How to sell a remake: The Gate of Flesh media franchise

González-López, Irene (2023) How to sell a remake: The Gate of Flesh media franchise. In: Diffrient, D.S. and Chan, K. (eds.) East Asian Film Remakes. Screen Serialities. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 27-48. ISBN 9781399508162.

Abstract

This chapter examines the Japanese media franchise of Gate of Flesh (Nikutai no mon) to explore the industrial, textual, and critical contexts that shape the intricate relations among its eight iterations to date. Gate of Flesh stems from Tamura Taijirō’s novel (1947), a controversial representative work of the Literature of the Flesh which celebrated the postwar liberation of bodily desires to nurture a new subjectivity. It is considered, both in popular and scholarly spheres, a fundamental text in the imagination of Occupied Japan (1945-1952). Perceived as ‘unfinished business’ (Braudy 1998: 331), defeated and occupied Japan has repeatedly been re-imagined in conflicting ways across the creative industries. Drawing on Verevis’ approach to analysing remakes (2006) and on recent Japanese scholarship that seeks to build a theoretical framework attuned to the national industries (Nakamura 2016, Kitamura and Shimura 2017), the chapter offers a detailed analysis of the films’ promotional materials and critical reception to reveal how each new iteration was justified or perceived as relevant in economic, cultural, or emotional terms—as Braudy would have it.

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