Yone Noguchi

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Yone Noguchi

Yone Noguchi, born (and known in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
as) Yonejiro Noguchi (????? Noguchi Yonejiro, 1875 - 1947), was an influential writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and literary criticism in both English and Japanese. He is also remembered as the father of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi

Tsushima, Aichi

is a cities of Japan located in Aichi Prefecture in the Chubu region of Japan.As of March 1, 2004, the city has an estimated population of 66,712 and the population density of 2,660 persons per square kilometer....
, near Nagoya.

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Yone Noguchi, born (and known in Japan

Japan

Isamu Noguchi

Biography

Early life

Noguchi was born on December 8, 1875 in the town of Tsushima

Tsushima, Aichi

Keio University

is a university located in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the top universities in Japan, similar to one of America's Ivy League institutions....
but left before graduating to travel to San Francisco in 1893. There, Noguchi joined a newspaper run by Japanese exiles associated with the Freedom and People's Rights Movement

Freedom and People's Rights Movement

The was a Meiji period Japanese political and social movement that in the 1870s and 1880s pursued the formation of an elected legislature, revision of the Unequal Treaties with America and European countrys, the institution of civil rights and the reduction of centralized taxation....
and worked as a domestic servant. He spent some months studying at a preparatory school for Stanford and working as a journalist before determining, after a visit to the Oakland hillside home

Joaquin Miller Park

Joaquin Miller Park is a park in the Oakland Hills owned and operated by the city of Oakland, California, named after early California writer and poet Joaquin Miller....
of Joaquin Miller

Joaquin Miller

Joaquin Miller was the pen name of the colorful American poet, essayist and fabulist Cincinnatus Heine Miller ....
, his true vocation of poet. Miller welcomed and encouraged Noguchi and introduced him to other Bay Area bohemians

Bohemianism

The term bohemian, of French origin, was first used in the English language in the nineteenth century to describe the untraditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities....
, including Gelett Burgess

Gelett Burgess

Frank Gelett Burgess was an artist, art critic, poet, author, and humorist. He was born in Boston, and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a B.S....
(who published Noguchi's first verses in his magazine, The Lark), Ina Coolbrith

Ina Coolbrith

Ina Coolbrith was a poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent and beloved figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community....
, Edwin Markham

Edwin Markham

Charles Edwin Anson Markham was an American poetry....
, Adeline Knapp

Adeline Knapp

Adeline E. Knapp was an American journalist, essayist, and novelist, as well as an activist for women's suffrage and other causes. An important figure in the turn of the century California literary scene, she is mainly remembered today for her tempestuous relationship with Charlotte Perkins Gilman....
, and Charles Warren Stoddard

Charles Warren Stoddard

Charles Warren Stoddard was an United States author.He was descended in a direct line from Anthony Stoddard of England, who settled at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1639....
. Noguchi weathered a plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one's own original work.Within academia, plagiarism by students, professors, or researchers is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud and offenders are subject to academic censure....
scandal in 1896 to publish two books of poetry in 1897, and remained an important fixture of the Bay area literary scene until his departure for the East Coast

East Coast of the United States

The East Coast of the United States, also known as the "Eastern Seaboard" or "Atlantic Seaboard", refers to the easternmost coastal states in the central and northern United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada....
in 1900.

Career

From 1900 to 1904, Noguchi's primarily base was New York City

New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
. There, with the help of Leonie Gilmour

Léonie Gilmour

L?onie Gilmour was an American educator, editor, and journalist who played a unique role in Japanese-American relations in the early decades of the twentieth century....
, he completed work on his first novel, The American Diary of a Japanese Girl
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl

The American Diary of a Japanese Girl is the first English novel published in the United States by a person of Japanese ancestry. Acquired for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Monthly Magazine by editor Ellery Sedgwick in 1901, it appeared in two excerpted installments in November and December of that year with illustrations by Genjiro Yet...
, and a sequel, The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid. He then sailed to England, where he self-published and promoted his third book of poetry, From the Eastern Sea, and formed connections with leading literary figures like William Michael Rossetti

William Michael Rossetti

William Michael Rossetti was an English writer and critic....
, Laurence Binyon

Laurence Binyon

Robert Laurence Binyon was an England poet, dramatist, and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....
, William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

File:William Butler Yeat by George Charles Beresford.jpgWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish people poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th century in literature....
, Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, Order of Merit was an England author of the naturalism movement, though he regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain....
, Laurence Housman

Laurence Housman

Laurence Housman was an English playwright, writer and illustrator.The younger brother of the poet A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire....
, Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons

Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor....
and the young Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Mitchell Ransome was an England author and journalist.He is best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books....
. His London success brought some attention on his return to New York in 1903, and he formed productive new friendships with American writers like Edmund Clarence Stedman

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Edmund Clarence Stedman , United States poet, critic, and essayist was born at Hartford, Connecticut, Connecticut, United States....
, Zona Gale

Zona Gale

Zona Gale was an American author, and playwright....
, and even Mary MacLane

Mary MacLane

Mary MacLane was a controversial Canada-born United States writer whose frank memoirs helped usher in the confessional style of autobiographical writing....
, but he continued to have difficulty publishing in the United States. This changed with the onset of the Russo-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War or the Manchurian Campaign in some English sources, was a conflict that grew out of the rival imperialism ambitions of the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over Manchuria and Korea....
in 1904, when Noguchi's writings on various aspects of Japanese culture were suddenly in great demand among magazine editors. He was able to publish a number of seminal articles at this time, including "A Proposal to American Poets," in which he advised American poets to "try Japanese hokku

Hokku

is the opening stanza of a Japanese orthodox collaborative linked poem, renga, or of its later derivative, renku . From the time of Matsuo Basho , the hokku began to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun , and haiga ....
."

Having (he thought) ended a brief, secret marriage to Leonie Gilmour

Léonie Gilmour

L?onie Gilmour was an American educator, editor, and journalist who played a unique role in Japanese-American relations in the early decades of the twentieth century....
in the early months of 1904, Noguchi made plans to return to Japan, with the intention of marrying another romantic interest, Washington Post reporter Ethel Armes

Ethel Armes

Ethel Marie Armes was an American journalist and historian.Daughter of Col. George Augustus Armes and Lucy Hamilton Kerr, the daughter John Bozman Kerr, Ethel was brought up in Washington, D.C....
. He returned to Japan in August 1904, and became a professor of English at his alma mater, Keio Gijuku, the following year, but his marriage plan was spoiled when it became known that Leonie Gilmour

Léonie Gilmour

L?onie Gilmour was an American educator, editor, and journalist who played a unique role in Japanese-American relations in the early decades of the twentieth century....
had given birth to Noguchi's son (the future sculptor Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi

was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architecture whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold....
) in Los Angeles. In 1907, Leonie and Isamu joined Noguchi in Tokyo, but the reunion proved short-lived, mainly because Noguchi had already acquired a Japanese wife before their arrival. He and Leonie separated for good in 1909, although Leonie and Isamu continued to live in Japan.

Noguchi continued to publish extensively in English after his return to Japan, becoming a leading interpreter of Japanese culture to Westerners, and of Western culture to the Japanese. His 1909 poem collection, The Pilgrimage, was widely admired, as was a 1913 collection of essays, Through the Torii. In 1913, he made his second trip to England to lecture at Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College redirects here, see also Magdalene College, CambridgeMagdalen College is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford of the University of Oxford in England....
at the invitation of poet laureate, Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges, Order of Merit , was an English poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930....
. He was hailed in the pages of Poetry magazine as a pioneering modernist, thanks to his early advocacy of Free verse

Free verse

Free Verse poetry does not have a strict pattern of rhyming. It does not have regular meter, rhyme, fixed line length, or a specific stanza pattern....
and association with modernist writers like Yeats, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington, born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an England writer and poetry.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry....
, and John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher was a Pulitzer Prize winning Imagist poetry and author. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a socially prominent family....
. In 1919, he made a transcontinental lecture tour of America. By the early 1920s, however, his work had fallen once again into critical disfavor, and he subsequently devoted his English efforts to studies of Ukiyoe, while beginning a somewhat belated career as a Japanese language poet. All of his later books were published in Japan, for Noguchi encountered stiff resistance from American publishers in the 1930s, despite the support of a few sympathetic editors like Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was a Modernism American poet and writer....
.

Late Life

Noguchi's politics usually followed prevailing Japanese tendencies. In the 1920s, following the leftist turn of Taisho democracy

Taisho period

The , or Taisho era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taisho Emperor....
, he published in leftist magazines like Kaizo, but the 1930s, he followed the country's turn to the right. Partly as a result of his friendship with leading Indian intellectuals like Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

, also known by the sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali people mystic, Brahmo poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist, and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and Music of Bengal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
, Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu or Sarojini Chattopadhyaya , also known by the sobriquet Bharatiya Kokila , was a child prodigy, freedom fighter, and poet....
, and Rash Behari Bose

Rash Behari Bose

Rashbehari Bose...
, Noguchi was sent to India in 1935 to help gain support for Japanese objectives in East Asia, but by the time of the infamous exchange of letters between Noguchi and Tagore in 1938, there seemed little hope of gaining international understanding for Japan's increasingly delusional militant imperialism. During the Second World War, Noguchi supported the Japanese cause, advocating a no-holds-barred assault on the decadent Western countries he had once admired. After the war, he succeeded in reconciling with his estranged son Isamu before dying of stomach cancer on July 13, 1947.

Critical Evaluations

Critical evaluations of Noguchi, while varying drastically, have frequently stressed the enigmatic character of his work. Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons

Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor....
referred to him as a "scarcely to be apprehended personality." Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Mitchell Ransome was an England author and journalist.He is best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books....
called him "a poet whose poems are so separate that a hundred of them do not suffice for his expression." Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an United States expatriate poetry, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist poetry movement in the first half of the 20th century....
, on first reading The Pilgrimage in 1911 wrote that "His poems seem to be rather beautiful. I don't quite know what to think about them." Nishiwaki Junzaburo

Nishiwaki Junzaburo

was a contemporary Japanese poet and literary critic, active in Showa period Japan....
wrote, "Most of his earlier poems have always seemed to me so terrific, so bewildering, as to startle me out of reason or system."

Noguchi may be considered a cross-cultural

Cross-cultural

cross-cultural may refer to*cross-cultural studies, a comparative tendency in various fields of cultural analysis*any of various forms of interactivity between members of disparate cultural groups ...
, transnational

Transnational

Transnational may mean:* International* Multinational* Transnationality* Transnational marriage* Transnational organized crime* Transnational crime...
, or cosmopolitan writer. His work may also be considered, albeit somewhat more problematically, within the national literatures of Japan

Japan

Japanese literature

Japanese literature spans a period of almost two millennia. Early works were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese....
, American literature

American literature

American literature refers to written or literature produced in the area of the United States and Colonial America. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States....
). Noguchi has recently gained attention in Asian American studies

Asian American Studies

Asian American Studies is an academic discipline which studies the experience of people of Asian ancestry in America. Closely related to other Ethnic Studies disciplines such as African American Studies, Latino/a Studies, and Native American Studies, Asian American Studies critically examines the history, culture, politics, issues, and experi...
due to the increasing interest in transnationalism

Transnationalism

Transnationalism is a social movement grown out of the heightened interconnectivity between people all around the world and the loosening of boundaries between country....
.

Books in English by Yone Noguchi

Seen & Unseen, or, Monologues of a Homeless Snail (1897, 1920)
The Voice of the Valley (1897)
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl

The American Diary of a Japanese Girl is the first English novel published in the United States by a person of Japanese ancestry. Acquired for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Monthly Magazine by editor Ellery Sedgwick in 1901, it appeared in two excerpted installments in November and December of that year with illustrations by Genjiro Yet...
(1902, 1904, 1912, 2007)
From the Eastern Sea (pamphlet) (1903)
From the Eastern Sea (1903, 1903, 1905, 1910)
The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor Maid (1905)
Japan of Sword and Love (1905)
The Summer Cloud (1906)
Ten Kiogen in English (1907)
The Pilgrimage (1909, 1912)
Kamakura (1910)
Lafcadio Hearn in Japan (1910, 1911)
The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (1914)
The Story of Yone Noguchi (1914, 1915)
Through the Torii (1914, 1922)
The Spirit of Japanese Art (1915)
Japanese Hokkus (1920)
Japan and America (1921)
Hiroshige (1921)
Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi (1921)
Korin (1922)
Utamaro (1924)
Hokusai (1925)
Harunobu (1927)
Sharaku (1932)
The Ukiyoye Primitives (1933)
Hiroshige (1934)
Hiroshige and Japanese Landscapes (1934)
The Ganges Calls Me (1938)
Harunobu (1940)
Hiroshige (1940)
Emperor Shomu and the Shosoin (1941).
Collected English Letters, ed. Ikuko Atsumi (1975).
Selected English Writings of Yone Noguchi: An East-West Literary Assimilation, ed. Yoshinobu Hakutani, 2 v. (1990-1992).
Collected English Works of Yone Noguchi: Poems, Novels and Literary Essays, ed. Shunsuke Kamei, 6 v. (2007)

Contributions to Periodicals

Noguchi contributed to numerous periodicals in the United States, Japan, England, and India, including: The Academy, Blackwood's, The Bookman (London)
The Bookman (London)

The Bookman was a monthly magazine published in London from 1891 until 1934 by Hodder & Stoughton. It was a catalogue of their current publications that also contained reviews, advertising and illustrations....
, The Bookman (New York)
The Bookman (New York)

The Bookman was a book review established in 1895, owned by the George H. Doran Company of New York. It was edited by Arthur Bartlett Maurice from 1899 to 1916, and John Chipman Farrar....
, The Calcutta Review
Calcutta Review

The Calcutta Review is a bi-annual periodical, now published by the Calcutta University press, featuring scholarly articles from a variety of disciplines....
, The Chap-Book, Chuo Koron, The Conservator, The Dial
The Dial

The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists....
, The Double-Dealer, The Egoist
The Egoist (periodical)

The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 in poetry to 1919 in poetry, during which time it published early modernist works, including those of James Joyce and T....
, The Graphic
The Graphic

The Graphic was a United Kingdom illustration newspaper, first published on 4 December 1869 by Illustrated Newspapers, Ltd. It continued to be published weekly under this title until 23 April 1932 and then changed title to The National Graphic between 28 April and 14 July 1932; it then ceased publication after 3,266 issues....
, The Japan Times
The Japan Times

The Japan Times is one of the few independent English language newspapers published in Japan: it mainly competes with English editions of the major dailies, such as the Yomiuri shimbun and the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun....
, Kaizo
Kaizo (magazine)

Kaizo was a Japanese general-interest magazine that started publication during the Taisho period and printed many articles of socialist content....
, The Lark, Mainichi Shinbun, The Modern Review (Calcutta)
Modern Review (Calcutta)

Modern Review was the name of a monthly magazine published in Calcutta since 1907.Founded by Ramananda Chatterjee, the Modern Review soon emerged as an important forum for the Indian Nationalism intelligentsia....
, Myojo
Myojo

was the title of a monthly literary magazine first published in Japan between February 1900 and November 1908.The name Myojo can be translates as either 'Bright Star' or 'Morning Star'....
, The Nation (London), The Nation
The Nation

The Nation is a weekly United States periodical devoted to politics and culture, self-described as "the flagship of the left-wing politics." Founded on July 6, 1865 at the start of Reconstruction era of the United States as a supporter of the victorious North in the American Civil War, it is the oldest continuously published weekly magaz...
(New York), The New Age
The New Age

The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement, but in 1907 Alfred Orage and Holbrook Jackson, who had been running the Leeds Arts Club, bought the journal with financial help from Ge...
, The Philistine, Poetry Magazine, The Reader Magazine, Sunset Magazine, T.P.'s Weekly, Taiyo
Taiyo

Taiyo is the Japanese language word for sun. It can also refer to:* Taiyo Yakuhin, a pharmaceutical product manufacturing company located in Takayama, Gifu, Japan....
, Teikoku Bungaku
Teikoku Bungaku

Teikoku Bungaku was a literature magazine during 1895 - 1920 published by Japanese writers, Inoue Tetsujiro, Ueda Kazutoshi, Takayama Chogyu and Ueda Bin....
, The Visva-Bharati Quarterly, The Westminster Gazette
Westminster Gazette

The Westminster Gazette was a liberal newspaper based in London which started publishing on January 31, 1893. It merged with the Daily News in 1928....
, and Yomiuri Shinbun.

Yone Noguchi

Biography

Early life

Career

Late Life

Critical Evaluations

Books in English by Yone Noguchi

Contributions to Periodicals

External links