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Article Excerpt
Ezra Pound's initial understanding of Japan clearly involves Ernest Fenollosa's papers, and Pound's encounter with Fenollosa's work is well known. (1) He met Fenollosa's widow, Mary, in London in 1912; she asked him to become Fenollosa's literary executor; and between 1913 and 1915, Pound received Fenollosa's notebooks, his translations of Japanese Noh dramas, his translations of Chinese poetry, and his essay "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry." Pound then published "Noh" or Accomplishment (1916), containing Fenollosa's essays on Noh and a collection of Noh plays that Pound co-translated from Fenollosa's papers. (2) An examination of Fenollosa's works reveals that Fenollosa saw Japan as an artistic culture whose disappearing traditions needed to be preserved and as a viable resource for the West to use even though that use contributed to the disappearance of certain traditions. These contradictory views will be explained later in this article, and more importantly, they will be connected to Fenollosa's legacy and its impact on Pound. Pound corresponded with a series of modern Japanese artists and writers including Yone Noguchi, Michio Ito, Tami Kume, Sadakichi Hartmann, and Katue Kitasono. (3) In some cases, these correspondents had their own connections to Fenollosa and supported Fenollosa's version of Japan. In other instances, Pound first had to convince his correspondents of the importance of forms such as Noh drama so that he could then rely on them as authorities on these same forms of art. Such a role was not unusual for Pound, who dedicated so much time and energy to defining and circulating his version of Anglo-American literary modernism. Pound regularly found patrons and publication outlets for other writers, and, as Lawrence Rainey notes, became "the cultural impresario and entrepreneur who ... occupied a critical position at the heart of modernism." (4) Pound's engagement with Japan's modern artists and writers becomes an extension of the networking he conducted in America and Western Europe. Furthermore, drawing on alternate literary and cultural traditions was central to Pound's modernist project. This study argues, however, that Pound did not simply draw on alternate literary and cultural traditions as resources for Western literature. In the case of Japan, he actively created his own version of the tradition that he then relied on as a resource, an approach to Japanese culture that stems from Fenollosa's works.
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Ernest Fenollosa hailed from the wealthy shipping port of Salem, Massachusetts, a city that built its fortunes through trade in the Far and Middle East. His father, Manuel, was a musician who emigrated from Spain, and his mother, Mary Silsbee, brought social status to the family as the daughter of a prestigious shipping family. When Fenollosa graduated from Harvard first in his class in 1874, he opted to stay on at Harvard for two years of graduate work in philosophy. He also entered the Unitarian Divinity School for a few months but left in 1877 to work at the Massachusetts Normal Art School and to study painting with Emil Otto Grundmann at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. (5)
In the winter of 1877-1878, Fenollosa's Salem neighbor and friend, Edward S. Morse, recommended him for the position of first chair in philosophy at Tokyo University, the institution designed by the Japanese government to modernize Japanese knowledge. (6) Morse's own enthusiasm for Japan came at a time when much of America was also developing an interest in things Japanese. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, America's interest in Japan increased in both the popular and academic spheres. It impacted everything from the arts to the ways in which women decorated their homes. William Hosley examines Victorian America's relationship with Japan and the manifestation of that relationship in material culture, noting that it "crested during the 1880s when American industry, art, and popular culture lined up behind a movement the Victorians dubbed 'the Japan craze.'" (7) In the midst of this movement, Fenollosa accepted the position in philosophy and arrived in Tokyo in 1878.
Fenollosa came to Japan at a time of tremendous cultural change. During the Meiji Era (1868-1912), social and political institutions underwent renovation with an eye toward modernization. The new government restored authority to the emperor and developed centralized institutions instead of feudal domains. Shinto became the official religion rather than Buddhism. Foreign workers, many of whom came, like Fenollosa, from New England, were brought in by the Japanese government to assist with its modernization. Western-style dress, literature, entertainment, and language also found their way into Japanese culture with the arrival of foreign employees and visitors.
Fenollosa was not swept up in the changes taking place in Japan. On the contrary, be was concerned about the country's movement away from ancient arts and practices. His written interpretations of Japan were unique because of this perspective and because of his access to works of art, artists, masters of Noh drama, and scholars. (8) In addition to being on faculty at Tokyo University, Fenollosa also became a member of the Imperial Commission of Fine Arts, helped to found the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, was adopted into the Kano family of artists, and studied Noh drama with Noh master Minoru Umewaka. Because of these connections, Fenollosa learned from knowledgeable sources about traditions in Japanese art and drama while simultaneously visiting temples and private collections of Japanese art to study individual works first hand. Furthermore, the Kano family and Minoru Umewaka practiced two of the very arts, traditional Japanese painting and Noh drama, that lost currency during the Meiji Era's push for modernization. They also gave Fenollosa access to information and to actual works of art that other Westerners did not have. Fenollosa's passion for Japanese art included encouraging preservation, and it also manifested itself in his painstaking research to locate and identify paintings and prints found throughout Japan in Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, private collections, and local stores. (9)
Temples and shrines offer an especially interesting insight to Fenollosa's work in Japan. Prior to the Meiji Era, Buddhism had over time largely supplanted Shinto as the dominant belief system and, as part of its conversion effort, had taken over shrines and converted them into Buddhist temples. Works of art were forgotten as shrines fell into disuse or were hidden away and ignored as Buddhist art become more prominent. The Meiji government was interested in reestablishing Shinto and many works of Buddhist art were either put into storage or literally thrown away. Often, Fenollosa needed to convince priests to open up rooms and altars long since closed or off limits to visitors. These factors all created a sense of discovery for Fenollosa as he searched for works of art unseen for many years and often unseen by any Westerner. The narrative of exploration and discovery connected with his research is comparable to that of a geographic explorer with Fenollosa seeking...
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