SOURCE: "Transmutations of a Westernizer," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3618, July 2, 1971, p. 755.

In the following review, the critic asserts that translator Graeme Wilson's use of traditionally western images distorts the meaning of the poems in Hagiwara's Face at the Bottom of the World, and Other Poems.

Owing to some remarkable resemblances in tone and imagery Hagiwara Sakutarō has had the misfortune of being dubbed "the Japanese Baudelaire". In much the same way Chikamatsu Monzaemon became "Japan's Shakespeare" and Osaka (of all places) "the Venice of Japan". Such pairings compel invidious comparisons and are invariably unfair to the supposed Japanese counterparts. Chikamatsu and Hagiwara are major writers, but the juxtapositions with Shakespeare and Baudelaire serve only to point up their shortcomings.

Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886-1942), who has also been described as "the father of modern Japanese poetry", is undoubtedly the most important of all the Western-style poets since the...