SOURCE: Introduction to Buddhist Elements in Dada: A Comparison of Tristan Tzara, Takahashi Shinkichi, and Their Fellow Poets, New York University Press, 1977, pp. 1-30.

In the following excerpt, Ko traces the influence of the Dada movement on Japanese literature.

The life of Dada as a poetical and artistic movement was by no means lengthy. Historically speaking, the onset of its group activities, whether they were those of "Pre-Dada" in New York, led by Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray; or of Zurich Dada, whose group including Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Jean (Hans) Arp, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, Walter Serner, and Sophie Tauber, all of whom were to frequent the Cabaret Voltaire as their headquarters, had much to do with these expatriates' or deserters' desperate objections to World War I, which broke out in 1914. As the Dada movement took place roughly between 1914 and 1923, spreading over a...