BK. Ezra Pound

177. Murakata, Akiko. The Ernest F. Fenollosa Papers, The Houghton Library, Harvard  University /Harvard daigaku Houghton Library, Ernest Fenollosa shiryô, vol. 3. Tokyo: Museum, 1987.

Murakata’s work is primarily a Japanese translation of the Fenollosa papers at the Houghton Library (see CB1a), but includes two essays of relevance here:

a. ‘Ernest F. Fenollosa’s Studies of Nô: With Reference to His and Other Unpublished Manuscripts and Ezra Pound’s Edition’. Based largely on the diaries of Umewaka Minoru (Ap), and Furukawa’s treatment of them in Meiji nôgakushi josetsu (introduction to the history of the nô in the Meiji period [Tokyo: Wan’ya shoten, 1969]), Murakata’s account is the fullest available in English of the nature of Fenollosa’s study of the nô, and along with Furukawa’s edition of Fenollosa’s letters and Yamaguchi’s monumental study of Fenollosa (for notes about both see D10d) demonstrates that the translations from which Pound worked in his versions were largely the work of Hirata Kiichi (Ap). Includes reference to John La Farge (Ap), William Sturgis Bigelow (Ap), and Okakura Kakuzô (see D16). See also BL109.

b. ‘Ezra Pound ed. “Fenollosa on the Noh” as it Was: Lecture V. Nô, Washington, 12 March 1903’. Murakata’s introduction to the Fenollosa manuscript from which Pound worked in preparing ‘Fenollosa on the Noh’ (13b) outlines his ‘lack [of] concern for a socio-historical perspective’, ‘misleading’ footnotes,  ‘disorganized . . . paraphrase[s]’ of ‘technical details beyond his comprehension’, and other editorial ‘confusion’ and ‘dereliction’.