A. Critical and Comparative Studies

72. Sadria, Modjtaba. ‘Japanese Way and American Followers’. Kokusaikankeigaku kenkyû 22 (1996): 53-76.

Begins with the proposition that literary exoticism is an adjunct to imperialism, and that as the position of Japan relative to the United States has changed, ‘the role of exoticism in Japan’s influence on American literature [has] changed as well’. Proposes to show where Amy Lowell, Pound, and Rexroth (see CA13 and 14d) ‘were able to get beyond the exotic’, as well as where they failed, though offers a sympathetic reading of each. Finds a progression from Lowell’s ‘superfluous [Japanese] decoration’ through Pound’s avoidance of exoticism to Rexroth’s movement beyond exoticism to an experiential knowledge of Japan.