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Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-born Irish author, is best known for his books on Japan and its folklore. He spent most of his life in the United States before moving to Japan, where he became a citizen and married a Japanese woman. He worked as a journalist and English teacher before producing his most famous works, including Kwaidan, and died in 1904.
Lafcadio Hearn, an author writing in the early 20th century, is best known for his books on Japan, especially his collections on the country’s folklore. Although he was born in Greece and raised in Ireland, Hearn has spent most of his life in the United States and has become a Japanese citizen in recent years. He fell in love with the local culture on his first visit to Japan and spent the rest of his life there, building a family with a Japanese woman and taking the name Koizumi Yakumo.
Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada on June 27, 1850, the son of an Irish surgeon-major father stationed on the island and a Greek mother. He moved to Dublin, Ireland in 1856 after his parents’ divorce and spent his childhood there with a great aunt. He briefly attended Ushaw Roman Catholic College in Durham. During his teenage years, he suffered a playground injury that blinded his left eye.
At the age of 19, he moved to the United States, first settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. After struggling in poverty for a few years, he befriended the English printer Henry Watkin and secured a job at a newspaper. He worked as a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer from 1872 to 1875. In 1874, he and painter Henry Farney collaborated on Ye Giglampz, an art and literature weekly that ran for nine issues. Although he was a successful journalist, his marriage to Alethea Foley, a black woman, cost him his job, as interracial marriages were legally prohibited in Ohio at the time. He then began working for the Cincinnati Commercial, the rival of the Daily Enquirer.
After his marriage to Alethea broke up, he moved to New Orleans in 1877, where he lived for ten years. The Commercial had paid him poorly, and Hearn began his stay in New Orleans the same way he had in Cincinnati: homeless. He was suffering from some serious illnesses, including yellow fever and dengue fever, and was admitted to a charity hospital. In 1878 he was referred to another newspaper job by a friend, this time on the Daly City Item. Hearn managed to turn the unprofitable paper into a popular publication during his time on staff.
In 1881, Hearn was offered a position in the Times Democrat. During his time in New Orleans he also wrote articles on New Orleans culture for national magazines including Harper’s Weekly, along with a dictionary of Creole proverbs and a Creole cookbook. His first story, Chita: A Memory of Last Island, was published in 1888 in Harper’s Monthly. He spent two years in the West Indies as a newspaper correspondent before traveling to Japan in 1890. He also wrote two books during this time.
Hearn went to Japan on assignment from Harper’s but soon broke his deal with them. His friend Basil Hall Chamberlain helped him get teaching jobs at Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Matsue Normal School. He has also worked as an English teacher in a private home.
In Matsue, Hearn adopted many Japanese customs, such as wearing kimonos and sandals, and married a Japanese woman, Koizumi Yakumo, in 1891. The same year, he began teaching at Kyushu Fifth High School, where the climate agreed with he. than in Matsue. He and his wife had four children, the first born in 1893.
He continued his journalism career with a post in the English-language publication Kobe Chronicle in 1894 and taught English literature at the University of Tokyo from 1896 to 1903. During this period, he produced some of his most famous works, most notably Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, published 1903. Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on September 26, 1904.
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