Yosano Akiko in Belle Époque Paris / ベル・エポックのパリの与謝野晶子

Abstract

Yosano Akiko (1878–1942), a significant modern Japanese poet, spent some five months in Europe in 1912. While she was in Paris, her presence in the city caused such a stir among Japanese expatriates that several French newspapers ran articles about her. In the main, those articles depicted Akiko as a feminist inasmuch as they quoted her views on the situations of women in France and Japan. The last of those articles, which appeared in Les Annales politiques et littéraires, a weekly magazine, included an introduction explaining Akiko's importance by the article's author, Léon Faraut (dates unknown). That introductory matter presented a handful of French translations of Akiko's verse, both tanka and shintaishi (new-style poetry)—some of the earliest European-language renderings of her work. The present article is a translation of Faraut's article, following a short preface.