Chinese Ghost Stories: Curious Tales of the Supernatural

About Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was born on the Greek island of Lefkas the son of an Anglo-Irish surgeon in the British army and a Greek mother. After his parent's divorce when he was six he was brought up in Dublin by a great aunt. At the age of nineteen he went to America eventually ending up in New Orleans as a newspaper reporter. His flight from Western materialism brought him to Japan in 1890 where he worked for an English newspaper the Kobe Chronicle and taught in various schools. In 1896 he began teaching English literature at Tokyo Imperial University a position he held until 1903 and at Waseda University. Hearn married a samurai's daughter Koizumi Setsu became a Japanese citizen and a Buddhist and changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo. At the young age of 54 he died of a heart attack. Hearn's search for beauty and tranquility for pleasing customs and lasting values made him a confirmed Japanophile. His keen intellect poetic imagination and wonderful clear style permitted him to penetrate to the very essence of things Japanese. He became the great interpreter of things Japanese to the West. Hearn's most famous work is a collection of lectures entitled Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (published posthumously in 1905). His other books on Japan include Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894) Out of the East (1895) Kokoro (1896) Gleanings in Buddha Fields (1897) Exotics and Retrospectives (1898) In Ghostly Japan (1899) Shadowings (1900) A Japanese Miscellany (1901) and Kwaidan (1904).Foreword by Victoria B. Cass noted author and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of Dangerous Women: Warriors Grannies and Geishas of the Ming and In the Realm of the Gods: Lands Myths and Legends of China.