Recreating Memory? The Drama Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai and Its Remakes

Kirsch, Griseldis

Abstract

Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai (I Want to Be a Shellfish), the story of a soldier unfairly tried for war crimes, is one of Japan’s longest running media fran chises. First produced as a television drama by the private station KRT (later called TBS)¹ in 1958, it borrows motifs from the 1953 essay Kuruerū Senpanshikeishū (A Mad War Criminal on a Death Row) by Katō Tetsutarō (2007), himself a pardoned BC (lesser crimes) class war criminal,² and was turned into a film in 1959. After the original drama, TBS remade it in 1994; and later Nihon TV also jumped on...

Citation

Kirsch, G. (2019). Recreating Memory? The Drama Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai and Its Remakes. In B. Guarné, A. Lozano-Méndez, & D. Martinez (Eds.), Persistently Postwar: Media and the Politics of Memory in Japan (85-102). Berghahn. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12pns6b.10

• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: May 16, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 16, 2019
• Pages: 85-102
• Book Title: Persistently Postwar: Media and the Politics of Memory in Japan
• ISBN: 9781785339592
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12pns6b.10
• Related Public URLs: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/GuarnePersistently