KAWAGUCHI Matsutarô's novel Tsuruhachi and Tsurujirô (1934) gained popularity after it was adapted into a play and then into a film. This paper examined how the novel was received. In addition, it also clarified the fluid nature of Matsutarô's text by examining the problems of its adaptation and relationship to the Japanese performance art genre “geidômono.”

The main characters of Tsuruhachi and Tsurujirô are the performers of the Shinnai musical performance art. Together with The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums that follows Kabuki actors, Tsuruhachi and Tsurujirô has generally been considered the performance art genre's representative work. The performance art genre “geidômono” refers to the group of works that depict a world where performance holds a supreme value beyond any particular person. Undeniably, this work and the theatrical production of its predecessor The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums functioned as the impetus creating this genre. Nevertheless, this investigation has shown that while both of these works were treated as similar stories in their historical contexts, their structures greatly differ. Furthermore, Tsuruhachi and Tsurujirô has been considered an adaptation of the long-time Hollywood film Bolero. Clearly, portions have commonalities with Bolero, for instance, the setting, but Tsuruhachi and Tsurujirô's structure and character models differ distinctly from Bolero.

Based on the true story of kabuki actor ONOE Kikunosuke II, MURAMATSU Shôfû's novel The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1937) became more publically known after being made into a film by director MIZOGUCHI Kenji, as well as a play in the New School style. During the few years around 1935, stories about performers and others involved in classical theater and their devotion to “the way of art (geidô),” were reproduced in many dramas and films. In this article, I examine The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum as a representative of these “works of art (geidômono).”

In its acceptance in plays and films, “art” was transformed into a world with values more important than any other thing. The stories came to be controlled by a value system that made devotion and sacrifice of oneself to “the way of art” as an act of nobility. The concept of “the way of art” had existed in Japan for a long time, but had not always required such a strong spirit of self-sacrificial dedication. This view towards “the way of art” was characteristic of the period, and in it one can find a certain type of complicity with emperorcentric nationalism.

The dramatization of a novel once played an important role in translating a highbrow work of art into a more popular form that could be enjoyed by the public. To demonstrate such an interaction between literature and theater or between high and popular culture, here I will take up the two melodramatic adaptations of Junichirō Tanizaki's novel Shunkin-shō, one written by Mantarō Kubota and the other by Matsutarō Kawaguchi.