A. Critical and Comparative Studies

23. Kimura, Ki. ‘Nichibei bungaku kôryûshi’ (Japanese-American literary exchange). In Nichibei bunka kôshôshi. Tokyo: Yôyôsha, 1955. Revised in Nichibei bungaku kôryûshi no kenkyû. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1960. Reprint, 1982. Translated and adapted by Philip Yampolsky in Japanese Literature; Manners and Customs in the Meiji-Taisho Era. Vol. 2 of A History of Japanese American Cultural Relations. Tokyo: Obunsha, 1957.

In the first section of Kimura’s long, anecdotal study of cultural exchange between Japan and the United States only two chapters are directly related to this study. In ‘The Hyakunin isshu and the Cinquain’ Kimura echoes earlier writers in tracing the form of Crapsey’s ‘cinquain’ (see CA4) to Japanese sources, and in ‘Haiku and Imagism’ he discusses in general terms the possibility of an influence from haiku in the poems of H. D. (see 8), Fletcher, Lowell, Pound, and Sandburg (see CA6). The study is not without questionable judgements and errors of fact—H. D. was not, for example, Fletcher’s wife—but it does bring to Japanese scholarship its first serious confrontation with the idea of a significant influence from the literature of Japan in the poetry of the United States.