Introduction
Critics have been pretty consistently hostile to the Yosanos, first because they expounded something novel and later because they refused to relinquish their principles long after their usefulness had ceased. Although they often speak of the creed of the Myojo, the Yosanos at no time held rigid tenets; they were much more tolerant toward young poets and new experiments than were their critics.
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In the history of modern Japanese poetry, the reign of the Myojo or Akiko, though brief, was significant, for it put the classical spirit of Japanese poetry, that had been drifting along the line of least resistance, to the test. Like the romanticists, the classical poets also played with flowers, jewels, love, dreams and fantasies; in fact all kinds of pleasant things, and somehow forgot that the true poetry is about the human soul. If there is love, there is strife; if life, then death and that which is beyond death. A partial affirmation of life by the romanticists forced the
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