Yoru no Funsui (; lit. "The Night's Fountain") was a Japanese Surrealist art-and-poetry journal published in Nagoya in 1938âÂÂ1939. Produced and edited by the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto, it combined poems and texts with drawings and photographs by Yamamoto himself.
The journal was short-lived, running for four issues (nos. 1âÂÂ4) from November 1938 to October 1939. It ended under conditions of wartime cultural policing: the Getty notes that Yamamoto ceased publication after the Tokkà  (special police) expressed concern about its contents, and other accounts describe the journal as ending due to police censorship after the fourth issue.
A key catalyst for the emergence of Nagoya's prewar Surrealist milieu was the Kaigai chà Âgenjitsushugi sakuhin-ten (Overseas Surrealist Works Exhibition), held at the Maruzen Gallery in Nagoya in July 1937. According to a Nagoya City Art Museum paper, Kansuke Yamamoto visited the exhibition repeatedly, met the poet and Surrealism advocate Chirà « (Tiroux) Yamanaka there, and this encounter helped set the stage for the launch of Yoru no Funsui the following year.
According to a later bibliographic note by poet Shinzà  Kinoshita, the 1937 Kaigai chà Âgenjitsushugi sakuhin-ten in Nagoya was strikingly quietâÂÂ"almost no sound," with only a few visitorsâÂÂyet Yamamoto returned day after day. Kinoshita recalls that Yamamoto and the poet Chirà « Yamanaka discussed the need for âÂÂpropagandaâ (i.e., an organized vehicle) for Surrealism in Japan, and decided to launch a small-format journal, which became Yoru no Funsui.
The journal appeared as a short run of four issues (nos. 1âÂÂ4), published from November 1938 to October 1939.
Kinoshita gives the issue dates as 1 November 1938 (no. 1), 20 February 1939 (no. 2), 1 July 1939 (no. 3), and 20 October 1939 (no. 4). He describes the journal as a pamphlet-format private edition (c. 250 ÃÂ 150 mm), with 21 pages in no. 1, 20 pages in no. 2, 19 pages in no. 3, and 16 pages in no. 4. The first three issues were reportedly limited to 100 copies each; the fourth to 65 copies.
The Getty notes that Yamamoto produced the journal in 1938 and 1939 as a forum for avant-garde and Surrealist ideas, featuring poems, texts, drawings, and photographs by Yamamoto himself.
All issue dates, pagination, and print-run figures below are from Kinoshita (1972).
The journalâÂÂs unusually small print runsâÂÂand the abrupt end after issue no. 4âÂÂhave often been read as a material trace of the tightening wartime climate and the cultural policing that surrounded Surrealist activity in Japan.
Kinoshita notes that Yamamoto sought out the papermaker Eishirà  Abe in Izumo and learned methods for producing and dyeing high-grade gampi paper for the journal. Bibliographer Kikyà  Sasaki likewise emphasizes the journal's unusual production values, describing its use of special papers and printing treatments across issues. In an essay reproduced from the 2001 Tokyo Station Gallery exhibition catalogue, John Solt writes that Yoru no Funsui "is now considered the greatest surrealist magazine in terms of paper quality," noting its printing on exquisite gampi paper reputed to endure for centuries.
Accounts of the journal's abrupt ending emphasize the pressures of wartime cultural policing. The Getty states that Yamamoto ceased publishing Yoru no Funsui after the Tokkà  (a special police force) expressed concern about its contents. Art historian Eiko Aoki similarly notes that Yamamoto was interrogated in 1939 and was released on the condition that he stop publishing the journal, which ended after its fourth issue. Solt records a pointed line of questioning used against Yamamoto during wartime cultural policingâÂÂasking, in effect, how Surrealist photography could serve JapanâÂÂs war effortâÂÂan episode that has often been cited as emblematic of the pressures surrounding Yoru no Funsui.
Later scholarship has discussed Yamamoto's 1940 photographic sequence Buddhist Temple's Birdcage as a work produced under the same climate of wartime pressure and surveillance that brought Yoru no Funsui to an end.
Kinoshita adds that Yamamoto later planned another Surrealist journal titled Brille (1943), but it remained unpublished amid wartime constraints and material shortages.
After the closure of Yoru no Funsui, Yamamoto remained active through Seidà Âsha, the Nagoya photography group he had founded in 1938, which later issued the bulletin Carnet Bleu (1941âÂÂ1942).
Yoru no Funsui combined literary and visual material in a compact, art-poetry format. The J. Paul Getty Museum describes the journal as featuring "poems, texts, drawings, and photographs" by its editor-publisher, poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto. YamamotoâÂÂs photographs from this period are also held in major museum collections; the SmithsonianâÂÂs National Museum of Asian Art holds his gelatin silver print Untitled (sea egg/distant horizon) (1938), accession no. S2018.2.330.
In the Getty publication ', curator Amanda Maddox writes that the contents ranged from translations of French Surrealist poetry to YamamotoâÂÂs own poems, alongside drawings by the Japanese artist Yoshio Shimozato; she notes that the drawings were printed as letterpress reproductions on a special washi paper selected by Yamamoto, and that the first issue reached the French Surrealist poet Paul ÃÂluard.
Maddox and other commentators have also framed the journal as part of a broader effort to translate and contextualize Surrealism in Japan: in an interview about the Getty publication, Maddox described Yamamoto as "a kind of translator" who used Yoru no Funsui to disseminate Surrealist texts to Japanese readers and to place Surrealism in a Japanese context. A reprint-series description by Yumani Shobà  likewise characterizes the Nagoya-published Yoru no Funsui as one of several modernist poetry magazines representing a Japanese response to Surrealism.
The journal also reproduced work associated with Western Surrealism. Maddox notes that Yamamoto reproduced drawings by the French Surrealist painter Yves TanguyâÂÂoriginally made for Benjamin Péret's poetry collection Dormir, dormir dans les pierres (1927)âÂÂin Yoru no Funsui, including a Tanguy line drawing reproduced in volume 3 (1939).
Published under increasing police surveillance and censorship, Yoru no Funsui remained short-lived; a Nagoya City profile describes it as a Surrealist poetry journal that ended with issue 4 in 1939 following police censorship.
Yoru no Funsui was edited and published by the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto. A City of Nagoya profile notes that Yamamoto edited the journal together with the poets Chirà « Yamanaka (), Shà Âko Ema (), Katsue Kitasono (), and Shirà  Murano (). A bibliographical note by Kikyà  Sasaki also points to a broader circle of contributors, translators, and visual collaborators associated with the journal.
According to Kikyà  Sasaki, Yoru no Funsui featured or reproduced work by the following writers and artists:
In later scholarship, Yoru no Funsui has been treated as part of the history of Japanese modernist poetry magazines and the reception of Surrealism in Japan. In a 1990 exhibition catalogue edited by Nagoya City Art Museum, Yoru no Funsui was described as the last poetry journal in Japanese Surrealism to explicitly identify itself as purely Surrealist. In 2009, Yumani Shobà  reprinted the journal in facsimile in its series Collection: Toshi Modernism Shishi (Collection: Urban Modernism Poetry Magazines), volume 3, Surrealism, listing Yoru no Funsui issues 1âÂÂ4 (November 1938âÂÂOctober 1939) among the materials reproduced.
In English-language museum contexts, the journal has been discussed in connection with YamamotoâÂÂs prewar Surrealism. The Getty MuseumâÂÂs online exhibition text on Yamamoto notes that in 1938 and 1939 he produced Yoru no Funsui, describing it as featuring "poems, texts, drawings, and photographs". The Getty Museum exhibition : The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto (2013) further presented Yamamoto's work to international audiences; reviewing the project, art historian Eiko Aoki notes that Yamamoto was interrogated in 1939 and forced to cease publication of his art-poetry journal Yoru no Funsui, and she discusses the exhibitionâÂÂs scale and catalogue as part of a broader reassessment of his work.