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Paper short abstract

Ningen Shikkaku (1948) by Dazai Osamu (1909–1948), despite the author’s frequent use of female narrators, largely silences its female characters. This paper examines how animated and live-action adaptations reinterpret and reintroduce these women’s voices.

Paper long abstract

Dazai Osamu (1909–1948) is well known for adapting the female voice in his works. For example, in Joseito (1939) the female narrator gives a description of her day, or the post-war hit Shayō (1947) is also fully narrated by Kazuko, a female narrator. However, in his final work Ningen Shikkaku (1948), the female characters have very few spoken lines. This work is narrated by the male protagonist, Yōzō, completely from his perspective; however, many of the female characters that he interacts with throughout the work have their “voice” either completely removed or filtered into his narrative.

In this presentation I will examine how the female characters in Ningen Shikkaku are given voices in adaptations. In particular, I would like to focus on the characters Tsuneko and Yoshiko by comparing their lack of voice in the original work and how their voices appear in the 2009 animation and 2010 live action film. By looking at how these characters are depicted in adaptation, we can see how the voices of these important female characters have been interpreted from the source work and further understand the depth of the characters.