Yoné Noguchi

Yonejirō Noguchi (野口 米次郎, Noguchi Yonejirō; December 8, 1875 – July 13, 1947), also known as Yone Noguchi, was a Japanese writer, poet, essayist and literary critic in both English and Japanese. He was the father of sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

Early life in Japan

Noguchi was born in what is now part of the city of Tsushima, near Nagoya. He attended Keio University in Tokyo, where he was exposed to the works of Thomas Carlyle and Herbert Spencer, and also expressed interests in haiku and Zen. He lived for a time in the home of Shiga Shigetaka, editor of the magazine Nihonjin, but left before graduating to travel to San Francisco in November 1893.

California

Noguchi arrived in San Francisco on November 19, 1893. There, he joined a newspaper run by Japanese exiles associated with the Freedom and People's Rights Movement and worked as a domestic servant. He spent some months at Palo Alto, California studying at a preparatory school for Stanford University but returned to journalistic work in San Francisco during the Sino-Japanese War.

On a visit to the Oakland hillside home of Joaquin Miller after the war ended, Noguchi decided his true vocation was to be a poet. Miller welcomed and encouraged Noguchi and introduced him to other San Francisco Bay area bohemians, including Gelett Burgess (who published Noguchi's first verses in his magazine, The Lark), Ina Coolbrith, Edwin Markham, Adeline Knapp, Blanche Partington, and Charles Warren Stoddard.

Noguchi weathered a plagiarism scandal in 1896 to publish two books of poetry in 1897, and remained an important fixture of the Bay Area literary scene until his departure to the East Coast in May 1900.