In this paper I have launched an investigation into the distinctive characteristics inherent in the symbolist poetry of Kanbara Ariake (1875-1952) which arose through the influence of the poetry anthology, The Sound of the Tide (Kaichō’on), translated by Ueda Bin (1874-1916). Although fourteen selections of translated French symbolist poetry were compiled in The Sound of the Tide which was published in October of Meiji 38 (1905), three disparate poetic styles are presented in these selections. Since The Sound of the Tide did not present symbolist poetry in a unified format, contemporary poetry circles in Japan came to understand symbolist poetry in a great variety of ways. Poets of that period approached their own symbolist poetic compositions through their various individual interpretations based on The Sound of the Tide. Within this context, Ariake tended to be deeply receptive to the entire form of the symbolist poetry in The Sound of the Tide and he struggled to create his own individual symbolist poems. The fruition of this effort was the Ariake Anthology (Ariake-shū) which was published in January of Meiji 41(1908). In the Ariake Anthology, Ariake attempted to represent his inner world imagistically. For Ariake, this inner world was a domain supported by a different logic and order from the real world. In order to represent this world, Ariake actively applied the modes of expression from the symbolist poetry in The Sound of the Tide while using the settings of the “secret room”，“the pond”，and other places that are closed off or restricted. In other words, Ariake assimilated all three of the forms of symbolist poetry introduced in The Sound of the Tide and applied them without reserve, tending to present independently his inner world in an integrated format through imagistic means. Through his positive reception of the translated symbolist poems in The Sound of the Tide, Ariake’s distinctive symbolist poetry came into being and heralded the establishment of symbolist poetry in modern Japan.

　This paper discusses how Frank O’Hara (1926-66) achieved his stylistic innovation in his poetry through his profound knowledge of the paintings of the New York School. Though what actually happened was an interaction between literature and the visual arts, the discussion will mainly focus on the aesthetic significance of the paintings on the formation of O’Hara’s poetics and style.

　When O’Hara began getting his poems published in Michigan and New York in the early fifties, the New Criticism and academic verse were still exerting a strong influence on American poetry. O’Hara, an art critic as well as a poet, dissatisfied with the stylistic mannerisms of academic verse and blessed with great opportunities to familialize himself with the avant-garde paintings of his time, created his idiosyncratic style by applying the stylistic innovations of the New York School paintings to his poetry.

　Of O’Hara’ aesthetic responses to the New York School paintings, the most significant is their expressionist aspect, that is, how the artist’s self should be represented in his/her work, because that was the most urgent problem for O’Hara when he began writing poetry.

　This paper focuses on O’Hara’s expressionist aesthics, and is divided into three parts: its relation to his early art criticism , the second generation painters of the New York School, and early examples of Pop Art. In each part, the discussion will elucidate how O’Hara’s poetics and new style evolved from his aesthetic contact with the art of his day.

　This paper examines the influence of Wordsworth’s poem “Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known” on Soseki’s short story “Koto no Sorane” (“An Illusory Sound of the Harp”). One of Wordsworth’s “Lucy Poems” included in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads of 1800 seems to have provided a strong motif for Soseki. In Wordsworth’s poem, upon seeing the setting of the moon behind the cottage of his lover (“Lucy”), the narrator suddenly identifies the moon with Lucy, strangely associating the setting of the moon with the death of his beloved. In Soseki’s story, the narrator, as he walks home late on a rainy night, sees the light of a red lantern far away. The light, however, soon goes out, whereupon he is suddenly and unaccountably possessed by the fearful thought of his fiancee’s death.

　Both Soseki and Wordsworth objectify the mind as it is affected by unreasonable fears to focus on the state of consciousness that shapes one’s view of the world. For Wordsworth, there was an 18th century cultural background of Gothicism which reflected the contemporary interests in the state of mind that becomes affected by sensations beyond the control of the faculty of reason. Soseki, a hundred years later, obviously took an interest in this literary history that reflected the late 18th century culture, since, just as Europe in the times of Wordsworth had been shaken up by the French Revolution, Japan in the times of Soseki was going through rapid modernization following the revolution of the Meiji Restoration. In both cases, the expected age of reason was felt to have failed in dispelling the dark mysteries of the human mind.

　«Kenrô-toshi : Kunopolis» (1960) est une des rares œuvres romanesques du jeune SHIBUSAWA. L’auteur prétend que «Le Diamant» (1959) d’André Pieyre de Mandiargues fut une de sources de cette œuvre. C’est une œuvre qui vaut la peine d’être étudiée de près,car, différentes opinions s’opposent à son sujet : certains critiques la considèrent comme un chef-d’œuvre, tandis que d’autres se demandent s’il ne s’agit pas d’un plagiat. Il semble que cette question du manque d’originalité ne concerne pas seulement «Kenrô-toshi» : on trouve le même problème à travers toutes ses œuvres romanesques. Nous considérons donc que c’est une problématique fondamentale de l’écriture de SHIBUSAWA.

　Dans «Kenrô-toshi», déjà, nous pouvons trouver presque tous les éléments typiques de l'univers littéraire de SHIBUSAWA. Par exemple, SHIBUSAWA emprunte au «Diamant» l'épisode d'un dieu animal et d’une fille qui ont une relation sexuelle dans un diamat, c’est-à-dire un espace géométrique. Nous pouvons trouver, dans l’œuvre de Mandiargues, de nombreux motifs géométriques dans des situations fantastiques et féeriques. La fréquence et la disposition de ces motifs dans «Le Diamant» sont significatives, car ils sont disposés, semble-t-il, de façon à ce que l'ensemble du texte présente une structure. Dans «Kenrô-toshi» également, il est vrai que l'on peut trouver des motifs géométriques, mais il est difficile de considérer qu’ils forment une structure. SHIBUSAWA ne comprenait pas sans doute la structure géométrique de l’ensemble du «Diamant», ou ne s'y intéressait pas. En s'inspirant du «Diamant», il a néanmoins composé «Kenrô-toshi» comme une œuvre d’un esprit tout à fait différent.

　SHIBUSAWA a créé un univers bizarré et déformé, dans lequel la cause et le résultat sont circulaires : on peut trouver plusieurs niveaux de rêves, et le rêve et la réalité s’entrecroisent ainsi que dans un tableau d’illusion visuelle. SHIBUSAWA cite aussi, ouvertement ou tacitement, d'utres œuvres littéraires que «Le Diamant», pour complexifier son propre univers romanesque. Nous avons donc considéré que «Kenrô-toshi» ne trouve en aucun cas sa place dans la lignée du «Diamant». SHIBUSAWA et Pieyre de Mandiargues diffèrent de nature, bien que l’on fasse fréquemment remarquer plutôt leurs ressemblances.

　A great many Irish dramas were translated, adapted and put on Japanese stage right after the birth of the new drama, which attempted to achieve the status and style of Western plays. Translations and adaptations of Irish plays came to be published in many literary and art magazines after 1907 (40^th year of the Meiji period).

　Tsubouchi Shoyo was one of the dramatists who contributed to those movements. He aimed to establish a characteristically Japanese new drama in Japan. For that purpose, he believed that while adaptations of plays from other cultures were of great importance, attempts should not be to made to present foreign works through literal translation.

　Shoyo insisted that the adaptation should not convey even a hint of a foreign atmosphere. Miracle, his adaptation of The Well of the Saints by J. M. Synge, emphasizes the shift from an Irish setting to a Japanese situation. He succeeds in creating an authentic rural Japanese atmosphere through the skillful use of dialogue. In Shoyo’s eyes, the core of The Well of the Saints was the decision of the protagonist to reject the advice of those around him, and thus remain blind. The powerful figure of the protagonist impressed Shoyo deeply; he tried to recreate this character in his Miracle. His attempt succeeded and was highly evaluated by the leading intellectuals of his time.

　The vogue of the Irish drama in the Taisho era synchronized with the birth of the concept of the “people.” For the first time, the Japanese people were recognized by intellectuals as a huge, single mass. The theatrical vanguard during the foundation period of the new drama began discussing drama for the people. Shoyo, especially, tried to educate the people through drama.

　Such a concept of the “people”，objectively determined by the intelligentsia，faded away since the different types of intellectuals who identify themselves as the “people” showed up and asserted themselves as the people on the social stage. At the same time, the vogue of Irish drama, which had been guided by the first generation of well-off intellectuals, began to wane in Japan.

　Mori Ôgai a critiqué “Baké-ichyô” d’ Izumi Kyôka en établissant une comparaison avec “L’Interdiction” de Balzac. Selon lui, ‹la folie› de l’héroine ne serait qu’un expédient pour obtenir l’acquittement de son crime, réduisant ainsi la dimension de l’œuvre à ‹un simple article médico-légal›. Cependant, force est de constater que l’essentiel de cette œuvre réside dans le conflit existant entre les époux face à leur incompréhension mutuelle, ‹la folie› de l’héroine n’étant pas ‹un expédient›, mais plutôt le résultat de ce conflit. Cette constatation nous ramène davantage à “Honorine” ou bien encore à “Adieu” de Balzac.

　Cet essai se donne comme objectif d’établir ce parallèle entre “Baké-ichyô” et “Honorine” en soulignant surtout la signification de ‹la folie› de l’héroine dont Ôgai s’est totalement détourné.

　Dans ces deux ouvrages, les auteurs essayent de traiter les époux à égalite, mais ‹le système social en vigueur› projette inévitablement ses effets sur des maris exerçant une profession sociale et incarnant la raison moderne.

　Ces maris ne trouvent pas de satisfaction dans leur vie intellectuelle, et intimement ils s’attachent respectivement à leur femme insondable, n’ayant de cesse de la séduire. Ce faisant, la femme ainsi traquée et cernée, voire enfermée par le mari, va l’affronter de front avec ‹la folie› ou ‹la maladie féminine›, entraînant les deux conjoints à la fois vers un abîme de destruction réciproques. Cet abîme, néanmoins, se révèle salvateur en procédant à une unification infernale des deux époux.

　‹La folie› ne se manifeste pas seulement chez la femme. Celle-là ne provient que du miroir des passions déraisonnables de son mari pour celle-ci. Dans le cas de Kyôka, cette opération romanesque de l'effet ‹miroir› va provoquer la formation de son propre monde ‹fantastique›.

　The literati painting, called Bunjin-ga in Japan, flourished up to the early years of the Meiji period. As the ideas which shaped it were distinct from Western realism, Bunjin-ga lost its vitality when realism entered Japan.

　Tomioka Tessai (1837-1924),however, is an exception. He created a magnificent style identical to Western post-impressionism, despite the fact that he immersed himself into oriental culture all his life. The main characteristic of his work is that nearly all his paintings have an lengthy inscription alluding to Chinese classics. This is an obvious key to his work. It is from this viewpoint that my article attempts to interpret Tessai’s paintings on the Chinese literatus Su Tong-po. I examine his drawings in the light of the three most representative motifs, namely Su in bamboo hat and clogs, Su’s former and latter Red Cliff Odes, and Su’s return to the Hanlin Academy, through an analysis of the inscriptions. I found that Tessai’s works are characterized by both original classical allusions. and his subjective transformation of those allusions. Ancient references as well as creative individuality enriched Tessai’s paintings. His style facilitated innovations to the Bunjin-ga in both Japan and China in the early years of the twentieth century when a dull content and form marked the decline of the school.

　For Maedako Hiroichiro (1888-1957), a proletarian writer active mainly in the 1920s, his years in Chicago and New York (1907-20) seem to hover over most of his subsequent writing days, involving such American issues as democracy, capitalism, socialism, anti-Japanese sentiment, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and the like.

　Such pieces of his as “The Unity of Asia,” “The Mikado’s Crane Room” (both 1912)，and “The Monument” (1913) were written in English and were printed in such socialistic journals as The Progressive Woman and The Coming Nation. “Green Houses,” originally “The Cherry Blossom”（1916)，was a sort of Japanology “collaborated” on with Floyd Dell. Maedako recollects that Theodore Dreiser and H.L.Menken, too, eagerly urged him to write such “Japanese” stories，that is, stories which were exotic and romantic, like the ones Lafcadio Hearn had “wrongly” expounded to the West.

　Not inclined to gratify their expectations, however, Maedako ceased to write stories in English and commenced writing in Japanese, whereby he produced the works “Gama no Kawa”（Toad- Skin，Kyoson，1917)，“Sawa no Dan” (Sawa’s Story，Japanese-America Cammerial Weekly，1918)，and “Yubiwa no tameni”（For a Ring, do., 1919). Respectively, these were about his home town, a crowd on board a ship, and the joys and sorrows of Japanese immigrants. All three are considered to lead to the works he later produced during the height of his activity, both in their stance and topics.