earticle

영어

The life of Okakura Tenshin(1862-1913) overlaps approximately with the Meiji Era. In many ways Tenshin was an embodiment of the period itself, with its magnitude and all its contradictions. As an art critic, philosopher, and interpreter of the East to the Western world, he traveled widely, and was actively involved in research, education, art administration, lectures, and writing. We can see in him, a vast knowledge of the West, a vigorous curiosity for and absorption of Western things and values, along with a strong sense of confrontation with the West which resulted in his defence of Japanese ideals and beauty. In his representative works, The Ideals of the East(1903), The Awakening of Japan(1904) and The Book of Tea(1906) we can see how he attempted to defence Japan and introduce Japanese culture. As his writings indicate all too well, it was Western readers he was effectively addressing. This in a sense determined the nature of his writings for it is not difficult to imagine that the more he was conscious of the "outside", the greater the necessity to assert his own identity and culture. In this paper I would like to focus on The White Fox(1913), a fairy drama in three acts written for music. Here, Tenshin adapts the Japanese legend in which a fox queen takes the form of a maiden and marries the man who had once saved her life. This paper is an attempt to examine how Tenshin tried to introduce this unique Japanese legend to the Western readers and where his special concern was, through an analysis of The White Fox, his last major literary work.