Novel
The Gold Demon
金色夜叉
Koyo Ozaki · 1897
Synopsis
Kan'ichi Hazama, an orphan taken in by the Shigisawa family, is to marry Miya, the daughter of the house, and take over the family succession, according to a Japanese reading-advice website. During a card game, Tomiyama, heir to a bank and owner of a very valuable diamond, notices the young woman, and Miya agrees to marry him. According to a Japanese travel magazine, Kan'ichi meets her again on the beach at Atami and swears to her that the moon on this night, one year hence, will be veiled by his tears.
Context
The novel appeared as a serial in the Yomiuri Shimbun, then in a literary review, from 1897 to 1903, according to a heritage film festival in Bologna, which counts it among the greatest commercial successes of the Meiji era; it remained unfinished, according to the portrait devoted to him by the Diet library. The British encyclopaedia reads in it the social price of modernisation, when money prevails over affection and duty. At Atami, a statue of the two characters, donated in 1986 by the town's Rotary club, recalls the scene on the beach, and a song spread by the films takes up its farewell.
Who it is for
An unfinished serial novel with a sentimental plot, for those who want to read a great popular success of Japan at the end of the nineteenth century.
Prizes and reception
Adapted at least sixteen times by the studios according to Il Cinema Ritrovato, including a colour version of 1954, known in France under the same title.
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