A Wanderer's Notebook

Mikio Naruse's A Wanderer's Notebook (1962) borrows the title of an autobiographical novel by Fumiko Hayashi, but it is actually the adaptation of a stage play written by Kazuo Kikuta based on the novel. Naruse adapted several works by Hayashi during his career, most notably: Meishi, Wife, Lightning, Late Chrysanthemums, and Floating Clouds. However, this story is not as satisfying as those adaptations for some reason. Perhaps it is in the overtly expressive performance by Hideko Takamine, who has only three expressions in the film sad (which is about 75% of the time in  the film), happy, and drunk. This stylized performance may have been used to reflect the silent films of the era, the 1920s, evoked in the film. Much like her heroines Hayashi has a bad habit of getting involved with handsome but good for nothing men who use and abuse her. There are several stock actors from Naruse's stable such as Kinuyo Tanaka as Hayashi's mother and Daisuke Kato as kindly neighbor from her boarding house that helps her out financially from time to time. Akira Takarada (Godzilla) is the selfish, egotistical, and effeminate man, Fukuchi, who seems to have no redeeming characteristics. As Catherine Russell points out in her book The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: "A Wanderer's Notebook does capture some of the materialist aesthetic that is so distinctive of Hayashi's writing. Fumiko's struggles are set in a very detailed context of material scarcity, urban geography, and women's work."" This includes constant itemization of foods she wants to eat and cash and coins are featured in a constant exchange of small loans. Hayashi eventually pulls herself out from poverty and establishes herself as a working writer in demand in a scene that looks to have been filmed at Hayashi's residence in the Nakai district of Tokyo near Shinjuku, which today is a memorial to the late write. Russell also states: "The film points to the many forms of exploitation that Hayashi and other women are subject to, but its potential as social critique is seriously undermined by its failure to endorse its central character's fundamental challenge to social norms of behavior." It is a moving look at one writer's triumph in the face of poverty despite the succession of setbacks and poor luck endured during the process.