Of all the Japanese novels that I have read, the one that I know and like best is Kuraimazu Hai ('Climber's High') by Hideo Yokoyama as I have written about in relation to World Book Day as well as in many other posts and in my research. Climber's High (which has an official translation called 'Seventeen') is not Yokoyama's only novel. Another that did particularly well is 64 (Roku-Yon, 'Six Four'). While there are Japanese dramatizations of this story, I have not seen any of them yet. But this week I finally got round to watching a UK version of the story.
Before watching the programme, I relistened to the audiobook of the English translation of Six Four to remind myself of the key aspects of the story. I need not have bothered. Although Yokoyama clearly gave authorisation for this dramatization to be made, part of me wonders if he had been shown the four-part series without prior knowledge of its contents, would he have realised that it was based on his novel? Of course the title makes a link clear, but beyond that there is so much that is different that the series producers may have a case for suggesting it was coincidence. I even wonder what score the script would get if put through the Turnitin plagiarism software we use at my university if it were compared with the dialogue in the English translation of the novel.
Warning - the rest of this post contains spoilers.
The differences between the original and the UK TV dramatization is not merely about location, but that is part of it. The original is set in Japan, while the UK dramatization is set in the UK, primarily in Scotland. Changing locations to being in the country where the target audience is has a wide range of advantages. You can get rid of cultural aspects that viewers may not comprehend and introduce characteristics, or 'pillars of truth' to use a term and concept that Yokoyama himself introduced to me, that the viewers can relate to. That not doing so, and in the case of novels not allowing translators to explain things that readers may not be familiar with, is something that I have discussed elsewhere, such as in the second edition of Japan: The Basics. In the case of Six Four UK, the localisation in Scotland led to Scottish independence coming up as a central issue, which obviously wasn't in the original (or anything equivalent).
Another significant change was how the title was handled. In the Japanese version, 64 refers to the year of the Showa Imperial reign, which is 1989. In Six Four UK refers to a person and is seemingly the equivalent of the 'Koda memo' in the original novel. Although this was perhaps a clever way to deal with the fact that the original reference for the number didn't work, the search for who 'Six Four' referred to didn't have anything like the tension or significance as the Koda memo in the original and certainly not to the degree that it justified 'Six Four' being the title of the series (other than what the novel was called... but as noted above Kuraimazu Hai ('Climber's High') became 'Seventeen' so Yokoyama may have allowed for a different title given he seemingly approved so much of the rest of the story to be changed.
Compared to the original, the wife of the protagonist is a very different character to the one in the novel. She is much more out-going. She doesn't wait at home for their missing daughter to phone. Indeed, although there is still a storyline about the police mishandling a phone call, it is not done in the same way as the novel and, in my view, is one of the most disappointing aspects of the changes (equivalent to the removal of the Mochizuki storyline in the 2008 movie version of 'Climber's High').
The UK version has additional criminal type people, perhaps in keeping with the sorts of things that British audiences would prefer/expect compared to the pace and style of the original Six Four. The ending even leaves open the potential for a sequel and further series using the same characters, but without any use of Yokoyama's book as a basis. But, overall, the dramatization, perhaps because I am familiar with the original, missed the mark and I'm not invested in seeing any continuation. I gave a rating of 6 for (😉) the UK dramatization on IMDb.
Ironically, for many years I used to ask students how a UK-based version of 'Climber's High' could be done. It was interesting to see how a different Yokoyama novel has been handled and it's given me further ideas about how I would handle a UK-based version of 'Climber's High'. As for Six Four, I need to get hold of the Japanese dramatizations to see how they hold up in comparison to the novel and UK version.
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