Troubled Youth. The fictional universes of Murakami Ryū and Iwai Shunji between literature and film

Abstract

The relationship between literature and cinema in Japanese cultural industries has always been intimate. Nonetheless the advent of hybrid figures of writers-directors is more recent: the essay proposes a case study of two authors who have different approaches to novels and films and could be considered emblematic of different historical moments. Murakami Ryū started his writing career in the 1970s and has competed in the film adaptations of his own novels. Iwai Shunji, active since the 1990s, defines himself a “visual artist” (eizō sakka): in the transmedia apparatus of his work, the novel has a decentered but still essential position. In both authors a central role is played by the study of Japanese youth unrest, as in the cases of Almost Transparent Blue (Murakami) and All About Lily Chou-Chou (Iwai). The analysis of their own novel-film adaptations allows us to reason on the changes elapsed in the status of Japanese literature and cinema in the last decades.