Leith Morton

Divided self : a biography of Arishima Takeo

Arishima Takeo led one of the most dramatic lives of any modern Japanese writer. He is particularly engrossing because of his treatment of the psyche and sexuality; the linking of behaviour with sexual drives was undoubtedly his outstanding achievement and presaged much later Japanese writing. His struggles with his own sexuality, graphically revealed in his diary, provided the motive for his concern. Arishimas fiction, as yet mostly untranslated, is also drawn upon in this biography, and quoted passages never before available to English-speaking readers are included. Arishimas life provides many insights into bourgeois early 20th century Japanese society, illustrating the dilemma of the intellectual in an increasingly right wing society.

Flood, Storm and Typhoon in Tanizaki Junichirō’s The Makioka Sisters

Morton discusses in detail for the first time in English the relationship between The Makioka Sisters, Tanizaki Junichirō’s famous 1948 novel, and two horrifying weather events. The chapter analyses the portrayal of these events, which form the heart of the work, as literary evocations of the trauma such tragedies create, and also as examples of the author’s unparalleled skill in making these experiences the turning point in his fascinating narrative of the slow decline of one family’s fortunes in pre-war Japan. The Makioka family’s decline parallels Japan’s own slide into chaos and war in the 1930s decade, and the connections between the family’s fate and that of Japan are subtly hinted at in the narrative.

Modernism in Prewar Japanese Poetry

To discuss the issue of Modernism in one of the traditional genres of prewar Japanese poetry entails a rethinking of prewar literary Modernism in Japan. This chapter attempts to do this and from time to time address the larger problems associated with Japanese Modernism but the main focus is on the impact of Modernism on the genre of traditional poetry known as tanka . It begins with a few words about Modernism itself and its history in order to trace the beginnings of Modernism in Japanese traditional poetry. Maekawa Samio defines his aesthetic in relation to Ishikawa Takuboku (1886-1912), the pioneer of tanka reform and also in relation to Mokichi, the leading tanka poet of the day. The link between Samio and Takuboku is so strong, especially in the Botanical Revels poems. Keywords: Ishikawa Takuboku; Japanese Modernism; Maekawa Samio; Prewar Japanese poetry; tanka

Mt. Fuji : selected poems 1943-1986

Poetry. Asian Studies. Translated from the Japanese by Leith Morton. Kusano Shinpei (1903-1988) is one of Japans mostdistinguished and innovative poets, full of the same kinds of brevity, inventiveness and surprising turns of phrase that distinguish the work of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Here, Kusano celebrates Fuji, the holy mountain, in a poetic equivalent of the great woodblock series of Hokusai, occasionally borrowing images from that master artist. Includes anintroduction by the American beat poet Cid Corman and a detailed bibliography.