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Activities: Context Activities Orientalism: Looking East  Back to Context Activities
Although Japan had been opened up to the West in 1853, for modern Americans the Orient remained a place of great mystery, reverence, and intrigue. American readers reveled in the exotic paraphernalia of Japanese daily life described in works such as Matthew Calbraith Perry's The Americans in Japan: An Abridgement of the Government Narrative of the U.S. Expedition to Japan, and fascination with the Orient spilled over into U.S. architecture. While many American architects were producing classical styles, Frank Lloyd Wright was inspired by Japanese architecture, from which he borrowed the concept of the tokonama. Defined as the use of a permanent element in the home as a focus for contemplation and ceremony, tokonama can be seen in Wright's use of the hearth as the vertical axis from which the horizontal floors radiate. The modernist fascination with the art and aesthetics of ancient Japan and China is also reflected in the writings of modernist poets. Overall, American culture was primed for orientalism; between 1870 and 1882, the Chinese population in America rose dramatically, fueled by a fourfold increase in new immigrants, chiefly from Canton. Wealthy collectors took an interest in traditional East Asian art, which began appearing in newly constructed museums in Boston, New York, Chicago, and other major cities. Japan modernized rapidly and emerged as a formidable military power, defeating Russia decisively in modern naval engagements that attracted the attention of the world. Moreover, the opulent, busy, literary and decorative styles of Victorian England and Belle Époque France were growing tiresome and predictable to young, independent thinkers, who hungered for aesthetic refreshment, for the austerity that the Japanese Zen tradition and the art of Imperial China seemed to embody. Many modernist poets, artists, and architects, particularly Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, William Butler Yeats, Marianne Moore, Georgia O’Keefe, and Frank Lloyd Wright, expressed their own personal fascination with the Far East. Late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century translations of Chinese poets like Qu Yuan, Tao Qian, Li Bo, Wang Wei, and Bo Juyi gained popularity in Western literary circles, helping to fuel this interest. For writers like Pound and Williams, the Orient did not represent a strange otherness, but rather an unexpected similarity in basic values. In 1913, Pound wrote that he felt "older and wiser" when looking at Japanese art, a sentiment shared by many of the modernist poets. When Wright set out to invent a "Prairie Style," an architectural vernacular expressive of the landscape and values of the American Midwest, he turned for inspiration to the temples and palaces of ancient Japan. One of the leading thinkers and mentors of his time, Pound did much to shape modernism and its theoretical underpinnings. Pound's affinity for the Orient is conspicuous in his haiku-like poems, such as "In a Station of the Metro." He came to favor the poetry of China over that of Japan, and he spent much of his career studying and translating Chinese poetry. "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter," one of his most anthologized poems, is a moving translation of a Chinese poem that depicts a lonely teenage wife longing for her husband with simplicity and emotion. Pound admired in Chinese poetry the impulse toward an economic, concrete verse, tendencies that became central to modernist poetry. Although his interest in China surfaces in a host of poems, The Cantos perhaps best illustrates his appropriation of techniques, themes, and allusions suggestive of Chinese poetry. The 1915 publication of Cathay, a collection of translated Chinese poems based partly on the writings of experts on the Orient, caught the interest of other modernist authors. Yeats experimented with the austerity and elegance of Japanese Noh drama, and the poetry of Wallace Stevens began to resonate with rhythms and images adapted from Chinese and Japanese poetry. Although Williams never discussed the place of the Orient in his own work, his early poetry also bears the mark of its influence. Many characteristics that we associate with modernist poetry, including the use of ellipsis, allusion, and juxtaposition, have their roots in English translations of Chinese poetry. The Chinese ideogram, and the related concept that a concise visual experience can suggest philosophical and psychological meaning, became a central idea in imagism and early modernism. Questions
[6176] Anonymous, Some Designs and Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect (1917), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZC4-4297]. Cover of a Japanese journal highlighting Frank Lloyd Wright's work. Wright's architecture drew on Japanese art and design. Wright designed projects in both the United States and Japan, including the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. [6662] Mary Cassatt, The Fitting (1891), courtesy of the Library of Congress. In the 1890s, an exhibition of Japanese prints influenced Mary Cassatt to make her style more emphatic and to use bolder and more defined colors. Cassatt, like Henry James and Edith Wharton, was interested in realistically capturing the lives of America's upper class. [7119] Shoshan, Monkey Reaching for the Moon (c. 1910), courtesy of the print collection of Connecticut College, New London. Japanese print showing a monkey hanging from a tree. Asian art became increasingly popular in the early twentieth century. Many modernist poets used Japanese and Chinese themes. [7126] Eisen, Asakusa Temple in Winter (c. 1810), courtesy of the print collection of Connecticut College, New London. Japanese woodcut of temple in winter scene. Modernist poets used Asian reli-gious and artistic themes, particularly emphasizing simplicity and nature. [7128] Anonymous, Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio (c. 1933), courtesy of the Library of Congress [HABS, ILL, 16-OAKPA,5-2]. Photograph of entrance to Frank Lloyd Wright's studio, looking southeast, near Chicago; an example of how Wright used orientalism in his architecture. [7982] Ando Hiroshige, Minakuchi, #51 of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road, Tate-E Edition (1855), courtesy of the print collection of Connecticut College, New London. Hiroshige produced many editions of this series of scenes from the highway between Kyoto and his native Edo (now Tokyo). Many modernist poets were drawn to the objectivity, precision, and connection with nature that characterize this art. [7984] Ando Hiroshige, Temple in the Park near Osaka (n.d.), courtesy of the print collection of Connecticut College, New London. Painting from the 100 Views of Edo series. Although early-twentieth-century Westerners saw the Orient as shrouded in exoticism, many modernist poets saw similarities between Eastern and Western culture. [7987] Ohara Shoson, Five Egrets (c. 1927), courtesy of the print collection of Connecticut College, New London. These elegant birds are frequent subjects of oriental art. The style, forms, and content of Japanese and Chinese art were of great interest to a number of modernist poets. |
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