The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid

About Yone Noguchi

Yone Noguchi (1875-1947) was a Japanese poet novelist and critic who wrote in both English and Japanese. Born in Tsushima he studied the works of Thomas Carlyle and Herbert Spencer at Keio University in Tokyo where he also practiced Zen and wrote haiku. In 1893 he moved to San Francisco and began working at a newspaper established by Japanese exiles. Under the tutelage of Joaquin Miller an Oakland-based writer and outdoorsman Noguchi came into his own as a poet. He published two collections in 1897 before moving to New York via Chicago. In 1901 he published The American Diary of a Japanese Girl his debut novel. Noguchi soon tired of America however and sailed to England where he published a third book of poems and made connections with such writers as William Butler Yeats and Thomas Hardy. Reinvigorated and determined to continue his career he returned to New York in 1903 but left for Japan the following year following the end of his marriage to journalist and educator Léonie Gilmour with whom he had a son. As the Russo-Japanese War brought his nation onto the world stage Noguchi became known as a literary critic for the Japan Times and focused on advising such Western playwrights as Yeats to study the classical Noh drama. He spent the second decade of the century as a prominent international lecturer mainly in Europe and Britain. In 1920 Noguchi published Japanese Hokkus a collection of short poems before turning his attention to Japanese-language verse. As Japan moved closer toward war with the West Noguchi turned from leftist politics to the nationalism supported by his countrys leaders straining his relationship with Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and distancing himself from his former colleagues around the world. In 1945 his home in Tokyo was destroyed in the devastating American firebombing of the city; he died only two years later having reconnected with his son Isamu.