Gassan by Atsushi Mori was given 70th Akutagawa Prize at the 48th age of Showa. It became the topic of talk, because he received the prize at his age of sixty-one and also reappered after long silence in spite of his early debut. The hero spent his life at Churenji looking upon Mt. Gassan in Tohoku district from fall to next spring. This is the author's original world of symbolic description of the nature, narrated in the letter style, in which the problems of the Nature, human beings, life and death are discussed through the hero's hibernation. After a suite was composed, based upon the novel, it is dealt with in ballet, fine art, dance, film, drama and so on. Seaching for features of Mori's literatuire, we would consider why it appeals so much especially to young readers.
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