Lafcadio Hearn

Upon his arrival in Japan in 1890, Lafcadio Hearn found himself enamored with the culture, people, and stories of the country, and would make Japan his home until his death in 1904. His collections of stories published during this time became the most popular of Hearn's writings, and earned him veneration worldwide as not only a great translator of Japanese mythology, but as a sensational teller of strange and wonderfully macabre tales. "Kwaidan"...

Lafcadio Hearn was probably as responsible as anyone for opening the Western mind to the ways of the Japanese, having lived and worked there, marrying a Japanese woman and becoming a naturalized citizen. He made his fame through translating Japanese ghost stories, but he also wrote a vast amount of essays and articles, with this being a collection of short, thoughtful pieces. (Goodreads)

An often referred to and well-respected account, mainly on Martinique, but also on Trinidad, St. Pierre, St. Kitt's, St. Lucia, Granada, etc. The author is most well-known for his works on Japan. A series of light, amusing and evocative sketches of Martinique at the end of the 19th century. This tells of the two years the author lived in the West Indies in the late 1880's. An appendix includes some Creole melodies and the illustrations are interesting'....

A brief but delightful insight into Japanese culture by an author who (from my experience) has consistently captured the ways of the Japanese people of the time. (Goodreads)

Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn by Lafcadio Hearn These chapters, for the most part, are reprinted from Lafcadio Hearn's "Interpretations of Literature," 1915, from his "Life and Literature," 1916, and from his "Appreciations of Poetry," 1917. Three chapters appear here for the first time. They are all taken from the student notes of Hearn's lectures at the University of Tokyo, 1896-1902, sufficiently described in the earlier...

In Exotics and Retrospectives, Lafcadio Hearn plays the role not only of tour guide, but also dreamscaper. Whether through his narrative recounting of Japanese customs and traditional tales, or while sharing his personal observations and flights of fancy, Hearn's graceful and poetic prose enables the reader to enter a foreign world. Covering subjects from Buddhism to beauty to the color blue to being, he gently, honestly, and humorously lays bare...

Journalist-by-trade Lafcadio Hearn used his wanderer's eye and guileless, graceful style to provide elegant chronicles for an English-speaking world fascinated by the exotic sensibilities of Japan. He set himself apart from others who attempted to translate the life and culture of this island country through his ability to reveal the truth of his subjects artfully-flawlessly exemplifying the Japanese aesthetic through his voice, as well as through...

Excerpt: "While engaged upon this little mosaic work of legend and fable, I felt much like one of those merchants told of in Sindbad's Second Voyage, who were obliged to content themselves with gathering the small jewels adhering to certain meat which eagles brought up from the Valley of Diamonds. I have had to depend altogether upon the labor of translators for my acquisitions, and these seemed too small to deserve separate literary setting. By cutting...

Stories from strange books. The reconciliation ; A legend of Fugen-Bosatsu ; The screen-maiden ; The corpse-rider ; The sympathy of Benten ; The gratitude of the Samébito -- Japanese studies. Sémi (Cicadae) ; Japanese female names ; Old Japanese songs -- Fantasies. Noctilucae ; A mystery of crowds ; Gothic horror ; Levitation ; Nightmare-touch ; Readings from a dream-book ; In a pair of eyes.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan is a bewitching look into a world that few Westerners saw in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a world that still endures in many ways in spite of the changes that have taken place during the modernization of Japan.