The Japanese Romantics’ ‘Returning Travel’ to Ancient Times : Ancient Japan and overcoming modernism Yasda Yojūro, a representative figure of the Japanese Romantics, visited Korean ancient capitals Gyeongju and Buyeo in May 1938. In his account on the travel to Korea published after he returned home, he acknowledged the influence of continental culture on Japanese ancient culture but rather he developed a paradoxical theory of comparative culture asserting the greatness and fruitfulness of ancient Japan’s cultural receptive capacity. Furthermore, he completed his writings on ‘Returning Travel’ to ancient Japan based on his account of trip to Korea by incorporating Korean scenery unreasonably into the Japanese traditional lineage of Utamakura. On the other hand, it was Nara that another Japanese romantics Kamei Katsichirō had explored several years since October 1937. To him, Nara was more “the Rome of his home country” suggested to Goethe than an old Japanese city with the remains of ancient Japan. Nara, which was in a metonymical relation with Rome, was a place that reduced the amplitude of turning from Marxism to Japan and, at the same time, led him to ancient Japan. In these ways, they attempted to spatialize romantic speculation in the form of travel note, and achieved the common ideological and literary task of ‘overcoming modernism’ through the representation of ancient Japan.