Yeats and Japan: The Dreaming of the Bones

Abstract

‘Yeats and Japan: The Dreaming of the Bones’ first investigates how the Noh came to influence Yeats, then analyzes Yeats's Four Plays for Dancers, focusing on The Dreaming of the Bones, and explains how this Yeats play is adapted into a new Noh play, Hone-no-Yume, in which the places, names and situations were changed to Japanese ones. An account is then given of the latter's production. Fenolossa came to Japan with an appointment to teach Ethics and Logic at the University of Tokyo in 1987, where he studied Noh with Minoru Umewaka, a Noh master. He also translated some Noh plays with the help of his students. After his death in London, his manuscripts were handed over to Ezra Pound by his second wife, Mary, and it is through Pound that Yeats came to read them. Inspired by them Yeats wrote Four Plays for Dancers. At the Hawk’s Well was later translated into two different Noh plays by Mario Yokomichi, thus completing the circle from Japan to Ireland and back.