a belated reply to death on the mountain/Narayama bushi-ko

[Kirsten Cather]

I've just gotten back to KineJapan after a couple of months absence
but wanted to add to the response below....

Although Kinoshita's 1958 version of Narayama bushi-ko was based on Fukazawa's
novella of the same title (and is a funky kabuki stylized rendition),
Imamura's in 1983
is adapted from both this and another novella by Fukazawa "Tohoku no
zunmu-tachi" (1960)
which has been  translated into Italian I think, but not English.  This is
especially key to
reading the Imamura in contrast to the Kinoshita since Imamura includes
lots of bawdy
details directly from "Tohoku" like the saga of devirginizing the "stinky"
(kusare) second
son, the unforgettable dog scene, and Oe's charitable round-robin of sex
with the second
sons of the village.

Kirsten Cather (grad student in modern Japanese literature
and film at Univ. of CA Berkeley)

>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
>
>*********************************************