In 1913, a young Japanese writer KORI Torahiko (1890–1924) left for Europe with a high ambition to be a great international literary man. He stayed there and followed literature until his death in Switzerland. Japanese as he was, he wrote his plays, poems and other works in English.
In 1917, Kanawa, his earlier work written in Japan and translated into English by himself soon after his arrival in England, was produced at the Criterion Theatre ; London, by the Pioneer Players. This one-act play is based on a Japanese Nô play of the same title. It, however, shows a strong influence of the Western artistic trend of his days. Fascinated with the aetheticism and decadence of the end of the 19 th century, KORI tried to synthesize a traditional Japanese stage art and modern Western poetic drama created by Hofmannsthal, Maeterlink, etc. He admired the passionate and gorgeous style of D’Annunzio and applied it to his own style. He seems to have chosen Salomé, a poetic drama by Oscar WILDE, as a good model of his Kanawa.
Known as a unique Japanese dramatist in London, KORI gave some information about Nô to W. B. YEATS, who, profoundly attracted by Nô and admiring it as the “subtlest of all arts”, wrote some plays in the manner of Nô. Thus KORI could play an important role as a cultural intermediary.
