Stephen Spender: a traveller through Japan

What Stephen Spender saw in Japan in 1958, forty years ago, seems in essence remarkably similar to what one might see today. Spender first visited Japan in 1957 with the novelist Angus Wilson, and managed to carry out his wish to pay another visit the following year, staying for about a month and travelling extensively throughout the country, from south to north. He writes:

In early 1957 I went to India, and in the summer of that year I attended the International PEN Conference in Tokyo as guest, together with Angus Wilson, of the Japanese PEN. After the conference was over, Alberto Moravia, Angus, a Japanese friend of mine called Masao and I travelled for a week together. At the conference I had met another Japanese friend, Shozo, who was later to become my translator. I longed to return to Japan, and did so in 1958, partly to lecture for the CCF and partly as a freelance, travelling all over the country and paying my way by giving lectures. The fees were so small that sometimes I had to lecture two or three times a day. Shozo accompanied me, acting as my interpreter.¹⁴³