The Reception of Max Weber’s Cubist Poems (1914) in Taishō Japan
In this paper, I will analyze the Japanese reception of Cubist Poems, a collection of experimental poetry published in 1914 by the Jewish-American painter Max Weber (1881‒1961). First, I will provide information on this little-known collection and its author. Then I will offer a general description of the structure of the field of cultural production in 1910s and 1920s Tokyo, a period that roughly corresponds to the reign of Emperor Taishō (1912‒1926). To do so, I will use a number of theoretical tools from the works of Pierre Bourdieu. Part of this article will be structured as a historical survey of the presentation of Cubist Poems in 1914‒1925 Japan. As will become clear, in the Japanese cultural world, Weber’s collection provoked an interest that was unparalleled in any other country, perhaps even in the English-speaking world. Finally, I will offer some interpretations of the characteristics of this reception and some hypotheses concerning its causes.
Copyright (c) 2017 Pierantonio Zanotti
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Copyright (c) 2017 Pierantonio Zanotti
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
