A Wanderer's Notebook
1962 · Japan · 124 min
- Director
- Mikio Naruse
- Screenplay
- Toshirō Ide, Sumie Tanaka
- Producer
- Sanezumi Fujimoto
- Music
- Yūji Koseki
Cast
What it is about
Fumiko Hayashi is a young woman who cannot find decent work and has just been left by her boyfriend. While working as a bar girl and in a factory, she writes about her life in poverty. Her friends think the writing is striking, yet no publisher will take it on. Along the way she meets Fukuchi, another aspiring writer struggling to sell his work, and their relationship becomes strained. Yasuoka, a warm and hardworking man, helps her in every way he can and asks her to marry him, but to Fumiko he is more a friend than a lover.
How it was made
Directed by Mikio Naruse, the film draws on Fumiko Hayashi's autobiographical book Diary of a Vagabond and on Kazuo Kikuta's stage adaptation of it. Toshirō Ide and Sumie Tanaka wrote the screenplay, and Sanezumi Fujimoto produced. Hideko Takamine leads the cast alongside Daisuke Katō, Akira Takarada and Kinuyo Tanaka, who plays the protagonist's mother. Yuji Koseki composed the score. Running 124 minutes, it is a drama from the later part of Naruse's career.
Reception and legacy
The film was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1985 and at the Harvard Film Archive in 2005, as part of retrospectives devoted to Naruse. Those programmes place it among the director's works that have drawn attention outside Japan. The sources consulted do not detail its critical reception or any awards, so its impact at the time of release cannot be stated with certainty.
Stills
More films by Mikio Naruse
Floating Clouds
Apart from You
Mother
Sound of the Mountain
Lightning
When a Woman Ascends the StairsOriginal Cinematopedia text based on Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.