The fifth decade of Meiji, when the literary current of the ‘fin de siècle’ became popular, was also a transitional period in Japanese modern literature. Kitahara Hakushū (1885–1942), who had great sensitivity, and intelligence, reacted to the various trends of the ‘fin de siècle’ art, and was able to make use of them in the creation of his own poetry.
The first collection of poems of Hakushū, Jashūmon (1909), is filled with a lot of elements that can be studied in the context of ‘fin de siècle’ art. His Nanban (Christian) poetry has been considered as a sort of exoticism until now, but it can be cosidered also as having a heathenish tone which was very popular among the ‘fin de siècle’ artists, with Huysmans as leader.
The theme of the hothouse, repeatedly appearing in his early poetry, is related to that in Serres Chaudes by Maurice Maeterlinck and A Rebours by J. -k. Huysmans, and it is also connected with the motif of the Artifitial Paradise which is one of the major motifs throughout his early poetry, not only in Jashūmon.
It was the artist, James McNeil Whistler who had the most important influence on his poetic world. Whistler’s a set of paintings of the Thames River, based on woodblocks prints of the Sumida River, made Hakushū perceive anew Tokyo and the Sumida River, which had been transformed into a ‘fin de siècle’ design.
In Tokyo Keibutsushi (1913), there are discriptions of Tokyo, transformed into a great labyrinth. This recognization of the city is similar to that of many of the ‘fin de siècle’ artists. His tendency to emphasize consciously the descriptions of rivers and canals, among urban scenery, seems to be influenced by Georges Rodenbach.
Hakushū, with his native sensibility and his power of expression, digested the main elements of the 'fin de siècle' art and made it his own. In this sense, I think that he was the leading poet of the transitional epoch, which Japanese modem poetry had to pass through in order to obtain true modernity.
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