Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn , 1850-1904, American-Japanese author, b. Lefkás, Ionian Islands, of Irish-Greek parentage. He was educated in Ireland, England, and France before immigrating to the United States in 1869. Handicapped by partial blindness, Hearn was a colorful, imaginative, but morbidly discontented man, who was most admired for his sensitive use of language in writing about the macabre and in creating strange exotic moods. Hearn first attracted attention with the originality and highly polished style of his "Fantastics," a series of weird sketches that appeared in a New Orleans paper. His first published book was One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882), a translation of six Gautier stories. In 1890 he went to Japan to write a series of articles for an American publisher. There he spent the rest of his life, writing what is considered his best work. He married a Japanese woman, taught in Japanese universities, and became a Japanese citizen in 1895, taking the name Yakumo Koizumi. Of his 12 books written during this period, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), Kokoro (1896), Japanese Fairy Tales (1902), and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904) are most memorable.

Bibliography: See biography by E. Stevenson (1961).

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904), born in Santa Maura (Levkas) of Irish-Greek parentage, educated in England. He worked as a journalist in Cincinnati and incurred scandal by living openly with a mulatto woman. He then lived in Martinique, an experience which produced Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) and a novel, Youma (1890). In 1890 he went to Japan, where he married a Japanese wife and spent the rest of his life. He published several works which vividly evoke the landscapes, mythology, and customs of his adopted country, including Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), Out of the East (1895), and Japan: an attempt at interpretation (1904).

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904), born in the Ionian Islands, of Irish‐Greek parentage, was educated in France and England, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1869. Handicapped by poverty, semi‐blindness, a morbid inferiority complex, and a scandal resulting from his relations with a mulatto woman, he had an unsuccessful career as a journalist in Cincinnati, and then lived for a time in New Orleans, where he wrote Fantastics, a series of weird newspaper sketches. His first book, One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882), stories translated from Gautier, was followed by Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884), reconstructing fantastically beautiful stories from the exotic literature which fascinated him; Gombo Zhêbes (1885), a collection of Negro‐French proverbs; and Some Chinese Ghosts (1887), beautifully polished Oriental legends. After a visit to Grand Isle, he wrote Chita: A Memory of Last Island (1889). Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) contains sketches based on his residence in Martinique (1887–89), from which he also drew material for his novel Youma (1890). During a brief residence in New York, he wrote Karma, a weak novel, and did some hackwork that enabled him to go to Japan (1890). There he spent the rest of his life, marrying the daughter of a Samurai family, and becoming a Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo. As a schoolteacher in the small town of Matsue he observed the feudal customs described in his Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). For almost ten years he occupied the chair of English literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo, and his lectures were posthumously published from verbatim transcripts made by his students. During this period he wrote 12 books on the life, customs, flora, and fauna of his adopted country. His stories of Japan were frequently set in the form of essays, and among the volumes in which he best catches the mood of the place and the people, or in which he most successfully treats the supernatural, are Out of the East (1895), Kokoro (1896), In Ghostly Japan (1899), Shadowings (1900), A Japanese Miscellany (1901), Kottø (1902), Kwaidan (1904), and The Romance of the Milky Way (1905). Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904) was the summation of his sympathetic and acute observations on the mind and the soul of the people among whom he had chosen to live.