Years after reading the novel, I saw the film version Zero Focus by Nomura Yoshitaro on Japanese TV. It is a film noir as ever there was one, with strong hints of Hitchcock, and here, too, the atmosphere is great. During a second trip to Kanazawa, Teiko visits the Noto Peninsula, which in the film appears as a snowbound landscape full of dangers. Sheer cliffs tower over raging seas, dilapidated houses cling to rocky slopes, and the snow keeps falling relentlessly. If anything, the last scene where Teiko confronts the murderer on this cliff has been drawn out too long, there are too many flashbacks while she challenges the woman behind the mystery to a confession. But I can easily imagine Nomura Yoshitaro liked this landscape so much he just went on filming here...
[Yase no Dangai Cliff, Noto]
Since then, I have had the chance to visit Noto and finally I could stand on the same cliff as Teiko in that dramatic last scene, 50 meters above the sea: Yase no Dangai. It was a beautiful summer day, and the sea was a calm field of green-blue. No raging waves, no violent storm, no snow. The only things that reminded me of the danger of the place were the many signs warning against suicide. The bodies of people who jump down here from the cliff are carried far away by the tide. Think about the faces of your parents.
[Matsumoto Seicho Poem, Noto]
Matsumoto Seicho also came here, of course, and he left the following poem that has been carved on a stone near Ganmon, a little bit to the south on the same rocky coast:
sagging clouds
alone facing
the raging waves
I feel sadness
first trip to Noto
kumo tarete | hitori takereru | aranami wo | kanashi to omoeri | noto no hatsutabi