My area of research is Modern Japanese Literature and Film, and my thesis examines the collaborations between the writer Abe Kôbô and filmmaker Teshigahara Hiroshi, two artists who addressed the themes of identity and alienation in modern society through their work together. Specifically, I focus on the process of adaptation, looking at how the themes from the original texts are approached and captured cinematically. Such a study will allow me to explore the relationship between the two media, the differences in the presentation of theme and the possibilities of translation. The collaborations between Abe and Teshigahara offer a rare opportunity to conduct a survey on a specific pair of writer and director over the course of several works, tracking the evolution of their artistic vision and practice. What I hope to achieve through this project is to situate film adaptation as a valuable branch in the study of narrative, demonstrating its exciting possibilities in providing a discourse on the re-imagining of words through images.

My area of research is Modern Japanese Literature and Film, and my thesis examines the collaborations between the writer Abe Kôbô and filmmaker Teshigahara Hiroshi, two artists who addressed the themes of identity and alienation in modern society through their work together. Specifically, I focus on the process of adaptation, looking at how the themes from the original texts are approached and captured cinematically. Such a study will allow me to explore the relationship between the two media, the differences in the presentation of theme and the possibilities of translation. The collaborations between Abe and Teshigahara offer a rare opportunity to conduct a survey on a specific pair of writer and director over the course of several works, tracking the evolution of their artistic vision and practice. What I hope to achieve through this project is to situate film adaptation as a valuable branch in the study of narrative, demonstrating its exciting possibilities in providing a discourse on the re-imagining of words through images.