, also titled '' Her Lonely Lane'', is a 1962 Japanese

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Mikio Naruse was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967. Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily Shoshimin-eiga, shōshimin-eiga ("common people drama") films with f ...

starring

Hideko Takamine was a Japanese actress who began as a child actress and maintained her fame in a career that spanned 50 years. She is particularly known for her collaborations with directors Mikio Naruse and Keisuke Kinoshita, with ''Twenty-Four Eyes'' (1954) a ...

. It is based on the autobiographical book ''Diary of a Vagabond'' by Fumiko Hayashi and its stage adaptation by Kazuo Kikuta.

Plot

Fumiko Hayashi 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, 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 on him, returns, and then walks out again. Yasuoka, 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

as Fumiko Hayashi *

Akira Takarada was a Japanese film actor best known for his roles in the ''Godzilla'' film series. Life and career Akira Takarada was born in Korea under Japanese rule, and lived for a time in Manchuria, China. His father worked as an engineer on the Sout ...

as Fukuchi *

Daisuke Katō was a Japanese actor. He appeared in over 200 films, including Akira Kurosawa's ''Seven Samurai'', ''Rashomon'', ''Yojimbo'', and ''Ikiru''. He also worked repeatedly for noted directors such as Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi. ...

as Yasuoka * Tatsuo Endō as Chief editor *

Kinuyo Tanaka was a Japanese actress and film director. She had a career lasting over 50 years with more than 250 acting credits, but was best known for her 15 films with director Kenji Mizoguchi, such as ''The Life of Oharu'' (1952) and ''Ugetsu'' (1953). W ...

as Kishi, Fumiko's mother

Legacy

''A Wanderer's Notebook'' was screened at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

in 1985 and at the

Harvard Film Archive The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is a film archive and cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dedicated to the collection, preservation and exhibition of film, the HFA houses a c ...

in 2005 as part of their retrospectives on Mikio Naruse.

References

External links

* Uhlich Keith.
Review: A Wanderer’s Notebook
" ''Slant Magazine'', 1 March 2006. * * * *
A Wanderer's Notebook
' on

Mubi Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; the Auteurs before 2010) is a global streaming platform, production company and film distributor. MUBI produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusively available ...

Plot

Cast

Legacy

References

External links

Further reading