Yone Noguchi (1875–1947)

Yoné Noguchi's little book (77 pages), The Spirit of Japanese Poetry, published initially in 1914, and reprinted by Mint Editions in 2021, comprises six chapters about Japanese poetry : (I) its "spirit", (II) the Hokku [i.e., Haiku] poetry, (III) the Noh theater, (IV) the earliest poetry of Japan, (V) the present poets of Japan, and (VI) "some Uta specimens from the Haykunin Ishiu Anthology compiled in 1235 by Sadaiye, a Noble of the Kyoto court". Noguchi tells us in his 'Introduction' that these chapters were first delivered as lectures at Magdalen College in Oxford University and at the Japan Society, the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Quest Society.

Mint Editions' "A Note About the Author" following the last page of the book, tells us that Yoné Noguchi (1875-1947) was born in Tsushima, and attended Keio University in Tokyo, where he studied Thomas Carlyle and Herbert Spencer, practiced zen and wrote haiku (i.e., hokku). Noguchi moved to San Francisco in 1983 and worked at a newspaper which served other Japanese exiles, and published his own poetry in two collections. He then moved to New York and, with the editorial assistance of journalist Leonie Gilmour, published his first novel 'The American Diary of a Japanese Girl' in 1901. He left New York for England and published a third book of poetry and became acquainted with writers William Butler Yeats and Thomas Hardy. Returning to New York in 1903, he married Gilmour. In 1904, with breakout of the Russo-Japanese War, Noguchi returned to Japan and served as a literary critic for the Japan Times. He ended his marriage with Gilmour with whom he had a son, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) the renowned sculptor. During the decades leading up to Japan's war with the West, Noguchi became a nationalist supporter of Imperial Japan. In 1945, his Tokyo home was destroyed in the firebombing of that city. Noguchi died in July 1947.

Chapter I, 'The Spirit of Japanese Poetry', may best be summed up in the expression 'less is more'. Noguchi exhibits in this chapter poets Basho and Buson, masters of the 17-syllable haiku poem. "When our Japanese poetry is best, it is, [Noguchi says], a searchlight or flash of thought or passion cast on a moment of life and nature, which by virtue of its intensity, leads us to the conception of the whole; it is swift, discontinuous, an isolated piece." [p. 16] This is contrary to the wordiness of English and American poets although Noguchi does hold in high regard the French symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme. Noguchi, in his opening chapter, also touches on other forms of Japanese imagination: the painting of Hokushi (Hokusai) ; the tea-masters "who were the true poets [ . . . ] of the true action" [p. 22] ; the true conception of Taoism or even by way of "Zennism" [p. 21]

Chapter II discusses in greater detail the Haiku and draws comparisons between Basho and Walt Whitman, as well as Tennyson, Wordsworth, Robert Browning, and especially William Blake. Chapter III explores the Noh drama, or "play of silence" in the Noh house (similar to the tea house) "where the the actors go straight into the hear of prayer in crating the most intense atmosphere of grayness, the most suggestive colour in all Japanese art, which is the twilight soared out of time and place [ . . . . ] [p. 38] Chapter IV delves into the 13th century street preacher, Nichiren (1222-1282) whose fervent tongue made me think of John the Baptist, and the 'Kojiki' or 'Records of Ancient Matters', the earliest compilation of Japanese literature, "when [Noguchi says] our Japanese mind was the Japanese mind pure and true, not the Japanese mind of latter age, sometimes doubtless, refined and polished, but always wounded and tormented by the despotic counsel of Chinese literature and Buddhism [ . . . ] [p. 49] Chapter V surveys the (then) contemporary poets of Japan who were coming under the influence of Verlaine, Hugo, Schiller, Keats, Shelley, and others in the Western canon of modernity.

Chapter VI, 'Some Uta Specimens from the Hyakunin Ishiu Anthology [ . . . ]' is too short for this reader. It led me to the University of Virginia website devoted to the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, or 100 poems by 100 poets.



In turn, I opened my copy of Kenneth Rexroth's 'One Hundred Poems From The Japanese (New Directions, 1964) and found therein at least half of what is at the UVA website.

If Kenneth Rexroth is considered the father of the 'beat' generation of poets in San Francisco, then Yoné Noguchi must be its grandfather.… (meer)

This is a short anthology of collected essays on Japanese poetry and related themes, originally published in 1914. Noguchi (1875-1947) was a pioneering figure in introducing Japanese culture to the West and popularizing its art, poetry and theatre, as well as such related manifestations as the tea ceremony, within an intellectual milieu that was newly curious about this unfamiliar aesthetic.

It was a curiosity tinged with appeal of the strange and exotic. Today we tend to view early relations between Western and Asian cultures through the lens of Orientalism, with its overtones of colonialism, imperialism and depredation. During those early days of contact, there was a vogue for Oriental-influenced work in France, which swept these preliminary threads of alien cultures in perhaps a pell-mell fashion into the impressionist, imagist and symbolist movements. The introductory Editorial Note draws a contrast between "the old world of Thought and the new of Action" and draws attention to the "great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought". Today, we might see such pronouncements as something of a survival reflex, on the part of the culture coming under the influence of Western domination, an assertion of primacy through claiming access to a realm of profundity beyond that of the basely materialistic West. This appeal of the exotic colored a good part of the early dialogue between Asia and the West.

My own early exposure to Oriental exoticism, via D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Eugen Herrigel and others, no doubt benefited from a similar grounding in which paradox, iconoclasm, and the wisdom of wordlessness and the inexpressible was paradigmatic. Noguchi was an early exponent of this world-view, bringing to the west such pithy apothegms as this:

"... written poems, even when they are said to be good, are only the second best, as the very best poems are left unwritten or sung in silence." [p.14]

In his exposition of the spirit of haiku, there is much, of course, of Zen and the Tao: Noguchi quotes Tsurayuki on the spirit of spontaneity as expressed by the poet, as well as the fundamental spiritual depth attained through the true poet’s insight: "without an effort, heaven and earth are moved" [p.16]

Alongside other early influencers such as Lafcadio Hearn, Noguchi, born into the culture and steeped in it, was well equipped to serve as translator and intermediary His own life was a busy and peripatetic journey between Japan and the centres of culture on the west coast of the United States, New York, London and Paris. The history of his personal relationships and attachments is similarly involved and tangled, marked by divided loyalties, separations and bisexual attractions and affairs. In addition to his works on Japanese poetry, he was influential in bringing Noh theatre to the West. Surprisingly, among those who were influenced by his works of cultural translation can be included Pound and Yeats.

Noguchi is strongest on haiku; his exposition of the Noh theatre, at least in the texts included here, is adulatory to the point of incoherence, and the fragments of Noh texts he adduces, including those written by himself, would not be convincing to the uninitiated.

There is something of a paradox inherent in, on the one hand, finding a rallying cry in an esthetic so inaccessible to the unwashed masses and whose intimacies are open only to those with the most purified and rarified of sensibilities; and, on the other, advancement of the cause of outspokenness, apparent simplicity and freedom from dogma and elitism which led Zen and its offshoots to become so popular in the 60s and 70s. The precision and sparseness of haiku resonates more with the compactness and polished surfaces of Pound and the imagists. And also, the school of “less is more”:

"Let the poets forget once and for all about publication, and let them live in poetry as the true poets of old days used to live." [p. 20]

And:

...a dozen good hokkus in one's whole life would not be regarded as a bad crop." [p.36]

Noguchi is contemptuous of poetry, or indeed any writing, that is motivated by an agenda -- including commitments and appeals to social reform and critiques of the existing order – as opposed to those that begin and end with spiritual insight and perception.

In reading Noguchi on haiku, I was led to wonder about the Danrin school, or the "talkative forest", of the 17th century from whose principles Bashō broke away, and which Noguchi references disparagingly [p. 36]. Almost nothing can be found about this school on Wikipedia, but Britannica’s history of Japanese literature yielded this tantalizing overview:

"The poets of the Danrin school, headed by Nishiyama Sōin and Saikaku, insisted that it was pointless to waste months if not years perfecting a sequence of 100 verses. Their ideal was rapid and impromptu composition, and their verses, generally colloquial in diction, were intended to amuse for a moment rather than to last for all time. Saikaku especially excelled at one-man composition of extended sequences; in 1684 he composed the incredible total of 23,500 verses in a single day and night, too fast for the scribes to do more than tally."

One wonders if there has been a revival or re-evaluation of these writers? My knowledge in this area is much too thin. Perhaps one might envison the school of Kerouac, as counterpoise to Pound and Eliot ? The ideal of sparsity, refinement and purity may, in one sense, contain its own inherent contradiction.

Mint Editions, the publisher, describes its goal – a worthy one -- as “bring[ing] life back to timeless works of literature and provok[ing] new conversations about how these works continue to shape our lives today.”… (meer)