted to go. ... I don't know whether it's true but they do say that those Overmantel men used to have a party every Tuesday after the bailiff had been to talk business in the morning-room. Laid out, they'd be, dead drunk – or so the story goes – on the green plush tablecloth, all among the tin boxes and the account books –'

'Now, Homily,' protested Pod, who did not like to gossip, 'I never see'd 'em.'

'But you wouldn't put it past them, Pod. You said yourself when I married you not to call on the Overmantels.'

'They lived so high,' said Pod, 'that's all.'

There's something in a story about tiny people that invites writers to look at the petty side of the human character, in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), for instance, and in Terry Pratchett's Truckers (1989), which incidentally is a very good children's book, in a different way. Pod and Homily both have a limited outlook on the world and are to some extent figures of fun for the author, but still impressive, as they face the constant dangers that their lives involve. Here they are discussing Arrietty's education.

'Now, now,' said Pod, 'don't bring up the past.'

'But you've got to think of it! they got the cat and –'

'Yes,' said Pod, 'but Eggletina was different.'

'How different? She was Arrietty's age.'

'Well they hadn't told her, you see. That's where they went wrong. They tried to make her believe that there wasn't nothing but was under the floor. They never told her about Mrs Driver or Crampfurl. Least of all about cats.'

'There wasn't any cat,' Homily pointed out, 'not till Hendreary was "seen".'

'Well, there was, then,' said Pod. 'You got to tell them, that's what I say, or they try to find out for themselves.'

'Pod,' said Homily solemnly, 'we haven't told Arrietty.'

The Ghibli film changes the emphasis in several ways. Homily is much the same houseproud, fearful character as in the book, Pod is significantly changed. In both book and film, he is gruff and straightforward; but film Pod is more dour and more heroic and the film makes more of Arrietty's relationship to him. Arrietty is a similar character in book and film, but book Arrietty is more stifled. At the beginning of the book, unlike film Arrietty, she has never been outside the little home under the floorboards. As I said above, the boy in the book is much younger than Arrietty, so that the character of their friendship is very different. Two new elements are borrowed from later in the series, Spiller and the voyage in a kettle. The borrowers riding the tin kettle is on the cover of the Japanese translation of The Borrowers Afloat.

Eight Graves Village

I wanted to write one post about each of the KINDAICHI Kousuke (金田一耕介) novels by YOKOMIZO Seishi (横溝正史) in chronological order. That would have meant that 夜歩く would be next. But I just left my copy on the train. I was about two thirds through, at the point where Kindaichi is pursuing a sleepwalking women through a forest in a violent thunderstorm and has just caught view of a sword brandishing man up ahead. So I'm going to be a bit on edge until I either get the book back or give up and order a new copy from Japan.

In the meantime, I'll skip one ahead and talk a bit about the next in the series, 八つ墓村 (Yatsu haka mura, The Village of Eight Graves, 1951).

Although there's a recognisable style to all the novels I've read in the series, Yokomizo also tries out several different approaches to the narration. In The Honjin Murder Case, he narrates in the third person without letting us see inside Kindaichi's head. In Gokumontou, he again narrates in the third person, but we see things from Kindaichi's perspective (the great detective is pretty much at a loss for most of the narrative). The Village of Eight Graves (like 夜歩く) is narrated in the first person, and Kindaichi is seen only from the outside. (My experience is that when we don't see inside Kindaichi's head, he often knows things that he isn't telling us; and that's particularly true here. His comment that doubtless Inspector Isokawa often thinks of murdering him is only too justified.) But before we get to the first person narrative, there is a prologue by Yokomizo, as in Gokumontou and some later books, in which he describes the background history from which the present case arises.

The first part of the village's history is the murder of eight samurai who had been hiding out there after being on the losing side in the civil wars of the sixteenth century. The villagers both feared the winner's anger and hoped to get hold of the money that the samurai had with them. But the gold was never found; and eight villagers died soon after, apparently from the curse of the murdered samurai. Hoping to assuage them, the villagers buried them properly in the eight graves that give the village its name and honoured them with a shrine. But in the twentieth century another massacre occurred, this time claiming 32 victims (closely modeled on a real mass killing, the Tsuyama massacre). The murderer is TAJIMI Youzou (多治見要蔵), the son of one of the two powerful families in the village, an always violent man, who had previously kidnapped and imprisoned a girl from the village.

Twenty-six years later, the novel's narrator, TERATA Tatsuya (寺田辰弥), the son of this woman, is contacted by a lawyer. The Tajimi family is looking for Tatsuya, as Youzou's son, to continue the family. Unaware of his own family's history, Tatsuya sets off for the isolated Okayama village, despite a mysterious warning letter and the death by poisoning of the grandfather who had come to accompany him back.

What follows is an atmospheric story with secret passages, labyrinthine cave systems, mysterious family secrets, hidden treasure, angry mobs, rival families, a not quite trustworthy love interest, an embittered war veteran, and so on. I've seen more than one reaction that this isn't much of a detective story at all (here, for instance), more of a horror story perhaps. To me, except for the horrific and repulsive background story, it more resembles the kind of book that Sir Walter Scott made popular. You might call it the male version of the gothic romance story that has been a staple of popular fiction (and occasionally high literature) for hundreds of years: an innocent visitor to a strange house is thrown into the midst of conspiracies and secrets and must decide whom they can trust. Christianna Brand did a very effective detective story version of the more normal women's gothic romance in Cat and Mouse (1950); so it's perfectly possible to combine the two. 

Considered as a puzzle, like  Gokumontou, it's a "serial murder with a pattern" story. There are no  special tricks from the murderer, only straightforward misdirection as to motive, which we suspect anyway. There's really only one clue; but accepting Kindaichi's view of what is going on with the serial murders, it points very clearly to one person. (It's actually a Yokomizo favourite, recurring slightly changed in at least two other novels.) But as often in the Kindaichi books, there are many side complications, so that although I made the necessary deduction, I was left feeling a little unsure and suspicious of other characters until the end.

There are three films based on the book. Since only one is available in Europe, that's the one that I've seen. It's the 1977 version by NOMURA Yoshitarou (野村 芳太郎), also known for several films based on  mysteries by MATSUMOTO Seichou (松本清張), which I haven't seen. This one was a commercial success in its day, but it didn't appeal much to me. The story of course has to be simplified for the film, but when I hear for instance that the doctor is the only one in the village, a little warning bell goes off in my head and I start thinking, "Hang on. In that case, what happens to the whole plot?" In fact Tatsuya's experiences and adventures and the background history remain much the same, but every single element of the detective story plot except for the identity of the killer has been removed. In its place, there's some tedious rigmarole involving the families that killed the original eight samurai, which gives the viewer no chance to work out who the killer is; it's simply announced by Kindaichi as the result of his researches at the end (and since its intercut with the killer's attempt to murder Tatsuya, the audience is probably not paying much attention anyway).

Since the story works well as an adventure story, one could hope that the film would get by with this; but a first person narrative doesn't translate well. And then Tatsuya's great aunts, Koume and Kotake, who are so effective (scary, funny and sad at the same time) in the book, just look wrong to me in the film: the characters are supposed to be very old, but they look like relatively young actresses, who have been unsuccessfully made up as old women, which gives the film a real feel of bad amateur drama. Following the links from the Japanese wikipedia page on the film, I see that the actress who played Kotake (市原悦子) was forty-one in 1977.

There is no English translation; but if you can read French, there's apparently a translation by René de Ceccatty and Ryôji Nakamura, Le village aux huit tombes (1999).

Kiki's Delivery Service

Kiki's Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便, more literally "Witch's express home delivery service") is a 1985 children's book by KADONO Eiko (角野 栄子, born 1935). It was a successful book in its own right, with several sequels; but it is best known as the book on which the Japan's most famous cartoon director, MIYAZAKI Hayao (宮崎 駿), based his 1989 film of the same name. For once, there is an English translation (which I haven't seen), by Lynne E. Riggs in 2003. It seems to be out of print at the moment; but second hand copies are easy to find.

It's hard to fairly judge a story when you've first got to know it in a different form. The few films that I've ever walked out of have been adaptations of books that I had read. In this case I knew the film before I read the book, and I couldn't help judging it in the light of the film.

In the world of the story, witches are a part of everyday life, but much rarer than they once were. Kiki, the daughter of a witch, has the choice of becoming a normal girl or a witch, and chooses the latter. Witches' skills have grown fewer over the years. Though Kiki's mother can both fly and make potions, Kiki herself has only learnt to fly. Her one other piece of magic is that she can talk to and understand her black cat Jiji, born at the same time as Kiki. In the year when she reaches thirteen, the custom is for a witch to spend one year living independently in a strange town. Kiki leaves the little town between wooded mountains where she grew up and sets off southwards, towards the sea. Following a river she comes to a large coastal town, with an improbably high clocktower, and decides to try making that her home for the year. The cool reception from the townspeople is a shock to her; but kinder treatment from a baker, Sono, persuades her to stay and earn her living by delivering parcels for the townspeople.

So far, those who know the film should find a lot that they are familiar with. Many of the strengths of the film come from the book. Kiki and other named characters are much the same in both. Kiki's parents are the same combination of stricter mother and more indulgent father. Jiji has the same cautious outlook on the world, but also a more childish side in the book. The themes are very similar; but Miyazaki makes the film more a story of a child coping with having to rely on their own emotional resources. The book is far more episodic: it follows the year that Kiki spends in the town with a series of seasonal episodes. Miyazaki selects a few of these (often radically changed) and puts them together to tell a story which does not attempt to fill the whole year. The film also shifts the emphasis towards realism, with its loving creation of a beautiful but plausible Scandivian town. The book allows itself a lot of deliberate comic absurdity, of which very little gets into the film (only the episode where Jiji must pretend to be a stuffed cat, I think). For instance, when the mayor discovers that the clock is broken on New Year's Eve, he wants to 'borrow' a gear from the clock of a nearby town, which has the same mechanism.

As soon as Kiki landed on the clock tower, the mayor spoke agitatedly, 'The fact is, this largest cog wheel of this clock is broken, you see? ..... If you cross three mountains west of here, the town over there ..... You could make an appropriation and come back to us, hmm? .... um, um, it's really urgent. ..... hmm? hmm? hmm?'

'Appropriation?' Kiki asked round eyed.

In response the mayor shrugged his shoulders and said in a small voice, 'In other words, just for the time the clock is sounding midnight, borrow it without telling anyone ..... is what I mean.'

'In other words, steal it?'

'Shhh! That's a bad word. That's not a word that a girl should be using. Definitely, definitely "borrowing" is what we want to call it. After all, we'll give it back when we're done."

By some accounts, Kadono was not happy with the film's changes to the book. But the character of the story is not massively changed beyond what I have described. Those who like the film would probably find the book interesting too.

High and Low

The connexions that crop up between Japanese and western culture can be surprising. I read many of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books long ago, though I don't think I read anything published later than the early eighties. I didn't give up on them consciously; but in my memory the earlier ones are better (though there are things I don't care for in them, too). In a completely different world, The Seven Samurai (七人の侍, Shichinin no Samurai, 1954), directed by KUROSAWA Akira (黒澤 明), was the first Japanese work that interested me. It was only after I had got to know most of Kurosawa's samurai films that I learnt that he had also directed an adaptation of one of the 87th Precinct novels, King's Ransom (1959). The film is known as High and Low in English, an ingenious translation of the Japanese title 天国と地獄 (Tengoku to jigoku, Heaven and Hell, 1963). A police procedural sounds like an oddity for Kurosawa, but in fact he had already made one of the earliest films in the genre, Stray Dog (野良犬, Nora inu, 1949).

I've seen the film several times now, and I thought it might be interesting to reread the book and compare them. Neither book nor film pretend to be mysteries; but as I can't say much about them without discussing the whole plot, I'll put the rest after the break. If you haven't read the book or seen the film and you're planning to do either, then you'd better not read any further.