A discussion of one of the great interpreters of Japan. The Japanese have always revered Hearn and this book shows the West why he is revered. Experts look at his writings and discuss his integrity as an observer and interpreter of Japan and the Japanese.

The Neo-Buddhist Writings of Lafcadio Hearn: Light from the East by Antony Goedhals offers radical rereadings of a misunderstood and undervalued Victorian writer. It reveals that at the metaphysical core of Lafcadio Hearn’s writings is a Buddhist vision as yet unappreciated by his critics and biographers. Beginning with the American writings and ending with the essay- and story-meditations of the Japanese period, the book demonstrates Hearn’s deeply personal and transcendently beautiful evocations of a Buddhist universe, and shows how these deconstruct and dissolve the categories of Western discourse and thinking about reality – to create a new language, a poetry of vastness, emptiness, and oneness that had not been heard before in English, or, indeed, in the West.

The American essays of renowned writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) artistically chronicle the robust urban life of Cincinnati and New Orleans. Hearn is one of the few chroniclers of urban American life in the nineteenth century, and much of this material has not been widely available since the 1950s. Lafcadio Hearn's America collects Hearn's stories of vagabonds, river people, mystics, criminals, and some of the earliest accounts available of black and ethnic urban folklife in America. He was a frequently consulted expert on America during his years in Japan, and these editorials reflect on the problems and possibilities of American life as the country entered its greatest century. Hearn's work, which reflects an America that is less "melting pot" than a varied, spicy, and often exotic gumbo, provide essential background for the study of America's first steps away from its agrarian beginnings.

A discussion of one of the great interpreters of Japan. The Japanese have always revered Hearn and this book shows the West why he is revered. Experts look at his writings and discuss his integrity as an observer and interpreter of Japan and the Japanese.

This collection of writings from Lafcaido Hern paints a rare and fascinating picture of pre-modern Japan Over a century after his death, author, translator, and educator Lafcaido Hearn remains one of the best-known Westerners ever to make Japan his home. Almost more Japanese than the Japanese--"to think with their thoughts" was his aim--his prolific writings on things Japanese were instrumental in introducing Japanese culture to the West. In this masterful anthology, Donald Richie shows that Hearn was first and foremost a reliable and enthusiastic observer, who faithfully recorded a detailed account of the people, customs, and culture of late nineteen-century Japan. Opening and closing with excerpts from Hearn's final books, Richie's astute selection from among "over 4,000 printed pages" not including correspondence and other writing, also reveals Hearn's later, more sober and reflective attitudes to the things that he observed and wrote about. Part One, "The Land," chronicles Hearn's early years when he wrote primarily about the appearance of his adopted home. Part Two, "The People," records the author's later years when he came to terms with the Japanese themselves. In this anthology, Richie, more gifted in capturing the essence of a person on the page than any other foreign writer living in Japan, has picked out the best of Hearn's evocations. Select writings include: The Chief City of the Province of the Gods Three Popular Ballads In the Cave of the Children's Ghosts Bits of Life and Death A Street Singer Kimiko On A Bridge

The East-West controversy over the significance and relevance of Lafcadio Hearn as a writer, thinker and interpreter of Japan continues unabated. Not surprisingly, the centenary of his death in 2004 presented an occasion for renewed debate and discussion by both sides of the divide. This volume, edited by one of Hearn’s leading contemporary apologists, in which he is also a significant contributor, presents twenty-two diverse essays drawn from over seventy papers delivered at conferences held in four cities in Japan in 2004, as well as at other international conferences that took place earlier. The contributors are Joan Blythe, John Clubbe, Susan Fisher, Ted Goosen, George Hughes, Yoko Makino, Peter McIvor, Hitobe Nabae, Cody Poulton and Masaru Toda. Their contributions range from Sukehiro Hirakawa’s ‘ A Reappraisal’ to Joan Blythe’s ‘Enduring Value of Lafcadio Hearn’s Tokyo Lectures’.

First publication in English of Soseki’s travels through Manchuria on the then recently-acquired South Manchurian Railway. 6-week travelogue including boat from Osaka to Dairen, railway up the Liaodong Peninsular to Fushun. Many descriptions of Manchuria. It is a lively, informative and sometimes very funny narrative, which reveals Soseki's wit and Western-style humour in observing the human condition, as well as the literary techniques that characterize his subsequent achievements in shaping the modern Japanese novel. The Introduction by Inger Sigrun Brodey provides both a new perspective on Soseki the man and writer, as well as an insightful commentary on the SMR journey itself and the place of the travelogue in Soseki's writings. A selection of Sammy Tsumematsu's collection of previously unpublished photographs of Soseki is also included.