A. Critical and Comparative Studies

50. Atsumi, Ikuko. Introduction to Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters (D15e9), 1975.

Atsumi argues that Noguchi’s influence on Yeats and the Imagists, particularly Pound, must have been greater than is generally acknowledged (see also BK195), and ‘must have been more direct than the mere fact that he wrote free verse with haiku-type images [see especially D15e1, 4, and 7]  . . . and published many translations of Japanese haiku [see D15e6 and 7]’. His influence ‘was absorbed in the strong inward necessity of the advancement of English modern poetry’, and when we read the letters to him from English-language writers, ‘it comes to light that Noguchi united US-Japan-England with an Oriental spirit representative in haiku’.