BL. W. B. Yeats

113. Oshima, Shôtarô. ‘W. B. Yeats and Japan’. Waseda daigaku daigakuin bungaku kenkyûkai kiyô 9 (1963): 1-25.

Part I, about Yeats’s relation with ‘the Zen philosophy’, takes a wide view about what that philosophy encompasses, but is nonetheless important as the first critical work in English to explore the subject in detail, though see also 66, 83, and 85. Later critics are more rigorous in their definitions of Zen, and Oshima himself is more insightful about it in 124e. Part II finds that the simple staging and design of the ‘plays for dancers’ (12, 14a-b, 17a) is derived from Yeats’s acquaintance with the nô. See also 124c. For other critical comment about Yeats and Zen see 66, 124, 124c, 131a, 133, 134, 146, 159, 163, 165, 166, 170, 196, 198, 211, 220, 224, 234, 244, 249, 255, and 256.