| Abstrakt: |
The poet and writer Noguchi Yonejirō (1875-1947) began his literary work during his stay in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland between 1893 and 1904. After starting a career in poetry, he took up a new role as a Japanese who provided rare information about his native culture to Westerners. This led him to start a writing project in English, in which he approached different cultural elements in order to improve the contemporary image of Japan. This paper focuses on his first writings on Japanese literature, especially prose literature, published in periodicals and newspapers in 1904, before he returned to Japan in September. The paper will discuss two main questions. On one hand, it will show the works that Noguchi used as sources for his articles. On the other hand, it will shed light on how Noguchi attempted to position Japanese literature and Japan as a country in a Western-centred cultural hierarchy. This paper contributes to the research on the international flow of information that shaped the image and improved the understanding of Japanese culture at the beginning of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
