Lafcadio Hearn: An Introduction

LAFCADIO HEARN AN INTRODUCTION

By

Hayato Tokugawa

LAFCADIO HEARN

An Introduction

By

Hayato Tokugawa

SHISEI-DŌ PUBLICATIONS Tajimi, Japan and San Francisco, California

LAFCADIO HEARN: AN INTRODUCTION

LAFCADIO HEARN: AN INTRODUCTION. Copyright © 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012 by Hayato Tokugawa and Shisei-Dō Publications. Japanese Version Copyright © 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012 by Hayato Tokugawa and Shisei-Dō Publications. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States and Japan by Shisei-Dō Publications. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Lafcadio Hearn: An Introduction is an abstract from the following copyrighted works, edited by Hayato Tokugawa and published by Shisei-Dō Publications: The Annotated In Ghostly Japan, © 2008 The Annotated Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Volume I, © 2008 The Annotated Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Volume II, © 2008 The Annotated Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan, © 2008 The Annotated Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, © 2008 The Annotated Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East, © 2009 The Annotated Shadowings, © 2009 The Annotated Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Thing, © 2009 The Annotated Exotics and Retrospectives, © 2010 The Annotated Japanese Fairy Tales. © 2010 The Annotated Japanese Lyrics, © 2010 The Annotated A Japanese Miscellany, © 2010 The Annotated Kottō: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs, © 2010 The Annotated The Romance of the Milky Way and other studies and stories, © 2010

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LAFCADIO HEARN: An Introduction

Lafcadio Hearn loved Japan. Of that there can be absolutely no doubt, as evidenced by this letter written in 1890, to his friend, American agent, and biographer, Elizabeth Bisland:1


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Dear Elizabeth,

I feel indescribably towards Japan. Of course nature here is not the nature of the tropics, which is so splendid and savage and omnipotently beautiful that I feel at this very moment of writing the same pain in my heart I have felt when leaving Martinique. This is a domesticated nature, which loves man, and makes itself beautiful for him in a quiet gray and blue way like the Japanese women, and the trees seem to know what people say about them: seem to have little human souls. What I love in Japan is the Japanese: the poor simple humanity of the country. It is divine. There is nothing in this world approaching the naïve natural charm of them. No book ever written has reflected it. And I love their gods, their customs, their dress, their bird-like quavering songs, their houses, their superstitions, their faults. And I believe that their art is as far in advance of our art as old Greek art was superior to that of the earliest European art-gropings i – I think there is more art in a print by Hokusai2 or those who came after him than in a $10,000 painting – no, a $100,000 painting. We are the barbarians! I do not merely think these things: I am as sure of them as of death. I only wish I could be reincarnated in some little Japanese baby, so that I could see and feel the world as beautifully as a Japanese brain does.

And, of course, I am studying Buddhism with heart and soul. A young student from one of the temples is my companion. If I stay in Japan, we shall live together. Will write again if all goes well.

My best live to you always.

LAFCADIO HEARN

i “…the earliest European attempts at art.”


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I fully admit that several decades of my life had passed before I struck up a personal acquaintance with Lafcadio Hearn and his body of work. Of course, I do not mean that in the sense of being able to shake his hand or to chat with him, for he passed on forty-four years before I was born. I say “personal acquaintance” in the sense that his writing is indeed quite personal; therefore, the reader cannot help but feel some special rapport with him. His words are not the run-of-the-mill trav- elogue style we have grown used to; nor does he simply recite stories that he just happened to picked up in his travels. He put in writing very personal accounts of the things he saw and did, in a style that allowed the reader to share in his experience. His story telling was of the good old-fashioned kind: every bit as personal, and always accented with personal quips and obser- vations. Certainly, I had read a couple of his short stories from Japan and an essay or two in school; however beyond that, I had not taken the time to sit down with one of his volumes and enjoy his prose and the wealth of insight he offered on things Japanese. I was simply too busy and involved in my own studies of Japanese history, art and culture, my work as an instructor and student of Japanese Budō, and my work as an essayist.

Then one day, I came across a copy of the man’s biography, and upon reading it, I immediately developed a feeling of close kinship with him. There indeed existed similarities between the two of us that made me wish that I could have met him, and I could not help but feel that had we done so, we could have been friends.

He loved Japan, as do I; perhaps more so for the reason that he lived in Japan, walked its streets, saw its sights, and talked to its people at a time when Japan was only beginning its transition to the nation and culture it is today. Much of what was Japan, much of the romantic image of Japan that we in the modern West still hold, were reality for him.


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I found other similarities beyond our mutual love of Japan and the Japanese people. We both had a Roman Catholic upbringing, which we also both abandoned as young adults. Another mutually shared experience comes from the fact that we both lived, for a time, in the Midwest of the United States: he in Cincinnati, Ohio and I in Chicago, Illinois. We both spent time in New Orleans and felt a romantic attachment to that incredible city as well. At some point later in our lives, we both ventured west to the Land of the Rising Sun and fell in love with the land, its people, and its culture, to such an extent, that we both married into Japanese families and made Japan our homes.

Hearn became a teacher of English and English literature at Tokyo University; I took up teaching English as a private tutor. We both began to write about the things we saw, heard, and learned in Japan; he as a prolific writer of volumes on Japanese culture, religion, philosophy, and just plain good story telling; myself as an essayist on Japanese art, poetry, history, and martial arts.

All that aside, allow me to tell you more about the man so that you may begin to know him yourself; and thus, gain some insight into Lafcadio Hearn and his work.

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn lived on of the strangest lives of any American author; indeed, he always thought of himself as an American writer. “Yes, he once told a friend, “I have got out of touch with Europe altogether and think of America when I make comparisons. At nineteen years of age, after my people had been reduced from riches to poverty by an adventurer, and before I had seen anything of the world, except in a year of London among the common folk, I was dropped moneyless on the pavement of an American city to begin life. Often slept in the street, etc. Worked as a servant, waiter, printer, proofreader,


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hack writer and gradually pulled myself up. I never gave up my English citizenship, but I had eighteen years of American life and so got out of touch with Europe. For the same reason, I had to work at literature through American vehicles.”

He was born on June 28, 1850 on Lefkada (the source of his middle name), one of the Greek Ionian Islands, the second son (but only the first surviving child) of Surgeon-major Charles Bush Hearn of County Offalay,i Ireland, and Rosa Antonia Kassimati (sometimes spelled Cassimati), herself a Greek citizen born on Kythera, an island in the Myrtoon Pelagos of Athens. He was baptized Patricio Lafcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn in the Greek Orthodox Church; a fact that directly relates to the first major controversy of his life; being that his parents may or may not have ever been legally married. The debate stems from the fact that Hearn’s relatives (on his father’s side), Irish Protestants, considered him to have been born out of wedlock; ostensibly because they did not, or would not, recognize the legitimacy of the Greek Orthodox Church to conduct a marriage ceremony for the Protestant Surgeon-major Hearn.

i A county in the Midlands Region of Ireland.


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While the boy was still a toddler, the family moved to Dublin where his mother was extremely unhappy, feeling put upon and discriminated against; thus, in short order, she chose to run off with her cousin and abandon her new family. According to his own account, Hearn felt that he favored his mother; indeed, he is quoted as saying that he got his impatience, sensitivity, and affection directly from his mother, and that there was little or nothing at all of his father in his personal makeup: mental or physical. Surgeon-major Hearn divorced Rosa, remarried, and went east to India, leaving Lafcadio to be adopted by his great-aunt, Mrs. Brennan, the widow of a wealthy Irishman, who brought the boy up (as he put it), “in a rich home, surrounded by every luxury.” His new guardian tried her utmost to convert him to Roman Catholicism but he was quite verbal regarding his disbelief in the Bible.

In 1865, he was sent to Upshaw Roman Catholic College in Durham. While playing a game at school, he was struck in the face, causing severe damage to his left eye. The injury was never


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properly treated, and the cornea became permanently scarred causing blindness in that eye. An incessant reader, Hearn put his good eye under such strain that in time it swelled to twice its normal size and protruded from the socket grotesquely.3 He left both the school and his adoptive family abruptly at age sixteen.

Lafcadio then made his way to London; however, few specifics are known as to what transpired there; although he does state that his rich relatives refused to pay anything to help him finish his education. What is known is that he worked for a short while as a servant and suffered from extreme poverty: reduced to sleeping in a hayloft.

Lafcadio headed west, across the Atlantic, at the age of twenty-one and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1871. He had departed Ireland with instructions from his aunt to go there directly, where he would receive money from one Mr. Cullinane. He, however, lingered, in New York, only to finally arrive in


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Cincinnati both penniless and friendless. For the next few years, he lived in dire poverty, barely keeping body and soul together.

He was a diminutive figure, all of five feet, three inches in height and nearly blind. Because of this, he was constantly in grave danger, especially every time he crossed a street. He was also quite shy, yet quick to take offense; and even though he had the beginnings of a classical education, he had absolutely no knowledge of how to make a living. To his good fortune however, he would, it seemed, always be rescued by someone just in a nick of time. Hearn had come to Cincinnati in what was the “Golden Age,” when American life had an ambiguous ease to it and there were few organized charities; rather, there were far more acts of casual kindness and charity than one finds today. People found jobs for him and if he lost or left a job, they sometimes fed him, just as they might a stray cat.

He was eventually able to find work as a messenger, but on his first day of work, his co-workers harassed him for both his small size and strange appearance: by the end of the day, he was again unemployed. What followed was a period of sleeping in boxes on the street, in sheds, in an old hayloft, and even in an abandoned boiler on a vacant lot. In due course, he found a short-term position at a secretarial job in a library, but the availability of books, literature being an addiction of his, lead to his eventual dismissal. As fate would have it however, at that exact same time, he made the acquaintance of Mr. Henry Watkins, a local printer. Watkins befriended the young Hearn, and it was he who convinced the Robert Clarke Company to give the young man a position as a proofreader, where he received the nickname “Old Semicolon,” in reference to his incessant use of semicolons, his favored form of punctuation, which he forever used to excess.

For some eighteen months, Hearn also worked as a waiter in Miss Haslam’s Boarding House at 215 Plum Street, in exchange for room and board. During his spare time, at night, he read and


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wrote extensively, and several of his essays were published in local weeklies, but without payment. Again, his friend Watkins intervened on his behalf and gained him a position as an editorial assistant for the Trade List, a small, local newspaper. Not content, however, Hearn one day visited the office of John Cockerill, editor of the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer. Hearn asked timidly, “Do you pay for contributions?” Cockerill replied that he did, and invited the unusual looking young man into his office; whereupon, Hearn produced a manuscript from beneath his overcoat, and with trembling hands, laid it down on the editor’s desk and left. Both the young man and what he read impressed Cockerill. He accepted the manuscript and later others. During 1873, the newspaper published a number of Hearn’s long articles as well as a number of book reviews. Sometimes his contributions filled one-fourth of the Sunday edition. The following year, Hearn was appointed a full-time staff writer for the paper, with a considerable amount of creative freedom.

American newspaper journalism gave Hearn the chance for success that he could not have found in any other field of endeavor. He came upon the scene at a time when many writers who had fled to Europe, complained that American books and magazines had to be written for a mannerly audience: one composed chiefly of women. These same writers either ignored or forgot about newspapers, which were by and large written for men and thus, allowed for more freedom of style and speech. Newspapers spoke of dicey things such as prostitution, adultery, and miscegenation: topics that could never be treated in magazines. Although the personnel of most newspapers were overworked and rewarded with a miserable wage, (standard pay in the Midwest was $10.00 a week for cub reporters and $30.00 a week for featured writers); yet, they did pay every Saturday and in doing so provided a sure livelihood. Great writers such as Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser began their literary careers as newspapermen.


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What was common to Cincinnati was of no interest to Hearn. While his position at the Enquirer necessitated a certain amount of standard reporting activities, when writing on his own, he chose instead to write articles that described the poverty, crime, misery, and death in the city. Many of the crimes he wrote about were ghastly, horrible felonies, such as the murder of a man with a pitchfork and the disposal of his body in a tannery furnace.i Hearn also wrote exposés on spirits and spiritualism: topics that would later often materialize in his books and essays about Japan.

He was a bohemian and regarded himself as a confederate of the late French romantic and decadent writers. As a newspaper journalist, he could publish translations from Théophile Gautier4 and Pierre Loti;5 audacious for the period, plus original sketches i “Violent Cremation,” the Cincinnati Enquirer, November 9, 1874.


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that magazines would have rejected out of hand as godless and offensive. Lafcadio possessed a risqué, even indecent style that was encouraged by his editors. In his description of a visit to a hospital in New Orleans during a yellow fever epidemic he wrote:

The grizzled watcher of the inner gate extended his pallid palm for that eleemosynary contribution exacted from all visitors; — and it seemed to me that I beheld the gray Ferryman of Shadows himself, silently awaiting his obolus from me, also a shadow.

In 1874 Hearn and Henry Farny,6 a renowned painter of the American West, wrote, illustrated and published a weekly journal of art, literature and satire, the Ye Giglampz, which ran for a grand total of nine issues. By then, his taste in subject matter and his style were maturing. His subject matter was generally aston-


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ishing, his treatment imaginative and original. He possessed an exotic, artistic temperament with an off-center approach to things and a preference for words that evoked color and sen- sation. He read Poe, the French Romantics, and all the strange and disturbing books he could get his hands on, which inev- itably turned his sensibilities toward the convoluted fantasies that lay hidden beneath life’s more mundane exterior. rite word was “ghostly,” but he also like to use such words as “spectral,” “elfin,” “ghoulish,” “bizarre,” “weird,” “hideous,” “dismal,” and “monstrous.”

Hearn was always very conscious of his own physical handicaps and because of his insecurity, he never made love to any woman of his own race, whom he regarded as his social equals. While a resident of Miss Haslam’s Boarding House, he happened to meet Althea (“Mattie”) Foley, a black woman, the mother of an illegitimate daughter by a white man, who was also in residence there. They fell in love, and Hearn attempted to get a marriage license so that the couple could marry. At that time, 1875, such an act caused a sizeable scandal; for, marriage across racial lines (miscegenation) was illegal. The couple did however marry amid wide publicity, which became a citywide scandal. Hearn was ultimately fired from the Enquirer and instead, went to work for the Cincinnati Commercial, who paid him a signif- icantly lower salary, and thought it a bargain.

By 1877, He had grown tired of his job at the Commercial in general, and Cincinnati in particular. His brief marriage to Mattie was at end. No divorce was necessary because mixed marriages were not legally recognized in Ohio. He had also recently developed an interest and curiosity about the American Gulf Coast; and persuaded the publisher to send him to New Orleans, ostensibly to cover the Rutherford B Hayes v. Samuel Tilden presidential election7 from a Louisiana viewpoint. Thereafter, for a short while, he wrote various other stories for the Commercial; however, he never returned to Cincinnati.


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For the next ten years, Lafcadio lived in New Orleans where he wrote for the Daily City Item at $10.00 a week: enough to live on. He loved his new city, and found the life there both colorful and exotic; a life that brought new energy to his flair as a journalist. His writings included stories about the city’s Creole population, the local cuisine, French opera, and even voodoo. In 1881, he became the literary editor of the New Orleans Times Democrat, to which he contributed essays on local color, obscure folktales and legends, as well as translations of French writers. Indeed, his first book, One of Cleopatra’s Nights (1882), was a translation of six stories by French author Théophile Gautier.

His literary style and subject preference was by then very well defined. Things romantic, strange, or grotesque attracted him; yet, he chose to present these in real settings with real people. In 1883, Hearn published, in Harper’s Weekly,8 the first nationally known article about Filipinos in the United States, whom he had visited in their villages at Saint Malo, south of Lake Borgne in Saint Bernard Parish. In 1884, he penned Stray Leaves from Strange Literature, a book of obscure legends and stories; followed in 1887 by Some Chinese Ghosts. Many of his articles were published in both Harper’s Weekly, The Century Magazine9, and Scribner’s Magazine10. Hearn’s best-known works from his “Louisiana Period” include: Gombo Zhébes, Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs in Six Dialects (1885), La Cuisine Créole (1885), a collection of culinary recipes from leading chefs and noted Creole residents, and Chita: A memory of Last Island, a novella based on the hurricane of 1856 and published by Harper’s Weekly in 1888.

Hearn’s writings included what could be regarded as impressionistic sketches of the New Orleans landscape and its characters. He often wrote vigorous editorials denouncing political corruption, street crime, violence, intolerance, and the failures of public health officials: problems that still endure in New Orleans more than a century later. Indeed, Hearn was credited by many has having “invented” New Orleans as an


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exotic place of mystery. Many of his pieces are collected in Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn by S. Fredrick Starr (2001).

Nowadays, except for Lafcadio Hearn aficionados, his New Orleans works are not widely known outside of the city, and its own set of devotees. It is also of some interest to note that there have been more books and articles written about Lafcadio Hearn than any former New Orleans resident, other than jazz musician Louis Armstrong.

The year 1887 saw Hearn journey to the West Indies as a correspondent, spending two years in Martinique where he declared that even nature itself was “nude, warm, savage, and amorous,” and where he felt totally at ease in a society com- prised of mixed races. There he penned two books: Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) and Youma, The Story of a West-Indian Slave (1890).

In 1890, Lafcadio went to Japan on a vague commission from Harper and Brothers for a series of books and magazine articles; however, shortly after his arrival, he quarreled with his


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publisher, only to find himself suddenly unemployed in a foreign country.11 The following letter to Elizabeth Bisland describes his sad state of affairs:

Dear Miss Bisland,

Do you think well enough of me to try to get me employment at a regular salary, somewhere in the United States? I have permanently broken off with the Harpers: I am starved out. My average earnings for the last there years have been scarcely $500 a year. Here in Japan, prices are higher than in New York — unless one can become a Japanese employee. I was promised a situation; but it is now delayed until September.

I shall get along somehow. But I am so very tired of being hard-pushed, and ignored, and starved, — and obliged to undergo moral humiliations which are much worse than hunger or cold [things Hearn had come to know all too well in his early years in Cincinnati], — that I have ceased to be ashamed to ask you to say a good word for me where you can, to some newspaper, or some publishing firm, able to give me steady employ, later on.

LAFCADIO HEARN

Despite the bleak start, he at last had found his home and the source of his greatest inspiration.

That summer, with the help of Basil Hall Chamberlain12, he took up a teaching position at the Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and also the Normal Schooli in Matsué,13 at the

i Hearn was under contract to serve as English teacher in the Jinjō Chūgakkō, or Ordinary Middle School, and also in the Shihan-Gakkō, or Normal School, for the term of one year.


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same time writing free-lance newspaper articles. Indeed, most Japanese identify Hearn with Matsué, being the location where many of his images of Japan were molded. Matsué is also the location of the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum and his old residence.

While outwardly busy and happy with his new position in Matsué, where he earned the princely sum of 100 yen a month, or about $45.00, which made him one of the richer inhabitants of the city, he was nonetheless lonely. His good friend and almost constant companion from his first days in Yokohama and Tokyō, Akira, had gone to Kyōto as the editor of a magazine; but then he found a new friend in Sentaro Nishida. A wave of pneumonia, during a severe early winter, struck both Nishida as well as Hearn himself. As five feet of snow covered Matsué, his enthusiasm severely waned. He was slow to recover, which caused him to worry, and made his loneliness even more acute.


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For all his life, up until then, Hearn had felt himself set off from the rest of society by virtue of his small stature and his strange appearance, especially by his uneven eyes; one blind, marbled and sunken into his head, the other terribly myopic and protruding, so that it looked not unlike the eye of an squid. He also suffered to some degree from paranoia, perceiving that he had powerful enemies, which included society in general, the Christian Church, and the American press. As he once wrote:

I am pretty much in the position of a bookkeeper known to have once embezzled, or a man who has been in prison, or of a prostitute who has been on the street. These are, none of them, you will confess, important persons. But what keeps them in their holes? Society, Church, and public opinion: the press.

Nevertheless, in Japan, Hearn felt as though he had, to some degree, escaped those enemies. His small stature ceased to be a cause for concern, since he was taller than most of his Japanese colleagues and because the entire country, with its small houses, dwarf trees and miniature gardens, was built on his scale. To be sure, even his strange appearance brought about no particular reaction or comment: all foreigners looked strange to the Japanese.

Hearn’s new friend and self-appointed guardian angel, Nishida (known throughout the city as “The Saint of Matsué”), decided that for Lafcadio’s own good, he needed to take matters into his own hands. The Meiji Restoration14 had overthrown the Tokugawa Shōgunate and restored direct power to the Emperor; however with the rule of the Meiji Emperor came the demise of the aristocratic daimyō and the samurai; in effect, the entirety of Japan’s feudal system. Many great samurai families lost their fortunes and their holdings, and were abruptly forced out of privileged security and into sudden poverty. Nishida’s own family had been samurai, and his mother had spent recent years


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living with another samurai family named Koizumi. It just so happened that the Koizumi family had a daughter, Setsuko, and it was Setsuko Koizumi, now twenty-two years old, who at that time occupied Sentaro Nishida’s mind; conceivably even more than Hearn occupied it; for, Nishida had been thinking: if Hearn were to stay in Japan (and Nishida rather hoped that he would), then he would need a wife to manage his home and at least see that he ate properly. He was certain that Setsuko would be a quiet, loyal wife and undoubtedly, she would be grateful for the kindness and protection of the foreign teacher; indeed, he believed that both of his friends would benefit from such an arrangement and wasted no time in bringing up to topic to Hearn.

Lafcadio had for a long while felt certain that the best that he could ever do for himself in matters of love or romance, would be some meek young woman, who might feel some small attachment to him because of his kindness. He had also promised himself that if he ever did marry, he would choose someone who was quiet and would stay within her “domestic sphere,” being content with his affection. Yet, he had never


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really thought that he would marry, and he certainly had never thought that he would marry a Japanese; on the other hand, opportunity was knocking. Hearn knew that it was true; he did need companionship, just as Nishida had said, and someone to look after him. Japanese women were petite and charming, and a Japanese wife would not interfere with his work. With that, Hearn gave Nishida, acting in the traditional role of matchmaker, permission to talk with the parents of Setsuko Koizumi.

The Koizumi family was quite willing to give their daughter in marriage to the foreign writer and teacher. Everyone said he was kind and gentle; therefore, he would be kind to “Setsu” and a good son-in-law. He certainly was not like other gaijin.i As for Setsuko, while not totally against the marriage herself, she knew nothing of Western customs or traditions: a source of grave concern to her. However, she was Japanese, and as such, a properly devoted daughter. She was also struck by the fact that, at last, she would have a home of her own and better still, no husband’s family to serve: in-laws in Japan could be very demanding, even cruel if they so wished.

So, Lafcadio Hearn and Setsuko Koizumi were married in January 1891, and so began the greatest period of fulfillment in his life. Throughout their life together, Hearn was aware of cultural differences and Setsuko became more conscious of Hearn’s own bewildering personal distinctiveness. Where under- standing was not possible, kindness and patience made up for it.

The first major barrier for the couple was language. Setsu did not know a single word of English and Lafcadio’s Japanese was severely lacking to say the least. For some months, they actually

i A colloquial Japanese term for a foreigner.


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had to talk via an interpreter; however, during this same time, Hearn worked hard to assimilate as much Japanese as he could. Setsuko, however, at Hearn’s insistence, was never to learn English. She was a “true daughter of Old Japan,” and she must remain as such. To him, with foreign language came foreign ideas, and his wife was not to be tainted by Western influence.

By means of the constant use of dictionaries, they gradually developed their own “language” called Hearn-san Kotoba or Hearn-ben15 (Hearn’s Dialect): a simplified form of Japanese (if you could even call it that), full of strange and often amusing words and pronunciations. Be that as it may, Hearn-san Kotoba seemed to work and he openly stated that their private “ben” was much easier to understand than most of the English spoken by their Japanese friends.

Setsuko took good care of Hearn and soon learned to deal with many of his idiosyncrasies, attributing them to his artistic nature; however, at times his emotions were extreme and thus, from time to time, became a source of apprehension to her. Sometimes, when she would enter his study, she would find him weeping, or laughing until tears ran down his cheeks. On other occasions, he would seem almost in a trance as he worked. Was he going mad? Nishida, ever the family friend, assured her that no, he was not insane; he was simply a very creative, sensitive man, sometimes too involved in his work for his own good. In fact, it would be better if sometimes, he did not work at all. Accordingly, Setsuko convinced Hearn to take her out more, and often. They want to sumo matches and art exhibits, which Hearn seemed to enjoy immensely. Yet, whenever she suggested that he was working too hard, he would always reply, “I am only happy when I am working. I never get tired when I have something to write. So you can help me and make me happy by telling me all the legends that you know and anything interesting that you hear.” She did just that.


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He also supported the entire Koizumi family, including Setsu’s mother, father and grandfather, as well as a sizeable collection of relatives who would come for month-long or even year-long stopovers. Although he had, in effect rescued them from poverty, Hearn’s relationship with the family was not at all one-sided. Certainly, he had more to give, but the Koizumis were fanatically loyal to him and gave whatever they could in return. The Koizumis guarded him, taught him Japanese customs, and kept him from being cheated. Once, when Lafcadio was suffering from a serious, prolonged attack of indigestion, he learned that Setsu’s father had gone so far as to swear an oath to the gods that he would starve himself for a year if they would allow his son-in-law to recover. In actual fact however, it was Setsuko’s mother who cured him, simply by learning to cook European meals for him.

Hearn took for granted that his own activities as a writer were sacrosanct, and he took that same attitude with respect to Setsu’s activities. In the affairs of the house, he gave her a completely free hand; in fact, he insisted that she use her own judgment in running their home. “I know how to teach and how


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to write,” he said, “and that is all! You know better about other things so it would please me the most if you do as you like.” Of course, on occasions they would butt heads; nevertheless, Hearn kept his word. He might make a half-hearted appeal, but if she stood her ground, he would retreat saying, “Gomen, gomen! (Sorry, sorry!) Little Setsu is right!”

The government paid him a “foreign salary,” that is, he was paid much more than Japanese instructors, and the cost of living in Matsué was low. All her life, Setsuko had been thrifty to a fault; and thus thought her husband was too often extravagant in his spending. He enjoyed helping her select her clothing; actually, if she wanted one kimono, he would buy her eight or ten. At art exhibitions, if she liked a print that also attracted his attention, he would quickly buy it up and at the same time assure her that they really should have paid more in order to help protect the artist from being taken. When in time, Hearn actually came to realize that Setsu was a better manager of money than he was, he placed all of his finances in her hands. His personal requirements were few and simple, and he was allowed a small sum as pocket money; consequently, she was able to put a large part of his salary in the bank each month. Still, he persisted on constantly bringing home small gifts and such. At times this dis-mayed Setsuko, but she would give a small smile, knowing full well in her heart that such things came from his.

As the couple settled into their life together, Hearn began to enjoy much more of a social life. His students were devoted to him and often small groups of his favorites would come to his house, bringing with them family heirlooms to examine or information, stories, legends, and such for his books. They would sit around him as he told stories of America or explained Western ideas. Much of his success as a teacher came from his intuitive nature and his sympathetic attitude towards his pupils. Even though he had lived in Japan for only a comparatively short while, he began to sense some of the problems that


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Western thought presented to Japan and he went to great lengths to help his students understand.

Japanese folklore was of a particular attraction to Hearn. He saw it as being threatened with extinction by the encroachment of Western science and logical thought: something he had come to detest and often wrote about. He opposed many nineteenth century encroachments by the West on the Orient, and Japan in particular; choosing instead to align himself with native customs and traditions in any way that he possibly could. Setsuko’s strong adherence to traditional Japanese etiquette comforted him and with her help, he now was becoming nicely adapted to Japanese life. Every day he and Setsu would walk around their garden in yukata16 and geta17, enjoying each other and their home. The appearance of even a new flower was always an event for them.

In 1892, he took up another teaching position at Kumamoto, Kyūshū, at the Fifth Higher Middle School, where he remained for three years and completed his book, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). The Hearns (or I should say Koizumis; for by then Lafcadio had become a Japanese citizen and had been adopted into Setsuko’s family, taking the name Yakumo, a name derived from the Kojiki18) soon became parents. In total, there were four


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Hearn-Koizumi children: three boys named Kazuo, Iwao, and Kiyoshi, and one girl, Suzuko. In later years, Kazuo Koizumi (1893 – 1965) would become a writer and produce several books about Hearn. Iwao Koizumi (1897 - 1937) was adopted into the Inagaki family as their heir. The Koizumi family and the Inagakis had become relatives back in the “old days” of the Tokugawa period. The Inagakis however, at that time, had no heir; that is, no one to carry on the family name. According to custom, Hearn (with considerable misgiving and hesitation) at last agreed to allow his son to be adopted by the Inagakis and to assume their name, although he lived with his natural parents and was, in all other matters, raised as a Hearn-Koizumi. Iwao Inagaki however, died relatively young, himself a middle school English teacher like his father. The Koizumi’s third son, Kiyoshi (1899 – 1962), as sensitive as his father, grew up to be an artist and painter, destined to achieve fame posthumously.

Kazuo, the first-born son, was idolized by his father. On the evening when the child was expected, Hearn knelt by his wife’s bed and prayed in broken Japanese, “Come into the world with good eyes,” over and over again. When the two midwives arrived later in the evening, they decided that he was a major distraction and hindrance, and coerced him out of the house and into the garden to wait. At one o’clock in the morning, the great-grandfather, an old, distinguished samurai gentleman, came dancing into the garden with his hands clutched above his head and his kimono sleeves dropped to his shoulders. “A great treasure child is born,” he shouted. In later days, the old man would carry young Kazuo around the house while loudly singing:

Urashima Taro lived a hundred and six years;

Takeuchi Sakuné lived three hundred years;

Tōbōsaku lived nine thousand years;

Koizumi Kazuo – a million and more millions.


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The birth of a firstborn son was a major link that bound the family together. Lafcadio Hearn, former outcast, was now “Papa-san” and the center of what amounted to a small community.

There are nearly twelve here to whom I am life and food and other things. However, intolerable anything else is, at home I enter into my little smiling world of old ways and thoughts and courtesies; where all is soft and gentle as something seen in sleep. It is so soft, so intangibly gentle and lovable and artless, that sometimes it seems only a dream; and then a fear comes that it might vanish away. It has become me. When I am pleased, it laughs; when I don’t feel jolly, everything is silent. Thus light and vapory as its force seems, it is a moral force, perpetually appealing to conscience.

Hearn was always faithful to his family. The children always came first, especially Kazuo, who had become the center of his life. In a letter to Elizabeth Bisland he wrote:

Every year there are born some millions of boys cleverer, stronger, handsomer than mine. I may be quite a fool in my estimate of him. I do not find him very clever, quick, or anything of that sort. Perhaps there will prove to be “nothing in him.” I cannot tell. All that I am quite sure of is that he naturally likes what is delicate, clean, refined, and kindly, and that he naturally shrinks from whatever is coarse and selfish…I must do all I can to feed the tiny light, and give it a chance to prove what it is worth. It is me, in another birth — with renewed forces given by a strange and charming blood from the Period of the Gods.


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Lafcadio was unhappy in Kumamoto, primarily due to bad relationships with his colleagues and an overall dissatisfaction with Kumamoto conventions and customs, which he found to be far more severe and less amicable than in Matsué or even Tokyō. In 1894, Lafcadio Hearn secured a position as a journalist with the English language Kobé Chronicle. Two years later, again with the help of Basil Chamberlain, he began to teach English Literature at Tokyo Imperial University. There he again received the esteem of his students: many of whom went on to make literary careers for themselves. This was quite possibly the most contented period in Hearn’s life, during which he composed his best prose, which includes: Kokoro (1896), Gleanings in Buddha-fields (1897), Exotics and Retrospectives (1898), In Ghostly Japan (1899), Shadowings (1900), Kwaidan (1903), Japan: An attempt at Interpretation (published just after his death in 1904), and The Romance of the Milky Way and Other Studies and Stories (published posthumously in 1905).


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Hearn left the Imperial University in 1903 in a dispute with the administration, which, in conversation, he tended to mini- malize, “If it is necessary to spend such long hours in the university, there will be no time left for writing,”

In fact, Hearn’s contract with Tokyō University was due to expire at the end of March of 1903. Earlier that month the rumor had circulated among the students, particularly his own, that he was planning to quit his post due to personal antagonism between the Japanese government, the university administration, and the author/teacher; the main allegation being that while the government was willing to keep him on, the university administration wanted him out. While the exact circumstances remained unclear to them, it is clear that he was very popular with the students and that they were upset to the point of anger, even rebellion, at the thought of his leaving. According to Hearn, he in fact wanted to remain at Tokyō University but felt less than encouraged by the administration:

On the 31st of March, as I had anticipated, I was forced out of the university, on the pretext that as a Japanese citizen, I was not entitled to a ‘foreign salary’ (foreign or visiting professors were typically paid at a much higher rate than Japanese instructors). The students, having made a strong protest in my favor, I was offered a re-engagement at terms so devised that it would be impossible for me to re-engage. I was also refused the money allowed to professors for a nine-month vacation after a service of six years; yet, I had served seven years.

Hearn regarded this as having been contrived by a combination of religious and political forces; including intrigue at the hands of the other professors who were less than sympathetic. The truth of the matters is that he seems definitely to have been the victim of policies based on politics rather than on ideals.


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According to one of Hearn’s Japanese biographers, who coincidentally was one of Hearn’s students and also served as his literary assistant, on March 2, Hearn went to the university where he found the students talking anxiously in the corridors regarding his dismissal. On the 10, a student meeting, filled to capacity and then some, was held to discuss their frustration with the attitude and actions of the administration; “their hearts were wounded terribly to think that even the biggest school in Japan could not afford to keep one Hearn.” It was agreed to at the meeting that some representatives of the students would be sent to the director of the university and to Hearn in the hopes of finding common ground upon which to find an equitable solution. On March 15, word reached the students that the director had been “moved by their enthusiasm.” On March 16, the students were told that their representatives had indeed met with Hearn and that he stated that “he would never forget their sympathy” and that he had actually cried. On March 17, a rumor was circulated that both the director and Hearn had, in fact, had a meeting. There was a brief vacation period for the school, and when the students returned on April 10, they were in high hopes that they would see Hearn again on the podium. Alas, he was gone; replaced interestingly by one of Japan’s greatest modern writers, Natsume Sōseki, adding to Sōseki’s own personal unhappiness. Indeed, the writer of Kokoro and I am a Cat told his wife that they (the university) had chosen him to replace Hearn with someone who lacked Hearn’s skills.

The dismissal from Tokyō University had its impact on Hearn. According to one observer, the author was caught sight of on a Tokyō street, a small figure of a man wearing a combination of Japanese and American clothes. He appeared shrunken and his clothing hung on his shrunken figure.

Of further note, the ultimate reason (excuse) given for Hearn’s termination from the university, was that owing to a cholera outbreak on campus, and because of the ensuing expenses incurred by the university as a result of that epidemic,


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they could not afford to keep Hearn at the wages he had originally been hired at.

Hearn began to teach at Waseda University19 as Professor of English Literature. Sadly, his tenure was short lived. That same year, Hearn’s health rapidly declined. At one time, he suffered from a severe case of bronchitis that resulted in a hemorrhage of his throat. Matters were complicated by angina pectoris, attacks of which grew more severe over time. Often he was bedridden for long periods, his interaction with his children restricted by the amount of time he could remain out of bed. His writing too was often limited, sometimes to only two or three hours a day. It was at this same time that his daughter, Suzuko was born; a bit- tersweet gift to Lafcadio, now convinced that he would never live to see her grow up. His hair had changed to white, he walked bent over like an old man, and pains in his chest and arms increasingly plagued him.


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Still, he could not stop working. “Money, money, money,” he often said. “I don’t want money for myself, I only what it for my wife and children”; hence, he continued to write against the advice of his physicians.

One night he had a dream which he related to Setsu the following morning as he smoked in his study. “It was a most unusual dream,” he said, thinking back. “I took a very long journey, and now that I am awake, it seems to have been not a real journey in a dream, but a dream journey in a dream! I was traveling in a very strange country, and I was going a very long distance. Very far away.” Those words would be a foreshad- owing of events soon to follow.

On the evening of September 26, 1904, the family enjoyed dinner. Throughout the meal, Hearn talked and joked with his sons, and then he returned to his study to work. As was the family practice, after the meal, the dining room was cleared and became the children’s play and study area. Kazuo was copying


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kanjii into a book for school the next day, Iwao was writing a letter and Kiyoshi was playing with toys under the watchful eyes of the family maid, O-Hana.

At about eight o’clock, Hearn returned to the room; however, his face appeared strange, ghostly white; indeed so strange, that all three boys looked up and stared at him as he walked over to a cupboard, opened it, and then asked O-Hana where the whiskey was. So frightened was the maid that she jumped up and ran to fetch Setsuko, while the boys watched in silence: their father’s hands clutching at his chest.

When Setsuko arrived, he did not resist her but instead, turned to her for help. “It’s the same pain, Mama-san,” he wheezed. “It’s come back.” She poured him a little whiskey and after he drank it, he started walking slowly, painstakingly back to his study. When he realized that Setsuko was walking with him, he told her, “I’m alright now. You go stay with the children.” Setsu however, insisted on accompanying him down the hall, entering the study with him, and then shutting the door. Inside, Hearn paced back and forth for a minute, still with his hands pressed to his chest. Strangely, he did not protest when his wife led him toward the bed and laid him in it. She then turned away for a moment to turn down the light and when she turned back, she thought that the pain seemed to have relaxed its grip as her husband lie on his bed, exhausted. As she bent over him he sighed, “Ah, byoki no tame!”

Hearn’s eldest son, Kazuo was just entering the hall as his mother opened the door and called out to him and the maid, “Come at once! All of you!”

In the dim light of the room, Kazuo saw his father’s face: his lips slightly parted but not moving. With that, he knew that with the words “Ah, because of sickness,” Lafcadio had left this world.

i Kanji are the Chinese characters used in written Japanese.


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Long before, Hearn had written in Kwaidan that, “I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind, so that my ghostly company should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and disintegrations of Meiji.”i Setsuko knew her husband and knew that some secluded temple cemetery would be the most appropriate resting place for him. Yet, at the same time, she knew that in Tokyō, near to his family, there no longer existed any Buddhist graveyards that were free from the taint of the Meiji Era, which Hearn had grown to detest so much. Zoshigaya20 on the other hand, had been one of his favorite haunts, and as a public graveyard, was free from modern intru- sions. At times when he wished to be alone, Hearn would often walk to Zoshigaya cemetery and wander among the graves. It was a comfortable walking distance from their home, in a quiet neighborhood of well-kept houses and gardens. He would be buried there, she decided, with rites both formal and public, yet within the bounds of convention that would have been pleasing to her husband. Buddhist High Priest, Tatara, an old family friend, and now an Abbot, would come to officiate and Hearn’s oldest pupil from his days in Matsué, now Professor Tanabe, would be the chief mourner. At the news of Hearn’s death, Otokichi, a long-time family friend, who had only that summer been with Lafcadio and Kazuo, rushed to Tokyō, still in his work clothes, to assist the family in any way he could.

On September 29, a day that Hearn might have described as a “luminous blue,” the funeral procession made its way from the Koizumi house to Kobudera temple,21 led by a host of mourners dressed in white, bearing white lanterns, towering pyramids of asters and chrysanthemums, and long poles from which fluttered sacred streamers. Two boys came next on jinrikishas22 carrying

i Meiji refers to the Meiji period (明治時代) or Meiji jidai of Japanese history, the forty-five year reign of the Emperor Meiji from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.


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small bamboo cages, containing birds, which would later be released as symbols of Hearn’s soul escaping its earthy prison. These were followed by six men in blue, carrying a portable hearse on their shoulders, as was the custom, upon which rested an unpainted wood coffin, adorned with clusters of gold and silver lotus blossoms. Next, in turn, came the priests, ringing little bells and carrying food for the dead, then the family, followed by immediate mourners, in turn followed by a long line of university professors and students.

The temple bell rang in the background as the procession climbed the Kobudera hill and entered the ancient building. Eight priests chanted a requiem to Kwannon,23 next to the diminutive Jizō-sama,24 perhaps Hearn’s favorite Buddhist deity. Abbot Tatara, dressed in robes of gold, lead Kazuo toward his father’s candle-lit coffin and together they knelt down before it. Kazuo touched his head to the floor in solemn ritual and then


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placed incense into a small brazier that was burning between the candles.

Then Setsuko, wearing a magnificent white obi and a face as expressionless as a mask, came forward with Iwao, followed again by Tanabe and Kazuo, who again knelt before the coffin. The service was completed with additional chanting from the sūtras.25

The procession then went to Ochiyai-mura, which like Zoshigaya was a favored haunt of Hearn’s. Often, together with Kazuo, he would walk to this little town of microscopic farms with thatched farmhouses, dominated by the tall chimney of a crematory in a nearby wood. Hearn had many friends among the old people who lived there; people with whom he would of sit, to rest and to chat in a little garden while Kazuo played.

After the body had been consumed in flames, Otokichi assisted in lifting the remnants of bone from the ashes, all the while chanting Buddhist prayers. At one point in the gloomy process, he lifted a kneecap from among the ashes and stared at it sadly, muttering, “This helped Sensei-sama swim in our sea only a little while ago.” He then dried his tears and continued with his somber duty.

After the burial at Zoshigaya, the earth of his grave was covered with a flat stone, the center of which had been hollowed out to hold water for his spirit. On either side of the water vessel was a small round hole for incense. As a last tribute, his students placed a laurel wreath that bore the inscription:

In memory of Lafcadio Hearn, whose pen was mightier than the sword of the victorious nation which he loved and lived among, and whose highest honor it is to have given him citizenship and, alas, a grave.


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At almost the exact same time, the first copies of Japan, An Attempt at Interpretation, published as his masterpiece, were coming off the presses back in the United States. Critics praised the book as a wonder of interpretive literature and as a sociological appraisal of Japan, which would serve as a warning against intolerant propaganda of any kind. Yet, theologians condemned Shintō, and sociologists challenged Hearn’s school- arship as a scientist. Conversely, everyone tended toward praise of his “complete and intimate account of a people’s sincere faith, the changeless nature of the Japanese soul and Shintō’s pro- found influence on the life and affairs of state of Japan. However, Lafcadio Hearn was beyond their words.


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Back in Tokyō, the Koizumi family shrine was moved into what had been the author’s study; and so it was that, twice daily through the years, Shintō prayers were spoken to him in front of the shrine. Until such time as his children were grown, they would come in at bedtime to say “Goodnight, Papa-san. Pleasant dreams.” On the twenty-sixth of each September, Setsuko would assemble her children, and eventually her grandchildren, for an anniversary feast in the study. Inside the shrine, small lacquer bowls held another feast, but in miniature, behind which stood Lafcadio Hearn’s picture, veiled by the drifting smoke of incense.

In his youth, first as a cub reporter and then later as a star reporter in both Cincinnati and New Orleans, Hearn demonstrated a coarse, even risqué literary style; one that was laced with Victorian prose, and one which the newspapers both liked and encouraged. In a description of a visit to a hospital in New Orleans, during a yellow fever epidemic, he wrote:

The grizzled watcher of the inner gate extended his pallid palm for that eleemosynary contribution exacted from all visitors; and it seemed to me that I beheld the gray Ferryman of Shadows himself, silently awaiting his obolus from me, also a shadow.

The Times-Democrat printed his piece without deleting a single adjective or semicolon, inspiring Hearn to use even more grandiose language: “The spider at last ceased to repair her web of elfin silk…years came and went with lentor inexpressible.” At the time, he was quite proud of that last phrase although later, he would regret it. “My first work was awfully florid,” he said many years later in Japan. “I should like now to go through many paragraphs written years ago and sober them down.”


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In reading his work, one is impressed, not only by its workmanship and integrity, but also by its limitations. Hearn tended to be narrow in scope, as though his small size and shortsightedness had been not just physical qualities but moral qualities as well. Sometimes he dealt with general themes, including frequent references to Herbert Spencer, who was Hearn’s only teacher in philosophy. His work is full of moods, colors, ghostly outlines, but often lacks in portrayal of daily life. He once complained that he knew absolutely nothing about small practical matters: “nothing, for example, about a boat, a horse, a farm, an orchard, a watch, a garden. Nothing about what a man ought to do under any possible circumstances.” He was also never able to invent a plot and often begged his friends to tell him stories so that he would have something to write about. Critics also complained that he lacked the ability to write anything beyond a short essay or folk tale. It has been said that of the sixteen books he published during his lifetime (no small number) only one, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation was a


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“proper” book. The others were relegated to such categories as “loose novelettes,” like Chita and Youma, in which the mood or ambience was “more important than the story;” or else they were collections of shorter pieces that appeared, or might have appeared in magazines.

Even early on in his career, Hearn often underestimated his own gifts. He once wrote, “Knowing that I have nothing resembling genius, and that any ordinary talent must be supple- mented with some sort of curious study in order to place it above the mediocre line, I am striving to woo the Muse of the Odd, and hope to succeed in thus attracting some little attention.” In another letter, he spoke of “pledging himself to the worship of the odd, the queer, the strange, the exotic the monstrous.” Erroneously he added, “It quite suits my temperament.

In the late 19th century, Japan had been largely unknown and thus exotic to the West. With the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, particularly at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, the West suddenly developed an insatiable appetite for Japan and things Japanese. Hearn, in addition to his books, wrote many essays and reports on the subject of Japan which were published in the United States and in Europe. His works were an introduction to Japan for thousands upon thousands of people and Lafcadio Hearn become known to the world through the depth, orig- inality, sincerity, and charm of his writing. In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn of exoticizing and romanticizing Japan; yet, he offered the West most of its early glimpses of pre-industrial and Meiji Japan.

After his death, Hearn’s reputation as a writer suffered somewhat from the collections of his early newspaper work that were hurriedly published. Many of those short pieces might have been better off having been left in the files of the Cincinnati and New Orleans newspapers for which they were written. Even the books written during his last years in New Orleans, Stray Leaves


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from Strange Literatures, Some Chinese Ghosts, and Chita, although they contain some fine work¸ were not representative of his mature writing. Even Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) is far better than those earliest of works and shows how Hearn could be drawn out of himself by living among people with whom he was sympathetic. Moreover, it was not until his early years in Japan that he was able to master subject and style.

In 1893, he wrote Basil Chamberlain, “After years of studying poetical prose, I am now forced to study simplicity. After attempting my utmost at ornamentation, I am converted by my own mistakes. The great point is to touch with simple words.” And that is exactly what he did for the rest of his career. Instead of using important-sounding words to describe things that were not necessarily important at all, he depended on the events themselves to impress the reader and thus looked for words that would reveal them clearly.

Take for example this critical paragraph from “The Story of Mimi-nashi-Hōichi,” a legend told to us in Kwaidan:


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At that instant Hōichi felt his ears grabbed by fingers of iron, and torn off! Great as the pain was, he gave no cry. The heavy footfalls receded along the verandah, — descended into the garden, — passed out to the roadway, — ceased. From either side of his head, the blind man felt a thick warm trickling; but he dared not lift his hands.

In contemporary literature, one is admonished not to use the exclamation point after the first sentence as Hearn did above, nor commas followed by dashes as he used in the third sentence; however, Hearn was following his own theory of punctuation as his guide to the reader’s voice. He was primarily writing for the ear rather than the eye, and most of the passages, in proper context, sound exactly right when read aloud. He invariably found the right words, such as those found at the conclusion of his story about a hunter who saw a pair of oshidori, or mandarin ducks, and killed the drake. Later, the hunter felt an inner need to revisit the same place again:

...and there, when he came to the riverbank, he saw the female oshidori swimming alone. In the same moment the bird perceived Sonjo, but, instead of trying to escape, she swam straight towards him, looking at him the while in a strange fixed way. Then, with her own beak, she suddenly tore open her own body, and died before the hunter’s eyes…

Sanjo shaved his head, and became a priest.


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Hearn would labor for hours, changing and rearranging words in a paragraph as simple as the one above. In a letter to Basil Chamberlain, he described it in this manner: “For me, words have color, form, and character. They have faces, manners, gesticulations; they have moods, humors, eccentricities; they have tints, tones, personalities, often in addition to or without reference to their meanings.” He was affected by the “whispering of words, the rustling of the procession of letters…the pouting of words, the frowning and fuming of words, the weeping, the raging and racketing and rioting of words, the noisomeness of words, the tenderness or hardness, the dryness or juiciness of words, the interchange of values in the gold, the silver, the brass and the copper of words.”

He once told a correspondent that he often worked for months on a single page before it expressed his meaning and mood. “When the best result comes, it ought to surprise you; for our best work is out of the unconscious.” He frequently wrote his first drafts hastily and then set them aside; later, he would rewrite them over and over, finding what he called his “latent feelings” forming during the process of revision. “Of course,” he said, “it looks like a big labor to rewrite every page half a dozen times. But, in reality, it is the least possible labor. To those with whom writing is an almost automatic exertion, the absolute fatigue is no more than that of writing a letter. The rest of the work does itself, without your effort. It is like spiritualism. Just move the pen, and the ghosts do the writing.” Perhaps he was boastful in his words.

Another time, he admitted that the process of composition was always painful for him, particularly in the moments before he sat down at his desk. Once he did sit down to write, his pen would begin to move rapidly on the page. Hearn wrote with his head bowed down and tilted to the left, with his one myopic eye a mere three to six inches from the paper. He would become deeply engrossed in his work; as long as the pen was moving, he was lost to the world. He liked to write at night by an oil lamp.


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One story about him tells that he would often keep the wick turned too high and Setsuko, on inspection of his study in the morning, would find everything coated in soot. Sometimes, during the summer, when she would enter his study in the morning, she would find hordes of dead, gorged mosquitoes, looking much like so many little red grapes, littered around his desk. “It must have been itchy,” she would say and Hearn would answer, “I didn’t even feel them.”

His technique of composition limited him to relatively small pieces, essays and folk tales, that he could finish rapidly, before exhausting himself; thus, losing touch with his subconscious, keeping him within his limitations and creating within his work, a deep honesty in his words. He does not assert one emotion by the meaning of his words and at the same time suggest another, by virtue of the color and sound of his words; hence, suggesting an absence of emotion and disbelief in what he says. Hearn’s writing was true, not only on the surface but deep inside. He was honest to both his conscious thought and to the deep-rooted feelings that gave rhythm to his words.

Lafcadio Hearn knew Japan, not simply as a spectator, as many other early writers on the subject of Japan were, but rather as a citizen: the adopted son of Japanese parents and the father of Japanese children. He was aware of the faults of his countrymen, but preferred to emphasize their virtues. Then too, he was a visionary of sorts, and foresaw the inevitable conflict between Japan and the West. As a teacher, he knew what reasoning would touch the Japanese mind and what explanations were needed before English poems and prose could be under- stood by Japanese students. Simply put, his students loved him. When he lost his post at the Imperial University, they spoke of banding together in order to defend him; not unlike the legendary forty-seven rōnin, who avenged their feudal lord, then committed seppuku in front of his tomb. Some students actually took down his lectures verbatim; in fact, a whole series of


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volumes, four in the United States and five in Japan, were published after his death, based upon those notes.

Of more importance are the eleven books by which he interpreted Japan for the West. He never claimed that his works presented a complete picture of Japan; indeed, he confessed that he actually knew very little about Japanese economics or politics and that he harbored a growing resentment, even hatred of industrial Meiji society. Hearn liked old things such as courtesy, kindness, devotion, and even ancestor worship; still, he had a wealth of knowledge about Japanese life, a scholar’s knowledge and an intimate, sympathetic grasp of Japanese legend.


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He learned the legends he wrote of from various sources; sometimes his students collected them for him, and some came from his wife, family, and friends. He put the best of the stories into English with all the skill and freedom of style of a professional Japanese storyteller. Whereas other writers of Japanese stories and folklore, contemporaries of Hearn, re- corded stories as though they were simply laboratory specimens, his versions were literature. Long before his feet ever touched down upon Japanese soil, Lafcadio Hearn demonstrated an instinct for finding within legend, the paradigm of human experience, in just the right words.


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NOTES 1 Elizabeth Bisland (1861 – January 6, 1929) was a close friend, confidant, and biographer of Lafcadio Hearn as well as a noted feminist, journalist, novelist and by the age of twenty-eight, the literary editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine. She is most noted not only for her volumes of biographical letters from Hearn, but for traveling around the world in an attempt to beat another female journalist, Nellie Bly (born Elizabeth Jan Cochrane) in a race to break the eighty-day travel record set by Jules Verne’s fictional character Phineas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours) (1873). While she lost the race, she did write a very popular book, Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World (Harper and Brothers, 1891) which recounted her adventure. Later she founded and served as the first president of the New Orleans’ Women’s Club, established to advance the cause of working women. 2 Hokusai Katsushika (葛飾北斎, October 23 1760 – May 10, 1849) was to the Western art world, Japan’s most famous artist. He was an ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period, as well as Japan’s leading expert on Chinese painting. Born in Edo (Tokyō) to artisan parents, Hokusai is best known as the creator of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三

十六景, Fugaku Sanjūrokkei, 1826 - 1830), which included the now iconic, and most recognized of Japanese prints, The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪

裏, Kanagawa-oki nami-ura).

While his career was extensive, he produced most of his important work after the age of 60. In addition to Thirty-six Views, he created a second, equally famous series titled One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, regarded as his masterpiece book of landscape art. His influence extended far beyond his Japanese contemporaries, all the way to Europe where his work had significant impact on Art Nouveau and Impressionism, influencing such artists as Renoir, Monet, Lautrec, Van Gough, and even the composer Claude Debussy. 3 While covering the yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1884, Hearn escaped contracting the disease but instead, contracted “breakbone fever” (also known as Dengue fever), a virus-based disease spread by mosquitoes which left him exhausted and further weakened his eyesight. While he was


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teaching in Japan in the 1890s, his eyesight became so poor that he was forced to write with his “good eye” only 3 inches from the paper. 4 Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (August 30, 1811 – October 23, 1872) was a French dramatist, journalist, literary critic, novelist, and poet. He was a passionate defender of Romanticism; however, his own work is difficult to classify but is frequently referenced by such other literary traditions as Symbolism, Decadence, and Modernism. Such writers as Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Proust, and Oscar Wilde held him in high esteem. 5 Pierre Loti was a pseudonym of Julien Viauld (January 24, 1850 – June 10, 1923) a French naval officer and novelist. In 1885, while serving in Southeast Asia, he visited Japan and subsequently wrote a novel on Japanese manners, Madame Chrysanthéme, which was a forerunner of Madame Butterfly, and Miss Saigon. He was regarded a one of the finest descriptive writers of his day. 6 Henry Francois Farny (1847 – 1916), born in Alsace and the son of a political refugee who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1853, was a noted 19th century artist and illustrator, famed for his pictures depicting the life of Native Americans. In 1859 his family moved to Cincinnati where he took his first job as an apprentice lithographer. Later he traveled the American West painting such great Native American leaders as Sitting Bull and became an illustrator for such popular publications as Harper’s Weekly and Century. 7 The election of President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 was hotly contested with the votes of three of four states, including Louisiana, challenged in the Electoral College. In order to win, a candidate had to gather a total of 185 electoral votes. Hayes opponent, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden had been expected to win the election and indeed, won the popular vote by 250,000 votes out of approximately 8.5 million total. Tilden came out short just one electoral vote with a total of 184; Hayes had 165, with 20 votes representing the four states in question. To complicate matters, three of these states, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina were in the South (Oregon was the fourth disputed state), which at that time continued to be under military occupation following the Civil War. As historians have noted, the election was not fair, based on fraud and intimidation that had been perpetrated on both sides.

In order to decide peacefully the results of the election, the two houses of Congress established a bi-partisan Electoral Commission tasked with investigating and determining the winner. Rather than an organized in- vestigation and determination, political wrangling became the determining factor. In a “backroom” at a Washington hotel, the Wormley House Agreement was ultimately arrived at. Southern Democrats were given assurances, that if Hayes became President, he would pull federal troops out


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of the South and end Reconstruction. A further agreement was made with Republicans that if Hayes cabinet consisted of at least one Southerner, and if he withdrew all Union troops from the South, then he could become President. Hayes was elected. 8 Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, was an American political magazine published by Harper & Brothers, in New York City, from 1857 until 1916. It featured foreign and America news, fiction, essays and humor. After 1900, the magazine devoted more space to political and social issues, featuring many articles by such prominent political figures as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. 9 The Century Magazine was first published in the United States in 1881 by the Century Company of New York City, as a successor to the popular Scribner’s Monthly Magazine. It stopped publication in 1930. 10 Scribner’s Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine for the People, was an American literary journal published by Charles Scribner and Scribner & Company of New York, from 1870 until l881. 11 Hearn’s personal assistant, Masanobu Ōtani tells us that it was in May of 1890, a Friday, that the writer caught his first glimpse of Mt. Fuji (see “Fuji-no-Yama” in Exotics and Retrospectives); although March seems to be more accurate, as he wrote a letter to Basil Hall Chamberlain from Yokohama on April 4, 1890. He landed in the open port of Yokohama in the company of an artist sent by Harper Brothers to assist him in reporting on Japan. It was the sight of a koinobori (a paper kite in the shape of a koi or carp) flying on the occasion of the Boy’s Festival, that first pleased him. According to Ōtani, Hearn immediately began to study Japan. He visited all of the temples in Yokohama and went to Kamakura as well as Enoshima. There was, however, some disagreement between Harper Brothers and the writer, who subsequently destroyed the contract, dismissed the artist, and went independent. It wasn’t long before he found himself in dire straits financially, ultimately taking the position of English teacher at the High School in Matsué. 12 Basil Hall Chamberlain (October 18, 1850 – February 15, 1935) was a professor at Tokyō Imperial University and the foremost British Japanologist in Japan during the late 19th century. He was also, for many years, Lafcadio Hearn’s closest Western friend and confidant in Japan. He wrote some of the first translations of haiku into English as well as the first English translation of the Kojiki, the oldest existing chronicle of ancient Japan, dating from the early 8th century. He is best remembered for his popular encyclopedic work Things Japanese (1890). He arrived in Japan on May 29, 1873 and taught at the Imperial Naval School in Tokyō from 1874 to 1882. His most prestigious position, however, was as Professor of Japanese at Tokyō Imperial University,


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starting in 1886. There he gained his reputation as a student and scholar of Japanese language and literature as well as a pioneer of the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages of Hokkaido and Okinawa respectively. Other works include: The Classical Poetry of the Japanese (1880), A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese (1888), A Practical guide to the Study of Japanese Writing (1905), and (with W. B. Mason) A Handbook for Travelers in Japan (1907). 13 Matsué (松江市, Matsué-shi) is the capital city of Shimane Prefecture, which sits between Lake Shinji and Lake Nakaumi along the banks of the Ohashi River, which connects the two. Because the lakes, the river, and canals are such a prominent feature of the city’s geography, Matsué is sometimes revered to as the “water city.” Nearby Izumo Taisha is recognized as one of the oldest and holiest Shintō shrines in Japan, ranked only second in importance only to Ise Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture. A major feature of the city is Matsué Castle, sometimes referred to as the “black castle,” one of the few remaining medieval castles in Japan. The grounds include a winding path through forests of bamboo, shrubs, and trees. Lafcadio Hearn lived and taught in Matsué from 1890 through 1892. His house is now a museum in his honor and a popular tourist attraction. 14 Prior to 1867, the power to govern Japan rested solely with the Shōgun in Edo (Tokyō), with the Emperor in Kyōto reduced to nothing but a figurehead. It was in 1867 that the Meiji Restoration (明治維新, Meiji Ishin), also referred to as the Meiji Revolution or Renewal, returned that power directly to the Emperor Meiji. Rather than one event, extending from the late Edo period to the beginning of the Meiji era, the Meiji Ishin was a chain of events, which once set in motion, brought enormous political, social, and cultural changes to Japan. 15 The term ben (弁, 辯,) or kotoba (言葉,ことば) is commonly used to refer to the many dialects of Japanese, more properly referred to as hōgen (方言), most often variations of standard Japanese (hyōjungo, or “standard language,” or kyōtsūgo, “common language.”) For example, the Ōsakan dialect is typically referred to as Ōsaka-ben and the Kyōto dialect is typically referred to as Kyō-ben.” 16A yukata (浴衣) (literally, “bath clothes”) characteristically is a casual, summer kimono made of cotton, which people often wear at home or in public to various festivals and celebrations during warm months, such as fireworks displays or Bon-odori (盆踊), the Bon dance held during the Obon or Bon (盆), the Festival of the dead. The yukata is also common to traditional Japanese inns or ryokan (旅館) for after bath wear. 17 Geta (下駄) are a traditional form of Japanese footwear closely resembling Western clogs or “flip-flops.” A kind of sandal, they have a raised wooden


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base to keep the foot above the ground, held onto the foot by means of a fabric thong. Geta are commonly worn with traditional clothing such as kimono or yukata, but are now often worn in the summer with Western clothes. 18 The Kojiki (古事記) or Record of Ancient Matters (along with the Nihon Shoki) is the first written record of Japan, regarded as a sacred text to the Shintō religion, compiled from oral tradition in 712. It is an important source for ceremonies, customs, fortune telling, and the occult or magical practices of ancient Japan, containing many myths, legends, and historical accounts of the Imperial court. 19 Waseda Daigaku or Waseda University, also referred to as Sodai (早大), located in Tokyō, is one of the top universities in Japan, and was founded in 1882 as Tokyō Senmon Gakko. The school is noted for its liberal envi- ronment, as indicated by its motto, “Gakumon-no-dokuritsu” (学問の独立) or “Independence of Learning.” 20 Zōshigaya Cemetery or Zoshigaya Reien (雑司ヶ谷霊園) is a public cemetery located in Minami-Ikebukuro, Toshima, Tokyō Prefecture, founded in 1874 by the Meiji government. The cemetery is open to deceased persons from any religion, and is the final resting place of not only Lafcadio Hearn but also such other famous people as Sōseki Natsume, Izumi Kyōka, and Tōjō Hideki. 21 Hearn fell in love with this temple while living in Tokyō, in the district known as Ichigaya-Tomihisa-cho, and visited it so often that Setsu discovered that when she could not find him at home, he could probably be found there. Once, when the temple cut down three trees to sell, Hearn was disappointed and grew angry to the point that he considered leaving the town. Still, his funeral was held there for the reason that Setsuko thought there was no other place in Tokyō that was adequate for the occasion. The temple still exists; however, there is nothing there that relates to Hearn. Moreover, the temple is no longer called Kobudera but rather Jishôin En'yûji Temple. 22 A jinrikisha, more commonly called a “rickshaw” in the West, is a two-wheeled cart, typically seating one or two persons, drawn by a human runner. The word jinrikisha (人力車, 人) itself, means “human-powered vehicle.” 23 Kwannon (観音) or Kannon, is a Bodhisattva; one who has achieved enlightenment but postpones Buddhahood until all can be saved. In Japan’s Pure Land Buddhism, whose principal deity is Amida, Kwannon, who personifies compassion and mercy, is the more important of Amida’s two main attendants; the other is Seishi Bosatsu. 24 Jizō is one of the most beloved deities of all Japanese Buddhism, who works to ease the suffering and shorten the sentence of those serving time in


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Purgatory, to deliver the faithful into Amida Buddha’s western paradise, and to answer the prayers of the living for health, success, children, and all manner of petitions. In modern Japan, Jizō is a friend to all, never frightening, even to children, and his many manifestations, often cute, even cartoon-like, incorporate Taoist, Buddhist, and Shintō components. 25 In Buddhism, sutra refers to holy scriptures, many of which are regarded as records of the oral teachings of Gautama Buddha.

Documents

Lafcadio Hearn: An Introduction