BC. Laurence Binyon

27. The Spirit of Man in Asian Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1935. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1965.

The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University for 1933-34. Lecture II begins with Okakura Kakuzô’s assertion from Ideals of the East (see D16) that ‘Asia is one’, and develops the thesis that, at least regarding artistic heritage, the various cultures of Asia ‘have more in common than might be supposed’; lecture III includes discussion of the impact of ‘Zen’ (through his career Binyon uses the Japanese rather than the Chinese term) on Southern Sung-dynasty art; lecture V traces the development of Japanese art, focuses again on the importance of Zen, and discusses illustrations of the Genji monogatari, ‘the greatest of Japanese (and doubtless of all Oriental) novels  . . . now beginning to be well known in the West through Mr. Waley’s beautiful translation’ (D26c); lecture VI, about popular art in India and Japan, includes description of the development and flourishing of ukiyoe. A Chinese translation of the essays appeared in 1988 as †Ya-chou i shu chung jen ti ching shen (Shenyang: Liaoning jen min ch’u pan she).