Balmont and Japan. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.

The book discusses the journey undertaken in May 1916 by the "traveling poet" K. D. Balmont to the land of the "Rising Sun." His two weeks' stay in Japan had left a deep impact on the poet's imagination: as a result, he created a number of "Japanese" poems, wrote essays about his impressions, and translated verses by both classic and contemporary Japanese poets into Russian. In Japan, his visit aroused a surge of interest in his work and in Russian literature in general. The book's authors, the noted philologists Constantin Azadovsky and Elena Diakonova, describe Balmont's trip as an important episode in the Russo-Japanese cultural rapprochement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Special attention is paid to the so-called "Japonism"- a major trend of European culture of the time that exerted influence on many Russian writers and artists of the Silver Age.