The end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century in Russia is a time marked by complex shifts in both the social and spiritual life of society. One of the features of this stage was cultural contacts between Russia and Japan. The Russian intelligentsia discovered an original world of Eastern aesthetics, which in most of its features was close to the search for domestic symbolists and stimulated the development of their creativity. Keywords: Russian symbolists, cultural contacts between Russia and Japan, Japanese poetic forms, synthesis of painting and poetry, Bryusov, Balmont. Japan has long been a mystery to Europe. Only at the end of the XIX century. K. M. Azadovsky and E. M. Dyakonova note that "the fashion for' everything Japanese ' came, of course, from Western Europe, where <...> after the appearance of Edmond de Goncourt's books Utamaro (1891) and Hokusai (1896) interest in Japan is growing rapidly<...>. The most popular Russian magazines <...> published translations from Japanese literature: legends, fairy tales, poems, as well as essays about the Japanese and Japan" [Azadovsky and Dyakonova, 1990, p. 45]. V. E. Molodyakov also writes that the main feature of "Japanismism"is that it is a very important feature of the Japanese culture. The role of Russian cultural and everyday fashion at the turn of the century was that "it was a European influence, and not the result of direct contacts" [Molodyakov, 2005, p. 58]. Igor Grabar, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Sergey Shcherbatov, artists who returned from Munich, expressed their admiration for the ukiyo-e color woodcut in St. Petersburg. Members of the Mir Iskusstva art association created a fashion for "Japanese" in Russia, as previously-for the French style or the Russian portrait of the XVIII century. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) also contributed to an increase in interest in everything Japanese. Imitations became a natural process in Russian literature. The poets tried not only to embody in ... Read more