AustLit

Kilpatrick explores the notion that 'different cultural and narratological differences can affect the significances arising out of the texts' (16), through an examination of Miyazawa Kenji's Nametoko Yama no Kuma, the Morimoto/Smith adaptation Kojuro and the Bears (Australian CBC Picture Book of the Year 1987), and the unillustrated original narrative. In a cross-cultural comparison, Kilpatrick argues that the westernised adaptations 'signify an unfamiliar message of interaction between nature and life to an audience acculturated by more anthropocentric traditions' (16).

Buddhism is intrinsic to Kenji's narratives and Kilpatrick sees a disparity between the central Buddhist tenet regarding the 'equality and ultimate oneness of all beings and objects in the phenomenal world' and the anthropocentric western perspective that privileges humans over animals and nature, in a hierarchy that is fixed and naturalised (17). The contrast shows how culture and 'discoursal strategies' affect intepretation through methods of representation and how certain significations 'foster and provoke [a] more intense contemplation of life' (25).

However, Kilpatrick highlights how the western adaptations are encoded with a more humanistic, ecological ideology, which, she argues, shows that, fundamentally, 'different notions about death and the cosmos make it difficult to avoid acculturated beliefs' (25).