The Imagist Ghazal: Urdu Modernism and Japan

abstract: In the 1930s, Urdu writers turned to Japan as an exemplar of an alternative modernity. This article examines the 1936 "Japan number," a special issue of the literary journal Saqi , to show how modernist writers interpreted the haiku as a model for imagist modernism. Writing back to colonial critiques of Urdu poetry and responding to the minoritization of Urdu within national language debates, contributor Mansur Ahmad recuperated the ghazal as a model for Urdu modernism. He engaged in modernist translation practice by adapting and transforming work by Yone Noguchi on the Japanese haiku, using japonisme to interrogate South Asian modernity.