Session 22—Th, April 5: Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain (1965) Session 1

Topics for this session

❖ Ibuse Masuji—Black Rain (1965)

Thoughts*

nothing yet ...

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Read Black Rain. This is distinctly a better book when read in full. But it is a long book and one full of pain. It is workable just to read far enough to get a good sense of the direction of the story. I would much rather have you read the real deal only partway through than read a summary that gives you the shape of the full story. It is the details that make this book the excellent and meaningful work that it is, not the plot line although that, too, is very good. So, read this work over the next few days as much as you can with as attentive a spirit as you can bring to it. Write your RJE on as much of the book as you can get done by this session. Have at least two entries to your RJE. It is important that you have "encountered" this work to some degree before the lecture or the lecture seems rather empty. It is likely I will quiz on the second session of this work and that will focus on details not plot and will draw from earlier chapters (in the first half or earlier for most of the questions). .... Spring 2012 students recommend read at least to somewhever between mid-Chapter 6 to the end of Chapter 7.

Texts, multimedia notes, links*

◊ "Black Rain" (Shōhei Imamura, 1989) [in class only, video clips]
◊ Depiction of Hiroshima bomb painted from memory ["WWII bomb memory", bSpace, jpeg]

Other*

nothing yet ...

*THOUGHTS: Reading before class probably helps follow session content, reading afterwards might help consolidate notes, revisiting for tests is recommended. Content might be added before class or anytime up until about 24 hours ahead of a midterm.

*TEXTS, MULTIMEDIA NOTES, LINKS: If I have read from something, shown something or presented audio, I usually include that information here. If I consider it testable material, it will definitely be listed here. Miscellaneous material that I show may or may not be listed. I often add material at the last minute and hope to have time later to note it, but often cannot.

*OTHER: When possible I note here names, places, and other details that I have mentioned in a lecture that would otherwise not be accessible in the assigned materials or easily located on your own. As with "TEXTS ..." this is usually sometime after class and, again, I might not be able to get around to doing it.