Foreign Correspondence: News from Japan

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE: NEWS FROM JAPAN By Minoru Oda (Fukuoka University of Education) According to Toshitaka Kawamoto's Nlhon ni okeru Thomas Hardy no Shoshi (Bibliography of Writings about Thomas Hardy In Japan), Bulletin of RikkyS Girls High School, No. 3, 1982, which follows close on the heels of Dr. Bunnosuke Yamamoto's Thomas Hardy no Shoshi: 1969-1979 (Bibliography of Writings about Thomas Hardy: 1969-1979) (Tokyo: Senjo, 1980), a monumental publication commemorating a branch of Hardy scholarship in Japan, about 162 writings were published during the period from 1979 to 1982 and thirty-two papers read at the annual meetings of the Thomas Hardy Society of Japan. It is hardly possible, however, to make mention of all these writings and papers in a short report. This essay will concern only those written on Hardy's poetry and present a list of Japanese renderings of Hardy's works as well as of the books written on him. Shigeru Fujii's Zanshö: Thomas Hardy no Banka (The Afterglow: Thomas Hardy's Elegies of Love to His Wife) (Tokyo: Senjö, 1982) is the only book recently written on Hardy's poetry. Comparing the fifteen poems grouped under Satires of Circumstance with Poems of 1912-13, Fujii finds that the poet's detached attitude of taking a direct look at reality cannot be found in the latter. Hardy creates his own sphere of imagination by taking a full look at himself and declares that it is not fate but human beings themselves that give rise to unhappiness in this world. The point of Fujii's argument is that the death of the poet's wife, far from fortifying his pessimistic philosophy, caused it to dissolve, inspiring lines which provide his inner voice with a deeper resonance born of candour. Hardy the poet is presented as making a new start at the time of Emma's death and establishing an enhanced cosmos of self-expression in which he can give full rein to sensibility. Fujii has also had the results of his other researches printed in bulletins and periodicals. Six serial essays on Hardy no Shi ni okeru Jikan (Time in the Poetry of Thomas Hardy) appeared in Bulletin of ShStoku Gakuen Junior College, Studies in Literature (1967 English Literary Society, Tokyo) and Studies in English Literature (English Literary Society of Nihon University). Special notice is to be taken of his enduring study which not only enabled him to discover that the word "time" appears as often as 500 times in his short poems, but also encouraged him to explore the core of the significance "time" had for Hardy. "No. 3: The Sound of Bells" (1980), "No. 5: The Loss of Home" (1981), and "No. 7: Hardy and Nature" (1981) will prove worth reading for those who take interest in Hardy's perception of time. Takao Furukawa's Hardy no Shi ni okeru HenchS no Giho (The Technique of Variations in Hardy's Poems), Bulletin of the Thomas Hardy Society of Japan, No. 12, 1981, focuses on a poetic effect Hardy succeeds in producing by means of diverse transformations of traditional verse forms. Furukawa's argument is very carefully thought out and results in a persuasive analysis of the poems he treats. Furukawa gives specific attention to the variations Hardy brings in the last stanzas of his poems and proceeds to elucidate the effect they finally produce. In the case of "Great Things"—which Furukawa examines from three points of view, i.e. substance, function and rhythm—he argues that the first three stanzas and the last substantially establish "a relationship of antithesis" in terms of youth and old age, but that the four stanzas are in "succession" when viewed from the standpoint of the old 228 poet recollecting his lost youth. The potentiality of this poem lies in the very coexistence of the two heterogeneous functional elements, "antitheses" and "succession ," and the metrical system, of which the poem shows Hardy has a good command, helps to strengthen the general poetic effect. Noteworthy is Furukawa's conclusive statement that Hardy's poetry is most brilliant when "a particular form" is made conscious use of "as an instrument" "for the sake of a particular function...