“Yasuko, Songs of Days Past”: New Film Remembers Poet Nakahara Chūya and a Literary Love Triangle

Literary Love Triangle

Yasuko, Songs of Days Past is the latest film by director Negishi Kichitarō. Its original title in Japanese, Yukite kaeranu (Never to Return), is taken from a poem by Nakahara Chūya (1907–37), who died aged just 30 on October 30, 1937. The previous month, he had entrusted the manuscript of his second poetry collection, Arishi hi no uta (Poems of Days Past) to his friend, the critic Kobayashi Hideo (1902–83). “Yukite kaeranu” is one of the poems included in that manuscript. Bearing the subtitle “Kyoto,” the poem is a bittersweet reflection on the time that Chūya spent in that city, between the ages of 16 and 18.

In 1974, 37 years after Chūya’s death, another book appeared with the same title: Yukite kaeranu: Nakahara Chūya to no ai (Never to Return: My Love Affair with Nakahara Chūya). The book was a memoir by Hasegawa Yasuko (1904–93), written with the literary critic Murakami Mamoru. Yasuko lived with Chūya in Kyoto and moved with him to Tokyo.

A still from the film Yasuko, Songs of Days Past. From left: Nakahara Chūya (Kido Taisei), Kobayashi Hideo (Okada Masaki), Hasegawa Yasuko (Hirose Suzu). (© 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee)

The son of a prominent doctor in Yamaguchi, Chūya was regarded as a childhood prodigy, and entered the prefectural junior high school as a brilliant student with outstanding grades. But he gradually lost focus and rebelled, dropping out in his third year. In April 1923, he got a place at the Ritsumeikan Junior High School in Kyoto, and left home to live in a dorm. The following year, he met Yasuko, three years his senior. She had graduated from a girls’ school in Hiroshima and was now working as a film actress in Kyoto, playing small parts.

They moved in together and relocated to Tokyo the following year. But the whirlwind romance was not to last. Just eight months after they moved to the capital, Yasuko left Chūya for another man: Kobayashi Hideo, whom Chūya had met through the poet Tominaga Tarō (1901–25). Then a brilliant student in the French literature department at Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), Kobayashi would go on to become one of the most important Japanese critics and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Even after the breakup, Chūya remained friends with Kobayashi, and continued to meet Yasuko socially. Looking back on the situation years later, Kobayashi wrote of the “strange triangular relationship” that existed between Yasuko and the two friends at the time.

Chūya in Kyoto, immersed in Arthur Rimbaud’s Une saison en enfer. (© 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee)

The idea of turning these tangled human relationships into a movie came from scriptwriter Tanaka Yōzō, who wrote a scenario based on the story more than 40 years ago. Projects to film the script came and went several times, only to come to nothing. Over the years, the script became something of an open secret among producers and directors.

Actors in a Script Written Before They Were Born

Now, after all these years, the famous script has finally been made into a film. Director Negishi Kichitarō has worked with Tanaka four times in the past, dating back to Female Teacher: Dirty After School in 1981, during his Roman porno period. More recently, they teamed up on the award-winning Villon’s Wife in 2009.

Chūya and Kobayashi bond over literature while Yasuko looks on skeptically. (© 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee)

“I knew about Nakahara Chūya since I was young,” Negishi says. “I’d always liked his poetry, and I’d heard the literary scandal of how his girlfriend had left him for Kobayashi Hideo. It struck me as a fascinating period and a series of events with dramatic potential. I’d heard rumors over the years that a script supposedly existed. At some stage—I can’t remember exactly how many years ago—I finally got hold of it and read it. And it was a great script. From that time on, I was determined to make it into a film someday.”

The story is a period piece set in the 1920s. In that sense, the fact that the script is now more than 40 years old has not dated it. How much did the director and his team feel they needed to edit it to make it suitable for filming after so much time?

“The dialogue is pretty much as it was originally written. It was quite literary, very beautiful Japanese, in a crisp, polished style that matches the period perfectly and convinces you this is the way the characters would really have spoken. But of course, the script had to work when performed by contemporary actors. I did ask Yōzō to make a few changes with that in mind. I wanted to focus more on their youth—that was my decision. I wanted to spend a bit more time showing them as young people confronting themselves and staring to make their way in life.”

(© Igarashi Kazuharu)

The three main roles are all played by young actors well known to contemporary audiences. It cannot have been easy for such young actors to give natural performances as characters who were born more than 100 years ago.

“The role of Yasuko is particularly difficult, I think, because she doesn’t stay the same. The actress has to change depending on the time and who she’s with—and she also ages over the course of the movie. Hirose Suzu did a great job of interpreting Yasuko’s character as she’s depicted in the script. For the part of Nakahara Chūya, we looked at more than a dozen different actors in auditions. I think the deciding point in Kido Taisei’s favor was his freshness and innocence—he has a real sparkle in his eyes. Okada Masaki did a great job too. He really thought deeply about Kobayashi and his character. And his role is vital—getting the part of Kobayashi Hideo just right was essential to allow Kido to throw himself into his part as the antagonist.”

Kobayashi confesses that he’s growing tired of life with Yasuko. (© 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee)

Negishi says he didn’t give any instructions to the actors in terms of the personality or state of mind of the characters they were playing.

“All my instructions were to do with positioning and the timing of the dialogue. Sit here, at this point I want you to move over there. Come here and pick up this bottle. Stand up at this line, and make sure to speak the lines till the end. Stuff like that. I think that’s enough, personally. Actors get the idea.”

For example, there is a moment at the beginning of the film when Yasuko looks up at a persimmon she is holding high above her head.

“It’s not the kind of thing anyone would normally do. But I didn’t give any reason—just asked her to do it. And she never asked for explanations. She’d just nod and do what I had asked. Gradually, though an accumulation of actions and gestures like that, an actor develops a feel for the personality of the character they’re playing. In that sense, these movements serve as hints for their performance. At least, that’s how I think of it.”

Kobayashi can’t take his eyes off the beautiful Yasuko. (© 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee)

The Innocence of a Poet

A psychological drama unfolds as the three characters collide and a twisted triangular relationship develops between them. How does the director interpret Tanaka Yōzō’s script?

“Fundamentally, I think it’s the story of a woman and the life she lived. She just happens to meet this younger man with a genius for writing poetry, and an older man who is a brilliant intellectual and scholar. They are both men whose names will survive them. But the interesting thing for me is that they recognized each other’s talent from an early stage, before either of them was known. It’s not just the story of a woman who leaves one man for another. The two men resonated on a certain wavelength, and felt a kind of envy and jealousy for each other, mixed in with their mutual admiration. Yasuko walks her own path through life over this tangled mass of emotions.”

(© Igarashi Kazuharu)

Part of the drama comes from the unique relationship between the two men, a poet and a critic whose attitude toward language was diametrically opposed. Yasuko felt connected to Chūya on a nervous level, and described Kobayashi as looking down on the world from a lofty height. In fact, she felt somewhat afraid of both men, and gradually loses her mental equilibrium over the course of the story.

“The film deals with people of rare gifts who lived in a particular time and place, but it is also a story that overlaps with our own time. A woman trapped between two men of genius—it’s a universal story. You don’t need to know anything about literary history to enjoy the film. I decided that the biographical elements in the story are not that important. Of course, Chūya’s compulsion to write, his passion for poetry is vital to the story, so I used some of his poems in the film. That’s an important part of the background to his story.”

(© 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee)

One of the poems Negishi uses in the film is “Asa no uta” (Morning Song), which marked a turning point in Chūya’s creative life. The poem was written in 1926, not long after Yasuko left him, and was later included in Yagi no Uta (Goatsongs), the only collection of Chūya’s work to be published during his lifetime.

“Most of his best-known poems were published after his death. He wrote them after his relationship with Yasuko came to an end. These include “Yukite kaeranu,” which I chose as the title for the film. In that poem, he looks back on his time in Kyoto. He was poor then, but perhaps because he was with Yasuko, the poem is full of the bittersweet melancholy of youth. There’s something fresh about the way he looks back on those days in these poems.”

(© 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee)

Yasuko is the central figure around whom the story unfolds. As in her memoir, one of the most touching aspects of the film is Chūya’s shining innocence, as seen through Yasuko’s eyes. Negishi reflects on an affecting scene in which Yasuko leaves behind the house where she has lived with Chūya and departs with Kobayashi.

“There’s a strange kindness and gentleness about him—he even helps her with her things. People sometimes call him crazy, but I don’t get that sense. I’m sure he had certain obsessions, and he may have been a bit of a misfit, with something wild and untamed about him. But he was also acutely sensitive to the sadness of life, and was able to sublimate his feelings into poetry. Yasuko left him, and then he lost his younger brother, then later a son . . . In the film, I wanted people to see Nakahara Chūya as a young man, someone devoted to poetry, who deals sincerely and honestly with the women in his life. Not a crazy person at all but a young man passionate about poetry and life.”

Trailer (Japanese)

(Originally published in Japanese. Reporting and text by Matsumoto Takuya of Nippon.com. Photos of Negishi Kichitarō © Igarashi Kazuharu. Banner photo: A still from the film Yasuko, Songs of Days Past. © 2025 Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Production Committee.)