Screenwriter and Director Adachi Shin Relishing Reputation as a Late Bloomer

Early Influences

As a screenwriter and film director, Adachi Shin is known for his comical, lighthearted tales. This image, however, belies a personal taste in movies that leans toward the macabre. He remembers as a boy seeing the poster for the 1980 horror cult classic Cannibal Holocaust and begging his father to take him to see it. From that point on, he was hooked.

Adachi Shin (© Hanai Tomoko)

While he has yet to dip his toes in the horror genre, he says he has no interest in dabbling in new-wave works like Ari Aster’s 2019 Midsommar, preferring instead to have a go at reinterpreting the B-horror movies of his youth. “The genre is terribly dated,” he declares. “Still, if I had the time and money, it would be fun to make something that harkens back to the old splatter movies, but giving it a personal touch.”

Alongside horror, Adachi also developed a fondness for short, over-the-top comedy sketches known as konto in Japanese. His infatuation was such that he memorized the now legendary track from the Yellow Magic Orchestra’s 1983 album Service that featured schtick by the comedy group Super Eccentric Theater. He performed the sketch at his elementary school’s arts festival, leaving his classmates in stiches and giving him his first taste of comic success.

In high school, he showcased his budding writing talents by penning a short play based on a popular movie for his school’s festival. Looking back, he recognizes his desire to recreate the works that he admired blurred the line between homage and outright imitation, but he says it was the best he could do at the time. He ended up winning first prize at the festival, which he considers his unofficial debut as a scriptwriter. “It gave me the confidence to pursue writing more seriously.”

From Script to Screen

After high school, Adachi left Tottori to study at the Japan Institute of the Moving Image, a film academy in Yokohama founded by director Imamura Shōhei. There he quickly drew attention for his writing and directing prowess. “I had just barely started when I took second in a scriptwriting contest at the school in which Imamura was one of the judges,” he recounts. “Top finishers were allowed to direct their works, so I enjoyed a lot of time behind the camera. It went to my head a little bit, but it also convinced me that if I wanted to direct then I should be writing the scripts too.”

Setting out on his own after graduating, Adachi eventually met up with Sasaki Shirō, who previously headed the well-known film production and distribution firm Art Theatre Guild before starting his own company Office Shirous. Sasaki pressed Adachi on his future plans and also introduced him to director Sōmai Shinji, who became his mentor. It was around this time that he met his future wife Akiko.

Adachi worked as an assistant director on various projects but his career remained in a holding pattern. Determining that he could have more success writing for the stage, he left the film industry to establish a theater troupe only to return to writing movie scripts on the encouragement of a colleague. Looking back, he says that “I had seen others use screenwriting as a launchpad to directing, so I thought that if I kept at it I’d eventually catch a break.”

Adachi’s persistence eventually paid off—or so he thought. His hopes soared when one of his scripts was picked up by the production company of an acclaimed producer, but just as quickly plummeted when the firm went bankrupt. “I was all set to make my debut when everything went belly up,” he recalls dryly.

(© Hanai Tomoko)

Spring’s Arrival

Adachi depicts the ups and down of this period of his life in his 2023 semi-autobiographic novel Haru yo koi, maji de koi (Spring, Get Here Now). The story, serialized in Japan’s oldest film magazine Kinema Junpō, describes the life of a down-and-out screenwriter who dreams of making it big. He is joined by a group of equally starry-eyed misfits—an aspiring comedian and hopeful novelist—in a rundown apartment in the suburbs of Tokyo. In writing the novel, Adachi says he wanted to capture the feelings of frustration and desire that characterized his late twenties. “I knew it would make a good story someday,” he says. Chuckling, he adds, “It’s fiction, but to be on the safe side I made sure that my friends from that time were ok with the characters before publishing.”

The novel is filled with Adachi’s style of humor—much of it blue in nature. While he admits to embellishing some scenes, Adachi asserts that the work is grounded in reality. “I had been plagued by feelings of guilt and shame for a long time, and I wanted to portray these as openly and honestly as I could.”

Lady Luck Smiles at Last

In the afterword of the book, Adachi describes the period as the darkest point of his life. Things eventually brightened—he married, started a family, and found solace in his role as a stay-at-home husband and father. Holding faintly to his dream of writing a successful script, he says he navigated the twists and turns of life. “I was satisfied with my lot,” he declares. “It was the first time that I felt that I had an actual purpose.”

This sense of comfort was soon shaken by his wife. “We were lying under the covers one night when she declared that she hadn’t married me so I could be a stay-at-home husband,” he recounted. “She then told me I had a year to prove myself as a screenwriter.” Adachi knew the timeframe was unrealistic—even the best of scripts take years to go from paper to screen. “I was so shocked that all I could do was grunt in response.”

It ended up taking five years, but he finally had his breakout success with 100 Yen Love, a quirky drama released in 2014 about a woman making a late start in life. The work earned him a Japanese Academy Film Prize for best screenplay and paved the way for other successes, including his 2016 debut novel Chibusa ni ka (A Mosquito on the Breast), which Adachi adapted into the award-winning A Beloved Wife. More recently, he has gained acclaim as a co-writer for the NHK serialized morning drama Bugi ugi (Boogie Woogie) based on the life of Kasagi Shizuko.

Adachi gives a lot of the credit for his belated success to his wife Akiko, who is well acquainted with her husband’s timid nature and confesses to twisting his arm as circumstances require. “If we were a production company,” Adachi says, “I’d be a run-of-the-mill employee and Akiko would be the boss.”

Adachi and his wife Akiko share a relationship that is not unlike a comic duo. (© Hanai Tomoko)

With Boogie Woogie now finished, Adachi says that he feels more of a sense of release than accomplishment, noting that the constant demand of working on the television drama cramped his typical work style and left him little time to consider other projects. “Honestly, I felt anxious,” he says. “I’m still in the middle of chasing my dream and so have to keep cranking out new ideas for movies.” Giving a little laugh he adds, “Anyway, when I get too busy, I get cranky, which I’ve learned is bad for family harmony. As Imamura Shōhei said, you have to make your own work. I take this to heart. I want to live a good life, which means taking the good with the bad.”

(© Hanai Tomoko)

(Originally published in Japanese. Text by Watanabe Reiko. Banner photo © Hanai Tomoko.)