BD. Edmund Blunden

127. [Blunden]. ‘A Japanese Garland’. Review of Modern Japanese Literature, by Donald Keene. TLS, 3 May 1957, p. 274.

Blunden finds Keene’s anthology ‘impressive’, but laments that it does not include a section on literary and art criticism, which ‘has been fully, often gaily, cultivated by numerous men of learning’ in Japan. Also Blunden is troubled by Keene’s suggestion that Japanese writing in English is ‘mere imitation’, and cites particularly Noguchi (see D15) as an example of ‘this active tradition’. Includes reference to the work of Natsume Sôseki (Ap) and Shimazaki Tôson (see also 101).