How Dark Is My Flower: Yosano Akiko and the Invention of Romantic Love(Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

The poetry of Yosano Akiko covers all the many and varied aspects of the experience of love—from early romantic encounters between the lover and beloved to the intimate pleasures of mutual infatuation and then true love. The journey outlined in Akiko’s verse also grapples with jealousy and unrequited passion, as Akiko’s poem-narrative treats the rivalry between herself and her best friend, the poet Yamakawa Tomiko, for the affection of the dashing young literary lion, Yosano Tekkan, who later became Akiko’s husband. Thus, How Dark Is My Flower: Yosano Akiko and the Invention of Romantic Love tells a number of stories: a real-life romance unfolds in the poetry of these three poets examined in the book, as well as the story of the journey from romanticism to modernism undertaken by early 20th century Japanese poetry. How Dark Is My Flower emphasizes the astonishing innovations in diction and style, not to mention content, in Akiko’s work that transformed the tanka genre from a hidebound and conservative mode of verse to something much more daring and modern. This book pays particular attention to poetry, particularly the tanka genre, in the evolution of modernism in Japanese literature and breaks new ground in the study of modern Japanese literature by examining the invention and evolution of the concept of romantic love.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction Chapter 1: Romantic Love in The Sun 1895-1905 Chapter 2: Romantic Love in The Woman’s Magazine 1897-1904 Chapter 3: The Birth of the Modern: Yosano Akiko and Tekkan’s Verse Revolution Chapter 4: Inventing Modernist Poetry: Yosano Akiko’s Rewriting of Tradition Chapter 5: Romantic Love in Myōjō Exchange Verse Chapter 6: Love as Literary Construct: Erotic Tropes in the Poetry of Yosano Akiko, Tekkan, and Yamakawa Tomiko Chapter 7: Rewriting Texts as Text: A Study of the “White Lily” Chapter of Tangled Hair Chapter 8: Yosano Akiko’s Tangled Hair, Modernity and Kansai Culture Chapter 9: The Poetics of Naturalism: Yosano Akiko and Motherhood Chapter 10: The Canonicity of Yosano Akiko’s Tangled Hair Reflections Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Leith Morton is Professor Emeritus at Tokyo University of Technology and Academic Affiliate in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney.

Review :
“This work brings together and builds on the extensive scholarship in Japan and the budding scholarship in the West on Yosano Akiko, her circle, and modern tanka. It manages to grapple with an enormous body of work and also bring the opinions of a variety of critics and critical approaches to bear. The translations are often the first of these poems into English, and they are extremely appealing.” “The book gives a detailed exegesis of the poetry of the Myōjō school, whose key founders Yosano Hiroshi, Yosano Akiko, and Yamakawa Tomiko were leaders in the modernization of the tanka, whose importance to the history of Japanese literature cannot be overstated. Morton is clearly informed by and builds on an encyclopedic review of Japanese-language scholarship on the topic, providing an enormous service to the field.” "In this prodigious and exhaustive study, Morton provides detailed evidence to support his thesis that the invention and evolution of romantic love (ren’ai) in Japan from the 1890s to 1920 was inspired and disseminated by the poets of the Myōjō circle, most notably in the tanka of Yosano Akiko. Rated highly recommended." "Morton makes numerous exciting contributions to the study of Japanese literature. Most importantly, he links the extensive body of scholarship by such thinkers as Saeki Junko and Mark Jones about the invention of the modern concept of romantic love in Japan to sensitive, insightful close readings of Yosano Akiko's poetry." "How Dark Is My Flower contains a multitude of translations, some of which have yet to appear in English until the publication of the present volume, making it an exceptional resource for numerous scholars and instructors. Morton's work is a welcomed addition to the growing number of volumes about Yosano Akiko in English..." "Leith Morton's How Dark Is My Flower: Yosano Akiko and the Invention of Romantic Love offers a long and rich reflection on the notion of romantic love and the key role played by the Midaregami collection in changing the way love was perceived in Japan."