BD. Edmund Blunden

55. Two Lectures on English Literature. Osaka: Osaka kyôiku tôsho, 1948.

Includes Japanese translation of two Blunden lectures, along with four occasional poems.

a. Osaka in Reconstruction. Four rhymed quatrains recall the Osaka of the days of John Saris (see 63), and that the city has seen more misery than most, but close with the prediction that as it has in the past been great it will be so again.

b. The Tourist (Near Komoro). The tourist of the title is the speaker, who surveys a pastoral scene from his ‘perch’ on a ‘templed height’.

c. Voices in Tokyo. The ‘voices’ of the title include those of the ‘stentorian crow’, ‘busy cicada’, and ‘fearless bullfrog’. According to Kirkpatrick (187, C2445) the poem appeared first in †Study of English (Eigo kenkyû) in October 1948; reprinted in 59 and 128; Blunden reads the poem in the sound recording †Gems from English Poetry (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1960).

d. William Adams [Ap] AT ITO. Praise for ‘that man / Who first united England and Japan’ (see 118). Reprinted in 118, and, under the title To the Citizens of Ito, in 76, 165 and 167, the last of which is from an earlier and slightly different version.