Yone Noguchi

In thisJapanese name,thesurnameisNoguchi.

Yonejirō Noguchi
Born	(1875-12-08)December 8, 1875 Tsushima, Aichi,Japan
Died	July 13, 1947(1947-07-13)(aged 71) Tokyo, Japan
Pen name	Yone Noguchi
Occupation	Poet essayist literary critic
Period	1897–1947
Literary movement	Imagism
Spouse	Matsu Takeda
Partners	Ethel Armes Léonie Gilmour
Children	Isamu Noguchi

Yonejirō Noguchi(Dã khẩu mễ thứ lang,Noguchi Yonejirō,December 8, 1875 – July 13, 1947)was an influential Japanese writer of poetry, fiction, essays and literary criticism in both English and Japanese. He is known in the west asYone Noguchi.He was the father of noted sculptorIsamu Noguchi.

Biography

Early life in Japan

Noguchi was born in what is now part of the city ofTsushima,nearNagoya.He attendedKeio Universityin Tokyo, where he was exposed to the works ofThomas CarlyleandHerbert Spencer,and also expressed interests inhaikuandZen.He lived for a time in the home ofShiga Shigetaka,editor of the magazineNihonjin,but left before graduating to travel to San Francisco in November 1893.

California

Joaquin Miller circa 1898

Yone Noguchi in 1903

Noguchi arrived in San Francisco on November 19, 1893.There, he joined a newspaper run by Japanese exiles associated with theFreedom and People's Rights Movementand worked as adomestic servant.He spent some months atPalo Alto, Californiastudying at a preparatory school forStanford Universitybut returned to journalistic work in San Francisco during theSino-Japanese War.

On a visit to theOakland hillside homeofJoaquin Millerafter the war ended, Noguchi decided his true vocation was to be a poet. Miller welcomed and encouraged Noguchi and introduced him to otherSan Francisco Bay areabohemians,includingGelett Burgess(who published Noguchi's first verses in his magazine,The Lark),Ina Coolbrith,Edwin Markham,Adeline Knapp,Blanche Partington,andCharles Warren Stoddard.

Noguchi weathered aplagiarismscandal in 1896 to publish two books of poetry in 1897, and remained an important fixture of the Bay Area literary scene until his departure to the East Coast in May 1900.

Further travels

Stopping in Chicago for several weeks, Noguchi befriended artistWilliam Denslow,writerOnoto Watanna,and journalist Frank Putnam, and was invited to write his impressions of the city for theChicago Evening Post.

He initially found New York unwelcoming. In September 1900 he made his long-awaited visit toCharles Warren Stoddardin Washington D.C. "After many years of passionate correspondence across long distances," writes historianAmy Sueyoshi,"they had finally consummated their affection for one another in person."From 1900 to 1904, Noguchi's primary base was New York City. There, with the help of editor and future loverLéonie Gilmour,he completed work on his first novel,The American Diary of a Japanese Girl,and a sequel,The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid.

Noguchi then sailed to England, where (with the help of his artist friendYoshio Markino) he published and promoted his third book of poetry,From the Eastern Sea,and formed connections with leading literary figures likeWilliam Michael Rossetti,Laurence Binyon,William Butler Yeats,Thomas Hardy,Laurence Housman,Arthur Symonsand the youngArthur Ransome.

His London success brought him some attention on his return to New York in 1903, and he formed productive new friendships with American writers likeEdmund Clarence Stedman,Zona Gale,and evenMary MacLane,but he continued to have difficulty publishing in the United States. He spent much of the summer of 1903 selling curios atKushibiki and Arai's "Japan by Night" installation atMadison Square Garden,“doing a pretty good business, selling things between 7 and 12 dollars a night,” telling Stoddard it was “awfully jolly to do such a thing upon the roof full of fresh air and music.”

Noguchi's situation changed dramatically with the onset of theRusso-Japanese Warin 1904, as his writings on various aspects of Japanese culture were suddenly in great demand among magazine and newspaper editors. In addition to translations of war news from the Japanese press,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 Japanesehokku."

Romantic entanglements

While in the United States, Noguchi became romantically involved withCharles Warren Stoddard,Léonie GilmourandEthel Armes.He had begun an amorous correspondence with Stoddard while still in California, and acknowledged that they slept in the same bed when he visited Stoddard in Washington, D.C., in 1900. He had met Ethel Armes at Stoddard's by Christmas 1901.He had hiredLéonie Gilmouras an English teacher and editor in February 1901. By the end of 1903 Noguchi was secretly married to Gilmour and secretly engaged to Armes.Stoddard, when informed about the Armes engagement, repeatedly begged Noguchi to end it.

• 
  Stoddard
• 
  Gilmour
• 
  Armes

Having (he thought) ended his brief, secret marriage to Léonie Gilmour in the early months of 1904, Noguchi made plans to return to Japan and marry Ethel Armes.At this point, theRusso-Japanese Warwas in progress and Armes, now inBirmingham, Alabamahad taken over as Noguchi's editor amid a greatly increased demand for Noguchi's articles on Japanese topics.

Return to Japan

Keio University Library 1912.

Noguchi returned to Japan in August 1904, and became a professor of English at his alma materKeio Universitythe following year, but his marriage plans were spoiled when it became known that Léonie Gilmour had given birth to Noguchi's son (the future sculptorIsamu Noguchi) in Los Angeles. He moved to theKoishikawaneighborhood of Tokyo in November 1905, and published an anthology ofprose poetryin English,The Summer Cloud,shortly thereafter.

From November 1906 to January 1908, Noguchi wrote a literary criticism column almost every week for theJapan Times,among the more notable of which was the November 3, 1907 "Mr. Yeats and the No," advisingWilliam Butler Yeatsto study theNohdrama. "He has been attempting to reform and strengthen the Western stage through his own little plays which are built on Irish legend or history; and so far, in his own way, he is successful. I feel happy to think that he would find his own ideal in our No performance, if he should see and study it."After studyingErnest Fenollosa's Noh translations withEzra Pound,Yeats staged his first Noh-style play,At the Hawk's Well,in 1916, eliciting Noguchi's approval in anotherJapan Timescolumn.

In 1907, Léonie and Isamu joined Noguchi in Tokyo, but the reunion proved short-lived, mainly because Noguchi had already married a Japanese woman, Matsu Takeda,before their arrival. He and Léonie separated for good in 1910,although Léonie 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.

Lectures abroad

Noguchi photographed by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1913

In 1913, he made his second trip to Britain (viaMarseilleand Paris) to lecture onJapanese poetryatMagdalen College, Oxfordat the invitation ofpoet laureate,Robert Bridges,also giving lectures to theJapan Society of Londonand reading at thePoetry Bookshop.While in London, he met withGeorge Bernard Shaw,W. B. Yeats,Ezra Pound,Laurence Binyon,Arthur Symons,Sarojini Naidu,and numerous other noted literary figures, and also investigated the latest trends in British modern art, spending time withRoger Fry,Alvin Langdon Coburn,Joseph Pennell,Jacob EpsteinandHenri Gaudier-Brzeska.In April the following year, while in Paris, he also met withTōson Shimazakiwho happened to be travelling in Europe at the time. Noguchi traveled back to Japan viaBerlinand Moscow using theTrans-Siberian Railway.

A collection of literary essays,Through the Toriihad appeared at the time of Noguchi's arrival in Britain, and while there, he arranged the publication ofThe Spirit of Japanese Poetry,The Spirit of Japanese ArtandThe Story of Yone Noguchi.

In 1919–20, Noguchi made a transcontinental lecture tour of America under the aegis of the James B. Pond Lyceum Bureau, speaking atStanford University,theUniversity of California at Berkeley,theUniversity of Chicagoand theUniversity of Utah,and theUniversity of Toronto,among other places.

Japanese poet and art critic

After the publication of a collection of short poems entitledJapanese Hokkusin 1920, Noguchi devoted most of his English efforts to studies ofukiyo-eand began a belated career as a Japanese language poet. Noguchi's success as a Japanese poet has been questioned by Japanese scholars; Norimasa Morita states that Noguchi "struggled to make a literary reputation for himself in Japan" and that "most of his Japanese poems received no critical or popular recognition".Other scholars including Madoka Hori point to evidence of Noguchi's success such as the May 1926Noguchi Yonejiro special numberof the magazineNippon Shijin(The Japanese Poet).

Noguchi's extensive art-historical writings produced similarly divergent reactions. A book likeThe Ukiyoye Primitives(1933) could delight poet and editorMarianne Moorewith its "renovated language of unimpaired connotation" while severely testing the patience of Harvard art historianBenjamin Rowland, Jr.,by its unfamiliar "manipulation of the language" that "frequently obscures the meaning of whole passages." Moore thought the book "useful to the judge of prints"; not Rowland, who complained that its aesthetic judgments "tend toward the sentimental and are for the most part so superficial as to be of practically no value." Even Rowland, though, had to commend what he thought "undoubtedly the finest reproductions in any work on Ukiyo-ye that has yet appeared in English."

All of Noguchi's later books, in both Japanese and English, were published in Japan, for Noguchi encountered stiff resistance from American and British publishers in the 1930s, despite the support of a few sympathetic editors like Moore andR. A. Scott-James.

The war years

Noguchi byIhei Kimura

Noguchi's politics tended to follow prevailing Japanese tendencies. In the 1920s, following the leftist turn ofTaishō democracy,he published in leftist magazines likeKaizō,but by the 1930s, he had followed the country's turn to the right. Partly as a result of his friendship with leading Indian intellectuals likeRabindranath TagoreandSarojini Naidu,Noguchi was sent toIndiain 1935–36 to help gain support for Japanese objectives in East Asia, but he had limited success. Noguchi and Tagore had a bitter exchange of letters in 1938 before their friendship ended over political and philosophical differences.During theSecond World War,Noguchi supported the Japanese cause, advocating a no-holds-barred assault on the Western countries he had once admired.

Postwar period

In April 1945, his house inNakano, Tokyowas destroyed in the AmericanBombing of Tokyo.After the war, he succeeded in reconciling with his estranged son Isamu before dying ofstomach canceron July 13, 1947.

Critical evaluations

Critical evaluations of Noguchi, while varying drastically, have frequently stressed the Enigma tic character of his work.Arthur Symonsreferred to him as a "scarcely to be apprehended personality."Arthur Ransomecalled him "a poet whose poems are so separate that a hundred of them do not suffice for his expression."Ezra Pound,on first readingThe Pilgrimagein 1911 wrote that "His poems seem to be rather beautiful. I don't quite know what to think about them."Nishiwaki Junzaburōwrote, "Most of his earlier poems have always seemed to me so terrific, so bewildering, as to startle me out of reason or system."

Noguchi was hailed in the pages ofPoetryas a pioneeringmodernist,thanks to his early advocacy offree verseand association with modernist writers like Yeats,Ezra Pound,Richard Aldington,andJohn Gould Fletcher.

Noguchi may be considered across-cultural,transnational, orcosmopolitanwriter. His work may also be considered, albeit somewhat more problematically, within the national literatures of Japan and the United States (seeJapanese literature,American literature). Noguchi has recently gained attention inAsian American studiesdue to the increasing interest intransnationalism.

Yone Noguchi is played byNakamura Shidō IIin the filmLeonie(2010).

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(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)ヨネ・ノグチ( dã khẩu mễ thứ lang ) tiếng Anh làm tập ～ văn vân tác phẩm ・ bình luận ・ thi tập ～
• Later Essays,ed. Edward Marx (2013).Later Essays by Yone Noguchi

Contributions to periodicals

Noguchi contributed to numerous periodicals in the United States, Japan, England, and India, including:The Academy,Asahi Shimbun,Blackwood's,The Bookman,The Bookman,The Boston Transcript,TheBrooklyn Eagle,The Calcutta Review,The Chap-Book,Chūōkōron,The Conservator,The Dallas Morning News,TheDetroit Free Press,The Dial,The Double-Dealer,The Egoist,The Graphic,The Japan Times,Kaizō,The Lark,Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly,London Mercury,Los Angeles Times,Mainichi Shinbun,Mita Bungaku,TheModern Review,Myōjō,The Nation (London),The Nation(New York),The New Orleans Times-Democrat,The New York Globe,The New York Sun,The New York Times,TheNew-York Tribune,The Philistine,Poetry Magazine,Poet Lore,The Poetry Review,The Reader Magazine,San Francisco Chronicle,St. Paul Globe,Sunset Magazine,T'ien Hsia Monthly,T.P.'s Weekly,Taiyō,Teikoku Bungaku,The Visva-Bharati Quarterly,The Washington Post,The Westminster Gazette,andYomiuri Shimbun.

References

• Duus, Masayo (2004).The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders.Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0691127828.
• Marx, Edward (2013).Leonie Gilmour: When East Weds West.Santa Barbara: Botchan Books.ISBN978-1939913012.
• Marx, Edward (2019).Yone Noguchi: The Stream of Fate.Vol. One The Western Sea. Santa Barbara: Botchan Books.ISBN978-1939913050.
• Noguchi, Yone (1975). Ikuko Atsumi (ed.).Collected English Letters.Yone Noguchi Society.
• Sueyoshi, Amy (2012).Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi.Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.ISBN978-0824834975.

External links

• Yone Noguchi Project
• Yone Noguchi, Japan, and English Language Verse
• "Seduced by Nationalism: Yone Noguchi's 'Terrible Mistake.' Debating the China-Japan War With Tagore" from The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
• Short radio episodeThe FallsfromThe Story of Yone Noguchi Told by Himself,1915.California Legacy Project.
• Works by Yone NoguchiatLibriVox(public domain audiobooks)