英字新聞The Japan Weekly Mail にみるヨネ・ノグチの姉崎正治論考

Abstract

This paper will introduce Yone Noguchi’s English article “Dr. M. Anesaki” published in The Japan Weekly Mail on 26 July 1913. Along with the original work, it will provide a new Japanese translation of the article to shed light on Noguchi’s relationship to Masaharu Anesaki. Yone Noguchi (1875-1947), a Japanese poet who gained his international fame with English poetry books in the United States and England, interviewed another internationalist, a Buddhist scholar Masaharu Anesaki (1873-1949) before Anesaki’s departure to Harvard University in 1913, where he was to lecture on Japanese culture for two years. In the article, Noguchi covered Anesaki’s achievements, including his major publications, his scholarship in comparison with the German scholar Rudolf Eucken, a brief biography of Anesaki’s, as well as discussing the people who helped realize Anesaki’s visiting to Harvard. While Noguchi’s writing style is longwinded, his respect and admiration for Anesaki are obvious. Noguchi does not mention how he got acquainted with Anesaki in the first place, but according to the article, the interview took place in Anesaki’s house in Tokyo. Recent research shows that The Japan Weekly Mail published quite a few articles written by Yone Noguchi; in particular, around the time when Noguchi himself was invited by the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges to give a lecture at Oxford University. Noguchi was known to translate his own work mostly from English to Japanese and/or re-publish his works elsewhere. A part of the article “Dr. M. Anesaki” is a reprint from “The Earliest Japanese Poetry” in The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (1913). The current paper is based on the presentation “Eiji Shinbun The Japan Weekly Mail and Yone Noguchi” on 12 November, 2017, for the Popular Culture Association of Japan.