Paper short abstract:

A critical analysis of how director Urayama Kirio adapted Yoshiyuki Junnosuke's famous novel Anshitsu into a celebrated Nikkatsu Roman Porno feature film. In the adaptation, as in the book, its frank depictions of sexuality become a means to explore deeper issues of solitude and despair.

Paper long abstract:

The Nikkatsu Roman Porno film Anshitsu/Dark Room was released in 1983 to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Film Studio Nikkatsu.. It also marked a return to the studio for director Urayama Kirio, famous for his sensitive 1962 debut film Foundry Town/Kyupora no aru machi, after a 14 year break. Dark Room was based on the book by Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, published in 1970 with the same title, and considered to be one of his representative works. Through its unfettered view of the sexual life of its male middle aged writer protagonist, the novel explores deeper questions relating to the meaning of life. Depicting a world of various compositions of sex and sensuality, its dissection of the true essence of desire becomes an abstraction for the depths of solitude, so characteristic of Yoshiyuki's literary work. The "dark room" of the title is an allegory for the womb, however, in the film version it becomes uniquely expressed through the diaphragm of the lens.

This presentation will utilize theoretical structures from adaptation theory to elucidate how director Urayama Kirio came to adapt the novel and direct his first pornographic film, focusing especially on the main protagonists solitude and the films elaborate visual representation of the "dark room".