ABSTRACT

Vacillating between the yellow peril ideology and the European fashion of japonisme, Russian modernist culture often took up the idea of Japan as a powerful symbol of the “Other”, even while mainly describing it according to orientalising stereotypes. This chapter explores the travels of poet Konstantin Balmont to Japan in 1916 and his experience of Japanese culture in the context of Russian ideas about Japan on the eve of the Revolution. He aligned himself clearly with Japanese culture and the Japanese way of life, starting to writing haiku in Russian. Japan worked for Balmont as a metaphorical window on self-discovery, both as a Russian and as a poet. While narratives of the relationship between Europe and the Orient are often measured according to orientalist paradigms of Self vs Other, Balmont’s identified with rather than against Japan. Balmont underwent a two-stage process: first, he identified himself completely with Japan and its vertical landscape, depicting himself as a foreigner, non-Russian poet. Second, he grafted a Russian characteristic, proctor, on the branch of the Oriental vertical landscape, thus creating a new and personal spatial point of intersection for his mature poetical and national identity.