Yoru no Funsui
Japanese Surrealist poetry journal (1938–1939)
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Yoru no Funsui (夜の噴水; lit. "The Night's Fountain") was a Japanese Surrealist art-and-poetry journal published in Nagoya in 1938–1939. Produced and edited by the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto, it combined poems and texts with drawings and photographs by Yamamoto himself.[1][2]
NumberOctober 1939
4
A page from the first issue of Yoru no Funsui (1938). A 1938 gelatin silver print by Kansuke Yamamoto (Untitled (sea egg/distant horizon)) is in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art collection. | |
| Categories | Surrealist poetry journal |
|---|---|
| First issue | November 1938 |
| Final issue Number | October 1939 4 |
| Country | Japan |
| Based in | Nagoya, Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
The journal was short-lived, running for four issues (nos. 1–4) from November 1938 to October 1939.[3][4] It ended under conditions of wartime cultural policing: the Getty notes that Yamamoto ceased publication after the Tokkō (special police) expressed concern about its contents, and other accounts describe the journal as ending due to police censorship after the fourth issue.[1][2]
History
Origins (1937–1938)
A key catalyst for the emergence of Nagoya's prewar Surrealist milieu was the Kaigai chōgenjitsushugi sakuhin-ten (Overseas Surrealist Works Exhibition), held at the Maruzen Gallery in Nagoya in July 1937. According to a Nagoya City Art Museum paper, Kansuke Yamamoto visited the exhibition repeatedly, met the poet and Surrealism advocate Chirū (Tiroux) Yamanaka there, and this encounter helped set the stage for the launch of Yoru no Funsui the following year.[5]
According to a later bibliographic note by poet Shinzō Kinoshita, the 1937 Kaigai chōgenjitsushugi sakuhin-ten in Nagoya was strikingly quiet—"almost no sound," with only a few visitors—yet Yamamoto returned day after day. Kinoshita recalls that Yamamoto and the poet Chirū Yamanaka discussed the need for “propaganda” (i.e., an organized vehicle) for Surrealism in Japan, and decided to launch a small-format journal, which became Yoru no Funsui.[6]
Publication (1938–1939)
The journal appeared as a short run of four issues (nos. 1–4), published from November 1938 to October 1939.[7]
Kinoshita gives the issue dates as 1 November 1938 (no. 1), 20 February 1939 (no. 2), 1 July 1939 (no. 3), and 20 October 1939 (no. 4). He describes the journal as a pamphlet-format private edition (c. 250 × 150 mm), with 21 pages in no. 1, 20 pages in no. 2, 19 pages in no. 3, and 16 pages in no. 4. The first three issues were reportedly limited to 100 copies each; the fourth to 65 copies.[8]
The Getty notes that Yamamoto produced the journal in 1938 and 1939 as a forum for avant-garde and Surrealist ideas, featuring poems, texts, drawings, and photographs by Yamamoto himself.[9]
Issue overview
All issue dates, pagination, and print-run figures below are from Kinoshita (1972).[6]
| Issue | Publication date | Pages | Print run (limited) | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. 1 | 1 November 1938 | 21 | 100 copies | Pamphlet-format private edition (c. 250 × 150 mm) |
| No. 2 | 20 February 1939 | 20 | 100 copies | Pamphlet-format private edition (c. 250 × 150 mm) |
| No. 3 | 1 July 1939 | 19 | 100 copies | Pamphlet-format private edition (c. 250 × 150 mm) |
| No. 4 | 20 October 1939 | 16 | 65 copies | Pamphlet-format private edition (c. 250 × 150 mm) |
The journal’s unusually small print runs—and the abrupt end after issue no. 4—have often been read as a material trace of the tightening wartime climate and the cultural policing that surrounded Surrealist activity in Japan.[10]
Material production and design
Kinoshita notes that Yamamoto sought out the papermaker Eishirō Abe in Izumo and learned methods for producing and dyeing high-grade gampi paper for the journal.[8] Bibliographer Kikyō Sasaki likewise emphasizes the journal's unusual production values, describing its use of special papers and printing treatments across issues.[11] In an essay reproduced from the 2001 Tokyo Station Gallery exhibition catalogue, John Solt writes that Yoru no Funsui "is now considered the greatest surrealist magazine in terms of paper quality," noting its printing on exquisite gampi paper reputed to endure for centuries.[12]
Suppression and closure
Accounts of the journal's abrupt ending emphasize the pressures of wartime cultural policing. The Getty states that Yamamoto ceased publishing Yoru no Funsui after the Tokkō (a special police force) expressed concern about its contents.[9] Art historian Eiko Aoki similarly notes that Yamamoto was interrogated in 1939 and was released on the condition that he stop publishing the journal, which ended after its fourth issue.[13] Solt records a pointed line of questioning used against Yamamoto during wartime cultural policing—asking, in effect, how Surrealist photography could serve Japan’s war effort—an episode that has often been cited as emblematic of the pressures surrounding Yoru no Funsui.[10]
Later scholarship has discussed Yamamoto's 1940 photographic sequence Buddhist Temple's Birdcage as a work produced under the same climate of wartime pressure and surveillance that brought Yoru no Funsui to an end.[14][15]
Kinoshita adds that Yamamoto later planned another Surrealist journal titled Brille (1943), but it remained unpublished amid wartime constraints and material shortages.[6]
After the closure of Yoru no Funsui, Yamamoto remained active through Seidōsha, the Nagoya photography group he had founded in 1938, which later issued the bulletin Carnet Bleu (1941–1942).[16][17]
Contents and editorial profile
Yoru no Funsui combined literary and visual material in a compact, art-poetry format. The J. Paul Getty Museum describes the journal as featuring "poems, texts, drawings, and photographs" by its editor-publisher, poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto.[18] Yamamoto’s photographs from this period are also held in major museum collections; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art holds his gelatin silver print Untitled (sea egg/distant horizon) (1938), accession no. S2018.2.330.[19]
In the Getty publication Japan's Modern Divide, curator Amanda Maddox writes that the contents ranged from translations of French Surrealist poetry to Yamamoto’s own poems, alongside drawings by the Japanese artist Yoshio Shimozato; she notes that the drawings were printed as letterpress reproductions on a special washi paper selected by Yamamoto, and that the first issue reached the French Surrealist poet Paul Éluard.[20]
Maddox and other commentators have also framed the journal as part of a broader effort to translate and contextualize Surrealism in Japan: in an interview about the Getty publication, Maddox described Yamamoto as "a kind of translator" who used Yoru no Funsui to disseminate Surrealist texts to Japanese readers and to place Surrealism in a Japanese context.[21] A reprint-series description by Yumani Shobō likewise characterizes the Nagoya-published Yoru no Funsui as one of several modernist poetry magazines representing a Japanese response to Surrealism.[22]
The journal also reproduced work associated with Western Surrealism. Maddox notes that Yamamoto reproduced drawings by the French Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy—originally made for Benjamin Péret's poetry collection Dormir, dormir dans les pierres (1927)—in Yoru no Funsui, including a Tanguy line drawing reproduced in volume 3 (1939).[20]
Published under increasing police surveillance and censorship, Yoru no Funsui remained short-lived; a Nagoya City profile describes it as a Surrealist poetry journal that ended with issue 4 in 1939 following police censorship.[23]
Contributors
Yoru no Funsui was edited and published by the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto.[24] A City of Nagoya profile notes that Yamamoto edited the journal together with the poets Chirū Yamanaka (山中散生), Shōko Ema (江間章子), Katsue Kitasono (北園克衛), and Shirō Murano (村野四郎).[25]
- Kansuke Yamamoto (山本悍右) — editor and publisher[24]
- Chirū Yamanaka (山中散生) — co-editor[25]
- Shōko Ema (江間章子) — co-editor[25]
- Katsue Kitasono (北園克衛) — co-editor[25]
- Shirō Murano (村野四郎) — co-editor[25]
Reception and legacy
In later scholarship, Yoru no Funsui has been treated as part of the history of Japanese modernist poetry magazines and the reception of Surrealism in Japan.[26][27] In a 1990 exhibition catalogue edited by Nagoya City Art Museum, Yoru no Funsui was described as the last poetry journal in Japanese Surrealism to explicitly identify itself as purely Surrealist.[27] In 2009, Yumani Shobō reprinted the journal in facsimile in its series Collection: Toshi Modernism Shishi (Collection: Urban Modernism Poetry Magazines), volume 3, Surrealism, listing Yoru no Funsui issues 1–4 (November 1938–October 1939) among the materials reproduced.[26]
In English-language museum contexts, the journal has been discussed in connection with Yamamoto’s prewar Surrealism. The Getty Museum’s online exhibition text on Yamamoto notes that in 1938 and 1939 he produced Yoru no Funsui, describing it as featuring "poems, texts, drawings, and photographs".[28] The Getty Museum exhibition Japan’s Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto (2013) further presented Yamamoto's work to international audiences; reviewing the project, art historian Eiko Aoki notes that Yamamoto was interrogated in 1939 and forced to cease publication of his art-poetry journal Yoru no Funsui, and she discusses the exhibition’s scale and catalogue as part of a broader reassessment of his work.[29][30]