Kodoani.com – Manga short stories “Ame no Naka no YokujōYoshiharu Tsuge's “(Desire in the Rain) is inspiring a live-action movie due out on November 29.
The film stars Ryō Narita as Yoshio, Eriko Nakamura as Fukuko, Gō Morita as Imori, and Naoto Takenaka as Oyaji. Other cast members include Tomomitsu Adachi, Yuki Nakanishi, Yūya Matsuura, Makoto Tsuchi, Kaori Momo, Kū Ijima and Li Xing. Shinzo Katayama is directing the film and is also writing the script with Takamase Ōe.
The film's story follows Yoshio, a poor, struggling manga artist living in Kitamachi. He is sent by Oyaji, his apartment owner, who is also involved in other shady business activities, to help a novelist named Imori move in and meet a recently divorced woman named Fukuko. Yoshio is immediately fascinated by her beauty, even though she already knows someone else. Meanwhile, Imori sets up an advertising agency, borrowing the name of a larger company from the wealthier Minamicho to sell his novel. Yoshio ended up helping Imori's efforts, and somehow Imori and Fukuko came to live with Yoshio.
Tsuge published the short manga in Hokutoh Shoboh's Yagyō magazine in 1981.
Tsuge was a pioneer in the gekiga (“dramatic image”) manga genre, a genre named by Yoshihiro Tatsumi in 1957 to describe an alternative manga style that emphasized realism and aimed at adult. He is perhaps best known for his 1968 manga Neji-Shiki (“Screw-Style”), a surreal story about a man wandering through devastated postwar Japan.
Teruo Ishii directed a live-action film adaptation of Neji-Shiki in 1998. Panik House released the film in North America under the title “Screwed”.
Drawn & Quarterly is releasing Yoshiharu Tsuge's complete works as a seven-volume set. Ryan Holmberg is translating the works.