This volume brings together research from international scholars focusing attention on the longevity and complexity of Blake's reception in Japan and elsewhere in the East. It is designed as not only a celebration of his art and poetry in new and unexpected contexts but also to contest the intensely nationalistic and parochial Englishness of his work, and in broader terms, the inevitable passivity with which Romanticism (and other Western intellectual movements) have been received in the Orient.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Steve Clark and Masashi Suzuki; Part I: The Orient in Blake: The Global Eighteenth Century; 1. International Blake; David Worrall, Nottingham Trent University, UK; 2. Blake and the Chinamen; Mei-Ying Sung; National University of Taiwan / Nottingham Trent; 3. Colour Printing East and West: Blake and the Ukiyo-e Tradition; Minne Tanaka, Nottingham Trent University, UK; 4. Blake and Rebekkah Bliss, Collector of Oriental Books; Keri Davies, Blake Society / Nottingham Trent University; 5. Blake and the Representation of Race in Late 18th Century England; Sibylle Erle, Nottingham Trent; 6. Black / Blake: Africa and Utopia in the 1790s; Susan Matthews, Roehampton University, UK; 7. An Empire of Exotic Nature: Blake's Botanic and Zoomorphic Imagery; Ashton Nichols, Dickinson College, US; 8. Blake and Egypt; Kazuya Okada, Okayama University, Japan; 9. Blake, Hayley and India; Hikari Sato, University of Kobe, Japan; 10. Blake, India and Wilkins's translation of the Bhagavad-gita; Tristanne Connolly, Waterloo, Ontario; PART II: Blake in the Orient: Early Twentieth Century Japanese Reception. 11. Blake's Oriential Heterodoxy: Yanagi's Perception of Blake; Ayako Wada, Tottori University, Japan; 12. A curious Symmetry between Blake and Yanagi; Kazuyoshi Oishi, University of the Air, Japan; 13. The Female Voice in Blake Studies, 1910s-1930s; Yoko Imalzumi, University of Tsukuba, Japan; 14. Yanagi and Jugaku in the Fifteen Years War; Shunsuke Tsurumi, Japan; 15. The Shirabaka Group and the Early Reception of Blake's Art Work in Japan; Yumiko Goto, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Arts; 16. Blake and the Young Painters of the Kyoto School; Kozo Shioe, Kyoto City University, Japan; 17. Self-Annihilation in Milton; Hatsuko Nimii, Japan's Women University; PART III: Blake in the Orient: Later Responses; 18. Blake's Night Thoughts; Jeremy Tambling, University of Hong Kong; 19. Blake's Reception in Sato and Oe; Barnard Turner, National University of Singapore; 20. Blake and Oe Kenzaburo; Keiko Kobayashi, Ritsumeikan University, Japan; 21. Nebuchadnezzar's Sublime Torment: Blake, Arthur Boyd and the East; Peter Otto, University of Melbourne, Australia; 22. Walking thro' Eternity: Blake's Psychogeography; Jason Whittaker, Falmouth, UK; 23. Blake's Question; John Phillips, University of Singapore; 24. Afterword: The Reception of the British Romantics over the Waters; Elinor Shaffer, University of London, UK Index.

About the Author

Steve Clark is at the University of Tokyo. Masashi Suzuki is Professor in the Graduates School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University and is President of the Japan Association of English Romanticism

Reviews

Feature on William Blake and the interest in the academic circles of Japan.
'Blake has, for whatever reasons, been thoroughly taken up by what one of the contributors charitably calls 'the long and distinguished Japanese tradition of reception.' 'The poet's bright Japan has proved to be one of his major resting places.'
Japan Times - May 2006 --Donald Richie