In 1916, just after graduation, he went to live in New York. He had wanted to go to Europe to see Rolland, but the World War I prevented him from doing so. Though he was enrolled at the
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, he spent much of his time going to theaters in Broadway and going to see his favorite artworks in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
Brooklyn Museum and the
Hispanic Society of America . He was also active in writing short stories and reports for "Shin-shichou". In answer to a journalist's request, he contributed a report "My First Night in New York" to a local newspaper the
New York World. In his journal "Trip to Florida", he commented on the American journalism and segregation, which was a rare record of the American South on the eve of America's entry into the World War I. He was asked to write an essay on Japan by his friend,
Waldo Frank. "Young Japan" was written in English and published in
The Seven Arts (pp. 616–26, April issue, 1917). In it are fully described the hope and despair of Japanese intellectuals who were at a loss in a sudden flood of Western cultures after the
Meiji Restoration. Meanwhile, he moved to Boston, where he took literary courses at Boston University and worked part-time as an explainer of
ukiyo-e at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Both in New York and in Boston, he was greatly impressed with real paintings and sculptures of the great masters, which he had only seen in books in Japan. In his college days, he often put in an order at the bookstore for foreign books such as "Collected Drawings of
Aubrey Beardsley". His favorites in museums in New York were
Millet,
Goya,
Chavanne,
Rembrant and
Rodin. He often wrote about his exciting experiences to his friends in Japan. In March 1918, he set sail from New York for Europe at the risk of being attacked by German U-boats, hoping to do volunteer work for the Red Cross. He arrived safely in Paris, but as the artillery fire from Germany became severe, he was evacuated to Ryon. It was not until in the middle of July that he crossed the French border into Switzerland. In Geneva, in a small island on the lake Leman, he happened to visit a statue of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose philosophy would become a longterm subject of Naruse's research. He finally met
Romain Rolland in
Villeneuve. He stayed there for about 3 weeks. Day in, day out, they discussed literature and culture both in the East and the West. Naruse gave a full account of the actual situation of Japan in those days. They foretold the outbreak of the Pacific War between America and Japan. We now know the details of their discussions, because Rolland wrote down every single word that Naruse told him in his "
Journal des Années de Guerre" (November, 1916～1918), (Éditions Albin Michel, Paris). The journal was published in 1952, 34 years after their meeting in Villeneuve, 12 years after Naruse's death. On his way home from Switzerland, Naruse stayed in Pairs for a while, where he luckily encountered with the victory celebration of the World War I. He wrote his impression of it to Rolland and for a Japanese newspaper,
Jiji shinpō(時事新報). Soon after he got home, he decided on researching into French literature as his lifework instead of writing novels. ==Life in Paris (1921–1925)==