Yosano Akiko no Ōshū ryokō to sono ato no tenkai – kokusai seishin to teikokushugi

Yosano Tekkan (Hiroshi) and Akiko achieved literary celebrity and a leading position in the Japanese romantic poetry scene by running the literary and artistic magazine Myōjō. When the magazine ceased publication, Tekkan gradually fell into a period of depression and was not able to regain his place in the Japanese poetic world. However, Akiko was still requested as a writer, poet and essayist and she also became the only financial means of support for their growing family. Akiko and Tekkan faced a period of economic and inner difficulties. Tekkan’s travels in Europe, and later Akiko’s, with the hope to overcome their difficult situation, represented a turning point for both writers. Together they visited France, London, Berlin and other European cities, and they collected their experiences in a volume titled From Paris. What emerges from later works is that this short period of travel (five months) had a considerable impact on Akiko's perspective about art, society and the struggle for the improvement of women’s social position. Among many interesting moments in Paris, their visit to Rodin’s atelier was one of the most exciting. A few years later Akiko and Tekkan named their fourth son Auguste, like the French sculptor, which reveals how deeply they were touched by their experiences in France. In 1942 Akiko dedicated to her son Auguste, when he was a lieutenant during the Pacific War, a poem exhorting him to fight bravely for the Empire. This might be taken as a mere coincidence, since Akiko's travels in Europe represented mostly an important background for her agency as an independent individual as well as a "modern" woman. However, in this paper I propose to reflect on the role of Akiko’s travels and cosmopolitan aspirations involved in her European experience, and their possible relations with her positive attitude towards the Japanese Empire in the 1930s, which was also taking its agency on the world scene by extending its control on neighbouring Asian countries. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the possible connections between Akiko’s cosmopolitan spirit and the multi-ethnic Japanese Empire, and in this perspective will offer an analysis of her literary production and ideological evolution from her travels in Europe to the years of Japanese Imperialism.