History

Jun Fujita, Poet
Who Escapes Photography in His Emotional Images

By Jack Oppeneim

Hi is a newspaper photographer and they call him Togo—Togo, because our profoundly facile journalists find it easier to enunciate two hollow than three sonorous syllables; or, perhaps, because they are plotting to foist upon us another genial superstition: to wit, that all Japanese are named Togo. Wasn't it in a local-room that the observation "All Chinamen look alike to me" had its origin?

I first met Jun Fujita (for that is his authentic name) when he was engaged in recording flying tackles and end-runs in his reflex camera; the Evening Post had assigned him to "football." Watching him squat near the sidelines, alert, agile, businesslike, it was difficult to conceive him as a poet who has already achieved his first large hearing. I had read that the Covici-McGee company was going to publish his "Tanka." And here the man was clicking a prosaic shutter.

Fujita, being an artist, will not like my introduction. "Photography," he makes plain to those who know him as a poet, "is not a medium, or, at the best, a very poor medium for artistic expression. Never can a camera be inspired. If the plate catches and perpetuates a truly artistic thing, it is a mere accident."

He tells you this in a matter-of-fact tone. It is so. No wrinkling of the brow. His eyes carry on no tradition: they do not flash. A clump of grass, a cigarette half-obscured in his palm diverts his glance while he talks. But, too, he is quite likely to look directly at you, inquiringly.

Concerning Pater and Poe

It is only when Fujita speaks his likes and dislikes and passions and abominations that his voice takes on a more intense expression. An ironic "Hell!" muttered without the concision of an American, or a big-toothed smile which distorts his mouth and cheeks amazingly, then serves to punctuate his remarks. A complete effacement of ego when he utters final judgments: "There are some marvelous things in Keats.... These poems of mine are very good.... The Mysterious Stranger is easily the best thing the Mark Twain ever wrote.... Pater I do not consider an artist.... Poe was an extremely bad poet...." And so on. Absolutely no pose.

He is not a "Bohemian," though it is true that he lives in a basement room—near the University. In it is no "atmosphere" except the universal sort. I suppose, to make my sketch interesting, I ought to discover something exotic in his personality and habitat. But Fujita offers no point of approach.

Literary composition is one of his comparatively recent undertakings. Not many years ago, during an excursion to the Indiana sand-dunes, Margaret Curry, then society editor of the Chicago Tribune, read a poem to Fujita.

"That is not poetry," the man declared. "It captures no mood, expresses no emotion. It is an intellectual exercise. It is prose."

He elaborated: "Ten words of prose, once set down, do the duty of only ten words. They are frozen to the piece of paper. But two words of poetry, with their suggestive power, can create a mood or paint a picture that in prose would require perhaps five hundred words to effect."

"A Poet Burbank"

He was led to experiment with his idea. To infuse an essentially Oriental mood and transplant an essentially Oriental form into a language of the Occident was the goal he set for himself. Some years ago Yone Noguchi did this in a half-way fashion. Fujita desired to, and did, go the entire distance. His first successful efforts were published in Poetry, Caprice, Youth, and The Wave. Many had an amateurish quality, which he has now escaped.

In the thousandth part of a second Fujita snaps a picture. That brings his bread. But six month, during which time it may undergo complete transformation, often elapses before hi will lay aside a poem, completely satisfied with its perfection. Call it the fulfillment of spirit or soul or emotional nature, that.

Fujita's live before he came to recreate Japanese moods and forms in the English language, forms a long story, and one which I am lathe to call a romance, for no other reason, perhaps, than that it is a romance.

At the age of 16, while attending a Tokio high school, he fell in love with a teacher much older than himself, and who looked upon him as a child. "Through many at the time thought the affair was funny, I did not. I still do not. My condition was so bad that eating and sleeping became impossible. Night and day I dreamed of this woman. I was too shy to speak to her, though a number of opportunities to express my passion presented themselves."

One day, in a state approximating desperation, Fujita wrote a note to the teacher. The note, by accident, became public. The whole town was scandalized. Fujita remained outwardly calm, though his thoughts were stirred up by the unfortunate consequences. He embarked to the Occident. In America, he had read, people work one hour daily and study and played the rest of the time.

In Canada commenced a strange career. Laborer in a construction camp, domestic slave, train porter, valet—Fujita played all these roles in the tragi-comedy of his first years in the new World. Finally he amassed sufficient wealth to leave Canada and fulfill his original intent of coming to the land he at that time conceived as the splendid Utopia.

Chance played no part in the choice of his American home. His destination was Chicago—he had read that living costs here were lower than in any other city in the United States. At that time he intended to pursue the career of engineering.

In Chicago he worked more than one hour a day. Yet he found time to study, and was graduated from Wendell Phillips high school. About that time his first Occidental inspiration came. He would become a movie star.

It was in the heyday of Francis Xavier Bushman's fame that Jun Fujita joined the Essanay company, the director of which told the japans that there was "a future" for him in "the pictures." As it happened, his rise was comparatively rapid. From the minor parts of valet and domestic he rose to a lead in a two-reel thriller, "Otherwise Bill Harrison." But there was no money in the game. So he deserted the now fourth greatest industry to become photographer for the Chicago Evening Post. The movie start knew next to nothing about newspapers and less about photography. Effective bluff won him in 1914 the job which he still holds.

[Originally published in The Circle, Vol. 2, No. 1]