ABSTRACT
A NUMBER OF British poets and writers were invited to Japan before the war to give lectures and teach at Japanese universities. Among these were poets such as Ralph Hodgson and William Empson. Other writers who found their way to Japan in the inter-war years included William Plomer and Laurens van der Post. Celebrities such as Bernard Shaw and Aldous Huxley also visited Japan during these years. Plomer never returned to Japan after the war although he had been deeply attached to individual Japanese. Van der Post was one who bridged the pre- and post-war periods, but in Japanese eyes, at least, the English writer who had won the hearts of young Japanese before the war and who returned to Japan after the war was the poet Edmund Blunden.
