FROM LEUCADIA TO MATSUE --- AN ODYSSEY
by
Ralph Fujimoto
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club
January 4, 1999
Mount Fuji, or Fuji-yama as it is called in Japan, is an imposing sight with its majestic slope rising
nearly 12,400 feet.
Fuji-yama has been scaled by many each year for one reason or another --- some older citizens of
Japan out of faith in the divinity of the mountain, some out of adventure and others such as me
and my late wife, Margaret, out of our desire to fulfill a wish we had for many years to see the
sunrise from atop Mt. Fuji. We were told that it was not very difficult to climb but our Japanese
host, apparently concerned for our safety, had arranged for a young lady guide to accompany
us.
An early wake-up call in a Tokyo hotel room, a bountiful Japanese breakfast of broiled fish, dried
seaweed, boiled eggs, picked radish, miso soup, a potage of potatoes, turnips, carrots and lotus
roots and rice. After a long bus ride we arrived at the fifth station along the mountain trail where
most walkers began their trek to the summit.
After several hours of climbing, we reached the seventh station in late afternoon. Margaret,
feeling tired, decided to stay over night in the hut with several other hikers. The guide and I
proceeded on our journey and reached the eighth station at dusk. Whiling away the evening with
other hikers, mostly young Japanese males, we exchanged snacks and swapped stories before
turning in at midnight. With the temperature near freezing, the wind piercing through the cracks in
the hut, even the thick futon and the clothes we wore --- boots, scarves and hat --- failed to keep
us warm.
Our 2:00 a.m wake-up call at 11,000 feet above sea level was in total darkness, wind and driving
rain. My first thought was that the final climb to the summit would be postponed for a time.
However, that was not to be, as everyone, with flashlights in hand began the climb in the
darkness. Viewing the lights snaking upward in the darkness, reminded me of a string of
Christmas lights. Wet and slippery volcanic rock had now become our path. I was happy that
my young escort was there to lead the way. After two hours of exhausting climb, we reached the
summit at 4:30 a.m. We had hoped that the weather would clear for us to view the sunrise but it
was not to be. So ended our dream of viewing the sunrise from Mount Fuji.
.
In 1898, a journalist/writer, after a more successful ascent to the summit, phrased his thoughts
poetically:
"But the view --- the view for a hundred leagues --- and the light of the far faint dreamy world --- and the fairy vapors of morning --- and the marvelous wreathings of cloud: all this, and only
this, consoles me for the labor and the pain...Other pilgrims, earlier climbers --- poised upon the
highest crag, with faces turned to the tremendous East --- are clapping their hands in Shinto
prayer, saluting the mighty Day..The immense poetry of the moment enters into me with a thrill. I
know that the colossal vision before me has already become a memory ineffaceable --- a memory
of which no luminous detail can fade till the hour when thought itself must fade, and the dust of
these eyes be mingled with the dust of the myriad million eyes that also have looked in ages
forgotten before my birth, from the summit supreme of Fuji to the Rising of the Sun."
Perhaps the writer in his twilight years, reflecting on his wretched childhood and unsettled
adulthood, had come to appreciate the conventional life as a family man he was leading and
wanted to view from atop its highest point, the country that he had learned to love.
He was born June 27, 1850 on the island of Leucadia in the Ionian Sea. His father was Charles
Bush Hearn, an Irish surgeon in the British Army, and his mother was Rosa Antonia Cassimati,
partly Greek and Italian. He was baptized under the Orthodox rite, as Patricio Lafcadio Tessima
Carlos Hearn.
In July, 1852, with Charles Hearn on call in the West Indies, his wife and two-year old child,
Lafcadio, were sent to Dublin to stay with the Hearn clan. A sister of Charles Hearn's mother,
Mrs. Sarah Bernane, took sympathy on the plight of Rosa and her son and took them both into
her home in a suburb of Dublin. Sarah was a widow with no children, but her deceased husband
had left her quite wealthy.
In the interval between, September of 1853 and 1856, Charles Hearn returned from his
assignment in Grenada and lived for a short time in Dublin with his wife and son. He soon left for
action in the Crimea leaving behind his wife pregnant with their second son, Daniel James, who
was born on her voyage back to Greece in 1854. Lafcadio, age four, was left with Aunt Sarah.
At the age of six, Lafcadio's parents divorced and both were remarried. Rosa's new husband, a
Greek/Italian, demanded that she give up custody of her two sons by Charles Hearn. Lafcadio
was never to see his parents again.
Lafcadio was now to be raised by great aunt Sarah Bernane who promised to make him one of
her heirs. Having been converted to Roman Catholicism, Sarah tried to teach him the tenets of
the Church but with little success.
Knowing now that her grand nephew was not growing up to be a good Roman Catholic, she
turned her fiscal affairs over to a distant relation of her deceased husband, Henry Hearn
Molyneaux, who became her financial advisor. Lafcadio was sent to study at a Catholic School in
France near Rouen --- the Petite Seminaire. Unable to cope with the regimented life, he left the
school within the year. Brought back to Ireland, Lafcadio was enrolled in St. Cuthbert's College
where he excelled in English Composition.
It was during the school years at St. Cuthbert's that an accident left him blind in one eye. This
misfortune was followed by the crushing news that his benefactor, Sarah Bernane, had suffered a
financial reversal and would no longer be able to send Lafcadio to school or to support him. He
was sent to live with relatives of Sarah's former maid in the poorer section of London. His new
guardians, however, left him to fend for himself, paying no attention to how he occupied his time
or where he slept. Lafcadio was to live the life of a vagabond at age eighteen.
However, Henry Molyneux, Sarah's financial advisor, had recovered financially in the meantime,
and, hearing of Lafcadio's plight, purchased for him a one-way ticket on a ship to America. Thus
began the strange odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn.
CINCINNATI
After landing in New York, Lafcadio Hearn went by train to the home of Molyneaux's sister,
Frances Anne, and her husband, Thomas Cullinan in Cincinnati. The welcome he received from
them was cold and very short--Thomas Cullinan took a quick look at the boy with one large
protruding eye and the other whitish blind eye, gave him five dollars which he had received from
Sarah Bernane and, wishing him good luck, showed him the door.
Again, at nineteen years of age, Lafcadio was forced to join the street people, sleeping wherever
he could find shelter, sometimes on a haystack in someone's barn.
One day, he met an English printer, Henry Watkins, who offered him a job as errand-boy and
janitor in his print shop. He learned typesetting and, in time, the two became good friends.
Because of his bad eyesight Hearn could not concentrate for long period of time at typesetting.
With the help of Watkins, he found several part-time jobs-- as a milling clerk in a printing office;
as a proof-reader for a trade journal; as a writer for a weekly family paper; and as private
secretary to Thomas Vicker, Pastor of the Cincinnati Unitarian Church.
His love of reading took him to spending his spare time at the Cincinnati Public Library where he
studied the works of French writers --- Gautier, Baudelaire, Pierre Loti, Gerard de Nerval and
Flaubert.
In 1872, while employed as a compositor and proof-reader for Robert Clarke & Co., a publishing
company, he submitted his review of Tennyson's Idylls of the King to the managing editor of the
Cincinnati Enquirer. The piece was accepted for publication in three issues of the paper. Hearn
continued to write pieces for the Enquirer such as book reviews, interviews with local artists and
feature articles. He was later hired to join the Enquirer's staff .
However, one afternoon in August, 1875, he reported for work at the Enquirer but was told that
he was fired because of the discovery that he had been living with a "woman of color" for four
year. Laws against miscegenation were not declared to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme
Court until 1967. He had met the girl, Alethea Foley, who was working as a cook in the cheap
boarding house where Lafcadio lived. Her father had been a slave-owner and her mother a
slave.
Within a short time after his firing, he was offered a job at the Commercial, a newspaper rival of
the Enquirer, where he wrote on subjects widely ranging from the ethereal Frost Fancies, a
meditation on the crystallized shapes and patterns which formed on a cold winter's windows, to
the robust life in Cincinnati's Bucktown with its population of thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts,
and others. Once, in an irrational moment, he volunteered to accompany a steeple-jack on a climb
up the steeple of Cincinnati's highest structure, the Cathedral of St.-Peter-in-Chain.
During his eight years (1869-1877) in the City of Cincinnati, Lafcadio Hearn became known as
its most talented and audacious reporter.
Still angry at being fired from the Enquirer, having been denied the pleasures of his first real lover,
feeling tired and exhausted, he desired a fresh start. Having heard of New Orleans as a place
where living was gracious and leisurely and the climate sub-tropical, he envisioned it as the ideal
place to rest, read, study, translate and write articles for magazines or write books.
NEW ORLEANS
Leaving Cincinnati in October by train and boarding a steamboat on the Mississippi, he arrived in
New Orleans in November 1877 with only twenty dollars in his pocket. He was expecting to
receive a fair remuneration for fourteen articles he had written for the Cincinnati Commercial ---
the amount he received was only twenty five dollars. Unable to live comfortably on his meager
resources, he was forced to sell his clothes and even sleep on park benches.
In the Spring of 1878, the City of New Orleans suffered a yellow fever epidemic which killed
almost seven thousand persons. Hearn came down with dengue fever. After recovering in a
charity hospital, he contracted marsh fever and malaria.
Twenty eight years of age, destitute and demoralized after seven months of unsuccessfully
looking for employment, he found an old friend whom he had met when he first arrived in New
Orleans and through him he was introduced to the editor of an unprofitable newspaper named the
Item. He was immediately hired on basis of his reputation as a journalist in Cincinnati. His writing
proved to be popular and he soon transformed the newspaper into a profitable one, but not
without controversy. As a book critic, he created controversy for having lambasted certain
popular southern novels and by retelling of the life of Buddha. Hearn became interested in
Buddhism after reading The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold and wrote about the subject in
several newspapers and magazines. Many New Orleans clergymen became angry at his
pro-Buddhist writings and began to preach against Hearn.
In 1881, he was offered a job as editor on the New Orleans Times-Democrat. This position
allowed him time to pursue other interests.
Hearn had excelled in his class in English Composition at St. Cuthbert College in England and in
the short time at Petite Seminaire in France, learned enough French to enable him to translate
French into English. However, feeling that he lacked education in a broader sense, he began
collecting an assortment of new and used books on diverse subjects --- Far-Eastern art and
legends, Arabic and Jewish folktales and mysticism, Anthropology and Ethnology, Geology,
Astronomy and Eastern Religion. In his published book Stray Leaves from Strange
Literature(1884) he included his rendition of tales, legends and folktales from his eclectic
collection. Another of his notable books was called Some Chinese Ghosts (1887), an elaboration
of six ghost stories.
Living in the Old Quarters of New Orleans, Hearn learned much about Creole life, foraging for
proverbs and songs. He made friends with the King of Voodoos and the Queen of Voodoos. He
had an interview with one legendary figure, Marie Laveau, an illegimate daughter who, through
her beauty and charm, became the proprietor of a famous bordello and was known as a Conjurer,
consulting both Blacks and Whites. Hearn was the last writer to have interviewed Marie who
died on June 16, 1881. Nearly a century later, gossip had her as a mistress of Lafcadio
Hearn.
Hearn also compiled a cook book La Cuisine Creole in which he wrote:
"Much domestic contentment depends upon the successful preparation of the meal, and as food
rendered indigestible through ignorance in cooking creates discord and unhappiness, it behooves
the young housekeeper to learn the art of cooking".
Little known is the fact that Hearn, in his concern for the downtrodden, established a little
restaurant in New Orleans naming it "The 5-cent Restaurant". Later, he changed the name to
"Hard Times." Unfortunately, it was soon closed because his partner ran away with the money
and the chef.
In the summer of 1884 he went to an island in the Gulf of Mexico called Grand Isle where he
enjoyed the sea air and swimming. He mingled with the local inhabitants listening to their stories.
One, a tale of a little Creole girl found on a beach in the arms of her dead mother during a
hurricane, inspired Hearn to compose a novella titled Chita which was accepted by Harper's
Weekly and published as a book by Harper and Brothers in 1889.
In May of 1887, having become tired of even the pleasant life in New Orleans, Hearn left on a
cruise ship for the island of Martinique, arriving at the port of St. Pierre where Paul Gaugin was
painting the Apple of Paradise. Here he wrote a travel essay, A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics.
With time now his own, he spent hours observing and living life among the local inhabitants ---
the most carefree period of his entire life.
After 18 months in the tropics, Hearn visited New York intending to see some old
friends--Elizabeth Bisland, who later became editor of the Cosmopolitan Magazine, and an
ex-reporter friend from Cincinnati, Joseph Tunison. Not successful in locating either one and
with no place to stay, he called on an old friend, Dr. George Gould, in Philadelphia. During his
stay, Hearn completed two works--Youma --- a story of a West Indian Slave which was published
in 1890 and Two Years in the French West Indies, also published in 1890.
Dr. Gould attempted to care for Hearn's myopic right eye. The doctor opined that "intellect was
largely the product of vision", adding that everything good and bad in Hearn's life was the result
of his myopia. The doctor recommended that he wear thick-lensed glasses but Hearn refused,
saying that it would strain his one remaining functioning eye.
During the New Orleans Exposition of 1885, Hearn had written several articles on the Japanese
exhibit which were published in the Harper's Weekly and Harper's Bazaar. Reading Percival
Lowell's The Soul of the Far East only increased his interest in Japan. William Patten, Art Editor
at Harper's Magazine, suggested that Hearn might write some additional articles about Japan.
Ever since Commodore Perry opened Japanese ports to Western trade, the American public was
eager to learn about that mysterious country.
Accordingly, on November 28, 1889, Harper and Brothers accepted Hearn's proposal to write a
book about living in Japan. However, not trusting his overly sensitive nature, Harpers offered no
written contract nor did it advance Hearn any money up front. To finance his trip, Hearn wrote a
few articles for Harpers, and accepted an assignment translating into English, Anatole France's
novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard which he completed in two weeks for the sum of
one-hundred and fifteen dollars.
Some other notable personages whose lives Lafcadio touched during his stay in the United States
were: George Washington Cable, a churchman, author and touring companion of Mark Twain,
Dr. Rudolph Matas, a Spanish surgeon in New Orleans, who is known to have performed the
first successful pre-planned attempt at intraspinal cocainization, Lieutenant Oscar Terry Crosby, a
West Point graduate, who befriended Hearn in a New Orleans "parlour" as they discussed Herbert
Spencer, founder of evolutionary philosophy, in whose works Hearn found intellectual support for
his own feelings, particularly regarding his liberal views on race and reverence for all forms of
faith, and Henry E. Krehbiel, journalist and music critic for the New York Herald, a generous
friend whom Hearn insulted before leaving for Japan and whose parting words to Hearn were "
Dear Hearn --- You can go to Japan or you can go to Hell!"
In much the same way, Hearn managed to break with almost all his old friends. Some who knew
him well suggested that Hearn was overly sensitive and was easily hurt by some words or minor
slight. Given his small stature (5 feet, 3 inches in height) one protruding eye, the other eye blind,
he never felt comfortable in social settings and may have carried over this feeling even when he
was alone with friends.
One friendship which endured was with Elizabeth Bisland to whom he wrote his last letter on
leaving the United States --- half a love letter, half an apology. Hearn signs off "Forgive me all
my horrid ways, my dear, sweet ghostly sister".
With that, Lafcadio Hearn left New York City by train across the Canadian plains and the
Rockies. He then boarded the steamship Abyssinia in Vancouver on March 17th, bound for
Japan.
JAPAN
Hearn arrived in Yokohama, Japan on April 12, 1890.These are his first impressions while being
led through the streets of Yokohama on a Jin-riki-sha:
"It is with the delicious surprise of the first journey through Japanese streets --- unable to make
one's kuruma-runner understand anything but gestures, frantic gestures to roll on anywhere,
everywhere, since all is unspeakably pleasurable, and new --- that one first receives the real
sensation of being in the Orient, in this Far East so much read of, so long dreamed of yet, as the
eyes bear witness, heretofore all unknown. There is romance even in the first full consciousness
of this rather commonplace fact; but for me this consciousness is transfigured inexpressibly by
the divine beauty of the day. There is some charm unutterable in the morning air, cool with the
coolness of Japanese spring and wind-waves from the snowy cone of Fuji; a charm perhaps due
rather to softest lucidity than to any positive tone--an atmospheric limpidity extraordinary with
only a suggestion of blue in it, through which the most distant objects appear focused with
amazing sharpness. The sun is only pleasantly warm; the jinrikisha, or kuruma, is the most cosy
little vehicle imaginable; and the street-vistas, as seen above the dancing white
mushroom-shaped hat of my sandaled runner, have an allurement of which I fancy that I could
never weary."
Two weeks spent visiting temples and shrines found Hearn without money or a job. He had
broken his ties with Harpers in a fit of pique, but he had two friends--Professor Chamberlain, an
English Professor who knew the Japanese language and Mitchell McDonald, a paymaster in the
U.S. Navy in Yokohama, who helped him look for work . In time, Hearn was hired as an official
tutor in remedial English for a handicapped 15 year old student son of an English father and a
Japanese mother.
Later, Hearn was offered a position teaching in a middle school in the City of Matsue, located 450
miles southwest of Tokyo near the Sea of Japan . Matsue was a community removed from
foreign influence, home to forty thousand residents who lived in the pre-Meiji world. English was
now required to be taught in high school and universities. Although the students had never before
seen a foreigner and thought Hearn rather strange, they respected him for his patient manner of
teaching and his way of speaking slowly in clear short sentences. They enjoyed his talking of
Greek mythology and the King Arthur legends. He did not speak disparagingly of Japanese
heathenism, nor did he try to proselytize them as did the missionaries who were there before
him.
In Matsue, Hearn adopted the Japanese style of life --- wearing kimono and sandals, sitting on a
zabuton, sleeping on a futon, smoking tobacco in a long stemmed Japanese pipe. He absorbed the
atmosphere of the Matsue area--visiting temples, castles and sacred places in nearby towns.
The weather on the Japan Sea side was cold and windy in Winter. Living in a house made of
wood and paper, Hearn developed respiratory illness. He longed for the warm tropic weather of
Martinique again. One day, the Dean of the School, Sentaro Nishida, observed that Hearn could
not take care of himself alone. He suggested a simple solution --- get married! A woman's body is
warmer than a Kotatsu!
Setsu Koizumi was the 22 year old daughter of a now-functionless Samurai caste. Being the only
child, she was expected to look after her family. A husband, by marrying her, would be expected
to provide financial help for his in-laws. The only legal way to marry under Japanese law was for
Hearn to be adopted into her family, taking up her family name. Dissatisfied with temporary
relationships, living alone and wanting children of his own, Hearn married Setsu in January,
1891.
Setsu was a traditionally submissive Japanese housewife who selected Lafcadio's clothes to wear
and walked several paces behind him when they went out together. His sense of security with her
subdued any longing to take off for other parts of the world, in spite of the fact that Setsu spoke
no English and Lafcadio knew very little of the Japanese language. Somehow the couple learned
to communicate by engaging in a Japanese -English baby talk.
After six months of teaching in Matsue, Lafcadio had saved two hundred dollars. In addition, he
was receiving royalty checks from Harpers so that he was able to move his family from Matsue
to Kumamoto where the climate was warmer. A son, Leopold Kazuo Koizumi, was born to
Setsu and Lafcadio in that city on November 17, 1893.
In Kumamoto, Lafcadio was engaged to teach Latin and English at the Imperial University.
Unlike the provincial atmosphere in Matsue, Kumamoto was a garrison town with soldiers housed
in red brick buildings. The students he taught were mostly unprepared and unresponsive. His
main reason for having moved to Kumamoto was that his higher income would enable him to
more easily support his family of nine dependents and would also allow him more free time to
write. While living in Kumamoto, he completed his first book on Japan, a two volume work ,
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. His essays were also appearing in the Atlantic Monthly
regularly.
Lafcadio had been living the life of a traditional Japanese husband. He described a typical day's
schedule in a letter to his friend Basil Hall Chamberlain:
Morning 6 a.m. --- The little alarm rings. Wife rises and wakes me with the salutation de rigueur
of old Samurai days. I draw myself into a squatting posture, draw the never-extinguished hibachi
to the side of the futon and begin to smoke. The servants enter, prostrate themselves and say
good morning and proceed to open the sliding wooden shutter. Meanwhile, in the other
chambers the little oil lamps have been lighted before the tablets of the ancestors and the
Buddhist deities --- and prayers are being said, and offerings to the ancestors made. I stop
smoking and make my toilet on the Engawa, a covered outdoor veranda facing the garden.
7 a.m. --- Breakfast, very light --- Wife serves eggs and toast. Lemonade with a spoonful of
whiskey in it and black coffee. Then the Kurumaya ( riki-sha-man) comes. I begin to put on my
western clothes. I opposed the custom of the wife laying out her husband's clothes and helping
him dress, but I found I was giving offence and spoiling pleasure.
7:30 a.m. --- All gather at the door to say "Sayonara"; but the servants stand outside, according
to the new custom requiring the servants to stand when the master is in western clothes. I light a
cigar, kiss a hand extended to me and pass to school.
(He continues) After returning from the morning at school, all come to the door again as before
to greet me and I have to submit to aid in undressing and in putting on the Kimono, obi, etc. The
kneeling-cushion and hibachi are ready. Dinner (meaning lunch). The rest eat only when I am
finished.
3 p.m. --- If hot, everybody sleeps. If cool and pleasant, all work around the garden or
elsewhere.
6 p.m. --- Bath hour.
6:30-7:30 p.m. --- Supper
8 p.m. --- Everybody squats around the hibachi to hear the Asahi Shimbun read, or to tell
stories. Sometime to play games if paper does not arrive.
Prayer time, little lamps are lit and offering are made.
All wait for me to give the signal of bed-time --- unless I become so absorbed in writing as to
forget the hour. Then I am asked if I am not working too hard.
The little wife asks pardon for being the first to go to sleep.
Longing for a life as a journalist, he left Kumamoto in 1894 and accepted an offer as editor with
the Kobe Chronicle, an English language newspaper. A short time into his job, Lafcadio's eye
became inflamed and his doctor advised him to leave the newspaper and spend his time resting his
eye in a dark room. Dispirited and losing his enthusiasm for writing, he would have, in his
younger days, packed and left for new places --- Samoa, Java, or other exotic places. However,
now married with a child and another on the way, he was not about to abandon his family like his
own father, Charles Hearn had done.
In 1895, he decided to become a real Japanese by giving up his British citizenship. This decision
required that he formally adopt a Japanese name --- the family name of Koizumi.
Later that year, Lafcadio accepted an appointment as Chair of the English Language and
Literature Department at the Tokyo Imperial University, an extraordinary accomplishment.
Although he was not enthusiastic about moving to the large city, his wife, Setsu, looked forward
to it and the family settled in the Tokyo suburb of Ushigome. Setsu subsequently gave birth to
three more children --- two boys ( Iwao and Kiyoshi) and one girl (Suzuko).
The first born, Kazuo, remained his father's favorite. Lafcadio taught him the English alphabet,
grammar and conversation at the age of five because he felt that, although the Japanese language
may have been easier to learn, the world was changing and that it would be more practical to
learn English.
After eight years at the Tokyo University, Hearn was removed from the faculty. The reason given
by the University was that, as a Japanese citizen, he was not entitled to receive a more favorable
foreigner's salary. Strong student protests against the administration in support of their favorite
professor were to no avail.
Hearn had suffered a series of illnesses in 1902 leaving him physically out of condition and with
this latest blow, may have prompted him to write to his good friend, Watkins, in Cincinnati -- "
I'm getting down the shady side of the hill --- and the horizon before me is already darkening and
the winds blowing out of it, cold."
On September 26, 1904, Lafcadio Hearn ( Koizumi Yakumo) died in his home. His wife, Setsu,
was at his side. His funeral was held in Kobudera, a Buddhist Temple, and was attended by
numerous professors and students, several foreign admirers and a multitude of friends. His bones
are buried in Zoshigaya Cemetery located in the northern part of Tokyo.
Tributes to Hearn's life appeared in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well
as in Europe where his works were recognized by many as having bridged the gap which
separated East from the West better than any other writer of his day. Although, others such as
Basil Hall Chamberlain possessed superior academic background and a greater knowledge of the
Japanese language, the artist in Hearn saw into the soul of Japan and its people. His works were
rooted in the culture of Old Japan.
Critics of Hearn point out that he lived in a past, the feudal system, which could not be
replicated in our modern world. In his book Bushido --- the Soul of Japan, Inazo Nitobe,
Professor in the Imperial University of Tokyo, wrote-- "Read Hearn, the most eloquent and
truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the working of that mind to be an example
of the working of Bushido which is the legacy of knightly ways, too well known to be repeated
anew."
Although Hearn never became proficient in the Japanese language, he was able to understand and
to speak it well enough to communicate with others in Japanese, especially with his wife, Setsu,
with whom dialogue was conducted in "Hearnese" Japanese. He wrote his version of stories
based on tales she would recite to him. Works by him included stories of Japanese life, travel,
folk culture, essays, and weird tales of the animistic world --- the attribution of living soul to
inanimate objects and natural phenomena. The most notable and lasting of his works are ghost
stories contained in a series entitled Kwaidan which was produced on film and won the
International Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Academy
Award as the Best Foreign Film in 1965.
As he surveyed the countryside from atop Mount Fuji, Hearn must have reminisced about his
tumultuous life --- a wretched childhood, abandoned by his father and eventually by his mother
and his great aunt as well; his mercurial life in Cincinnati and New Orleans and his carefree life in
Martinique. His feeling for the latter never left him. Even in Japan there were moments of
discouragement and disenchantment when he felt the urge to leave for the Phillippines or other
exotic places.
And yet, loyalty to his Japanese family was an obligation he could not dismiss. By becoming the
sole provider to his extended family including his wife's parents, adopting the family name of
Koizumi and becoming a Japanese citizen, he would ensure that his estate would be passed down
to his Japanese wife and children.
A remarkable closeness was formed within the family members during his lifetime. Even after his
death, it is reported that at the family's little Buddhist shrine in the study of the Koizumi home,
Lafcadio's four children never went to bed before saying "Good night, Happy dreams,
PaPa-san!".
When we look back on Lafcadio Hearn's life, we see a man who was admired and accepted for
his views on Japan by the Japanese of his time. He is still admired today in Japan for having
taught in their schools and having become a Japanese citizen. If he were to return today, he would
be disappointed to see a highly industrialized nation competing vigorously in a materialistic world,
a condition from which he tried to escape by going East in 1890. Yet he would be consoled in
knowing that the Soul of Old Japan still remains deeply within the Japanese people.
Since the end of World War II, interest in Hearn has increased in the West and in Japan. Some
say that it is due to Western curiosity about Shintoism and rekindling of interest in things Japanese
which was diminished by the war. Others say that Hearn has renewed their interest in the lost
culture of the Meiji era.
To celebrate the date of Hearn's arrival in Japan, a Centennial Festival was held in Matsue, Japan
from August 3 through September 3, 1990. Since then, other gatherings and commemorative
events have taken place in the United States in Cincinnati, New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and
other cities.
Bon Koizumi, Lafcadio Hearn's great grandson and curator of the Hearn Memorial Museum in
Matsue, spent the summer of 1993 visiting Cincinnati, Denver, Atlanta , Chicago and New
Orleans. Hearn's global family reunion also was held that year in Washington D.C.
A Lafcadio Hearn/Japan Room has been established within the Rare Books and Special
Collections Department of the Howard- Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University for the
extensive Hearn Collections which have been brought together by both Americans and Japanese
admirers of his works.
A General Catalogue of Hearn Collections in Japan and Overseas lists the holdings of thirty-one
Hearn Libraries around the world --- sixteen in Japan; fourteen in the United States, and one in
Ireland.
Hearn once was quoted to have said :
"I an individual --- an individual soul! Nay, I am a population --- a population unthinkable for
multitude, even by groups of a thousand millions! Generations of generations I am, aeons of
aeons! Countless times the concourse now making me has been scattered and mixed with other
scatterings. Of what concern, then, the next disintegration? Perhaps, after trillions of ages of
burning in different dynasties of suns, the very best of me may come together
again."
And so it has !
---Footnote---
I do not recall when I became aware of the name Koizumi Yakumo or Lafcadio Hearn. I had read
Jonathon Cott's book Wandering Ghost some years ago and browsing the Internet I found the title
Fuji-No-Yama, an article Hearn had written in 1898. Reading it reminded me of our Fuji climb in
1985 and rekindled my interest.
My own ODYSSEY had now begun!
In my search for source material I visited the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane
University which had a Special Collection of his works in a room dedicated to him, the Lafcadio
Hearn/Japan Room, as well as the Cincinnati Public Library to view Hearn Collections and to talk
with Sylvia Verdun Metzinger, Head of their Rare Books and Special Collections Department.
She was instrumental in establishing Tulane University's Hearn Collection.
I received a call from a gentleman in New Lenox, Illinois through whom I acquired a two volume
collection of Lafcadio Hearn Letters.
Later, the editor of the New South Japanese Magazine in Atlanta called to inform me of the
Traveling Exhibit of Hearn Books and Murals.
I also received an inquiry into organizing a Lafcadio Hearn Society in Chicago.
And last but not least, I received a phone call from Steve Laurent, introducing himself as a great
grandson of James Daniel Hearn, Lafcadio's younger brother.
Steve and his wife, Linda, invited me for dinner and a thoroughly enjoyable evening discussing the
fascinating life of Lafcadio Hearn.
( Following presentation of this paper on January 4, 1999, I had the privilege of introducing
Steve and Linda Laurent who were in the audience as my guests for the evening)
Ralph Fujimoto