This book focuses attention on the longevity and complexity of Blake's reception in Japan and elsewhere in the East. This book offers a case-study of the way in which the vigorous afterlife of Blake's work has allowed active appropriation of an inspiring presence, rather than passive succumbing to a Eurocentric or Orientalist ideology.This volume brings together research from international scholars focusing attention on the longevity and complexity of Blake's reception in Japan and elsewhere in the East. It is designed as not only a celebration of his art and poetry in new and unexpected contexts but also to contest the intensely nationalistic and parochial Englishness of his work, and in broader terms, the inevitable passivity with which Romanticism (and other Western intellectual movements) have been received in the Orient.

Author Biography

Steve Clark is Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo. Masashi Suzuki is Professor in the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University and is President of the Japan Association of English Romanticism