Narratology In The Japanese Wife

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Narratology, even though has its roots in Aristotle’s Poetics gained prevalence by the mid twentieth century. It is the study of how a chain of related events are presented through words or images, called a narrative, and by whom they are narrated. With the growing interest in multimedia, film narratology which studies the structures in film narratives came into prevalence. The Japanese Wife is an absorbing film directed by the Bengali filmmaker Aparna Sen. It is based on the short story of the same name by the Bengali writer Kunal Basu. Released in 2010, the narrative revolves around a Bengali school teacher, Snehamoy, and a Japanese woman, Miyage. It is an epistolary film and Sen brilliantly takes the narrative forward mainly through the exchange of letters by the main characters. The film is set both in India and Japan. This paper has attempted a study of the narrative of The Japanese Wife. A study has been done with its focus on the method of narration, the story-plot distinction, the dramatic acts (based on the theories by Syd and Todorov), the frame and embedded narratives involved, space, time, the order of narration, narrators, the narrative devices used and the editing techniques employed.
Keywords: Narratology, story-plot, narrative, narrator, analeptic-proleptic, film editing …show more content…

Snehamoy’s parents were drowned in river Matla during the floods and ever since then he was brought up by his mother’s sister. Snehamoy, a Bengali, begins a relationship with Miyage, a Japanese girl who runs a family store from her home. Snehamoy becomes her pen friend after finding her name in a particular magazine. We are not told as to how they came to be friends. Their relationship is confined to the exchange of letters which began when Snehamoy commenced his college education. After his education he secures a job as an arithmetic teacher in a local

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