HOMEPAGE	CITYSCOPE	CONTENTS
UNWANTED CHILD by James Bailey

"Even though my back was turned," she recalls of that nocturnal visit, "I knew it was [my stepfather] by the disgusting smell of his hair pomade. I first thought it was his finger that he slid along the cleft of my buttocks, and I shook with fear; then it turned out it wasn't his finger at all."

A borderline psychopath who nails shut the toilet door so that Shizuko cannot get out and who threatens to sew her vagina closed, this central character in one of the most talked-about novels of recent years outdoes the evilest of fairy-tale stepmothers. But what is perhaps most shocking about this stepfather from hell is that he's not entirely fictional.

Father Fucker is an autobiographical novel by Shungiku Uchida, a 36-year-old cartoonist. Born in Nagasaki, Uchida dropped out of high school in her first year, moved to Tokyo at age 19, became a cartoonist at 25 and wrote her harrowing account of family life and strife "out of spite" for her mother, who knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it.

The feature-length film version of Uchida's book--which was published two years ago and has sold 300,000 copies--opens this month and marks the directorial debut of Genjiro Arato. The producer of nearly a dozen films, including the critically well-regarded Dotsuitaruenen and Tsuigoinerwaizen, Arato certainly does not lack behind-the-scenes experience. But some diehard fans of Uchida's book may very well wonder if he was the right man for the job.

Certainly, it is difficult to fault his casting choices: Kaori Momoi as Shizuko's feckless mother, Yoshio Harada as her biological father, Michi Akiyama as her stepfather and, as Shizuko, Masami Nakamura, a 16-year-old Yokohama native picked for the role from a pool of some 4000 aspirants. Having assembled performers more than capable of doing justice to this story of nth degree dysfunctionalism, Arato decided to tell a different story.

"I don't think it's a good idea for the representation of sexual content to be so direct," says Arato. "And I don't feel I can adequately represent such a dreadful situation [as Shizuko's]." Instead, he has concentrated on accentuating the positive, on showing how a "weak young girl transforms herself into a person strong enough to secure her own freedom."

And what does Uchida think of the changes? Not much, apparently. Through a very apologetic spokesperson, she declined to be interviewed by this magazine about the film and has no plans to help promote it. A source close to the author says her terse reaction upon seeing a pre-release screening of Father was, "That's Arato's film."

Uchida is not the only one to deny Arato a seal of approval. Despite his stated hope that Shizuko's peers--i.e., junior high school students--will see his debut, the censors have given it an "R" rating, making it off-limits to anyone under the age of 16. "Given how we pared down the sexually explicit material," complains Arato, "the decision is unusual."

Perhaps more unusual, however, are Arato's decisions concerning how best to tell Shizuko's story. Uchida wrote the name of her alter ego with the characters for "quiet" and "child," as if to emphasize her silent fear. With unflinching honesty, Uchida gave her "quiet child" a voice. Arato, unfortunately, has taken that voice away.