Lafcadio Hearn

Aaron Acierno

Pictured left- One of the most famous photographs of Lafcadio Hearn

(Retrieved from: http://www.lib.u-toyama.ac.jp/chuo/hearnlib.html )

Introduction

Over the course of this webpage, I hope to outline the life, legacy, and impact of the Greek writer and translator Lafcadio Hearn. Our class was first introduced to Hearn during the second week, when he was compared to other scholars of Yokai, including Toriyama Sekien, Yanagita Kunio, and Mizuki Shigeru. Surely, one of the peculiarities of Hearn is his entrance into our realm of study which is inherently related to native and indigenous Japanese cultures and scholars. Hearn (or Koizumi Yakumo, as he was known in Japan) has experienced criticism for his work, stemming from what Sukehiro Hirakawa describes as ‘cross-Pacific misunderstandings’ [1]. Additionally, regarding his works, George Hughes writes that, regarding the controversy of his writings, that it “still polarizes readers into positions of endorsement and admiration, or distrust and dislike.” [2]

Regardless, Lafcadio Hearn is a recurring figure all throughout the history of Japanese culture and folklore. Following the release and worldwide success of the film Kwaidan, there came about a ‘renaissance’ of sorts for better understanding Hearn [3]. Elsewhere, Westerners have been fascinated with Hearn’s perspective on Shinto traditions. Finally, scholars of all cultures have been captivated by the blending of cultures as Japanese texts are translated to English, and his English texts translated back into Japanese [4]. It is my hope that my work here can provide the adequate background to being able to appreciate Hearn’s life and text no matter the reader’s perspective.

Childhood and History

Although a champion for Japanese culture, Hearn was born in Santa Maura in 1850, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. His father Charles was an Irishman and Surgeon-Major in the English Infantry Regiment, and his mother Rosa Cassimati was a Greek woman from Cerigo. Due to his father’s profession, he spent his childhood with his mother until the age of two, when they moved to Dublin, Ireland. Much of Hearn’s childhood followed a similar trajectory of uncertainty in both his family and home life. Hearn lives without both his parents at the age of four, when his mother returns to Cerigo and father is reassigned to Crimea. Two years later, his parents would divorce and both would remarry within the next year. Hearn would later attend St. Cuthbert, a catholic boarding school in Great Britain. Within his class, his friends and classmates noted Hearn to be good-humored and a mischief-maker, often pulling pranks and making jokes. As a child, he suffered an eye injury while attending a British school in a playground incident, which left him disfigured for the remainder of his life. For this reason, most photographs taken of him were from his right side, hiding his injury [5].

In 1869, when Hearn was 19 years old, he would move to Cincinnati and live in poverty for the next eight years. He decided to make the trip after he received a small cash sum from his great-aunt’s distant relative and friend. At the time, Hearn had difficulty finding his footing in work, although he did find that he had an affinity for writing. During this time, he was a writer for both The Enquirer and Commercial. Jeff Suess described Hearn’s articles in a 2018 article as “[he wrote] about the dock workers, gravediggers and poor people. He was fascinated by African-American culture, and wrote about taboo subjects. [6]” He lost his job with The Enquirer in 1874 following his marriage to Alethea Foley, a black woman born into slavery. His marriage to Foley was highly controversial considering anti-miscegenation laws at the time and only lasted until the following year. In 1977, Hearn would move to New Orleans and write for The New Orleans Daily Item, Times-Democrat, Harper’s Weekly, and Scribner’s Magazine. Here, he wrote about similar topics to that in Cincinnati: taboo and dark topics of the city that were only talked about behind closed doors and small circles. Following his work in New Orleans, he would travel often over the next few years, going from New Orleans to Philadelphia, to the West Indies, to Canada, and finally to Japan [5].

Life In Japan

Travelling through Canada and to Japan, Hearn was commissioned to write about Japan for a piece for Harper’s Magazine in 1890. At this time, Hearn published a book written during his time in the French West Indies, appropriately named Two Years in the French West Indies. At the time, his commission with Harper’s fell through, and would become a schoolteacher in Izumo in Japan. One of Hearn’s co-workers thought that a wife would help cure his loneliness and eccentricity, and help arrange a marriage to Koizumi Setsu, the daughter of a samurai-class retainer. The marriage proceeded forward quickly, and the two were married in a matter of a few weeks. When the two met, Hearn knew only a little Japanese and Setsu only a little English. Over their next several years, they helped teach each other their primary languages, which would help Hearn greatly over his career. The two also had four children: Kazuo, Iwao, Kiyoshi, and Suzuko Koizumi. This was the time that Hearn would also officially adopt his Japanese name: Koizumi Yakumo. In comparison to Hearn’s previous marriage, the two were tightly knit and in-love for the entirety of their lives, even developing pet names for one another and their ‘own little language’. This event in Hearn’s life would help provide the foundation for his love for Japanese culture and language [5].

Pictured left: Hearn and his Wife, notice the way Hearn is facing. Retrieved from https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/entertainment_life/tricentennial/article_5eb514f2-d75b-11e7-b08a-b393fdbbf7dd.html

Japan, An Attempt at Interpretation

During the course of Hearn’s time in Japan, he learned many things about the culture, including folklore, religion, and social practice. In 1901, news of Hearn’s exploits reached all corners of the globe, and eventually reached Cornell president J. G. Schurman, who wished for Hearn to perform lectures on his travels to his campus. The stipulations of the arrangement asked for Hearn to perform 20 lectures to Cornell in exchange for $1,000. Additionally, these lectures could be performed at any other campus or location at his discretion. In 1902, Cornell University was struck with a typhoid epidemic and could not come up with the $1,000 dollars they had originally promised. For these reasons, as outlined in a letter from Schurman to Hearn, meant the cancellation of the lectures. This did not stop Hearn, as he continued to revise the lectures he originally intended on delivering, and wrote them in a framework of a publication. Hearn eventually published Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation, a 481 page work containing all 20 of the original lectures Hearn intended on delivering to Cornell, including two extra chapters at the beginning and end of the book. These two chapters are ‘Difficulties’ and ‘Reflections’ respectively, and former which will be briefly discussed later. Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation was published in September 1904, the same month that Lafcadio Hearn died. It serves as a powerful reflection on Hearn’s life and love of learning from his point-of-view. Hearn’s view on whimsical nature of Japan is well-reflected in the text, which includes clues into the wonderfully-deviant and mysterious world in which he spent the latter part of his life [5].

One important consideration I would like to briefly discuss is potential controversy that has come about among scholars regarding the writings of Lafcadio Hearn. From class and from previous assertions, we know that Hearn loved Japanese culture and the land itself, yet some scholars have claimed that Hearn’s perspective of the Japan culture has been ‘westernized’, and his love for the region may have led to a work that is not entirely as objective as Hearn makes it out to be. One such example is related to religion, namely, Hearn’s interpretation on the Shinto religion in Japanese culture. In Miner’s essay Hearn and Japan: An Attempt At Interpretation, he notes the importance of religion to Hearn’s work. Of the 20 lectures that were intended to be delivered at Cornell, the titles of 10 of them are related in some way to religion. A further reading of every piece shows that religion is a reoccurring theme and present throughout all of his work. Then, to refer to an essay by Toda titled Hearn’s Romantic Representation of Shinto, the Way of Japanese Gods, he makes the argument that Hearn ‘packages’ the Shinto religion in a digestible way for western audiences that permits readers to accept the premise it has in modern religion. That is, a discussion on Shinto religion as a valid and valuable world religion that promotes good and contains a unifying sense of community within the members. However, Toda makes an argument that Hearn’s function as an outsider author permits him to transform Shinto religion into a body which is consumable for Western audiences. This can be both a positive and a negative: a positive as it allows the transfer of religious ideas from one culture to the next, but a negative as a large sense of the traditional Japanese interpretation of Shinto religion is lost. Again, we see the distinction between the Japan that Hearn interpreted, and the Japan that the Japanese experience [8]. Although Hearn does not shy away from the possibility that he is wrong, as the very title of the piece of work states that his interpretations are merely ‘an attempt’. In fact, much of the doubts offered by critics may have been addressed in the first chapter of his book, titled Difficulties. He makes a conscious effort to discuss the total imperative of religion in customs which he states “any true comprehension of social conditions requires more than a superficial acquaintance with religious conditions.” Such a relationship with religion reveals the true difficulty in transcribing Japanese culture to any one individual which is not intimately familiar with their religious background. Regardless, many westerners whom have been interested in Shinto religion have often turned to Hearn’s writing if for no other reason that an introduction to the culture, which has continually grown in interest since his death [7].

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

In this section, I hope to discuss the Kwaidan, both the popular film and the book published by Hearn in 1903.

Of all of Hearn’s works, many could argue that there are none which have contributed more to his legacy than Kwaidan. Much of the ‘renaissance’ of Lafcadio Hearn can be attributed to the commercial success of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 film which borrows the same name of Hearn’s publication. Kobayashi’s creation was a worldwide success, amassing awards from the Cannes Film Festival, Mainichi Film Concours, and even receiving an Oscar nomination. In the film, four horror stories are presented to the audience separately over the course of its runtime. These stories are “The Black Hair”, “The Woman of the Snow”, “Hoichi the Earless”, and “In a Cup of Tea”. In fact, the book published by Hearn contains 17 separate writings of which four are those represented in Kobayashi’s film. Additionally, there are three essays written at the end of the book under the heading Insect-Studies, written on butterflies, mosquitoes, and ants, respectively [9,10].

Pictured right: Poster for Kwaidan Movie (1964) Retrieved from: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kwaidan/

In the preface of the Kwaidan, Hearn makes an effort to inform his readers that most of the tales he has written about have originated from Japanese literature. He also notes that it is likely that a few of the stories have strictly Chinese roots, but have been retold by the Japanese to reflect the values of a Japanese reader or listener. Of the 20 essays he has written in Kwaidan, the origin story of two essays is particular. Firstly, the story of Yuki-Onna was not one that he had noted or read in his studies, but rather was told to him by a farmer in Chofu, Nishitamagori in Musashi province. Hearn notes that he does not know if this tale is one that has ever been recorded in Japanese history. Second, the story of “Riki-Baka” is one from his own experiences, and he notes that he has written the story as closely to his experience as possible, only changing the names of individuals in the story where necessary [10].

The four stories portrayed in Kobayashi’s film will be briefly discussed here, and their parallel story in Kwaidan. The first story, “The Black Hair”, was actually not borrowed from Kwaidan but from a story called “The Reconciliation” in Shadowings. Hearn’s published book Shadowings contains 16 stories and sketches under the headings published in 1900. In this story, a Kyoto samurai remarries after his poverty-stricken first marriage leaves him unhappy. Eventually he decides to leave his second wife and returns to his first wife, apologizing for leaving her. The samurai soon realizes that his wife was not actually alive, but had commit suicide after she was left. The second story is “The Woman of the Snow” is based on a story Hearn obtained during his travels from a farmer in Musashi province. In this story, a beautiful woman in white appears to two lumberjacks in a forest. She kills one of the men, but only knocks the other man unconscious, and tells him that she will return to kill him if he ever speaks of his experience ever again. The third story is “Hoichi the Earless”, which appeared in Kwaidan in 1903. The story involves a blind biwa played named Hoichi who lives in a temple with a band of priests. When he is approached at night by spirits of the Heike clan, he foolishly follows to play the biwa for them. In order to be spared from the spirits, he has the holy sutra painted all over his body, however the priests do not paint the text on his ears, and they are ripped off by the spirits. The final story is “In a Cup of Tea”, comes from Kotto: Being Japanese Curios, With Sundry Cobwebs which was published in 1902 and is a collection of 20 essays. In this story, a samurai is drinking a cup of tea when he sees the face of a man in the reflection. Discarding the cup of tea, he pours another, but the face remains. Drinking this cup, the man in the reflection returns to him during the night, and says that he will seek revenge in 16 days. The story ends before we see what happens to the samurai, but it is left to the imagination of the reader [5].

Conclusion

In this project, it is my hope that I have outlined a prolific writer and legendary individual in the field of Japanese culture and folklore, Lafcadio Hearn. A man that had humble beginnings, Hearn traveled across the world and had many experiences prior to his arrival in Japan, followed by his subsequent marriage and assimilation into Japanese society. In his position as a foreigner, he viewed Japan from a Western point of view, allowing readers a unique look into the religious customs and cultural norms of a country that he loved so much. He was able to relay his experiences through Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation, where he published a series of lectures originally intended for a Cornell University lecture series hoping to unwrap Japanese culture for Western audiences. One of his most popular works, Kwaidan, outlined 17 particular creatures that he encountered on his journey through Japan, two of which may have been recorded for the first time in Japanese history. I also outlined Kobayashi’s film Kwaidan which was extremely important in the world’s introduction and renaissance to Lafcadio Hearn and his stories. One ending quote I would like to present comes from the first essay in Hearn’s Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation regarding the charm and whimsical nature of Japan as a country and culture.

“As first perceived, the outward strangeness of things in Japan produces (in certain minds, at least) a queer thrill impossible to describe,--a feeling of weirdness which comes to us only with the perception of the totally unfamiliar. You find yourself moving through queer small streets full of odd small people, wearing robes and sandals of extraordinary shapes; and you can scarcely distinguish the sexes at sight. The houses are constructed and furnished in ways alien to all your experience; and you are astonished to find that you cannot conceive the use or meaning of numberless things on display in the shops. Food-stuffs of unimaginable derivation; utensils of enigmatic forms; emblems incomprehensible of some mysterious belief; strange masks and toys that commemorate legends of gods or demons; odd figures, too, of the gods themselves, with monstrous ears and smiling faces,--all these you may perceive as you wander about; though you must also notice telegraph-poles and type-writers, electric lamps and sewing machines. Everywhere on signs and hangings, and on the backs of people passing by, you will observe wonderful Chinese characters; and the wizardry of all these texts makes the dominant tone of the spectacle.”

-Lafcadio Hearn [7]

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