SOURCE: An introduction to Selected Writings of Yone Noguchi: An East-West Literary Assimilation, Volume 2, Associated University Presses, 1992, pp. 13-51.

In the following excerpt, Hakutani explores the influence of Noguchi's work on that of William Butler Yeats and—in a fuller elucidation of topics discussed by Hakutani earlier—Ezra Pound.

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Since childhood, W. B. Yeats felt in his heart that "only ancient things and the stuff of dreams were beautiful."¹ It was the rise of science and realism in the Victorian age that directed his attention to the Middle Ages and the world of myths and legends. As he read Certain Noble Plays of Japan, translated by Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa in 1916, he found in them what he would emulate in reshaping his own poetic drama. "In fact," he wrote, "with the help of these plays .. . I have invented a form of drama, distinguished, indirect and symbolic...