Yanagida Kunio's Poetical Sensitivity in his Early Stage : New Style Poetry and Poetical Prose

Abstract

The recent tendency in research on Kunio's new style poems and his poetical prose is to evaluate his works by enlightening them from the viewpoint of ethnology which he accomplished in his later years. In my opinion, however, this attitude should be avoided. My proposal is to evaluate the feature of Yanagida's poetical sensitivities in his early stage, by discussing his poem with the theme of "Yugure-jocho" (twilight time atmosphere), his unique love poem symbolized by the word "kiyoki-kimi" (chaste maiden), his poems with the theme of Kindai Japanese people's consciousness for their home town, and his short poems which initiated the group of poems called "jojo-shokyoku" (short lyrics) in the Kindai poetry history.