He has published three or four books of poems, and has
translated
Li Po into English.
Ezra-Pound-Japan-Letters-essays
P.
Dutton, 1962).
Finally,myspecialthanksareduetoJohnWalsh. I shouldliketoexpressmy heartfelt appreciation for the encouragement and assistance I received from him in many forms and over a period of many years. --S. K.
? yiii
NOTE ON TEXT
NOTE ON THE TEXT
In rendering the Pound material in typeset format, certain translations have been utilized: underlined words have been placed in italics; double underlined words are indicated by boldface; and triple underlining appears as italic capitals. Words originally in block letters appear in small capitals. Handwritten inserts have been placed in the text where indicated by Pound and appear in italics within angle brackets. Phrases and words in foreign languages, as well as titles, have been italicized. With few exceptions. Pound's original spelling, punctuation and spacing have been retained, and a line-for-line approximation has been attempted. In only a few cases have the letters from Japanese correspondents been corrected to aid clarification; no attempt has been made to regularize Japanese names and terms, as this forms one of the themes of the correspondence. The following manuscript abbreviations (followed by the number of pages of the original) have been used: tl
= typed letter; TLS = typed letter signed; PC = postcard; AL = handwritten letter; and ALS = handwritten letter signed.
In the Notes, citations to the editions of Pound's works as listed in Donald Gallup's Ezra Pound: A Bibliography, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University of Vir- ginia Press, 1983) have been placed within brackets.
Two additional references are to be included: Ezra Pound, Plays Modelled on the Noh (1916), ed. Donald Gallup (Toledo: Friends of the University of Toledo Libraries, 1987); and Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud, Eduardo Sanguinetti and Charles Tomlinson, Rengo: A Chain of Poems (NY: Braziller, 1971)--with special reference to letter 73: The modern chain poem is a descendant of the Japanese "kusari-renga" ["linked poems"] developed between the Heian (794-1183) and Muromachi (1336-1573) periods.
? PREFACE
On the walls of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts hangs a painting by the American painter William Paxton entitled The New Necklace. In the paint- ing is depicted a young American woman, wrapped in an oriental jacket placed over her long frilled dress; she is seated by an oriental screen, set in front of the Western painting and tapestry on the wall; an encased oriental statuette is on top of the woman's lacquered writing desk-chest. The date of the painting is 1910.
The intermixing of styles in this painting reflects the extent of the current vogue of /aponisme, in a setting most likely proximate to one of the ports of the Yankee clipper trade which flourished between Yokohama and Salem. "Things Japanese" had most definitely entered American fashion by this time, a good fifty years after the American painters La Farge and Whistler had begun their collections of Japanese Ukiyoe [woodblockl prints. Such artistic transport, facilitated by the speed of the Yankee clipper ships, prompted Van Wyck Brooks to remark that "the Far East seemed closer to Salem than to any other American town when Ernest FenoUosa* was born there in 1853" (FenoJJosa and His Circle).
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the nearby Peabody Museum in Salem, were the recipients of much of the art and artifacts of traditional Japanese culture that were shored up against time, thanks to a determined effort on the part of a group of Boston-based Americans who had travelled to Japan--fortuitously arriving at precisely the critical moment for their enterprise. Ernest FenoUosa and Edward Morse, followed by William Stur- gis Bigelow and Percival Lowell, and later by Henry Adams, John La Farge, and then Lafcadio Hearn--all arrived in Japan within nearly a decade (1878-90], at a time when the traditional culture of Japan was on the brink of being swept away. "P'or twenty years," remarks Van Wyck Brooks, "the most precious works were treated as rubbish. " Masterpieces were paradox- ically more commonly to be found in trash-heaps than in showrooms. With a broad gesture, the Japanese had turned their backs on their past in favor of Western modernity. A year after FenoUosa had arrived in Japan, he had been able to acquire a masterpiece by the painter Ganku from a dealer who had never even heard of the master's name, and he was still able to find in 1884 a fine ceramic head of the Buddha--one of the earliest relics of Tendai sculpture--in an ash barrel where it had been discarded. Along with FenoUosa and Morse, these Americans eagerly took to the task of attempt-
IX
--
? X PREFACE
ing to preserve what they feared to be the last surviving traces of a vanishing civilization. Fenollosa took sculpture and painting as his specialty, while Morse chose pottery. Morse also took lessons in the traditional tea cere- mony, and studied Japanese singing with the No master, Minoru Umewaka, under whom Fenollosa studied as well.
At a time when the Japanese feudal system was in its death-throes and
noble families found it necessary to sell their great collections to stave off
poverty, excellent examples of traditional art--swords, guards, emblems,
lacquer boxes, along with statues, paintings, scrolls and pottery
abounded in a radically devalued market. And Fenollosa and Morse bought
discerningly and extensively, shipping off vast collections to the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston.
Along with Okakura Kakuzo (who organized the Imperial Art School in
Tokyo), Fenollosa acted as Imperial Commissioner of Fine Art and scoured the countryside in search of cast-off treasures. Ironically, however, most of this treasure was being shipped to America. Morse, well aware of the contradiction, remarked: "It is like the life-blood of Japan seeping from a hidden wound. " But this wound was soon to be staunched; in 1884, further transport of national Japanese treasures (now recognized to be so) began to be discussed by the Japanese government. By 1885, a rebirth of interest in the traditional culture of Japan had begun.
Certainly, the crucial role played by this small group of American Japanophiles had not been forgotten by the Japanese; in the words of Prof. Yaichi Haga, "An American, Ernest Fenollosa, taught us how to admire the unique beauty of our art. " And upon preparing to return to America in
1886, Fenollosa was told by the Emperor: "You have taught my people to know their own art; in going back to your great country, I charge you, teach them also. "
When Ezra Pound in London received his first letter from a Japanese correspondent in 1911 (a year before the publication of FenoUosa's Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art], he probably was not as yet familiar with the work of Fenollosa. Perhaps he had not yet at that time thought much directly about Japan, even though he was certainly familiar with the art of Whistler. Were he in London at the time, he most probably would have seen the Japanese Exhibition held at Shepherd's Bush in 1910. Perhaps he had even discussed Fenollosa when he met, in October 1913, the American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn, who had intensively studied the collection of Chinese and Japanese art set up by Fenollosa in the Boston
? PREFACE xi
Museum of Fine Arts. But when towards the end of 1913 he received from Mary Fenollosa the notebooks containing Fenollosa's notes on oriental literature, draft translations of Chinese poetry and Japanese No dramas, along with his essay "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry"--with the stipulation that Fenollosa wanted the material treated as literature, not philology--a world opened. In March 1909, Pound had heard Laurence Binyon lecture on "Oriental and European Art," and in the spring of 1911, he had written his haiku-like poem on the Paris Metro (see Sanehide Kodama, American Poetry and Japanese Culture). He had also written in 1913, prior to the receipt of the bulk of Fenollosa material, the Chinese-inspired poems "After Ch'u Yuan," "Fan-Piece for Her Imperial Lord," and "Liu Ch'e. " Most significantly. Pound's "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste" had already appeared. But what accompanied China in the Fenollosa notebooks was the near-virgin world of Japan--territory which he set about exploring almost immediately. Pound and W. B. Yeats spent much of the winter of 1913 in Stone Cottage immersed in the study and translation of No drama. By January of 1914 Pound was able to send off to Harriet Monroe of Poetry the finished version of Nishikigi. And so began
his lifetime enthrallment.
Ironically, Pound's discovery of Japanese drama coincided with an-
other phase of modern Japan's turning away from its traditional culture. When the Japanese dancer Michio Ito arrived in London in 1914, he knew next to nothing about classical Japanese drama--but, most fortunately, a fellow expatriate, the painter Tami Koume, did. So it was in London, not Tokyo, that Ito learned about his own cultural tradition. (Perhaps the apocryphal story of Ito's visit with Yeats to the London zoo to watch the movements of a caged hawk justifiedly merits being preserved. ) From these seeds, the study of No drama became an enduring passion for Pound.
The importance of the No drama for Pound echoes throughout this correspondence. Seated in the cinema in Rapallo watching the film Mit- souko, Pound is filled with nostalgia, struck by the sound of the singing, and remembering a No performance enacted in Paris by Tami Koume and other Japanese: "You have a treasure like nothing we have in the Occident. " In a later letter of 1957, Pound most succinctly and poignantly remarks: "Hagoronno is a sacrament. " And Pound seriously and fondly hoped that his own play. Women of Trachis (1954), would be translated into Japanese and be staged by a No troupe: "Am convinced the Noh technique is only way of doing it properly, in whatever language. "
It was to preserve this induplicable treasure of the No that Pound went to the extreme of suggesting that the American-occupied island of Guam be
--
? Xii
PREFACE
negotiated with the Japanese in exchange for a set of films of classic No plays--along with their authentic music, "insist," wrote Pound to the Japanese poet Katue Kitasono, "on having 300 Noh plays done properly and recorded on sound film so as to be able to educate such American students as are capable of being cultured. "
Ironic indeed that this was being said by an American at a time when many modern Japanese were in another phase of turning away from their cultural heritage--the avant-garde poet, Katue Kitasono. most certainly included. When in 1952 Michael Reck--who made a pilgrimage to Fenollo- sa's grave above Lake Biwa [cf. Canto LXXXIX)--upon Pound's urging met Kitasono, he discovered that the Japanese poet evidenced no enthusiasm at all at the prospect of attending a No performance--to such an extent that he sent his wife in his place to accompany the young American. And after a short time, she politely excused herself and left the performance, leaving the American to discover the classical world of Japan on his own. There is a certain humor in the fact that Pound in his letters to Kitasono is continually asking questions about Japan's traditional culture--ironic in that Kitasono was not at all as interested in it as was Pound himself. For Kitasono embodied contemporary Japan.
What Kitasono, in turn, presented to Pound was not the past but the new. He introduced Pound to what the young avant-garde was doing as reflected in poems written by members of the VOU Club and published in its magazine. Pound seized upon the potential offered by this poetry washed clean as if by acid--written in halting English translations by these young Japanese, for he saw that they approached the language with fresh eyes, without preconceptions, and used English freely, idiosyncratically and inventively. "All the moss and fuzz that for twenty years we have been trying to scrape off our language--these young men start without it. " He praised this "vortex of poetic alertness" for its immense clarity and rapid-
ity: "The Japanese eye is like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. . . . They see the crystal set, the chemical laboratory and the pine tree with untrammeled clearness. . . . The Japanese poet has gone from one peak of [thought] to another faster than our slow wits permit us to follow before we have got used to his pace. "
Rather than condescendingly dismissing these poems for their techni- cal flaws, Pound positively saw in them a new beginning and enthusiasti- cally recommended them to Ronald Duncan of Townsman and lames Laughlin of New Directions for publication. While one need not necessarily agree with Pound's generous evaluation of them as "better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings," by seeing them in the manner that Pound
? PREFACE xiii
saw them and for the qualities that he cited, lessons could be learned. Here Japan was making its contemporary contribution to the West.
This collection of letters and essays documents Pound's lifelong in- volvement with the art, literature and culture of japan. Extending from 1911 to 1968, Pound's correspondence with Japanese artists and poets forms a record of a vital cultural interchange from which both East and West gained through the interaction. Included in this volume are letters from the Japanese painter Tami Koume and the dancer Michio Ito dating from Pound's early years in London--when he was at work with W. B. Yeats on translating Japanese No dramas--and his years in Paris during the early 1920's; the correspondence between Pound and the Japanese mod- ernist poet Katue Kitasono (editor of VOU) while Pound was residing in Rapallo (and later from St. Elizabeths); and articles written by Pound which appeared in the Japan Times just prior to the outbreak of World War II, promoting cross-cultural communication and insisting that "diplomacy alone could not do it. " Letters from Mary Fenollosa and various other
Japanese correspondents, along with the pertinent material included in the appendix, further round out the portrait.
Similar to the influence exerted by a previous generation of Americans who had travelled to Japan (Fenollosa, Bigelow, Morse, La Farge and Hearn), EzraPoundfromafaralsomadehiscontributiontothepreservation of the classic Japanese tradition, drawing attention to its masterworks as an essential component of world culture and a crucial means to increase East-West understanding.
--John WaJsh
'For further on Fenollosa, see note to letter 4 on Mary Fenollosa; see also Van Wyck Brooks, Fenollosa and His Circle (NY: E. P. Dutton, 1962).
? XIV
INTRODUCTION
In this book are collected letters exchanged between Ezra Pound and his Japanese friends, ranging between the years 1911 to 1968. These letters are, in most cases, chronologically arranged so that the reader may have an historical overview of Pound's involvement with the art and culture of Japan. The book also includes Pound's contributions to Japanese per- iodicals written shortly before World War II, at a time when he had little outlet elsewhere. Supplementary letters, such as those between Ezra Pound and Mary Fenollosa, Katue Kitasono to Dorothy Pound and Mary de Rache-
wiltz, etc. , which touch on material regarding Japan have also been in- cluded.
In the summer of 1911 Ezra Pound received a completely unexpected letter postmarked from Japan. "Dear Mr. Pound," the letter opened, "As I believe you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separate cover, my new book of poems called The Pilgrimage. . . . " It was from Yonejiro Noguchi, a Japanese poet who was ten years older than Pound and had been favorably received in England and America. He had published a few books of verse and prose in English in both countries: Seen and Unseen (1897), The American Diary o/a Japanese GirJ (1902] and From the Eastern Sea (1902), and had returned to Japan after spending thirteen years abroad.
In his polite response to Noguchi Pound wrote, "of your country I know almost nothing. " But he also wrote, "1 had, of course, known of you. " One may wonder how much knowledge Pound actually had of Japan when he said, "I know almost nothing. " It can be assumed that by 1911 Pound already had some knowledge of Japanese haiku, as he had regularly been attending T. E. Hulme's meetings at the Cafe Tour d'Eiffel since 1909, where haiku had by then become common knowledge. Basil Hall Chamber- lain's CJassicaJ Poetry of the Japanese (London, 1880) had long been out. One of the members of the group, Joseph Campbell, had written three-line poems such as "The Dawn Whiteness," and Edward Storer had written "Image. " F. S. Flint had translated some haiku into English from Paul-Louis Couchoud's French translations, including a piece by Arakida Takeari, which Pound was later to quote. Actually Pound might already have read Couchoud's and Chamberlain's translations himself.
But haiku was not the only aspect of Japan that Pound was acquainted with by that time. He surely would have known something of Japan's political and social aspects as well: news of the unexpected victory of Japan
? INTRODUCTION XV
over Imperial Russia in 1905 and reports concerning the Baltic Fleet, the battles at Liishun, and the following negotiations at Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, most certainly.
Moreover, Pound's juvenescence had coincided with the period of
/aponisme. Certainly, Japan had been "opened" to the American market for some time. Even Sears, Roebuck and Co. had listed Japanese fans with illustrations in their catalogue of 1902. Lacquer ware, paper napkins, kimo- no, netsuke, wood-block prints, and other objets d'art had been imported through Yamanaka & Co. for domestic usage. French and American pain- ters had been influenced for some time by Japanese art, and in his early essays Pound had already made frequent mention of the connection be- tween Whistler and Hokusai.
But Pound in 1911 was still looking at Japan through the back end of a pair of opera glasses. Pound viewed Japan as a far-away, beautiful country, inhabited by people with a delicate and subtle sensibility, by women pretty, gentle, obedient, and loveable, and by men courageous enough to defeat Imperial Russia. When he received a businesslike letter from Yone Noguchi, therefore. Pound must have been surprised, but he does not seem to have changed his basic view of Japan. The image of a dream-like Japan had been so strongly imprinted on his young mind that it could not easily
be changed or removed.
When he wrote "The Encounter," Pound compared the graceful fingers
of a London woman to the "tissue" of a soft and lissome "Japanese paper napkin. " And when he wrote the "Metro" poem suggested by haiku, Pound presented the image of the glimmering petals scattered upon "the wet, black bough" as if painted on soft Japanese paper, to be "superimposed" upon the image of the beautiful faces of women and children in Paris.
By the time Pound met Mary Fenollosa, in 1913--and soon afterwards received the bundle of her late husband's notebooks on the No plays and Japanese interpretations of Chinese classics--his knowledge of Japan had been substantially enhanced. Yet he does not seem even then to have changed his basic image of Japan. Rather, he became more enthusiastic about "beautifying" Japan. While promoting the production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well, Pound met Michio Ito, Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano, and through them became acquainted with the Japanese language, Japanese customs, the No plays, Zen and various other aspects of Japan. He ex- perienced, as it were, some new phases of the realities of Japan, including the awkward English of many Japanese. But still he rarefied and mytholo- gized Japan by translating the No plays and the Chinese classics into beautiful English poetry. Certainly Pound tried to finish the translations as
? xvi INTRODUCTION
"Ernest Fenollosa would have wanted them done. " But in any event the more Pound learned about Japanese realities, the more he emphasized their beauty and positive value.
The same can be said of Canto 49. That is, Pound read the manuscript poems in Japanese and Chinese on the lakes and hills around the River Hisaio-Hsiang in China, and he used the images to create an unworldly lyrical world of "stillness" suggestive of the paradiso terrestre. And again we find that aspect when he began correspondence with Kitasono in 1936. Pound read the "crystal" poems by the members of the VOU Club, and introduced them as the "vortex of poetic alertness" in the Townsman (see Appendix). He urged the publisher James Laughlin to introduce them also in his yearly New Directions AnthoJogy. In his essay "Orientamenti" in Broletto (1938), Pound also introduced Japan favorably as being in a new "cycle," though he was aware of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
In 1939 Pound had begun to subscribe to the Japan Times & Mail, and was thus exposed to much more concerning the political, economic and social realities of contemporary Japan. But in 1940 he mythologized the whole history of Japan by writing that all the emperors "were of heaven descended" in Canto 58. (His source was most probably Heinrich Julius Klaproth's translation of Nippon Odai Ichiran. See Pound's letter to Kitaso- no. 3 March 1939. )
When we trace Pound's view of Japan, we come to realize that even though he continued to further his knowledge of Japan throughout his life, his earlier image of Japan as a far-off, dreamlike country persisted; a treas- ure land for the aesthete, a country entangled with pleasant memories of youth. We cannot neglect the basic fact that Pound grew up in the era of Japonisme, and the image of Japan registered in his mind in his early youth as a land of lotus and butterfly was not to be erased from his mind through- out his life. And we must also remember that FenoUosa's impact was so very strong on him that FenoUosa's admiration for Japanese values could only reinforce Pound's idealized image.
However, the important thing is that Pound had the intuitive critical sensibility to sift "to kalon" from the chaff, and he did discover authentic treasures in his study of Far Eastern cultures. Although one might wish that Pound could have written more objectively of the realities of Japan, whether approvingly or not, the fact was that Japan remained for him the distant, mythic country of Hagoromo, Aoi. and Komachi.
--Sanehide Kodama
? I POUND'S EARLY CONTACTS WITH JAPAN: 1911-23
In this section are collected three letters of Yonejiro Noguchi to Pound, one letter of Pound to Noguchi, four letters of Mary Fenollosa to Pound, one letter by her to Dorothy Pound, three letters of Michio Ito to Pound, seven- teen letters of Tamijuro Kume to Pound, and an invitation card to Tamijuro Kume's exhibition in Paris. Pound must have written back to his Japanese friends at that time, but unfortunately most of Pound's letters to them were lost in the earthquake of 1923 and during the bombing of the Second World War.
Yonejiro Noguchi (1875-1947), a Japanese poet, went to California in 1893, studied poetry under Joaquin Miller for some time, and published there his books of poems. Seen and Unseen (San Francisco Press, 1897), and The Voice of the Valley (The Doxey Press, 1897). He then went to London to publish Eastern Sea (1903), first at his own expense, and then by Macmillan. Because of the Japonisme then fashionable, the Macmillan edition went into three printings. After his return to Japan, he was invited by Oxford University to give a series of lectures, and he sailed again to England. While there (1913-14), he met, as he writes in his essay "Irish Atmosphere," W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. The first two letters printed in the following pages were obviously written before these meetings had occurred.
After Noguchi returned to Japan in 1914, he maintained a correspond- ence with Pound. The strange article, "To Criticize Aoi no Ue by Ezra Pound" which appeared in Japanese in Yokyokukai (October, 1916) may most probably be the anonymous translation, or rather adaptation, of Pound's "Introduction" to ''Awoi no Uye: A Play by Ujinobu" which had appeared in Quarterly Notebook (Kansas City, June 1916). If so, Pound must have sent to Noguchi a copy of the American journal. In the editorial note to the article Pound is thus portrayed:
Mr. Ezra Pound is a young poet, born in the U. S. A. , now living in England.
He has published three or four books of poems, and has translated Li Po into English. He is a vigorous poet and is said to have been claiming himself a revolutionist of the literary world. He is a friend of Mr. Yonejiro Noguchi.
In certain ways, Noguchi and Pound did evidence a kinship. Both were interested in "certain forgotten odours": Pound in "the spirit of romance"
? 2 SECTIONI: 1911-23
and Noguchi in "the spirit of Japan. " And botli were fascinated by tfie No play. Though their sensibilities and their styles of writing were different, closer examination might reveal certain reciprocal echoes.
Michio Ito (1893-1961) was a Japanese modern dancer, who played the part of the hawk in a performance of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well in 1916. He had gone to Germany to study music when he was 18, but the course of his life was changed after he saw Isadora Duncan. When the war broke out, he escaped from Germany, but he was stranded when his father stopped sending him money. One day in 1914 when he did not have a penny to feed the gasometer at his flat in London, he was invited to dance at a party. At the dinner table he sat next to an elderly gentleman who admired him highly. But Ito could not understand English, and he asked him if he could speak in German. After hesitation the gentleman consented, and they talked for two hours. A few days later Ito received from that gentleman, who turned out to be Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, a letter enclosing a check for ? 20. Pound writes of the episode in Canto 77:
So Mischio sat in the dark lacking the gasometer penny but then said: "Do you speak German? "
to Asquith, 1914.
Pound had met Ito at the Cafe Royal where the refugee artists met. He asked him to help him with the editing of the No plays in the Fenollosa notebooks, and then to help Yeats with At the Hawk's Well. Ito had himself little knowledge of the No play then, but his Japanese classmates who happened to be in London were versed in it. Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano (Torahiko Kori)--especially the former--taught them about the No play and assisted Pound in interpreting FenoUosa's notebooks, continuing even after Ito had left for New York.
Tamijuro Kume (1893-1923), a Japanese painter, had begun taking lessons in No and Kyogen from Minoru Umewaka when he was still in primary school. His father, Taminosuke Kume, a successful businessman, had a No theatre in his large house in Yoyogi, Tokyo, where his family and guests often sang and played. Not much is recorded about his first son, Tamijuro. But according to the family legend, he began painting while he was a student at Gakushuin Middle School. He went to Europe after gradua- tion to study oil painting. During World War I, he met Pound in London, through his classmate, Michio Ito. Obviously he played a crucial part in Pound's rendering of the No plays and Dulac's production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well. He performed utai, the vocal part of the No, at Pound's flat in
? SECTIONI: 1911-23 3
London. How much affection Pound had for him, especially after Pound lost Gaudier-Brzeska, may be gleaned from the following letters. But noth- ing much is known about the actual role he played in assisting Yeats and Pound in their research.
He returned to Japan in July 1918, vigorously worked at his "hideout" studio near Lake Yamanaka, and went to New York in January 1921 to exhibit his paintings (February 1-12). Hethen went to Paris in January 1922 and there again met Pound who arranged an exhibition for "Tami Koume" in July. Though Tamijuro Kume had a love affair in Paris, he left there in February 1923, returning to Tokyo by boat. On September 1, 1923, he was in Yokohama, again on the verge of sailing abroad, this time to America to launch a second exhibition in New York. His wife, Kiyo, and his 5-year-old son, Masayoshi, were at their villa in Koshigoe, Kamakura, planning to join him briefly at Yokohama and then see him off at the pier. However, the great earthquake occurred, just when Tamijuro Kume was in the dining room in the basement of the Oriental Hotel with a friend of his. His body was pulled out from under the bricks and ashes with his watch and rings on.
? 4 SECTIONI: 1911-23
1: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound ALS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 16 July 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
As I think you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separatecover,mynewbookofpoemscalledThePilgrimage. AsI [am]not yet acquainted with your work, I wish you will send your book or books which you like to have me to read. This little note may sound quite businesslike, but I can promise you that I can do better in my next letter to you.
Yours truly, Yone Noguchi
P. S. Iamanxioustoreadnotonlyyourpoeticalworkbutalsoyourcriticism.
2: Ezra Pound to Yone Noguchi
TLS-2 c/o Elkin Mathews, Vigo St. , London. Pmk: 2 September 1911
Dear Yone Noguchi:
I want to thank you very much for your lovely books & for your kindness in sending them to me.
I had, of course, known of you, but I am much occupied with my mediaeval studies & had neglected to read your books altho' they lie with my own in Mathews shop & I am very familiar with the appearance of their covers.
I am reading those you sent me but I do not yet know what to say of them except that they have delighted me. Besides it is very hard to write to you until I know more about you; you are older than I am--1 gather from the dates of the poems--you have been to New York. You are giving us the spirit of Japan, is it not? very much as 1 am trying to deliver from obscurity certain forgotten odours of Provence & Tuscany (my works on Guido Cavalcanti, & Arnaut Daniel, are, the one in press, the other ready to be printed).
I have sent you two volumes of poems. I do not know whether to send you The Spirit of Romance or not: It treats of mediaeval poetry in southern Europe but has many flaws of workmanship.
? SECTIONI: 1911-23 5
I can not help wondering how much you know of our contemporary poets & in what things of ours you would be likely to be interested.
I mean I do not want to write you things that you already know as well
or better than I do.
OfyourcountryI knowalmostnothing--surelyiftheeast&thewestare
ever to understand each other that understanding must come slowly & come first through the arts.
You ask about my "criticism. " There is some criticism in the Spirit of Romance & there will be some in the prefaces to the "Guido" & the "Arnaut. " But I might be more to the point if we who are artists should discuss the matters of technique & motive between ourselves. Also if you should write about these matters I would discuss your letters with Mr. Yeats & likewise my answers.
I havenotansweredbeforebecauseyourletter&yourbookshave followed me through America, France, Italy, Germany and have reached me but lately.
Let me thank you again for sending them, and believe me
3: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 22 October 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
Many thanks for your kind letter [together] with Exultations and Can- zoni. I was glad to be acquainted with Exultations, and what a difference of your work from mine! I like to follow closely after your poetry.
Sincerely yours, Yone Noguchi
4: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 24 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Your violet ray from Stone Cottage has just penetrated. Since you
Yours Very Sincerely Ezra Pound
I
? 6 SECTIONI: 1911-23
announced that you are to be there "forever," I suppose I might as well begin addressing you there. It certainly sounds good enough to be a forever,--with the aigrette of the usual "day. "
I am beginning with right now, to send you material. I am going to number the rolls, envelopes, packets, or whatever form they go in. So if you merelyletmeknowthatNo. 1hassafelyarrived--thenNo. 2--, andsoon,it will be enough to bring me "anshin," which is to say "peace of the spirit. " I fear it will go to you in a pretty mixed up condition, but the great fact is that it will all go.
I know you are pining for hieroglyphs and ideographs: but I must keep to our plan and send the No stuff first. That is a complete book in itself-- almost think that you had better spell it Noh, as some French writers do. It looks just a little more impressive. Don't you think so? Later I will have something to say about the illustrations, but the time hasn't come, yet, for that.
If you ever see Sarojini, or write to her, wont you please say to her that if she could have sprouted a new petal every time I've thought of her, or wanted to write to her, she would be the shape and size of a chrysanthe- mum by this.
I used to think I was somewhat rushed in London, but it was a long hour of silent prayer by this! I've a million relatives, more or less, and they all feel hurt when I shut myself up even to write letters. By the way, don't forget to give me your mother's address. After Christmas I shall be wandering be- tween the cauldron of Pittsburgh and "My City, my beloved, my white! " I want to meet your mother.
Mary FenoUosa
5: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
TLS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 25 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Please don't get discouraged at the ragged way this manuscript is coming to you. As I said yesterday, it will all get there in time,--which is the most important thing.
For instance, chronologically, the lectures taken down by my husband, from old Umewaka Minoru are so rough, and so many abbreviations are used, that I can't send them until I have time to make quite copious notes to
-- SECTIONI: 1911-23 7
help you understand. It is going to be something of a puzzle, at best.
In these notes the initials "U. M. " are constantly used. Sometimes they are put "M. U. . " for to this day, the Japanese are a little undecided whether to place the family name first, according to their own custom, or last. In any case, whenever you see these initials together they mean the old lecturer. He was brought up in the last Shogun's court, and comes from a long line of famous Noh players. He had all the costumes, masks, literature and tradi- tions. I had thought, if ever I attempted editing the book, to begin it with this personal note of old U. M. and the Professor. (Whenever I say "Professor" I
mean E. F. F. ). He had two beautiful young sons, still living and acting whether real or adopted I am not sure, but that doesn't matter in Japan. The son who is adopted for reasons of fitness, talent, and capability of carrying on an artistic tradition is considered more real than a son who is merely of the flesh. All the great artists of old times adopted successors this way. These sons, also very often referred to in the notes, and in the studies of the Noh plays, were Manzaburo Umewaka and Takeyo Umewaka. Both were beautiful,--the former, a tall and rather stout youth, did not look unlike a picture of a cavalier by Franz Hals, and the younger, our teacher in the singing of Noh, was more like a soulful and very handsome East Indian poet than a Japanese. I hope I come across a photograph of him, but I haven't yet. However I have an excellent one of the old Umewaka to send.
I shall go over these notes of his lectures, and wherever you see new ink writing you will know that I put it.
I must explain at more length the recurring term "cats. " This would surely be a puzzler. At the back of the stage in many,--in fact most, of the pieces, there are always two queer old, old musicians that come in with funny little folding stools, sit facing each other for a moment, and then turn themselves and the stools so that they face the audience. They have weird little drums, and at intervals, during the performance, they utter the most astonishing sounds, suppressed wails, throaty gurgles, and muted banshee howls. These sounds are more like the noises of back-yard fence cats than anything else on earth, and the Professor and I got into the way of calling them "cats. " I didn't realize that he had accepted the term seriously enough to put it all through the notes. In rare cases there are sometimes four cats, or even more; but, as I remember it, always there were two. I don't believe they were ever used in the comic interludes, or "kyogen. " You will see also frequent reference to "Mr. H. " This always means little Mr. Hirata, a pupil of my husband's, who always went to the Noh performances with us, and
did the translations. I don't think much of his literary style. Neither will you. I should suggest that the examples you wish to present in full should
? ? 8 SECTIONI: 1911-23
be taken only from those pieces where the Professor has written out the Japanese words too, and given the literal translation.
Please remember, from the first, that whenever I say "suggest," I mean just that thing, and nothing more stringent. What I am hoping is that you will become really interested in the material, absorb it in your own way, and then make practically new translations from the Japanese text as rendered into Romaji. It seems going ahead of myself a little, but I might as well tell you the Noh pieces that have seemed to us most beautiful. I think that first I would place "Kinuta. " Old U. M. considered it so, and also said that it took nearly a life-time, and much prayer and fasting, to learn to sing properly. Another that the Professor specially loved was "Nishi ki gi. " "Yoroboshi" was the first I heard, really to understand, and I care a lot for it. "Hagoromo" is perhaps the favorite of all, with the average Japanese Noh lover, and is a legend strangely like the old Celtic one of the mermaid who had her magic sea-garments stolen by a mortal. "Sumidagawa" is another wonder. Most, if not all of these, are carefully translated.
This is a big enough dose for one day. When you get into it, please don't hesitate to ask me questions. I only wish I were there with you and Yeats, working on it. I am homesick for London already.
Mary FenoJlosa
6: Michio Ito to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 82 St. John's Wood Terrace, London, N. W. Pmk: 8 May 1915
Dear Ezra Pound,
Thank you very much for your letter. I understand quite well this time. I should be very pleased [tol meet you on this Sunday night, but I have been very busy now as I have an engagement at Coliseum Theater from 10th of May. Then, if I could not call you at 7 o'clock, I should come [a] little later.
Yours truly Michio Ito
-- SECTIONI: 1911-23 9
7: Mary Fenollosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 Kobinata, Spring Hill, Alabama. 27 February 1916
My dear Ezra:
I haven't any envelopes to go with this lovely hand laid Japanese paper--am too poor to buy any more--but I'm writing on it because the address is my permanent one in America-- From now on, into a vague future, I shall be living here, or else my widowed mother. Letters will surely be forwarded. We've had all sorts of bereavements and unpleasant things in our family. Finances in the South are poignantly rotten. Only the vile munition makers of your part of America are thriving.
Your letter was one of the very few bright spots that has come my way lately. It certainly has cheered me up. My getting to England is now so indefinite that I am going to try and get you that roll of Noh illustrations by post. Heaven knows whether it ever will reach you! As I write these Germans are battering the forts near Verdun. One has already fallen--What is going to happen to the world any way? I believe I'll go back to Japan scoop out a rock, and be a hermitess.
? 8: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 3c Warwick Ave. W. 22 March 1916
My dear Mr. Pound,
I am awfully sorry to hear that you are sick in bed. 1 received your telegraph and was pain. How are you now? To-day I tried to go and ask after your health, but I was temptated by Itow, and staing long time at Mr. Dulac's, where we study some play. I am so anxious how are you now. I hope that you are well soon.
I am your's great friend T. M. Koume
Devotedly yours Mary Fenollosa
---- -- 10 SECTIONI: 1911-23
9: Mary FenoUosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 c/o Grant-Thompson, Co. , 280 Madison Avenue, New York. N. Y. 24 July 1916
You dear Ezra:
This certainly is good news--that you have succeeded in getting McMillan to publish E. F. F.
Finally,myspecialthanksareduetoJohnWalsh. I shouldliketoexpressmy heartfelt appreciation for the encouragement and assistance I received from him in many forms and over a period of many years. --S. K.
? yiii
NOTE ON TEXT
NOTE ON THE TEXT
In rendering the Pound material in typeset format, certain translations have been utilized: underlined words have been placed in italics; double underlined words are indicated by boldface; and triple underlining appears as italic capitals. Words originally in block letters appear in small capitals. Handwritten inserts have been placed in the text where indicated by Pound and appear in italics within angle brackets. Phrases and words in foreign languages, as well as titles, have been italicized. With few exceptions. Pound's original spelling, punctuation and spacing have been retained, and a line-for-line approximation has been attempted. In only a few cases have the letters from Japanese correspondents been corrected to aid clarification; no attempt has been made to regularize Japanese names and terms, as this forms one of the themes of the correspondence. The following manuscript abbreviations (followed by the number of pages of the original) have been used: tl
= typed letter; TLS = typed letter signed; PC = postcard; AL = handwritten letter; and ALS = handwritten letter signed.
In the Notes, citations to the editions of Pound's works as listed in Donald Gallup's Ezra Pound: A Bibliography, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University of Vir- ginia Press, 1983) have been placed within brackets.
Two additional references are to be included: Ezra Pound, Plays Modelled on the Noh (1916), ed. Donald Gallup (Toledo: Friends of the University of Toledo Libraries, 1987); and Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud, Eduardo Sanguinetti and Charles Tomlinson, Rengo: A Chain of Poems (NY: Braziller, 1971)--with special reference to letter 73: The modern chain poem is a descendant of the Japanese "kusari-renga" ["linked poems"] developed between the Heian (794-1183) and Muromachi (1336-1573) periods.
? PREFACE
On the walls of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts hangs a painting by the American painter William Paxton entitled The New Necklace. In the paint- ing is depicted a young American woman, wrapped in an oriental jacket placed over her long frilled dress; she is seated by an oriental screen, set in front of the Western painting and tapestry on the wall; an encased oriental statuette is on top of the woman's lacquered writing desk-chest. The date of the painting is 1910.
The intermixing of styles in this painting reflects the extent of the current vogue of /aponisme, in a setting most likely proximate to one of the ports of the Yankee clipper trade which flourished between Yokohama and Salem. "Things Japanese" had most definitely entered American fashion by this time, a good fifty years after the American painters La Farge and Whistler had begun their collections of Japanese Ukiyoe [woodblockl prints. Such artistic transport, facilitated by the speed of the Yankee clipper ships, prompted Van Wyck Brooks to remark that "the Far East seemed closer to Salem than to any other American town when Ernest FenoUosa* was born there in 1853" (FenoJJosa and His Circle).
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the nearby Peabody Museum in Salem, were the recipients of much of the art and artifacts of traditional Japanese culture that were shored up against time, thanks to a determined effort on the part of a group of Boston-based Americans who had travelled to Japan--fortuitously arriving at precisely the critical moment for their enterprise. Ernest FenoUosa and Edward Morse, followed by William Stur- gis Bigelow and Percival Lowell, and later by Henry Adams, John La Farge, and then Lafcadio Hearn--all arrived in Japan within nearly a decade (1878-90], at a time when the traditional culture of Japan was on the brink of being swept away. "P'or twenty years," remarks Van Wyck Brooks, "the most precious works were treated as rubbish. " Masterpieces were paradox- ically more commonly to be found in trash-heaps than in showrooms. With a broad gesture, the Japanese had turned their backs on their past in favor of Western modernity. A year after FenoUosa had arrived in Japan, he had been able to acquire a masterpiece by the painter Ganku from a dealer who had never even heard of the master's name, and he was still able to find in 1884 a fine ceramic head of the Buddha--one of the earliest relics of Tendai sculpture--in an ash barrel where it had been discarded. Along with FenoUosa and Morse, these Americans eagerly took to the task of attempt-
IX
--
? X PREFACE
ing to preserve what they feared to be the last surviving traces of a vanishing civilization. Fenollosa took sculpture and painting as his specialty, while Morse chose pottery. Morse also took lessons in the traditional tea cere- mony, and studied Japanese singing with the No master, Minoru Umewaka, under whom Fenollosa studied as well.
At a time when the Japanese feudal system was in its death-throes and
noble families found it necessary to sell their great collections to stave off
poverty, excellent examples of traditional art--swords, guards, emblems,
lacquer boxes, along with statues, paintings, scrolls and pottery
abounded in a radically devalued market. And Fenollosa and Morse bought
discerningly and extensively, shipping off vast collections to the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston.
Along with Okakura Kakuzo (who organized the Imperial Art School in
Tokyo), Fenollosa acted as Imperial Commissioner of Fine Art and scoured the countryside in search of cast-off treasures. Ironically, however, most of this treasure was being shipped to America. Morse, well aware of the contradiction, remarked: "It is like the life-blood of Japan seeping from a hidden wound. " But this wound was soon to be staunched; in 1884, further transport of national Japanese treasures (now recognized to be so) began to be discussed by the Japanese government. By 1885, a rebirth of interest in the traditional culture of Japan had begun.
Certainly, the crucial role played by this small group of American Japanophiles had not been forgotten by the Japanese; in the words of Prof. Yaichi Haga, "An American, Ernest Fenollosa, taught us how to admire the unique beauty of our art. " And upon preparing to return to America in
1886, Fenollosa was told by the Emperor: "You have taught my people to know their own art; in going back to your great country, I charge you, teach them also. "
When Ezra Pound in London received his first letter from a Japanese correspondent in 1911 (a year before the publication of FenoUosa's Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art], he probably was not as yet familiar with the work of Fenollosa. Perhaps he had not yet at that time thought much directly about Japan, even though he was certainly familiar with the art of Whistler. Were he in London at the time, he most probably would have seen the Japanese Exhibition held at Shepherd's Bush in 1910. Perhaps he had even discussed Fenollosa when he met, in October 1913, the American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn, who had intensively studied the collection of Chinese and Japanese art set up by Fenollosa in the Boston
? PREFACE xi
Museum of Fine Arts. But when towards the end of 1913 he received from Mary Fenollosa the notebooks containing Fenollosa's notes on oriental literature, draft translations of Chinese poetry and Japanese No dramas, along with his essay "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry"--with the stipulation that Fenollosa wanted the material treated as literature, not philology--a world opened. In March 1909, Pound had heard Laurence Binyon lecture on "Oriental and European Art," and in the spring of 1911, he had written his haiku-like poem on the Paris Metro (see Sanehide Kodama, American Poetry and Japanese Culture). He had also written in 1913, prior to the receipt of the bulk of Fenollosa material, the Chinese-inspired poems "After Ch'u Yuan," "Fan-Piece for Her Imperial Lord," and "Liu Ch'e. " Most significantly. Pound's "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste" had already appeared. But what accompanied China in the Fenollosa notebooks was the near-virgin world of Japan--territory which he set about exploring almost immediately. Pound and W. B. Yeats spent much of the winter of 1913 in Stone Cottage immersed in the study and translation of No drama. By January of 1914 Pound was able to send off to Harriet Monroe of Poetry the finished version of Nishikigi. And so began
his lifetime enthrallment.
Ironically, Pound's discovery of Japanese drama coincided with an-
other phase of modern Japan's turning away from its traditional culture. When the Japanese dancer Michio Ito arrived in London in 1914, he knew next to nothing about classical Japanese drama--but, most fortunately, a fellow expatriate, the painter Tami Koume, did. So it was in London, not Tokyo, that Ito learned about his own cultural tradition. (Perhaps the apocryphal story of Ito's visit with Yeats to the London zoo to watch the movements of a caged hawk justifiedly merits being preserved. ) From these seeds, the study of No drama became an enduring passion for Pound.
The importance of the No drama for Pound echoes throughout this correspondence. Seated in the cinema in Rapallo watching the film Mit- souko, Pound is filled with nostalgia, struck by the sound of the singing, and remembering a No performance enacted in Paris by Tami Koume and other Japanese: "You have a treasure like nothing we have in the Occident. " In a later letter of 1957, Pound most succinctly and poignantly remarks: "Hagoronno is a sacrament. " And Pound seriously and fondly hoped that his own play. Women of Trachis (1954), would be translated into Japanese and be staged by a No troupe: "Am convinced the Noh technique is only way of doing it properly, in whatever language. "
It was to preserve this induplicable treasure of the No that Pound went to the extreme of suggesting that the American-occupied island of Guam be
--
? Xii
PREFACE
negotiated with the Japanese in exchange for a set of films of classic No plays--along with their authentic music, "insist," wrote Pound to the Japanese poet Katue Kitasono, "on having 300 Noh plays done properly and recorded on sound film so as to be able to educate such American students as are capable of being cultured. "
Ironic indeed that this was being said by an American at a time when many modern Japanese were in another phase of turning away from their cultural heritage--the avant-garde poet, Katue Kitasono. most certainly included. When in 1952 Michael Reck--who made a pilgrimage to Fenollo- sa's grave above Lake Biwa [cf. Canto LXXXIX)--upon Pound's urging met Kitasono, he discovered that the Japanese poet evidenced no enthusiasm at all at the prospect of attending a No performance--to such an extent that he sent his wife in his place to accompany the young American. And after a short time, she politely excused herself and left the performance, leaving the American to discover the classical world of Japan on his own. There is a certain humor in the fact that Pound in his letters to Kitasono is continually asking questions about Japan's traditional culture--ironic in that Kitasono was not at all as interested in it as was Pound himself. For Kitasono embodied contemporary Japan.
What Kitasono, in turn, presented to Pound was not the past but the new. He introduced Pound to what the young avant-garde was doing as reflected in poems written by members of the VOU Club and published in its magazine. Pound seized upon the potential offered by this poetry washed clean as if by acid--written in halting English translations by these young Japanese, for he saw that they approached the language with fresh eyes, without preconceptions, and used English freely, idiosyncratically and inventively. "All the moss and fuzz that for twenty years we have been trying to scrape off our language--these young men start without it. " He praised this "vortex of poetic alertness" for its immense clarity and rapid-
ity: "The Japanese eye is like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. . . . They see the crystal set, the chemical laboratory and the pine tree with untrammeled clearness. . . . The Japanese poet has gone from one peak of [thought] to another faster than our slow wits permit us to follow before we have got used to his pace. "
Rather than condescendingly dismissing these poems for their techni- cal flaws, Pound positively saw in them a new beginning and enthusiasti- cally recommended them to Ronald Duncan of Townsman and lames Laughlin of New Directions for publication. While one need not necessarily agree with Pound's generous evaluation of them as "better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings," by seeing them in the manner that Pound
? PREFACE xiii
saw them and for the qualities that he cited, lessons could be learned. Here Japan was making its contemporary contribution to the West.
This collection of letters and essays documents Pound's lifelong in- volvement with the art, literature and culture of japan. Extending from 1911 to 1968, Pound's correspondence with Japanese artists and poets forms a record of a vital cultural interchange from which both East and West gained through the interaction. Included in this volume are letters from the Japanese painter Tami Koume and the dancer Michio Ito dating from Pound's early years in London--when he was at work with W. B. Yeats on translating Japanese No dramas--and his years in Paris during the early 1920's; the correspondence between Pound and the Japanese mod- ernist poet Katue Kitasono (editor of VOU) while Pound was residing in Rapallo (and later from St. Elizabeths); and articles written by Pound which appeared in the Japan Times just prior to the outbreak of World War II, promoting cross-cultural communication and insisting that "diplomacy alone could not do it. " Letters from Mary Fenollosa and various other
Japanese correspondents, along with the pertinent material included in the appendix, further round out the portrait.
Similar to the influence exerted by a previous generation of Americans who had travelled to Japan (Fenollosa, Bigelow, Morse, La Farge and Hearn), EzraPoundfromafaralsomadehiscontributiontothepreservation of the classic Japanese tradition, drawing attention to its masterworks as an essential component of world culture and a crucial means to increase East-West understanding.
--John WaJsh
'For further on Fenollosa, see note to letter 4 on Mary Fenollosa; see also Van Wyck Brooks, Fenollosa and His Circle (NY: E. P. Dutton, 1962).
? XIV
INTRODUCTION
In this book are collected letters exchanged between Ezra Pound and his Japanese friends, ranging between the years 1911 to 1968. These letters are, in most cases, chronologically arranged so that the reader may have an historical overview of Pound's involvement with the art and culture of Japan. The book also includes Pound's contributions to Japanese per- iodicals written shortly before World War II, at a time when he had little outlet elsewhere. Supplementary letters, such as those between Ezra Pound and Mary Fenollosa, Katue Kitasono to Dorothy Pound and Mary de Rache-
wiltz, etc. , which touch on material regarding Japan have also been in- cluded.
In the summer of 1911 Ezra Pound received a completely unexpected letter postmarked from Japan. "Dear Mr. Pound," the letter opened, "As I believe you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separate cover, my new book of poems called The Pilgrimage. . . . " It was from Yonejiro Noguchi, a Japanese poet who was ten years older than Pound and had been favorably received in England and America. He had published a few books of verse and prose in English in both countries: Seen and Unseen (1897), The American Diary o/a Japanese GirJ (1902] and From the Eastern Sea (1902), and had returned to Japan after spending thirteen years abroad.
In his polite response to Noguchi Pound wrote, "of your country I know almost nothing. " But he also wrote, "1 had, of course, known of you. " One may wonder how much knowledge Pound actually had of Japan when he said, "I know almost nothing. " It can be assumed that by 1911 Pound already had some knowledge of Japanese haiku, as he had regularly been attending T. E. Hulme's meetings at the Cafe Tour d'Eiffel since 1909, where haiku had by then become common knowledge. Basil Hall Chamber- lain's CJassicaJ Poetry of the Japanese (London, 1880) had long been out. One of the members of the group, Joseph Campbell, had written three-line poems such as "The Dawn Whiteness," and Edward Storer had written "Image. " F. S. Flint had translated some haiku into English from Paul-Louis Couchoud's French translations, including a piece by Arakida Takeari, which Pound was later to quote. Actually Pound might already have read Couchoud's and Chamberlain's translations himself.
But haiku was not the only aspect of Japan that Pound was acquainted with by that time. He surely would have known something of Japan's political and social aspects as well: news of the unexpected victory of Japan
? INTRODUCTION XV
over Imperial Russia in 1905 and reports concerning the Baltic Fleet, the battles at Liishun, and the following negotiations at Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, most certainly.
Moreover, Pound's juvenescence had coincided with the period of
/aponisme. Certainly, Japan had been "opened" to the American market for some time. Even Sears, Roebuck and Co. had listed Japanese fans with illustrations in their catalogue of 1902. Lacquer ware, paper napkins, kimo- no, netsuke, wood-block prints, and other objets d'art had been imported through Yamanaka & Co. for domestic usage. French and American pain- ters had been influenced for some time by Japanese art, and in his early essays Pound had already made frequent mention of the connection be- tween Whistler and Hokusai.
But Pound in 1911 was still looking at Japan through the back end of a pair of opera glasses. Pound viewed Japan as a far-away, beautiful country, inhabited by people with a delicate and subtle sensibility, by women pretty, gentle, obedient, and loveable, and by men courageous enough to defeat Imperial Russia. When he received a businesslike letter from Yone Noguchi, therefore. Pound must have been surprised, but he does not seem to have changed his basic view of Japan. The image of a dream-like Japan had been so strongly imprinted on his young mind that it could not easily
be changed or removed.
When he wrote "The Encounter," Pound compared the graceful fingers
of a London woman to the "tissue" of a soft and lissome "Japanese paper napkin. " And when he wrote the "Metro" poem suggested by haiku, Pound presented the image of the glimmering petals scattered upon "the wet, black bough" as if painted on soft Japanese paper, to be "superimposed" upon the image of the beautiful faces of women and children in Paris.
By the time Pound met Mary Fenollosa, in 1913--and soon afterwards received the bundle of her late husband's notebooks on the No plays and Japanese interpretations of Chinese classics--his knowledge of Japan had been substantially enhanced. Yet he does not seem even then to have changed his basic image of Japan. Rather, he became more enthusiastic about "beautifying" Japan. While promoting the production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well, Pound met Michio Ito, Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano, and through them became acquainted with the Japanese language, Japanese customs, the No plays, Zen and various other aspects of Japan. He ex- perienced, as it were, some new phases of the realities of Japan, including the awkward English of many Japanese. But still he rarefied and mytholo- gized Japan by translating the No plays and the Chinese classics into beautiful English poetry. Certainly Pound tried to finish the translations as
? xvi INTRODUCTION
"Ernest Fenollosa would have wanted them done. " But in any event the more Pound learned about Japanese realities, the more he emphasized their beauty and positive value.
The same can be said of Canto 49. That is, Pound read the manuscript poems in Japanese and Chinese on the lakes and hills around the River Hisaio-Hsiang in China, and he used the images to create an unworldly lyrical world of "stillness" suggestive of the paradiso terrestre. And again we find that aspect when he began correspondence with Kitasono in 1936. Pound read the "crystal" poems by the members of the VOU Club, and introduced them as the "vortex of poetic alertness" in the Townsman (see Appendix). He urged the publisher James Laughlin to introduce them also in his yearly New Directions AnthoJogy. In his essay "Orientamenti" in Broletto (1938), Pound also introduced Japan favorably as being in a new "cycle," though he was aware of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
In 1939 Pound had begun to subscribe to the Japan Times & Mail, and was thus exposed to much more concerning the political, economic and social realities of contemporary Japan. But in 1940 he mythologized the whole history of Japan by writing that all the emperors "were of heaven descended" in Canto 58. (His source was most probably Heinrich Julius Klaproth's translation of Nippon Odai Ichiran. See Pound's letter to Kitaso- no. 3 March 1939. )
When we trace Pound's view of Japan, we come to realize that even though he continued to further his knowledge of Japan throughout his life, his earlier image of Japan as a far-off, dreamlike country persisted; a treas- ure land for the aesthete, a country entangled with pleasant memories of youth. We cannot neglect the basic fact that Pound grew up in the era of Japonisme, and the image of Japan registered in his mind in his early youth as a land of lotus and butterfly was not to be erased from his mind through- out his life. And we must also remember that FenoUosa's impact was so very strong on him that FenoUosa's admiration for Japanese values could only reinforce Pound's idealized image.
However, the important thing is that Pound had the intuitive critical sensibility to sift "to kalon" from the chaff, and he did discover authentic treasures in his study of Far Eastern cultures. Although one might wish that Pound could have written more objectively of the realities of Japan, whether approvingly or not, the fact was that Japan remained for him the distant, mythic country of Hagoromo, Aoi. and Komachi.
--Sanehide Kodama
? I POUND'S EARLY CONTACTS WITH JAPAN: 1911-23
In this section are collected three letters of Yonejiro Noguchi to Pound, one letter of Pound to Noguchi, four letters of Mary Fenollosa to Pound, one letter by her to Dorothy Pound, three letters of Michio Ito to Pound, seven- teen letters of Tamijuro Kume to Pound, and an invitation card to Tamijuro Kume's exhibition in Paris. Pound must have written back to his Japanese friends at that time, but unfortunately most of Pound's letters to them were lost in the earthquake of 1923 and during the bombing of the Second World War.
Yonejiro Noguchi (1875-1947), a Japanese poet, went to California in 1893, studied poetry under Joaquin Miller for some time, and published there his books of poems. Seen and Unseen (San Francisco Press, 1897), and The Voice of the Valley (The Doxey Press, 1897). He then went to London to publish Eastern Sea (1903), first at his own expense, and then by Macmillan. Because of the Japonisme then fashionable, the Macmillan edition went into three printings. After his return to Japan, he was invited by Oxford University to give a series of lectures, and he sailed again to England. While there (1913-14), he met, as he writes in his essay "Irish Atmosphere," W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. The first two letters printed in the following pages were obviously written before these meetings had occurred.
After Noguchi returned to Japan in 1914, he maintained a correspond- ence with Pound. The strange article, "To Criticize Aoi no Ue by Ezra Pound" which appeared in Japanese in Yokyokukai (October, 1916) may most probably be the anonymous translation, or rather adaptation, of Pound's "Introduction" to ''Awoi no Uye: A Play by Ujinobu" which had appeared in Quarterly Notebook (Kansas City, June 1916). If so, Pound must have sent to Noguchi a copy of the American journal. In the editorial note to the article Pound is thus portrayed:
Mr. Ezra Pound is a young poet, born in the U. S. A. , now living in England.
He has published three or four books of poems, and has translated Li Po into English. He is a vigorous poet and is said to have been claiming himself a revolutionist of the literary world. He is a friend of Mr. Yonejiro Noguchi.
In certain ways, Noguchi and Pound did evidence a kinship. Both were interested in "certain forgotten odours": Pound in "the spirit of romance"
? 2 SECTIONI: 1911-23
and Noguchi in "the spirit of Japan. " And botli were fascinated by tfie No play. Though their sensibilities and their styles of writing were different, closer examination might reveal certain reciprocal echoes.
Michio Ito (1893-1961) was a Japanese modern dancer, who played the part of the hawk in a performance of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well in 1916. He had gone to Germany to study music when he was 18, but the course of his life was changed after he saw Isadora Duncan. When the war broke out, he escaped from Germany, but he was stranded when his father stopped sending him money. One day in 1914 when he did not have a penny to feed the gasometer at his flat in London, he was invited to dance at a party. At the dinner table he sat next to an elderly gentleman who admired him highly. But Ito could not understand English, and he asked him if he could speak in German. After hesitation the gentleman consented, and they talked for two hours. A few days later Ito received from that gentleman, who turned out to be Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, a letter enclosing a check for ? 20. Pound writes of the episode in Canto 77:
So Mischio sat in the dark lacking the gasometer penny but then said: "Do you speak German? "
to Asquith, 1914.
Pound had met Ito at the Cafe Royal where the refugee artists met. He asked him to help him with the editing of the No plays in the Fenollosa notebooks, and then to help Yeats with At the Hawk's Well. Ito had himself little knowledge of the No play then, but his Japanese classmates who happened to be in London were versed in it. Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano (Torahiko Kori)--especially the former--taught them about the No play and assisted Pound in interpreting FenoUosa's notebooks, continuing even after Ito had left for New York.
Tamijuro Kume (1893-1923), a Japanese painter, had begun taking lessons in No and Kyogen from Minoru Umewaka when he was still in primary school. His father, Taminosuke Kume, a successful businessman, had a No theatre in his large house in Yoyogi, Tokyo, where his family and guests often sang and played. Not much is recorded about his first son, Tamijuro. But according to the family legend, he began painting while he was a student at Gakushuin Middle School. He went to Europe after gradua- tion to study oil painting. During World War I, he met Pound in London, through his classmate, Michio Ito. Obviously he played a crucial part in Pound's rendering of the No plays and Dulac's production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well. He performed utai, the vocal part of the No, at Pound's flat in
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London. How much affection Pound had for him, especially after Pound lost Gaudier-Brzeska, may be gleaned from the following letters. But noth- ing much is known about the actual role he played in assisting Yeats and Pound in their research.
He returned to Japan in July 1918, vigorously worked at his "hideout" studio near Lake Yamanaka, and went to New York in January 1921 to exhibit his paintings (February 1-12). Hethen went to Paris in January 1922 and there again met Pound who arranged an exhibition for "Tami Koume" in July. Though Tamijuro Kume had a love affair in Paris, he left there in February 1923, returning to Tokyo by boat. On September 1, 1923, he was in Yokohama, again on the verge of sailing abroad, this time to America to launch a second exhibition in New York. His wife, Kiyo, and his 5-year-old son, Masayoshi, were at their villa in Koshigoe, Kamakura, planning to join him briefly at Yokohama and then see him off at the pier. However, the great earthquake occurred, just when Tamijuro Kume was in the dining room in the basement of the Oriental Hotel with a friend of his. His body was pulled out from under the bricks and ashes with his watch and rings on.
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1: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound ALS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 16 July 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
As I think you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separatecover,mynewbookofpoemscalledThePilgrimage. AsI [am]not yet acquainted with your work, I wish you will send your book or books which you like to have me to read. This little note may sound quite businesslike, but I can promise you that I can do better in my next letter to you.
Yours truly, Yone Noguchi
P. S. Iamanxioustoreadnotonlyyourpoeticalworkbutalsoyourcriticism.
2: Ezra Pound to Yone Noguchi
TLS-2 c/o Elkin Mathews, Vigo St. , London. Pmk: 2 September 1911
Dear Yone Noguchi:
I want to thank you very much for your lovely books & for your kindness in sending them to me.
I had, of course, known of you, but I am much occupied with my mediaeval studies & had neglected to read your books altho' they lie with my own in Mathews shop & I am very familiar with the appearance of their covers.
I am reading those you sent me but I do not yet know what to say of them except that they have delighted me. Besides it is very hard to write to you until I know more about you; you are older than I am--1 gather from the dates of the poems--you have been to New York. You are giving us the spirit of Japan, is it not? very much as 1 am trying to deliver from obscurity certain forgotten odours of Provence & Tuscany (my works on Guido Cavalcanti, & Arnaut Daniel, are, the one in press, the other ready to be printed).
I have sent you two volumes of poems. I do not know whether to send you The Spirit of Romance or not: It treats of mediaeval poetry in southern Europe but has many flaws of workmanship.
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I can not help wondering how much you know of our contemporary poets & in what things of ours you would be likely to be interested.
I mean I do not want to write you things that you already know as well
or better than I do.
OfyourcountryI knowalmostnothing--surelyiftheeast&thewestare
ever to understand each other that understanding must come slowly & come first through the arts.
You ask about my "criticism. " There is some criticism in the Spirit of Romance & there will be some in the prefaces to the "Guido" & the "Arnaut. " But I might be more to the point if we who are artists should discuss the matters of technique & motive between ourselves. Also if you should write about these matters I would discuss your letters with Mr. Yeats & likewise my answers.
I havenotansweredbeforebecauseyourletter&yourbookshave followed me through America, France, Italy, Germany and have reached me but lately.
Let me thank you again for sending them, and believe me
3: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 22 October 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
Many thanks for your kind letter [together] with Exultations and Can- zoni. I was glad to be acquainted with Exultations, and what a difference of your work from mine! I like to follow closely after your poetry.
Sincerely yours, Yone Noguchi
4: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 24 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Your violet ray from Stone Cottage has just penetrated. Since you
Yours Very Sincerely Ezra Pound
I
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announced that you are to be there "forever," I suppose I might as well begin addressing you there. It certainly sounds good enough to be a forever,--with the aigrette of the usual "day. "
I am beginning with right now, to send you material. I am going to number the rolls, envelopes, packets, or whatever form they go in. So if you merelyletmeknowthatNo. 1hassafelyarrived--thenNo. 2--, andsoon,it will be enough to bring me "anshin," which is to say "peace of the spirit. " I fear it will go to you in a pretty mixed up condition, but the great fact is that it will all go.
I know you are pining for hieroglyphs and ideographs: but I must keep to our plan and send the No stuff first. That is a complete book in itself-- almost think that you had better spell it Noh, as some French writers do. It looks just a little more impressive. Don't you think so? Later I will have something to say about the illustrations, but the time hasn't come, yet, for that.
If you ever see Sarojini, or write to her, wont you please say to her that if she could have sprouted a new petal every time I've thought of her, or wanted to write to her, she would be the shape and size of a chrysanthe- mum by this.
I used to think I was somewhat rushed in London, but it was a long hour of silent prayer by this! I've a million relatives, more or less, and they all feel hurt when I shut myself up even to write letters. By the way, don't forget to give me your mother's address. After Christmas I shall be wandering be- tween the cauldron of Pittsburgh and "My City, my beloved, my white! " I want to meet your mother.
Mary FenoUosa
5: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
TLS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 25 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Please don't get discouraged at the ragged way this manuscript is coming to you. As I said yesterday, it will all get there in time,--which is the most important thing.
For instance, chronologically, the lectures taken down by my husband, from old Umewaka Minoru are so rough, and so many abbreviations are used, that I can't send them until I have time to make quite copious notes to
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help you understand. It is going to be something of a puzzle, at best.
In these notes the initials "U. M. " are constantly used. Sometimes they are put "M. U. . " for to this day, the Japanese are a little undecided whether to place the family name first, according to their own custom, or last. In any case, whenever you see these initials together they mean the old lecturer. He was brought up in the last Shogun's court, and comes from a long line of famous Noh players. He had all the costumes, masks, literature and tradi- tions. I had thought, if ever I attempted editing the book, to begin it with this personal note of old U. M. and the Professor. (Whenever I say "Professor" I
mean E. F. F. ). He had two beautiful young sons, still living and acting whether real or adopted I am not sure, but that doesn't matter in Japan. The son who is adopted for reasons of fitness, talent, and capability of carrying on an artistic tradition is considered more real than a son who is merely of the flesh. All the great artists of old times adopted successors this way. These sons, also very often referred to in the notes, and in the studies of the Noh plays, were Manzaburo Umewaka and Takeyo Umewaka. Both were beautiful,--the former, a tall and rather stout youth, did not look unlike a picture of a cavalier by Franz Hals, and the younger, our teacher in the singing of Noh, was more like a soulful and very handsome East Indian poet than a Japanese. I hope I come across a photograph of him, but I haven't yet. However I have an excellent one of the old Umewaka to send.
I shall go over these notes of his lectures, and wherever you see new ink writing you will know that I put it.
I must explain at more length the recurring term "cats. " This would surely be a puzzler. At the back of the stage in many,--in fact most, of the pieces, there are always two queer old, old musicians that come in with funny little folding stools, sit facing each other for a moment, and then turn themselves and the stools so that they face the audience. They have weird little drums, and at intervals, during the performance, they utter the most astonishing sounds, suppressed wails, throaty gurgles, and muted banshee howls. These sounds are more like the noises of back-yard fence cats than anything else on earth, and the Professor and I got into the way of calling them "cats. " I didn't realize that he had accepted the term seriously enough to put it all through the notes. In rare cases there are sometimes four cats, or even more; but, as I remember it, always there were two. I don't believe they were ever used in the comic interludes, or "kyogen. " You will see also frequent reference to "Mr. H. " This always means little Mr. Hirata, a pupil of my husband's, who always went to the Noh performances with us, and
did the translations. I don't think much of his literary style. Neither will you. I should suggest that the examples you wish to present in full should
? ? 8 SECTIONI: 1911-23
be taken only from those pieces where the Professor has written out the Japanese words too, and given the literal translation.
Please remember, from the first, that whenever I say "suggest," I mean just that thing, and nothing more stringent. What I am hoping is that you will become really interested in the material, absorb it in your own way, and then make practically new translations from the Japanese text as rendered into Romaji. It seems going ahead of myself a little, but I might as well tell you the Noh pieces that have seemed to us most beautiful. I think that first I would place "Kinuta. " Old U. M. considered it so, and also said that it took nearly a life-time, and much prayer and fasting, to learn to sing properly. Another that the Professor specially loved was "Nishi ki gi. " "Yoroboshi" was the first I heard, really to understand, and I care a lot for it. "Hagoromo" is perhaps the favorite of all, with the average Japanese Noh lover, and is a legend strangely like the old Celtic one of the mermaid who had her magic sea-garments stolen by a mortal. "Sumidagawa" is another wonder. Most, if not all of these, are carefully translated.
This is a big enough dose for one day. When you get into it, please don't hesitate to ask me questions. I only wish I were there with you and Yeats, working on it. I am homesick for London already.
Mary FenoJlosa
6: Michio Ito to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 82 St. John's Wood Terrace, London, N. W. Pmk: 8 May 1915
Dear Ezra Pound,
Thank you very much for your letter. I understand quite well this time. I should be very pleased [tol meet you on this Sunday night, but I have been very busy now as I have an engagement at Coliseum Theater from 10th of May. Then, if I could not call you at 7 o'clock, I should come [a] little later.
Yours truly Michio Ito
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7: Mary Fenollosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 Kobinata, Spring Hill, Alabama. 27 February 1916
My dear Ezra:
I haven't any envelopes to go with this lovely hand laid Japanese paper--am too poor to buy any more--but I'm writing on it because the address is my permanent one in America-- From now on, into a vague future, I shall be living here, or else my widowed mother. Letters will surely be forwarded. We've had all sorts of bereavements and unpleasant things in our family. Finances in the South are poignantly rotten. Only the vile munition makers of your part of America are thriving.
Your letter was one of the very few bright spots that has come my way lately. It certainly has cheered me up. My getting to England is now so indefinite that I am going to try and get you that roll of Noh illustrations by post. Heaven knows whether it ever will reach you! As I write these Germans are battering the forts near Verdun. One has already fallen--What is going to happen to the world any way? I believe I'll go back to Japan scoop out a rock, and be a hermitess.
? 8: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 3c Warwick Ave. W. 22 March 1916
My dear Mr. Pound,
I am awfully sorry to hear that you are sick in bed. 1 received your telegraph and was pain. How are you now? To-day I tried to go and ask after your health, but I was temptated by Itow, and staing long time at Mr. Dulac's, where we study some play. I am so anxious how are you now. I hope that you are well soon.
I am your's great friend T. M. Koume
Devotedly yours Mary Fenollosa
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9: Mary FenoUosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 c/o Grant-Thompson, Co. , 280 Madison Avenue, New York. N. Y. 24 July 1916
You dear Ezra:
This certainly is good news--that you have succeeded in getting McMillan to publish E. F. F.
