| Recontextualizing the Allegorical Spirit in Yukio Mishima’s Beautiful Star ：From the 1962 Novel to the 2017 Film Adaptation |
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| Kahyun LEE |
| Research Professor of Global Institute for Japanese Studies Korea University |
三島由紀夫 |
| 李佳呟 |
| 高麗大学校グローバル日本研究院研究教授 |
Correspondence
Kahyun LEE ,Email: ukalove@korea.ac.kr
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Published online: 30 December 2025. |
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Copyright ©2025 The Global Institute for Japanese Studies, Korea University |
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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.
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| ABSTRACT |
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This paper examines how Yukio Mishima’s novel Beautiful Star (1962) was reinterpreted in the 2017 film adaptation directed by Daihachi Yoshida, focusing on the transformation of its allegorical structure through the process of recontextualization. While the original novel reflects the external crisis of the Cold War and nuclear anxiety, the film redefines this into internal and structural crises such as environmental collapse and information overload. Drawing on Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation and Robert Stam’s concept of intermediality and media specificity, this study demonstrates how Yoshida’s creative “misreading” dismantles the novel’s structuralist and mythic allegory, reconstructing it as a media-critical and participatory allegory suited to the digital age. The paper further argues that the adaptation’s treatment of the “failure” motif—central to Mishima’s narrative—functions as a productive site of transformation, translating the original’s theological uncertainty into an epistemological ambiguity about truth in contemporary media society. Through this comparative analysis, the study contributes to adaptation studies and modern Japanese literature studies by revealing how allegorical imagination can traverse temporal and medial boundaries in order to produce renewed cultural meanings. |
Keywords:
Mishima Yukio, Beautiful Star, Adaptation Studies, Recontextualization, Intermediality
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| キ―ワ―ド:
三島由紀夫, 美しい星, アダプテーション研究, 再文脈化, インターメディアリティ |
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