V Yone Noguchi's English poems and Mansfield The biographer explored that Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) had read English poems of a Japanese poet in 1910. That was Yonejiro Noguchi (1857-1947), whose pen name was Yone Noguchi. It seems that his son Isamu Noguchi, talented sculptor, is more famous than he nowadays. He went to America at 19, and after finding favor with Joaquin Miller, the American poet, he began to write English poems. In 1903 he published his third book of poems, From the Eastern Sea, in London, which was acclaimed by Thomas Hardy, Arthur Symons and other authorities on English literature. In 1909 he also published his masterpiece, The Pilgrimage, in London. Mansfield might have read either of these books. His poems were commented like as poems of French symbolist. The part of the first poem of the book Seen and Unseen (1896) is as follows : The fate-colored leaves float dumbly down unto the groundbreast, thousands after thousands, mutting the earth with yellow flakes, Whilst the brushing of a golden, Autumn wind dreams away into the immoral stillness. Ah, they roam down, roam down, roam down. It reminds Japanese readers of that sympathetic phrase found in Journal of Katherine Mansfield : In the autumn garden leaves falling. Little footfalls, like gentle whispering. They fly, spin, twirl, shake. (October 18, 1922)

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