SOURCE: "A Selection of New Style Verse (Shintaishisho, 1882)," in Literature East and West, Vol. XIX, Nos. 1-4, January-December, 1975, pp. 9-33.

In the following essay, Morrell elucidates the influence on Japanese poetry of Shintaishio, an anthology of western poetry published in Japanese translation in 1882.

In August, 1882, Maruzen Bookstore in Tokyo—still a favorite haunt for the foreign traveler in Japan—published a small booklet of nineteen poems, fourteen translations from English and five original pieces. The collection's three authors were all professors at Tokyo University; they were not professional poets. The youngest was Inoue Tetsujiro (1855-1944), 27 years old and just that year appointed as Assistant Professor. Two years later, in 1884, he would go to Germany for six years of study, returning to Japan in 1890 to become one of the most distinguished and influential philosophers of the age. Inoue died in 1944.

The other two authors, who contributed most of the...