Kadokawa Films’ Combined Media Strategy and the Adaptation of Seishi Yokomizo’s Work ：Focusing on Kon Ichikawa’s <i>The Inugami Family</i> (1976)

KIM, Hyosun

doi:10.22628/bcjjl.2025.21.1.111

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 21(1); 2025 > Article

Special Issue

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2025;21(1): 111-128.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2025.21.1.111

Kadokawa Films’ Combined Media Strategy and the Adaptation of Seishi Yokomizo’s Work ：Focusing on Kon Ichikawa’s The Inugami Family (1976)

Hyosun KIM

Professor of Korea University

角川映画のメディアミックス戦略と横溝正史文学のアダプテション ―― 市川崑監督の

金孝順

高麗大学グローバル日本研究院教授

Correspondence Hyosun KIM ,Email: uzzanzi@korea.ac.kr

Published online: 30 December 2025.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes Kon Ichikawa’s film The Inugami Family, an adaptation of Seishi Yokomizo’s novel, through the prism of the media environment of the 1970s and Kadokawa Publishing’s promotional strategy.
The novel The Inugami Family was made into a film as part of Kadokawa Publishing’s efforts to adapt to the changing media environment by vertically integrating print, video, and music. Kadokawa’s combined media strategy is seen as having been a great success, thanks to the huge production and advertising budgets they devoted to the project. However, the film’s success can be attributed in large part to effective adaptation, such as changes to the story and the use of audiovisual imagery to enhance its realism and add to its entertainment value. Ichikawa skillfully and artistically adapted Yokomizo’s novel to suit the grammar of the film. In this way, the film The Inugami Family can be said to have been a success in both the commercial and artistic fields, thanks to the successful interaction between Kadokawa Haruki’s desire for a combined media strategy and Ichikawa Kon’s intentions as a creator.
As a result, the film The Inugami Family is seen as a “monumental achievement in Japanese mystery films,” and not only has it solidified Yokomizo Seishi’s position as a writer who established the genre of authentic mysteries, but it has also strengthened the popularity of the novel The Inugami Family, which is still read today and has been adapted many times by multiple forms of media.

Keywords: The Inugami Family, Adaptation, Seishi Yokomizo, Kon Ichikawa, Kadokawa, Media Mix

キ―ワ―ド: 犬神家の一族, アダプテーション, 横溝正史, 市川崑, 角川, メディアミックス