death on the mountain

[Adriana Boscaro]

A reply to Bob Grody:

The film _The Ballad of Narayama_ directed by Imamura Shohei was taken from
_Narayamabushi kou_ (1956) by Fukazawa Shichiroo (1914-87), which deals
with the OBASUTE legend in which the elderly are said to have been
abandoned in the mountains in premodern Japan. Before Imamura, also
Kinoshita Keisuke directed the same subject in 1958. There is an English
translation of Fukazawa's book by Donald Keene, "The Songs of Oak
Mountain", in _Three Modern Japanese Short Novels_, New York, Viking Press,
1961, pp. 3-50.
Adriana Boscaro

*********************************************
Adriana Boscaro
Dipartimento di Studi sull'Asia Orientale
(Department of East Asian Studies)
Universita' Ca' Foscari
Ca' Cappello, San Polo 2035
30125 VENEZIA (Italy)
tel. +39.041.52.85.801
fax  +39.041.52.42.397
e-mail: boscaro at unive.it

*********************************************