Lafcadio Hearn's Japan : an anthology of his writings on the country and it's people

257 Pages·2011·1.36 MB·English

by  Hearn

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Lafcadio Hearn’s
Japan

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Lafcadio Hearn’s
Japan
An Anthology of His Writings
on the Country and Its People
Edited and with an Introduction
Donald Richie
by
TUTTLE Publishing
Tokyo Rutland, Vermont Singapore
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Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
www.tuttlepublishing.com
©1997 by Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Co., Inc.
©1997 Donald Richie (Text Only)
Cover image: Japanese Gallery, London
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy-
ing, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
prior written permission from the publisher.
First edition, 1997
LCC Card No. 96060931
ISBN: 978-4-8053-0873-8
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Contents
Preface page 7
Introduction 9
PART ONE :The Land 17
Strangeness and Charm 23
The Chief City of the Province of the Gods 33
In a Japanese Garden 60
Three Popular Ballads 92
In the Cave of the Children’s Ghosts 98
A Letter from Japan 113
Ho¯rai 127
PART TWO :The People 131
Bits of Life and Death 139
Of Women’s Hair 155
A Street Singer 165
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6 Contents
Kimiko 169
Yuko: A Reminiscence 179
On a Bridge 185
The Case of O-Dai 189
Drifting 195
Diplomacy 202
A Passional Karma 205
Survivals 226
Notes 235
Chronology 246
Glossary 248
Bibliography 253
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Preface
Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) spent fourteen years in Japan—he
arrived in Yokohama in April 1890 and died in Tokyo in September
1904.
If this span seems somehow short, it is because his reputation is
based upon his writings on this country and because these are volu-
minous. Even now he remains somehow representative of Japan,
and his books about the country and its people—not counting his
collected letters and his uncollected articles—amount to over four
thousand printed pages.
Attempting a single-volume anthology thus means leaving out
much: over nine-tenths. At the same time it offers the opportunity
to create a kind of narrative that reflects Hearn’s expatriate life and
what he saw and felt.
My choices for this anthology are determined by my belief that
Hearn, besides being an occasional romancer, was also a reliable
observer who has preserved for us a detailed account of turn-of-the-
century Japan.
To indicate this and at the same time to illustrate the changes in
attitude that informed his later writings, I have decided upon an
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8 Preface
anthology in two parts, purposely patterned after those of his time,
dealing with place and people. The first half of the book is a descrip-
tion, Hearn’s vision of Japan during the early years of his stay. The sec-
ond half is devoted to his coming to terms with the further realities
of the place, the Japanese themselves. Such a structure shows Hearn
subjectively describing the look of the country, and then objectively
dramatizing the people he met—and the many he didn’t . . . those
ghosts that so people his landscape.
Everything selected is given in its entirety except for one section,
“Three Popular Ballads,” where I include the setting and leave out
the ballads. I have also retained Hearn’s original punctuation, his
inconsistent spelling of place names, his treatment of Japanese
words, and most of his footnotes, which often contain further
information.
—D. R.
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Introduction
In the spring of 1890 the forty-year-old Lafcadio Hearn was offered
a trip to Japan by Harper’s Magazine.He was to write about his expe-
riences and thus inform his readers about this land then already
famous for being thought quaint and picturesque.
Just a year earlier Sir Edwin Arnold had written that if the reader
wanted to know what Japan looked like, he or she should just “look
at the nearest Japanese fan,” which argues for an abundance of such
in England and other countries where the fad for japonaiserie contin-
ued. There were indeed so many quaint and picturesque curios loose
in the West that Amy Lowell could later report that the interest in
Japanese poetry which so distinguished her own verse began in the
rooms of her childhood—crammed with Japanese objects that her
brother Percival had shipped back while representing the United
States government.
In accepting the magazine’s terms, Hearn wrote that in a country
already so well trodden as Japan he could not be expected to discov-
er anything completely new. Rather, what he hoped to do was “to cre-
ate, in the minds of the readers, a vivid impression of [his emphasis]
living in Japan . . . as one taking part in the daily existence of the
common people, and thinking with their thoughts.”