Lafcadio Hearn | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Hearn in 1889 | |||||
| Born | Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850-06-27)27 June 1850 | ||||
| Died | 26 September 1904(1904-09-26) (aged 54) Tokyo, Japan | ||||
| Resting place | Zōshigaya Cemetery | ||||
| Pen name | Yakumo Koizumi (小泉 八雲,Koizumi Yakumo) | ||||
| Language | English,Greek,Japanese,French | ||||
| Citizenship | Japan (from 1896) | ||||
| Spouse | |||||
| Children | 4 | ||||
| Signature | |||||
.svg) | |||||
| Japanese name | |||||
| Kanji | 小泉 八雲 | ||||
| Hiragana | こいずみ やくも | ||||
| Katakana | コイズミ ヤクモ | ||||
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Yakumo Koizumi (Japanese:小泉 八雲,Hepburn:Koizumi Yakumo; bornPatrick Lafcadio Hearn;[a] 27 June 1850 – 26 September 1904) was a Greek and Irish writer, translator, and teacher who introduced theculture andliterature ofJapan to theWestern world.[1] His writings offered unprecedented insight intoJapanese culture, especially his collections oflegends andghost stories, such asKwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Before moving to Japan and becoming a Japanese citizen, he worked as a journalist in the United States, primarily inCincinnati andNew Orleans. His writings about New Orleans, based on his decade-long stay there, are also well-known. His home inOrleans Parish is listed on theNational Register of Historic Places and theLafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum is in Japan.
Hearn was born on theGreek island ofLefkada but moved toDublin, where he was abandoned first by his mother, then his father, and finally by his father's aunt (who had been appointed his official guardian). At the age of 19, he emigrated to the United States, where he found work as a newspaper reporter, first in Cincinnati and later in New Orleans. From there, he was sent as a correspondent to theFrench West Indies, inMartinique, where he stayed for two years, and then in 1890 to Japan, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
In Japan, Hearn marriedKoizumi Setsuko, with whom he had four children. His writings about Japan offered the Western world greater insight into a still largely unfamiliar culture.
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on 27 June 1850 on theIonian Island ofLefkada, then part of aBritish protectorate, theUnited States of the Ionian Islands, now part of Greece.[2] His mother was aGreek named Rosa Cassimati, a native of the Greek island ofKythera,[3] while his father,Staff Surgeon of the Second Class Charles Bush Hearn, aBritish Army medical officer, was ofIrish andEnglish descent,[3][4] who was stationed in Lefkada during the British protectorate of the United States of the Ionian Islands. Throughout his life, Lafcadio boasted of his Greek blood and felt a passionate connection to Greece.[5][6] He was baptized Patrikios Lefcadios Hearn (Greek: Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν) in theGreek Orthodox Church, but he seems to have been called "Patrick Lefcadio Kassimati Charles Hearn" in English; the middle name "Lafcadio" was given to him in honour of the island where he was born.[7] Hearn's parents were married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on 25 November 1849, several months after his mother had given birth to Hearn's older brother, George Robert Hearn, on 24 July 1849. George died on 17 August 1850, two months after Lafcadio's birth.[8]
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Hearn's father Charles in 1850 was reassigned from Lefkada to theBritish West Indies. Since his family did not approve of the marriage, and because he was worried that his relationship might harm his career prospects, Charles did not inform his superiors of his son or pregnant wife and left his family behind. In 1852, he arranged to send his son and wife to live with his family inDublin, where they received a cool reception. Charles's Protestant mother, Elizabeth Holmes Hearn, had difficulty accepting Rosa's Greek Orthodox views and lack of education; she was illiterate and spoke no English. Rosa found it difficult to adapt to a foreign culture and the Protestantism of her husband's family, and was eventually taken under the wing of Elizabeth's sister, Sarah Holmes Brenane, a widow who had converted to Catholicism.
Despite Sarah's efforts, Rosa suffered from homesickness. When her husband returned to Ireland on medical leave in 1853, it became clear that the couple had become estranged. Charles Hearn was assigned to theCrimean Peninsula, again leaving his pregnant wife and child in Ireland. When he came back in 1856, severely wounded and traumatized, Rosa had returned to her home island ofCerigo (Kythera), where she gave birth to their third son, Daniel James Hearn. Lafcadio had been left in the care of Sarah Brenane.
Charles petitioned to have the marriage with Rosa annulled, on the grounds that she had not signed their marriage contract, which made it invalid under English law. After being informed of the annulment, Rosa almost immediately married Giovanni Cavallini, a Greek citizen of Italian ancestry, who was later appointed by the British as governor ofCerigotto (Antikythera). Cavallini required as a condition of the marriage that Rosa give up custody of both sons. As a result, James was sent to his father in Dublin while Lafcadio remained in the care of his great-aunt, Sarah Brenane, who had disinherited Charles because of the annulment. Neither Lafcadio nor James ever again saw their mother, who had four children with her second husband. Rosa was eventually committed to the National Mental Asylum onCorfu, where she died in 1882.[9]
Charles Hearn, who had left Lafcadio in the care of Sarah Brenane for the past four years, now appointed her as Lafcadio's permanent guardian. He married his childhood sweetheart, Alicia Goslin, in July 1857, and left with his new wife for a posting inSecunderabad, a city in India, where they had three daughters prior to Alicia's death in 1861.[10] Lafcadio never saw his father again: Charles Hearn died of malaria in theGulf of Suez in 1866.[11]
In 1857, at age seven and despite the fact that both his parents were still alive, Hearn became the permanentward of Sarah Brenane. She divided her residency between Dublin in the winter months, and her husband's estate atTramore,County Waterford, on the southern Irish coast, and a house atBangor in North Wales. Brenane engaged a tutor during the school year to provide Hearn with basic instruction and the rudiments of Catholic dogma. Hearn began exploring Brenane's library and read extensively in Greek literature, especially myths.[12]
In 1861, his great-aunt, aware that Hearn was turning away from Catholicism and at the urging of Henry Hearn Molyneux, a relative of her late husband, he was sent to a Catholic college in France, but was disgusted with the life and gave up the Roman Catholic faith. He became fluent in French and would later translate into English the works ofGuy de Maupassant andGustave Flaubert.
In 1863, again at the suggestion of Molyneux, Hearn was enrolled atSt Cuthbert's College, Ushaw, a Catholicseminary inCounty Durham, England. In this environment, Hearn adopted the nickname "Paddy" to try to fit in better, and was the top student in English composition for three years.[13] At age 16, while at Ushaw, Hearn injured his left eye. The eye became infected and, despite consultations with specialists in Dublin and London, and a year spent out of school convalescing, the eye went blind. Hearn also suffered from severemyopia, so his injury left him permanently with poor vision, requiring him to carry a magnifying glass for close work and a pocket telescope to see anything beyond a short distance. Hearn avoided eyeglasses, believing they would weaken his vision further. The iris was permanently discoloured, and left Hearn self-conscious about his appearance for the rest of his life, causing him to cover his left eye while conversing and always posing for the camera in profile so that the left eye was not visible.[14]
In 1867, Henry Molyneux, who had become Sarah Brenane's financial manager, went bankrupt, along with Brenane. As there was no money for tuition, Hearn was sent to London's East End to live with Brenane's former maid. She and her husband had little time or money for Hearn, who wandered the streets, spent time in workhouses, and generally lived an aimless, rootless existence. His main intellectual activities consisted of visits to libraries and theBritish Museum.[15]
By 1869, Henry Molyneux had recovered some financial stability and Brenane, now 75, was infirm. Resolving to end his financial obligations to the 19-year-old Hearn, he purchased a one-way ticket to New York and instructed the young man to find his way toCincinnati, where he could locate Molyneux's sister and her husband, Thomas Cullinan, and obtain their assistance in making a living. Upon meeting Hearn in Cincinnati, however, it became clear that the family wanted little to do with him: Cullinan all but threw him out into the streets with only $5 in his pocket. As Hearn would later write, "I was dropped moneyless on the pavement of an American city to begin life."[16]
For a time, he was impoverished, living in stables or store rooms in exchange for menial labor.[17] He eventually befriended the English printer andcommunalistHenry Watkin, who employed him in his printing business, helped find him various odd jobs, lent him books from his library, including utopianistsCharles Fourier,Hepworth Dixon andJohn Humphrey Noyes, and gave Hearn a nickname which stuck with him for the rest of his life,the Raven, from theEdgar Allan Poe poem. Hearn also frequented theCincinnati Public Library, which at that time had an estimated 50,000 volumes. In the spring of 1871 a letter from Henry Molyneux informed him of Sarah Brenane's death and Molyneux's appointment as sole executor. Despite Brenane having named him as the beneficiary of an annuity when she became his guardian, Hearn received nothing from the estate and never heard from Molyneux again.[18]
By the strength of his talent as a writer, Hearn obtained a job as a reporter for theCincinnati Daily Enquirer, working for the newspaper from 1872 to 1875. Writing with creative freedom in one of Cincinnati's largest circulating newspapers, he became known for his lurid accounts of local murders, developing a reputation as the paper's premier sensational journalist, as well as the author of sensitive accounts of some of the disadvantaged people of Cincinnati.The Library of America selected one of these murder accounts,Gibbeted, for inclusion in its two-century retrospective ofAmerican True Crime, published in 2008.[19] After one of his murder stories, the Tanyard Murder, had run for several months in 1874, Hearn established his reputation as Cincinnati's most audacious journalist, and theEnquirer raised his salary from $10 to $25 per week.[20]
In 1874, Hearn and the youngHenry Farny, later a renowned painter of the American West, wrote, illustrated, and published an 8-page weekly journal of art, literature and satire entitledYe Giglampz. The Cincinnati Public Library reprinted a facsimile of all nine issues in 1983.[21] The work was considered by a 20th-century critic to be "Perhaps the most fascinating sustained project he undertook as an editor."[22]
On 14 June 1874, Hearn, aged 23, married Alethea ("Mattie") Foley, a 20-year-old African American woman who was formerly enslaved, an action in violation of Ohio'santi-miscegenation law at that time. In August 1875, in response to complaints from a local clergyman about his anti-religious views and pressure from local politicians embarrassed by some of his satirical writing inYe Giglampz, theEnquirer fired him, citing as its reason hisillegal marriage. He went to work for the rival newspaperThe Cincinnati Commercial. TheEnquirer offered to re-hire him after his stories began appearing in theCommercial and its circulation began increasing, but Hearn, incensed at the paper's behavior, refused. Hearn and Foley separated, but attempted reconciliation several times before divorcing in 1877. Foley remarried in 1880.[23][24] While working for theCommercial he championed the case ofHenrietta Wood, a former slave who won a major reparations case.[25]
While working for theCommercial Hearn agreed to be carried to the top of Cincinnati's tallest building on the back of a famoussteeplejack, Joseph Roderiguez Weston, and wrote a half-terrified, half-comic account of the experience. Hearn wrote a series of accounts of the Bucktown and Levee neighborhoods of Cincinnati, "...one of the few depictions we have of black life in a border city during the post-Civil War period."[26] He also wrote about local black song lyrics from the era, including a song titled "Shiloh" that was dedicated to a Bucktown resident named "Limber Jim."[27] In addition, Hearn had printed in theCommercial a stanza he had overheard when listening to the songs of theroustabouts, working on the city's levee waterfront. Similar stanzas were recorded in song byJulius Daniels in 1926 andTommy McClennan in his version of "Bottle Up and Go" (1939).[28]
During the autumn of 1877, recently divorced from Mattie Foley and restless, Hearn had begun neglecting his newspaper work in favor of translating works by the French authorThéophile Gautier into English. He had grown disenchanted with Cincinnati, writing to Henry Watkin, "It is time for a fellow to get out of Cincinnati when they begin to call it the Paris of America." With the support of Watkin andCincinnati Commercial publisherMurat Halstead, Hearn left Cincinnati forNew Orleans, where he initially wrote dispatches on the "Gateway to the Tropics" for theCommercial.
Hearn lived in New Orleans for nearly a decade, writing first for the newspaperDaily City Item beginning in June 1878, and later for theTimes Democrat. Since theItem was a 4-page publication, Hearn's editorial work changed the character of the newspaper dramatically. He began at theItem as a news editor, expanding to include book reviews ofBret Harte andÉmile Zola, summaries of pieces in national magazines such asHarper's, and editorial pieces introducing Buddhism and Sanskrit writings. As editor, Hearn created and published nearly two hundred woodcuts of daily life and people in New Orleans, making theItem the first Southern newspaper to introduce cartoons and giving the paper an immediate boost in circulation. Hearn gave up carving the woodcuts after six months when he found the strain was too great for his eye.[29]
At the end of 1881, Hearn took an editorial position with the New OrleansTimes Democrat and was employed translating items from French and Spanish newspapers as well as writing editorials and cultural reviews on topics of his choice. He also continued his work translating French authors into English:Gérard de Nerval,Anatole France, and most notablyPierre Loti, an author who influenced Hearn's own writing style.[30] Milton Bronner, who edited Hearn's letters toHenry Watkin, wrote: "[T]he Hearn of New Orleans was the father of the Hearn of the West Indies and of Japan," and this view was endorsed by Norman Foerster.[31] During his tenure at theTimes Democrat, Hearn developed a friendship with editor Page Baker, who went on to champion Hearn's literary career; their correspondence is archived at theLoyola University New Orleans Special Collections & Archives.[32]
The vast number of his writings about New Orleans and its environs, many of which have not been collected, include the city'sCreole population and distinctive cuisine, the French Opera, andLouisiana Voodoo. Hearn wrote enthusiastically of New Orleans, but also wrote of the city's decay, "a dead bride crowned with orange flowers".[33]
Hearn's writings for national publications, such asHarper's Weekly andScribner's Magazine, helped create the popular reputation of New Orleans as a place with a distinctive culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. Hearn's best-known Louisiana works include:
Hearn published inHarper's Weekly the first known written article (1883) aboutFilipinos in the United States, the Manilamen orTagalogs, one of whose villages he had visited atSaint Malo, southeast ofLake Borgne inSt. Bernard Parish, Louisiana.
At the time he lived there, Hearn was little known, and even now he is little known for his writing about New Orleans, except by local cultural devotees. However, more books have been written about him than any former resident of New Orleans exceptLouis Armstrong.[34]
Hearn's writings for the New Orleans newspapers included impressionistic descriptions of places and characters and many editorials denouncing political corruption, street crime, violence, intolerance, and the failures of public health and hygiene officials. Despite the fact that he is credited with "inventing" New Orleans as an exotic and mysterious place, his obituaries of thevodou leadersMarie Laveau and Doctor John Montenet are matter-of-fact and debunking. Selections of Hearn's New Orleans writings have been collected and published in several works, starting withCreole Sketches[35] in 1924, and more recently inInventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn.[36]
Harper's sent Hearn to theWest Indies as a correspondent in 1887. He spent two years inMartinique and in addition to his writings for the magazine, produced two books:Two Years in the French West Indies andYouma, The Story of a West-Indian Slave, both published in 1890.[37][38]
In 1890, Hearn went to Japan with a commission as a newspaper correspondent, which was quickly terminated. It was in Japan, however, that he found a home and his greatest inspiration. Through the good will ofBasil Hall Chamberlain, Hearn gained a teaching position during the summer of 1890 at the Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School inMatsue, a town in western Japan on the coast of theSea of Japan. During his fifteen-month stay in Matsue, Hearn marriedKoizumi Setsuko, the daughter of a localsamurai family, with whom he had four children: Kazuo, Iwao, Kiyoshi, and Suzuko.[39] In January 1896, he became aJapanese citizen, assuming the legal name Yakumo Koizumi (小泉 八雲,Koizumi Yakumo) after accepting a teaching position in Tokyo; Koizumi ishis wife's surname and Yakumo is fromyakumotatsu, a poetic modifier word (makurakotoba) forIzumo Province, which he translated[40] as "the Place of the Issuing of Clouds". After having been Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and, later on,Spencerian, he becameBuddhist.[41]
During late 1891, Hearn obtained another teaching position inKumamoto, at the Fifth High Middle School (a predecessor ofKumamoto University), where he spent the next three years and completed his bookGlimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). In October 1894, he secured a job in journalism with the English-language newspaperKobe Chronicle, and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teachingEnglish literature atTokyo Imperial University, a position he held until 1903. In 1904, he was a lecturer atWaseda University.
While in Japan, he encountered the art ofju-jutsu which made a deep impression upon him: "Hearn, who encountered judo in Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, contemplated its concepts with the awed tones of an explorer staring about him in an extraordinary and undiscovered land. "What Western brain could have elaborated this strange teaching, never to oppose force by force, but only direct and utilize the power of attack; to overthrow the enemy solely through his own strength, to vanquish him solely by his own efforts? Surely none! The Western mind appears to work in straight lines; the Oriental, in wonderful curves and circles."[42] When he was teaching at the Fifth High Middle School, the headmaster was founder of JudoKano Jigoro.
On 26 September 1904, Hearn died of heart failure in Tokyo at the age of 54. His grave is at theZōshigaya Cemetery in Tokyo'sToshima district.[43]
In the late 19th century, Japan was still largely unknown and exotic to Westerners. However, with the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, particularly at the ParisExposition Universelle of 1900, Japanese styles became fashionable in Western countries. Hearn became known to the world by his writings concerning Japan.[44] In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn ofexoticizing Japan,[45] but because he offered the West some of its first descriptions of pre-industrial andMeiji era Japan, his work is generally regarded as having historical value.[46][47][48]
Admirers of Hearn's work have includedBen Hecht,[49]John Erskine,Malcolm Cowley[50] andJorge Luis Borges.[51]
Hearn was a major translator of the short stories ofGuy de Maupassant.[52]
Yone Noguchi is quoted as saying about Hearn, "His Greek temperament and French culture became frost-bitten as a flower in the North."[53]
Hearn won a wide following in Japan, where his books were translated and remain popular to the present day. Hearn's appeal to Japanese readers "lies in the glimpses he offered of an older, more mystical Japan lost during the country’s hectic plunge into Western-style industrialization and nation building. His books are treasured here as a trove of legends and folk tales that otherwise might have vanished because no Japanese had bothered to record them."[54]
TheLafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum and his old residence in Matsue are still two of the city's most popular tourist attractions. In addition, another small museum dedicated to Hearn opened inYaizu, Shizuoka, in 2007 (ja:焼津小泉八雲記念館).
The first museum in Europe for Hearn was inaugurated in Lefkada, Greece, his birthplace, on 4 July 2014, as the Lafcadio Hearn Historical Center.[55] It contains early editions, rare books and Japanese collectibles. The visitors, through photos, texts and exhibits, can wander in the significant events of Lafcadio Hearn's life, but also in the civilizations of Europe, America and Japan of the late 18th and early 19th centuries through his lectures, writings and tales. The municipalities ofKumamoto, Matsue,Shinjuku, Yaizu,Toyama University, the Koizumi family and other people from Japan and Greece contributed to the establishment of Lafcadio Hearn Historical Center.[56]
On a trip to Matsue in 2012, Professor Bon Koizumi (Hearn's great-grandson) and his wife Shoko were introduced to Dublin-based Motoko Fujita, a published photographer ofThe Shadow of James Joyce (Lilliput Press Ltd., Ireland, 2011) and the founder of the Experience Japan Festival in Dublin. Acting on the Koizumi's desire to reconnect with their Irish roots, Fujita then coordinated a trip for Bon and Shoko in autumn 2013, during which relationships to more Lafcadio supporters in Ireland were forged. Fujita's initiative led to the exhibitionComing Home: The Open Mind of Patrick Lafcadio Hearn at theLittle Museum of Dublin (15 October 2015 to 3 January 2016),[57] the first time Hearn was honoured in the city. The exhibit contained first editions of Hearn's works and personal items from the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum. Professor Bon Koizumi was in attendance at the opening of the exhibition.[58] Fujita initiated the planning of a Japanese garden in Hearn's honour, and in 2015 theLafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens in Tramore, County Waterford opened.
There is a cultural centre named after Hearn atDurham University, where in 2022 a conferenceLafcadio Hearn and the Global Imagination at the Fin de Siècle was held.[59]
His life journey later connected its both ends; Lefkada and Shinjuku becamesister cities in 1989. Another pair of cities he lived in, New Orleans and Matsue, did the same in 1994.[60]
The Japanese directorMasaki Kobayashi adapted four Hearn tales into his 1964 film,Kwaidan. Some of his stories have been adapted byPing Chong into hispuppet theatre, including the 1999Kwaidan and the 2002OBON: Tales of Moonlight and Rain.
In 1984, four episode Japanese TV seriesNihon no omokage (ja:日本の面影, Remnants of Japan), depicting Hearn's departure from the United States and later life in Japan, was broadcast with Greek-American actorGeorge Chakiris as Hearn. The story was later adapted to theatrical productions.
Two manga book versions of Hearn’s Japanese stories have been made by writer,Sean Michael Wilson, who lives in Kumamoto, as Hearn did, and is also half Irish. These areThe Faceless Ghost (2015) with Japanese artist Michiru Morikawa, andManga Yokai Stories (2020) with Japanese artist Ai Takita.
The video game seriesTouhou Project is influenced by Hearn's works. Thisdoujin series is about a fantasy world known as "Gensokyo", separated from "our" world with a magical barrier, which world was stuck on the late Edo period.[61] Two of its characters, Yukari Yakumo and Maribel Hearn, are direct references to Lafcadio Hearn. Yukari is aYōkai who helped create the border separating Gensokyo from the outside world, and Maribel Hearn is a college student who is able to see Gensokyo in her dreams. ZUN (the sole writer of the Touhou series), ambiguously stated that these two characters are the same person.[62] Yukari Yakumo appears in many Touhou games, books and manga, and considered as "a mastermind who only takes action once its really required", and Maribel appears in the stories included in "ZUN's Music Collection", a series of music CD albums, from the second installment onwards, alongside another character, Renko Usami.
_Glimpses_of_unfamiliar_Japan.jpg)
Source:[63]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)(Hearn, who had three daughters with Alicia, died of malaria in the Gulf of Suez on November 21, 1866.)
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)'Sayonara' collection of Japanese folk tales translated from English to Irish by Pádraig Mac Cearáin. Published by Coiscéim 2018.
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