author
Yoné Noguchi
1875–1947
A pioneering Japanese poet and critic who built a literary career in both English and Japanese, he helped introduce Japanese poetry and aesthetics to readers in the United States and Britain. His life moved between Japan and America, and that cross-cultural experience shaped much of his writing.
2 Audiobooks
The Spirit of Japanese Art
by Yoné Noguchi
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl
by Yoné Noguchi
About the author
Born Yonejirō Noguchi in Tsushima, Japan, in 1875, he became one of the first Japanese-born authors to gain notice writing poetry in English. After studying at Keio in Tokyo, he traveled to San Francisco in the 1890s, where he began publishing and entered American literary circles.
Over the years, he wrote poetry, essays, fiction, and criticism in both English and Japanese. He is especially remembered for bringing Japanese literary ideas to Western readers and for the way his work explored identity, language, and the meeting of cultures.
Noguchi later returned to Japan and continued writing and lecturing there until his death in 1947. He was also the father of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, but his own place in literary history stands on its own as an important bridge between Japanese and English-language writing.