A Wanderer's Notebook

A Wanderer's Notebook (放浪記, Hourou-ki), also known as Her Lonely Lane, is a 1962 black-and-white Japanese film drama directed by Mikio Naruse, starring Hideko Takamine. The film is a biopic about the novelist and poet Fumiko Hayashi, whose favorite phrase was “The life of a flower is short. It is full of sufferings.”

Plot

Fumiko Hayashi (Hideko Takamine) is a young woman who cannot find a decent job and has been dumped by her boyfriend; she writes on the side. Fumiko’s friends tell her that her writing about her life in poverty is excellent and impressive, but no publishing company will buy her autobiographic novel. She continues working as a bar girl and a factory worker and gets together with another aspiring writer, Fukuchi (Akira Takarada), who has also been struggling to sell his work. Despite the fact that she does all she can for him and cares for him while he suffers from tuberculosis, he abuses her verbally and eventually physically. She walks out of him, returns, and then walks out again. Yasuoka (Daisuke Katō), a warm-hearted and hard-working man, helps Fumiko in every way possible and asks for her hand, but she rejects his proposal—to Fumiko, Yasuoka is more of a friend than a lover. After these struggles, the film ends with her literary success.

Cast

• Hideko Takamine as Fumiko Hayashi
• Akira Takarada as Fukuchi
• Daisuke Katō as Yasuoka
• Kinuyo Tanaka as Kishi, Fumiko's mother

References

External links

• Uhlich Keith. "A Wanderer's Notebook review." Slant Magazine, 1 March 2006.
• A Wanderer's Notebook at Japan Movie Database
• A Wanderer's Notebook on IMDb
• A Wanderer's Notebook at Rotten Tomatoes
• A Wanderer's Notebook on Mubi (website)