Proceedings

lectures & music

Lafcadioat Home
8th October, 2015
The Little Museum of Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

Proceedings

lectures & music

Lafcadioat Home
8th October, 2015
The Little Museum of Dublin
Dublin, IrelandLectures & Music “Lafcadio at Home”
date: Thursday 8th October, 2015, 6pm
venue: The Little Museum of Dublin, Dublin, Irelandlecturers: Rodger S. Williamson (Professor, The University of Kitakyushu)
John Moran (Journalist, The Irish Times)
Paul Murray (Hearn Biographer)
Bon Koizumi (Professor, University of Shimane; Great-grandson of Lafcadio Hearn)
irish harp: Junshi Murakami
chairperson: Simon O’Connor (Curator, The Little Museum of Dublin)

An Exhibition “Coming Home—The Open Mind of Patrick Lafcadio Hearn”
date: Wednesday 7th October, 2015—Sunday 3rd January, 2016
venue: The Little Museum of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
curators: Simon O’Connor (Curator, The Little Museum of Dublin)
John Moran (Journalist, The Irish Times)

organizer: The Little Museum of Dublin
co-organizers: Embassy of Japan in Ireland
		Sanin Japan-Ireland Association
sponsors & supporters: Dublin City Council
		The Ireland Funds
		Matsue City
		Embassy of Ireland in Japan
		Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum
		The Koizumi Family
		Takis Efstathiou
		Ireland Japan Association
		The Hearn Society
		The Japan Foundation

Published on 25th March, 2016
by The Little Museum of Dublin / Sanin Japan-Ireland Associationwww.littlemuseum.ie
hearn2015.sanin-japan-ireland.org
www.facebook.com/hearn2014
Copyright © 2015 The Open Mind of Patrick Lafcadio Hearn—Coming Home

2

CONTENTS

Foreword 

4

Simon O’Connor
lectures

Lafcadio Hearn: Open Minded Rebellion in Print 

5Under the Volcano in St. Pierre 

9A Fantastic Journey: the Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn

12Considering Lafcadio Hearn’s Open Mindfrom the Point of View of One Descendant 

16Rodger S. Williamson
John MoranPaul Murray

Bon Koizumi
Lafcadio at Home

3

Foreword

Simon O’Connor

Curator, The Little Museum of Dublin

Apart of the Little Museum of Dublin’s“Coming Home — The Open Mind of
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn” exhibition,
the museum hosted a wonderful evening of
lectures and music on the subject “Lafcadio athome”. Designed to focus on both the personal
and local aspects of Lafcadios life both in Japanand other countries, the lectures were presented
by world leaders in the field of Hearn study, andcomplemented by the wonderful Irish harpplaying of Junshi Murakami, the perfectcounterpoint to pull the audience from verbal
analyses of Hearn’s life to the world of wordlessaesthetic beauty that he so often inhabited.
Four lectures were presented, the transcripts
of which are reeproduced here. Professor Rodger
Williamson of the University of Kitakyushu
spoke of Hearn’s work in New Orelans andCincinatti, an “open-minded rebellion in print”
which paved the way for many new forms ofjournalism in the 20th century.
John Moran spoke with poetic elegance on
Hearn’s time in the West Indies, most specifically4

Foreword

St. Pierre, and how Lafcadio’s records of the city
before its devastation by volcano is in fact a
priceless record of a society that no longer exists
beyond his pages.
Hearn’s biographer, Paul Murray gave a broad
introduction to the audience on Hearn’s affection
for Japan, and the closing chapters of his life.
Fittingly, the evening was concluded with alecture by Lafcadio’s great-grandson, Mr. Bon
Koizumi, who gave a most-touching andmemorable survey of not only his greatgrandfather’s Japanese characteristics, but also
the ways in which he retained and indeed remanifested his Irishness toward the end of his life.
The museum thanks all the speakers for theirtime and passion, a special thanks to Junshi
Murakami for the wonderful music on theevening, and more importantly to Shoko and
Bon Koizumi, Matsue City and the JapanFoundation for working tirelessly to support
both the exhibition and the associated events
accompanying it.

Lafcadio Hearn:
Open Minded Rebellion in Print
Rodger S. Williamson
Professor, The University of Kitakyushu

L

afcadio Hearn writes to his half-sister
Minnie Atkinson that life in Cincinnati
was a brutal awakening for him. He
says that he was “dropped” into the “enormousmachinery of life” of which he knew nothing. He
tried a number of odd jobs to survive fromselling mirrors to telegraph messenger-boy. He
failed miserably and found himself on the street.
He tells her that, “I was touchy then, — went off
without waiting for my wages. Enraged friends
refused to do anything further for me. Boardinghouses turned me out of doors. At last became aboarding-house servant — lighted fires, shoveledcoal, etc. in exchange for food and privilege ofsleeping on the floor of a smoking-room”(Zenimoto). Hearn luckily found lodging with
Henry Watkin who would give him meals and aplace to stay in exchange for working at his
printing shop. Hearn continues that he wasquite bitter at the fact of his Great Aunt’sbankruptcy that forced him to leave school andgo to look for relatives in Cincinnati. As anabandoned youth in Cincinnati, his father
represents everything bad about the west and his
mother’s uprooted oriental heritage represents
all that is good and just. He is caught between
these two worlds, as he becomes a youngreporter. Hearn’s feelings for the victims of
unsympathetic modern civilization would
blossom from these circumstances. As ajournalist for The Cincinnati Enquirer and The
Cincinnati Commercial, Lafcadio Hearn exposedsocial problems, reported on city crime andmade important commentary on the social ills
that plighted America’s forgotten and neglectedminorities. Of course as any journalist, one of

Hearn’s primary motivations was to write
articles such as murder investigations thatwould help increase the circulation of the paper.
However, he could careless about theramifications of his endeavors that irritated civic
leaders. His early actions in Cincinnati are key,
particularly his marriage to an African
American, as they are clear evidence that his
motivations went beyond just selling
newspapers. Unfortunately, his early endeavors
would eventually get him sacked and he would
set his sights on New Orleans as a place to not
only restart his career but also escape the reachesof an unforgiving social order. Hearn’s uprooting
from his life in Ireland became the catalyst for
his outlook towards a brutal world that had little
respect for non-western cultures and beliefs.
Cincinnati had been a wealthy manufacturing
hub on the bank of the Ohio River with a large
population of German and Irish immigrants.
Historically, this was a very turbulent period after
the American Civil War when former Africanslaves were freed but found themselves on thefringes of a predominately white, racist society.
Hearn could care less about these racial
boundaries and even married Mattie Foley, an
African American who worked at his boarding
house in Cincinnati. The rediscovery of news
articles from Hearn’s early days in Cincinnati
clearly shows that his time as a young journalist
was a major turning point in his fundamental
view of the world. Articles from the early 1870s,
such as Murderers and Clergymen in New York, A
Hebrew College, The Gentleman or the Scholar, Pagan
Piety, The English and the Anthropophagi, Bismillah,
Marquesan Incident and A Mild and Just Government
Lafcadio at Home5

illustrate his sympathies for those denied basic
human rights and victimized or subjugated by
the social norms of the day. Hearn was a man
ahead of his time and should be commended forhis desire to bring these issues out in the open atsuch an intolerant time in history. He writes in1873 that civil liberties and religious freedom are
the founding ideals of the American Democracy.
Hearn praises these ideals and awakens hisreaders to real stories of injustice, persecution,and religious or cultural biases within American
society. He was vigorous and idealistic andsought out subject matter avoided by mostjournalists such as the life of the poor, murders,
racial tensions, and of course, ghosts. His big
break was his vivid and outright grotesquereportage of the Tanyard Murder. Hearn broke all
decorum of newspaper reporting by putting his
reportage of a “Violent Cremation” on the front
page with illustrations of the killers and themutilated remains. The victim, Herman Schilling
was thrown into a furnace after being mortallywounded for seducing the extremely young
daughter of a saloonkeeper.
For a short time his editors gave him thefreedom to explore moralistically divergent
issues and ideas. As his editor John Cockerill put
it “He prowled about the dark earners of the city,and from gruesome places he dug out charming
idyllic stories. The Negro stevedores on thesteamboats fascinated him. He wrote their songs,
their imitations, their uncouth ways, and hefound picturesquessness in their rags, poverty
and juba dances” (Findsen 170). His success with
the Tanyard Murder made him one of Cockerill’sstar reporters. Hearn’s fortune took a turn for
the worse when his “openly racist editors”
caught wind of his “social transgression” ofmarrying a mulatto woman that was illegal
according to Ohio State Law. Hearn’s actions
endangered the reputation of the paper so he
was fired for “deplorable moral habits.”
It is, however, this period that is important as
Hearn could indulgently explore the underbelly
of society and expose “social evils.” In articles
such A Curious Orientalism, Epidemic in Embryo:
The Plague Spots of Our Beautiful Community, and A
Human Exposition, he reports on minority groups,
the deplorable conditions of factory workers andthe outright disenfranchisement of social
outcasts. He cleverly employs sarcasm and6

Lafcadio Hearn: Open Minded Rebellion in Print

humor at times to make his remarks digestible
to all readers. These articles also demonstrate
Hearn’s deep awareness of the ethnically diverse
make-up of his surroundings in a cold,
unforgiving society.
In the previously unpublished, A Case of
Lunacy of July 1876, interestingly the centennialof the founding of America’s young democracy,
Hearn writes about the delusions of a drunken
mulatto man. Nicholas O’Neil dreams of a place“wherein strangers from the four quarters of theearth might be quartered free of charge, andCivil Rights should be respected.” At this time,
though, only a lunatic might imagine such a
preposterous vision or at least Hearn had to play
to the sentiment of the society in order to keep
his employment. Again his marriage with Mattie
is not only illegal, but also a social taboo that
could ruin him for life.
Once Hearn settles in New Orleans, he writes
Watkin about his newfound success. Yet, his pastin Cincinnati still hovers like a dark cloud. He
writes to Watkin “I have succeeded in getting
acquainted & being introduced into the bestsociety. I see my way clear to a position
here, — but then I feel sure some one will tell thatstory on me, sooner or later. Then I will have togo away” (Kuwabara). Amazingly, Hearn was
nervous but yet became close friends with
George Washington Cable who angered mostwhite southerners with his articles on the plightof African Americans and his advocacy for
granting freed slaves equal rights. He shares astory with one of his former colleagues inCincinnati about a group of fugitives from theSouth, white and black, heading for the North.
The steamer is carrying cotton that bursts intoflame and the captain and other whitepassengers are the first to abandon ship.
However the mulatto pilot stays at his post. The
ideal of a free society in the North compels thepilot to keep course and try to save the ship. The
mulatto man dies a hero while the whitepassengers escape in cowardice with little
remorse for the loss of those left aboard.
He works for the New Orleans Item and
Democrat and later moves to the Times-Democrat
in 1882 when the Democrat merges with the Times.
He becomes an accomplished and well-known
journalist in New Orleans for his exploration ofCreole Culture until 1887. Amazingly with theuse of only one eye he would produce his own
artwork to go with his articles. During thisperiod he wrote approximately 700 pieces for
publication. Hearn also starts to publish literaryworks in book form such as a translation of One
of Cleopatra’s Nights by Gautier (1882), Stray Leaves
from Strange Literature (1884) and Some Chinese
Ghosts (1887). When he becomes an editor for the
Item he even writes an article that details his
duties. In “Our Waste Basket,” Hearn tells thereadership that denunciations of religion, freethought, and “attacks upon sects of races” are all“equally condemned” and ignored by his editorial
staff. Hearn’s declares,....whatever and editor may be in his
private life, in his sanctum he has no specificreligious ideas, no freethinking
aggressiveness, no sectarian prejudices, nohumanitarian theories, no vegetarian or
carnivorous proclivities, no politicalpreferences. (The Item, May 1881)
In 1894 he would reminisce to Chamberlain of
his idealistic, yet impossible rebellion. He writes
that, “I thought I could overturn the universe.”
Hearn’s tendencies to go to extremes and ignore
the social rules of his day are often used as an
explanation by his first biographers for alifestyle of which others could not approve. In
Life and Letters, Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore
suggests that Hearn was “sick, unhappy andunpopular” with the root cause being the
resentment of his co-workers. The fact that
Wetmore tries to explain away his marriage to
Mattie Foley as a “pathetic, high minded piece of
quixotism” makes it clear that she did not
approve. Hearn was young and naive and his
desperate situation “drifted into someconnection with this girl.”
In Japan, as the editor of the Kobe Chronicle,
Hearn could tackle issues that had bothered him
since his days in Cincinnati. In an editorial of
October 20, 1894 he establishes his uniqueperspective to readers that “by long residence in
the Southern States of America” he was “familiar
with the abnormal social conditions there
existing [...] He continues that “Rarely can one
open an American newspaper without reading oflynchings and killings of negros; [.and.] It would
be impossible to contradict that conditions incertain parts of the South are not the conditionsof civilization” (Kobe Chronicle, October 20, 1894).
The impact of his experiences in Cincinnati
can be clearly seen in a number of articles for the
Kobe Chronicle. Hearn’s early writings
demonstrated that he was always keen to pointout those features of modern civilization that
poisoned or victimized other non-westerncultures. Hearn, in his criticism of the excesses ofwestern governments, highlights issues similarly
spotlighted in his reports on the abuse and horrid
conditions of laborers in Cincinnati. As a youngreporter he criticized the use of “shot and shell”
to bring Christianity to other cultures. His
feelings in this regard would strengthen in Japanand he used his post in Kobe to voice what he felt
as foul. In an article entitled Anti-Foreigner Anti
Missionary? of August 16, 1895 Hearn criticizes
the actions of missionaries for their collisions
with Chinese culture. In an editorial of October 4,1885 entitled The Latest Word on International
Morality, he laments over the continual use ofviolence in relentless wars. At the conclusion ofthis essay, Hearn attacks “Jingoism” or theexcessive nationalism that results in the belief of
one nation’s complete superiority over all others.
Then, Hearn probably makes one of the mostprofound statements of his career that definitely
has its roots in his early journalism.
Certainly it is clear that it is the growth ofintellectuality that we must look to for theelimination of race hatreds and the spread ofa sane cosmopolitanism. Race hatred itself isbased on a sort of perverted emotionalism
and sentimentalism, which will disappear
only with the substitution of ideals that lookto the extension of the limits of law and orderfrom communal to international relations.
(The Kobe Chronicle, October 4, 1895)
Hearn’s strong opinions in these commentaries
did not sit well with some readers. However, hestood his ground for the rest of his time in Japaneven though he came to feel a sense of alienationfrom the foreign community.
The late nineteenth century was a time of theovershadowing and marginalization of minority
cultures by a process of rapid modernization. In
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields Hearn confidently
states in his essay “In Osaka,” that “It is not true
Lafcadio at Home

7

that Old Japan is rapidly disappearing. It cannot
disappear within at least another hundred years;
perhaps it will never entirely disappear.” Modern
civilization is encroaching on the Japanese but“Old Japan survives in art, in faith, in customs andhabits, in the hearts and the homes of the people:
it may be found everywhere by those who know
how to look for it” (Gleanings 152). Hearn’s
experiences as an outcast during his time in
Cincinnati thrust him into a cruel, modern world
and could have completely swallowed him up.
Ironically, it was these environments that lead
him to those on the outskirts of acceptablesociety to find the faults and vices of American
society. These experiences eventually led him
away from the unforgiving, racial sentiments of
the United States. But in his flight from modern
society he gained a respect for other cultures thathe brought with him to Japan. He gained an
appreciation and, more importantly, a desire topoint out the distinctive elements of culture that
his contemporaries would ignore.

References• Barrett, Clifton Waller. Collection of Lafcadio Hearn
Manuscripts, ts., Special Collections, University ofVirginia.
• Bisland, Elizabeth. The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1923.
• —. The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn. Boston and
New York: The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1910.
• Cable, George W. “The Freedman’s Case of Equity.” New
Century Magazine January, 1885. The University ofVirginia. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/.
• Chamberlain, Basil Hall. Things Japanese: Being Notes on
Various Subjects Connected with Japan. London: J.
Murray, 1905.
• Findsen, Owen. Whimsically Grotesque. Tokyo:
Dojisha., 2004.
• Frost, O. W. Children of the Levy. Kentucky: Universityof Kentucky Press, 1957.
• Frost, O. W. Young Hearn. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1958.
Hirakawa, Sukehiro, ed. Rediscovering Lafcadio Hearn:
Japanese Legends, Life & Culture. Folkestone, Kent, UK:
Global Oriental, 1997.
• Gould, George M. Collection of Lafcadio Hearn Materials,ts., Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

8

Lafcadio Hearn: Open Minded Rebellion in Print• Hearn, Lafcadio. “Bismillah” Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati, Ohio: December 13, 1873.
• —. “A Case of Lunacy” Cincinnati Commercial.
Cincinnati, Ohio: July 18, 1876.
• —. “A Curious Orientalism,” The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati, Ohio: May 2, 1873.
• —. “Epidemic in Embryo.” The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati, Ohio: June 8, 1873.
• —. “The English and the Anthropophagi” Cincinnati
Enquirer. Cincinnati, Ohio: November 27, 1873.
• —. Gleanings in Buddha Fields. Boston: Little Brown andCompany, 1898.
• —. “A Hebrew College” Cincinnati Enquirer. Cincinnati,
Ohio: May 23, 1873.
• —. “A Human Exposition.” The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati, Ohio: September 23, 1875.
• —. Kokoro. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1896.
• —. “A Marquesan Incident” Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati, Ohio: December 17, 1873.
• —. “A Mild and Just Government” Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati, Ohio: January 10, 1874.
• —. “A Nasty Nest” Cincinnati Enquirer. Cincinnati,
Ohio: July 27, 1873.
• —. “Pagan Piety” Cincinnati Enquirer. Cincinnati, Ohio:
November 15, 1873.
• —. “Slow Starvation.” The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati, Ohio: February 15, 1874.
• Ichikawa, Sanki. Some New Letters and Writings ofLafcadio Hearn. Tokyo: Kenkyusha Publishers, 1925.
• Kuwabara, Shunzo. Veiled Letters from Lafcadio Hearn.
Tokyo: Yushodo Press, 1991.
• Murray, Paul. A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literatureof Lafcadio Hearn. Sundate, Folkestone, KentCT20 3EE:
Japan Library, 1993.
• Perkins, P. D., and Iona Perkins. Lafcadio Hearn: A
Bibliography of His Writings. Introduction by Sanki
Ichikawa. 1934.
• Philips, John E. “Double-duty Scholar Lafcadio Hearna Link between Japan and Black America” The Japan
Times. Tokyo: September 17, 1988.
• Spears, Bill. “Vagabond Lafcadio Hearn Arrives.”
Enquirer Magazine. Cincinnati, Ohio: 1974.
• Summers, Mark Wahlgren. The Press Gang: Newspapers
and Politics, 1865-1878. Chapel Hill, NC: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1994.
• Tanabe, Ryuji. Lafcadio Hearn Diaries and Letters. Tokyo:
1921.
• Tinker, Edward Larocque. Lafcadio Hearn’s AmericanDays. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924.
• Sangu, Makoto. Lafcadio Hearn: Editorials From The Kobe
Chronicle. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1960.
• Zenimoto, Kenji. Lafcadio Hearn Letters I. Hearn
Society, 2001.

Under the Volcano in St. Pierre

John Moran
Journalist, The Irish TimesW

hen Anthony Trollope toured the
Caribbean islands in 1859 he foundthe towns on islands under Frenchadministration superior in design, architecture
and port amenities to those governed from
London. Among these French possessions, thetown of Saint-Pierre on the island of Martinique
was considered the finest of all and was known
as the Little Paris of the Antilles.

On his own Caribbean cruise in 1887, thewandering Irishman Patrick Lafcadio Hearn,
who had recently abandoned newspaper
journalism after a highly successful career inCincinnati and New Orleans, was also smitten by
Martinique. Even the surrounding blue-black sea“bewitches certain Celtic eyes”, he wrote. After
dropping off in Saint-Pierre during his threemonth tour, he decided to return for a longer
period to record the tropical beauty and the daily
routines of the inhabitants of an island where
Napoleon’s wife Josephine was born.
Lafcadio Hearn stayed in Martinique for two
years, sending sparkling and often poetic essays
and sketches to Harper’s Magazine in New York.
These would later form part of his travel classic,
Two Years in the French West Indies. He also
completed a charming novelette, Youma: the Storyof a West Indian Slave. In the foreword to the mostrecent edition of the travel book, Martiniquan
writer Raphael Confiant notes: “After less than
two years of living in Martinique, Lafcadio
Hearn had succeeded in penetrating one of themost jealously guarded secrets of our ancient
quimboiseurs (witch-doctors). This magnificent

traveller was sensitive to colours and sounds andthe peculiar way they shape our everyday lives in
the Caribbean islands.” Confiant also delights in
Hearn’s “ungovernable tendency to associatewith black and mulatto people”.
In the two years between 1887 and 1889, Hearnbecame a familiar sight on the island. He lived
mostly in Saint-Pierre in the shadow of its
looming volcano, Mont Pelée, which was known
affectionately by Pierrotins as “La Montagne”. To
the long-gone Arawaks, and the Caribs who
replaced them, it had been known as “FireMountain”. Apart from his watchful ramblings
around the streets of Saint-Pierre, Hearn also
climbed Mont Pelée and went on expeditions
into the interior, recording the customs, culture
and place in the social hierarchy of the different
ethnic groups. Though he was familiar withhigh-society colonists and Creoles who
possessed the latest fashions and ideas from theMetropole, he chose to live among and write
about those of African and East Indian descent.
It all reminded him of the old French Quarter in
New Orleans. “A population fantastic,
astonishing — a population of the ArabianNights,” he noted with delight.
Hearn worked painstakingly, noting theminutiae of the daily routines of the
blanchusseuses, women who washed clothes inthe euphonious river Roxelane, which flows
through Saint-Pierre, just as he did with theporteuses or porter women who, with sublime
grace, carried heavy loads on their heads fromthe port out into distant country destinations; he
Lafcadio at Home9

recorded the routines of the petits canotiers,
canoe boys who dived for coins thrown bypassengers and crew arriving on visiting ships.
He doggedly travelled throughout the pitons,
mountains and mornes, past pious little Marian
jungle shrines perched incongruously among
the strange vegetation of giant plants and exotic
tropical trees. He also heard stories of life on thesugar plantations of the days of slavery.
Hearn particularly revelled in the tales ofzombies and quimboiseurs, which he gleaned
from his neighbours. Echoing his period as areporter on the police beat in Cincinnati, heseemed to possess a desire to willfully discomfit
the comfortably-off readers of Harper’s Magazine
with occasional grotesque accounts of theisland’s creepy-crawly creatures, once lovingly
detailing the putrefying effects of a bite from thedeadly fer-de-lance viper.
Nature was at her most beautiful in thetropics, but also at her most dangerous, Hearn
noted: “A paradise this is, but a paradise of fire.”
During a virulent smallpox epidemic that laid
waste to hundreds of lives, Hearn chronicled thedeaths of friends, acquaintances and strangers.
His account of the Saint-Pierre Carnival thatwent ahead at the height of the plague is bothsensitive and macabre.
Though only 5 feet 3 inches in height andhaving the sight of just one bulbous eye, Hearn’s
determined spirit was evident in his completionof the arduous climb of the 4,500ft Mont Pelée,the volcanic giant that looms over Saint-Pierre
and dominates the landscape. Near the top,
Hearn rested with a bathe in a crater. Looking
down from the summit, he was overwhelmed by
the panoramic view down towards Saint-Pierre
and beyond. But he was also struck bymelancholy: “For all this astonishment of beauty,
all of this majesty of light and form and colour,
will surely endure — marvellous as now — after wehave lain down to sleep where no dreams come,and may never arise from the dust of our rest to
look upon it.”
Hearn compared the mountain’s contours to
an exquisitely printed Japanese fan, and went on:“The artist willing to devote a few weeks of traveland study to Pelée has not yet made his

10

Under the Volcano in St. Pierre

appearance in Martinique.” He wasn't to knowthat by an extraordinary coincidence the French
painter Pierre Gauguin lived for four months justoutside Saint-Pierre around the time Hearn was
actually there. Gauguin was there for the same
reason as Hearn — the wild, exotic beauty of its
landscapes and people. Gauguin completed adozen works in Martinique and it is a nice irony
that one of these, Coming and Going in Martinique,today adorns the cover of a modern edition of
Hearn’s Two Years in the French West Indies.
In 1889, Hearn departed Martinique, which
he had “loved as if it were a human being”.
Within a year he was in Japan, a country whose
ancient culture was exciting great interest in theWest. Rafael Confiant has said that Hearn “spokewith a Martinique voice”, exactly theauthenticity Hearn said he hoped to achieve inJapan. (Hearn completed 14 books and made aninternational name for himself as an interpreterof Japan at a time when things Japanese were all
the fashion in London and Paris and New York.)
Back in Martinique, from late February 1902,
13 years after Hearn left, fumaroles on Fire
Mountain began emitting sulphuric gases that
wafted down and whorled all around the streetsof Saint-Pierre, fouling the air with the noxious
pungency of rotten eggs. As the months wore on,
there were successions of eruptions of steam anddust, sometimes accompanied by frighteningroars and growling earth tremours.
Things got worse for Pierrotins as springarrived with invasions of the city by yellow ants,
large black centipedes and a host of othercreatures, fleeing the boiling emissions. Not least
among these invaders were the hundreds of fersde-lances which seethed around the streets andhomes of Saint-Pierre striking out at anythingthat moved, leaving 50 dead, mostly children.
Though some fled the gathering horror, themilitary forced them back. The majority stayed,having been advised to do so by the town’s
conservative white politicians who wished themto vote in an important election on May 11th.
“Where better could you be than in Saint-Pierre?”
asked Les Colonies newspaper in its final SaintPierre edition.

Mont Pelée gave its answer on May 8th, 1902,
at 7.50am, when two enormous clouds of
volcanic material exploded from the side of themountain, sending smoke and debris hissing
down the side of the mountain in a “glowing
avalanche” as it gained relentlessly on the port ofSaint-Pierre. Within minutes, pyroclastic surges
began engulfing the city.
In the harbour, sailors and passengers on
board ships had at first cheered the “magnificent
spectacle” as the volcano blew, but soon saw“glimpses of hell”, with scenes of blind panic on
the shore as spectral figures shrouded in ash fled
through the suffocating maelstrom of boilingmagma, frantically seeking shelter.
But there was none. Even the sea was boiling.
Hundreds who sought sanctuary in the town’scathedral died there. In just under an hour all
those in the city — up to 30,000 people — wereannihilated.
All those in the city save three, that is. One ofwhom was Aguste Ciparis, aka Ludger Sylbaris,a prisoner in the dungeon of the city jail.
Although badly burned, he survived. Within ayear Ciparis was the star attraction, in the US, ofBarnum and Bailey’s circus freak show as “theevil survivor of the city of death”.
On the other side of the world the next day, theprofessor of English literature at the prestigious
Tokyo Imperial University, Lafcadio Hearn— or
Koizumi Yukumo, as he was now known— wasperusing the foreign pages in his morningnewspaper when a one-paragraph account of thefate of Saint-Pierre shattered his calm. All his
friends and those he had written about so
affectionately had died in the most appalling of
circumstances. A forlorn Lafcadio Hearn
recorded his anguish: “But all this was— and isnot! Never again will the sun or moon shine upon
the streets of that city; never will its ways be
trodden again— except in dreams.”
For long after the disaster, Saint-Pierre wasdeemed unsafe and for many, cursed. Fort-deFrance became the island’s principal town, but
in time green shoots began to appear throughthe carpet of volcanic debris around Saint-Pierre
and rebuilding began. Today, Saint-Pierre is a
chic Caribbean port and Martinique is a fulldépartement of France where now you may buy
goods with euro. The town’s comeback is marked
each year on the anniversary of the disaster witha jazz festival and a candlelit procession ofremembrance from the cathedral.
And thanks to the delicate, fretful art ofPatrick Lafcadio Hearn — the forgotten Irishmanof letters — wherever Two Years in the French West
Indies is read, the old city of Saint-Pierre will live
again in the imagination, and that generation of
Pierrotins who perished in that cruel spring of1902 will be remembered.
From an article in the The Irish Times in thecentenary year of Hearn’s death, Saturday, April
24th, 2004

Lafcadio at Home

11

A Fantastic Journey:
the Life and Literature of
Lafcadio Hearnd
Paul Murray
Hearn BiographerT

he research for my biography, A
Fantastic Journey: the Life and Literatureof Lafcadio Hearn 1, began in the New
York Public Library in September 1980. My
interest in Hearn went back to my posting at the
Embassy of Ireland, Tokyo, as Deputy Head ofMission, from 1978 to 1980, from where I moved
to North America in the summer of 1980.
I discovered Lafcadio Hearn as a young
diplomat in Japan. In the 1970s Hearn’s
reputation was at its nadir. I recall seeing a
television documentary on Hearn — on NHK, I
think — in which the various academics
interviewed were united on one thing: that while
Hearn’s life was interesting, his work was nolonger of relevance. In 1979, Professor Sukehiro
Hirakawa of Tokyo University, the dean of Hearn
scholarship, commented:
Hearn’s writings are today so discredited
among American Japanese specialists that if ayoung student quotes Hearn sympathetically,
he is almost certain to be criticised by hisacademic advisers and considered a belatedromanticist unfit for serious scholarship.
There is, however, no problem at all withquoting the authoritative [Basil Hall]
Chamberlain 2.
My reaction was precisely the opposite: when I
began reading Hearn in 1978 I felt that there was a
hard kernal of meaning in Hearn’s interpretationof Japan that transcended, not just his contemporary Japanologists, Basil Hall Chamberlain, Ernest
Satow and William George Aston, but even muchof the analysis encased in the massive volumes

12

A Fantastic Journey: the Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn

then running off the academic presses. While
Hearn had been well served by biographers since
his death, most recently in the 1960s by the excellent Elizabeth Stevenson, none of his Anglophonebiographers had lived in Japan and none had seen
his analysis of that country as central to their work.
I felt that a new biography was needed which
would place at its heart Hearn’s interpretation ofJapan. My reasoning was that if Hearn had fallen
overboard and drowned on his way to Japan in1890 he would be little more than a footnote toAmerican literary history. The thirteen major
books 3 that he wrote in his fourteen final years
in his adopted country established him as awriter of significance, one who was worthy ofremembrance and, indeed, of biography. Also, it
was in Japan that his style matured from anattempt to mimic his French literary idols in
New Orleans to the simple, uncluttered andhighly effective prose of his Japanese work.
I set about trying to persuade those I felt were
better qualified to undertake this work but none
was interested. One prophesied that, after five
years of intensive work on Hearn, I would not beable to bear hearing the sound of his name. He
could hardly have been more wrong. Finally, mywife advised that I should write the book myself.
I had, after all, a background in publication,
having edited a fortnightly magazine, Ireland
Today, for the Department of Foreign Affairs in
Dublin for three years, 1975–78, prior to mydeparture for Japan. My wife, a graduate of theRoyal College of Art in London, had been thedesigner of Ireland Today and other Foreign
Affairs publications that we had produced
together. I was confident that with her helptranscribing research material I could write ashort biography in about eighteen months: it
would take thirteen years.
I had a stroke of luck in that while I was crossposted from Tokyo to Ottawa in the summer of
1980, I spent about four months each autumn
assisting at the Irish Mission to the United
Nations in New York. Here were kept some of thegreat collections of Hearn primary material. A
librarian at the New York Public Libraryprovided a list of the primary source collectionsin the United States and these would provide thebedrock of research material that would be thebackbone of my biography, a first draft of which
was written in the mid 1980s. On my return to
Ireland in 1985 I found new material which
illuminated Hearn’s early years and this wasadded to the existing draft. A chance meetingwith Paul Norbury, publisher of the Japan
Library, in London, where I was posted as a
diplomat in the 1990s, led to A Fantastic Journey
being published in 1993. Paul arranged for its
subsequent publication in America by the
University of Michigan Press in 1997 and inJapanese translation by Kobunsha in 2000.
Biography, however, never stands still. Not
alone do new writers appear but established ones
such as myself continually find new material
that adds to or modifies their understanding of
the subject. Only last August, I was giving apaper at a history conference in Maynooth
University on newly-discovered material on
Bram Stoker, which radically transforms ourunderstanding of the origins of Dracula 4, when I
wandered into the campus bookshop. There I
found a book on American post Civil War
Reconstruction which included an illustration ofan 1868 cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper's
Weekly 5. The cartoon features three figures, an
Irish-American holding a club; an exConfederate soldier brandishing a dagger; and, aJewish financier holding aloft a bundle of money,
each of them with a foot on top of a crushed
black man. The point being made, in the midstof a Presidential election, was that an unholy
alliance of the Irish, Southerners and Jews wereconspiring to deny the black man his rights: theIrishman and Confederate by force and theJewish financier by bribery. It is noteworthy thatwhile the black man is sympatheticallyportrayed, the Confederate and the financier areat least depicted as human; the Irishman alone is
sub-human, a drunken, violent animal.
A modern commentator provides context:“The figure on the left is Irish-American. He wears
working-class clothing, has an alcohol bottle inhis hip pocket, a pipe and a cross in his hat, andholds a club in a striking position. ‘5 Points’[emblazoned on his hat] refers to a neighborhoodin New York City, populated at the time primarily
by poor Irish immigrants. The man’s features are
ape-like, a common way the Irish were portrayedin nineteenth-century illustrations.” 6 This
cartoon was not a once-off: Nast was the mostinfluential — and feared — cartoonist of the age
who consistently targeted the Irish. Harper's
Weekly was a leading intellectual journal with anational audience at a time when most media in
America was local or regional and so its potential
negative impact on a young immigrant like
Hearn could have been substantial.
It was probably these cartoon that Lafcadio
had in mind when he wrote to the publisher, Will
H. Coleman, in 1886 (on contemporary
representations of Chinese beauty): “They nomore represent the finer type than the
caricatures of Irishmen in Harper's Weekly
represent the Irish University graduate or Irish
colonels of a Light-Horse brigade.” 7 Here Hearn
is making it clear that he does not fit thisstereotype of the Irish as apes: his reference tograduates and army colonels clearly relates to his
own family, so many of whom were graduates of
Trinity College Dublin and officers in the British
army. But he was still Paddy Hearn, who was not
a WASP on account of his Roman Catholicbackground, with a Dublin accent, albeit it an
educated one. On the other hand, he would nothave fitted the self-image of the Irish themselves,
most of them Roman Catholics of peasantbackground. He was therefore in an identity
no-man’s land.
Nast’s cartoons caused me to revisit theCincinnati of Hearn’s era. Intense anti-Roman
Catholic/anti-foreign hostility had been directedat German immigrants, mostly Roman
Catholics, who had been arriving there in large
numbers from 1830s. The “Know-Nothing” Partyof the 1850s was a reaction to the growing
numbers of Jews, Roman Catholics and blacks.
In 1855, three days of violence followed theimportation of nativist thugs to seize ballots in
Lafcadio at Home13

German areas (the Germans had establishedtheir own quarter, Over the Rhine, where theymostly congregated). Hearn arrived at the end of
the following decade, just four years after the
Civil War, when the USA was convulsed by the
racial issues inherent in Reconstruction. Hearnnever wrote explicitly of these larger politicaland social issues but he quietly defied
convention by his interest in black culture andby marrying a black ex-slave at a time wheninter-racial marriage was illegal in Ohio.
The racial prejudice that Hearn encounteredin America would have been a shock given that
he had grown up in an Ireland where it wasnotably absent. Since writing my biography, I
became aware of the experience of Frederick
Douglass, the great black American statesman
who toured Ireland in 1845 while still a slave andwas amazed by its lack of prejudice:
Eleven days and a half gone and I havecrossed three thousand miles of the perilous
deep. Instead of a democratic government, I
am under a monarchical government. Insteadof the bright, blue sky of America, I am
covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald
Isle [Ireland]. I breathe, and lo! the chattel[slave] becomes a man. I gaze around in vain
for one who will question my equal humanity,
claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I
employ a cab — I am seated beside white
people — I reach the hotel — I enter the same
door — I am shown into the same parlour — I
dine at the same table — and no one isoffended... I find myself regarded and treatedat every turn with the kindness and deference
paid to white people. When I go to church, I
am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip
to tell me, ‘We don’t allow niggers in here! ’ 8
Cincinnati therefore presented Hearn withchallenges of race, nationality and religion
which he had solved by the time he left in 1877 bysevering his links with Irishness and Roman
Catholicism and becoming more circumspect on
the racial issue. He had come to the US as an
insecure, nineteen-year-old, Patrick or Paddy
Hearn, traumatised by the sudden decline in his
fortunes over the previous two years; he would
now transform himself into Lafcadio Hearn,
confident litterateur, and such he would remain.

14

A Fantastic Journey: the Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn

While I was aware of negativity towards thewave of Irish immigrants in mid nineteenthcentury America, it was only when I saw Nast’s
cartoons that I realised the viciousness ofcontemporary racism and what this might havemeant for the formation of Lafcadio Hearn in themaelstrom of Reconstruction America. It also
raises the question as to whether his celebrated
break with Harper shortly after his arrival in
Japan could have been influenced by thesefactors. His letter severing the relationship is
one of the most remarkable passages ofscatology in English literature:...liars, —and losers of MSS, —employers oflying clerks and hypocritical, thieving editors,
and artists whose artistic ability consists infarting sixty-seven times to the minute,—scallywags, scoundrels, swindlers, sons ofbitches... Know also that there exists one
particular individual, whose name is at the endof these words, whom all the money of all theStates of America and Mexico could not induce
to contribute one line to your infernally vulgar
beastly-goodey’s-Lady’s-Book-Magazine, youmiserable beggarly buggerly cowardly rascallyboorish brutal sons of bitches. 9
This scatalogical invective is unparalled in
Hearn’s letters and had serious consequences forhim: he had now sundered his relationship with
Harper, the source of his income and his lifeline
to America, on which he would continue to belargely dependent both for publishing andreadership. Could his extreme anger — which isotherwise difficult to explain, even for one aspassionate as Hearn — have reflected a long-held
grudge based on Harper’s racial stereotyping?
Similar chance encounters have led me toreassess other aspects of Hearn’s life.
Conversations with kindly Greeks on a visit to
the mental hospital in Corfu where Hearn’s
mother spent her final decade, after I had
attended a 2014 Lefkas conference devoted to
Hearn, resulted in a good deal of new material
coming to light on the relationship between
Hearn’s parents in the Ionian Islands and thevery specific nature of the then United States of
the Ionian Islands, a nominally independent,
British protectorate where he was born which isusually, inaccurately, described as “Greece”. 10

A book 11 on the Corrib area in the West of
Ireland, which I came across by chance, hastransformed my understanding of the Elwood
family, at whose residence the young Patrick
Lafcadio experienced the happiest days of hischildhood in Ireland. Space, however, precludes
providing detail on these explorations: it issufficient to say that the fantastic journey on
which I embarked with Patrick Lafcadio Hearn
in 1980 continues apace, thirty-six years later.
Notes
1. Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey: the Life and Literatureof Lafcadio Hearn, Folkestone: Japan Library, 1993
2. “Supplementary Comment on the Lafcadio Hearn
Paper”, Professor Hirakawa Sukehiro, paper given at
the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for
Scholars, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.,
19/7/1979; published in Lafcadio Hearn: Japan’s Great
Interpreter, A new anthology of his writings 1894–1904,
Louis Allen & Jean Wilson (ed), Japan Library:
Sandgate, Kent, 1992, 302-8
3. Available at that time under the Tuttle imprint; I
recall buying the entire set in a Kanda bookshop in
the autumn of 1978

4.

Paul Murray, “Puritanism and the formation of Bram
Stoker’s Dracula”, Fifth Tudor and Stuart IrelandInterdisciplinary Conference, Maynooth University,
28-29 August 2015
5. Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, New
York: Harper & Row, 1990; ‘This is a White Man’s
Government.’, Harper’s Weekly, 5 September 1868, 568
6. “This Is A White Man’s Government”, HarpWeek (JohnAdler, publisher), http://blackhistory.harpweek.com/
7Illustrations/Reconstruction/ThisIsAWhiteMansGov.
htm (last accessed 23 March 2016)
7. Quoted in Murray, A Fantastic Journey, 85
8. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom,
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia
Library, Part II, 371
9. Quoted in A Fantastic Journey, 133
10. The most significant item to come to my attention
was a Greek language article, “Roza Antoniou
Kassimati (Mother of Lafcadio Hearn)”, Eleni CharouKoroneou, Kythyranean, May 2006; kindly translated
for me by the then Ambassador of Cyprus in Ireland,
Michael Stavrinos, a friend and neighbour
11. Richard Hayward, The Corrib Country, with
illustrations from drawings in wash by J. Humbert
Craig, R. H. A., Dundalk, Ireland: W. Tempest,
Dundalgan Press, 1943
Lafcadio at Home

15

Considering Lafcadio Hearn’s
Open Mind from the Point of View of
One Descendant
Bon Koizumi

Professor, University of Shimane; Great-grandson of Lafcadio Hearn

I

would like to talk about Lafcadio Hearn’s
open mind from a point of view of one
descendant.
Hearn’s one-way ticket journey that crossed
over half the globe enabled him to accept
different cultural characteristics of each place
wherever he dropped. I believe, his remarkablecosmopolitanism emerged from the result of
this fantastic journey. I am sure it was Irelandthat presented to him the wandering spirit,
which had been fundamental for his whole life.
By the way, I partially inherit this spirit fromhim, so I had already wandered around Japan
when I was only twelve years old. I am proud of
inheriting this wandering spirit.
Though many scholars have researched theroots of Hearn family, only one thing is certainthat Daniel Hearn, Lafcadio’s great-grandfather
settled in Dublin in the early eighteenth century.
Yesterday, the Lafcadio Hearn Reading
Performance was held at St. Ann’s Church, where
Daniel had served. He would later become theArchdeacon of Cashel, and establish thefoundation of Hearn family in Ireland. As
tracing back further from Daniel, it is said theancestor of Hearn family was a lord of a town inNorthumberland, Northern England.
About six years ago, an elderly woman Ray
Hearne visited Matsue, where we live, from
North Carolina.
“I have the same family name “Hearne” as you,but it is slightly different,” she said, “My familyname is Hearne, “e” is attached after “n.” But I
think you and I have common ancestors.
Recently, I have visited a village le Heron,locating near Rouen, Normandy. There I got a16

book titled as Hearne History, so I will give yousome part of its copies.”
As she said so, she presented them to me. It
explains that, though there exist seven different
spellings of the family name Hearn, ourcommon origin converges on the Heron family
in Heron village. Following William theConqueror, my ancestor seemed to go to England.
Later, the descendant of the ancestor, William
Heron was designated as the Governor of
Bamborough Castle in Northumberland. If
William Heron has some relationship to Hearn,
the Hearn family is descended from the AngloNorman. But, of course, there exists noparticular proof in fact.
When I visited Le Heron in 2009, I asked avillager the reason why this village was named
Heron. The villager answered, because a large
number of small fish live in L’Andelle River,
herons gather for them to prey. In fact, until thenineteen-forty’s, there existed the castle named“Chateau du Heron” in the village. Besides, in frontof the village, I found that there was a board on
which a heron was painted. By the way, the crestof Hearn Family in Ireland includes four herons,
and a heron is also designed in the Koizumi
Family’s crest. This crest was produced by an art
teacher, who was a colleague during Hearn’s
Matsue days. I felt wonder in this coincidence.
In Hearn’s later life, a peddler came to his
house to sell baby herons. As he saw them, hefelt pity and bought one of them. He raised itwith great care, and finally released it in a forest.
Hearn had been sympathetic toward theaggrieved throughout his life. About forty years
later, in the middle of the Second World War, my

Considering Lafcadio Hearn’s Open Mind from the Point of View of One Descendantfather was boarded on a naval ship, but it wasdestroyed by an American submarine at theMariana Trench, the deepest trench in the world.
Recognizing he was going to die, he found a
shadow of a ship far away. Surprisingly, thename of this ship was “Sagi,” which means aheron in Japanese. Saved by this torpado boat
named Sagi, in other words, heron, he would
survive until two-thousand zero nine.
Furthermore, the pretty symbol flower of
Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, where I was born, is“Sagiso.” As the figure of this plant looks like thatof a flying heron, so it was named like this. I still
remember my mother grew it in my house.
I suppose both Hearn family and members of
the Koizumi family have been tied with herons
supernaturally for a long time. Throughout his
life, Lafcadio was the kind of person who had
respected such supernatural sensitivity.
At 30th August 1890, Hearn assumed histeacher’s post in Matsue; but its winter climate
was so severe for him, so Setsu Koizumi, adaughter of ex-samurai class, took care of him
kindly. She proved to be a good storyteller later.
Hearn and Setsu publicly married on 1896 when
they were in Kobe.
Later in his life, Hearn became absorbed incollecting and retelling Japanese ghost stories,
and he greatly appreciated her role as his
informant, a role that had provided original
stories for him. Setsu had no academic
background according to the economic distressof her family, but she was a kind of a girl who
liked stories so much that she had always asked
the adults around her to narrate some stories.
The stories to which she had listened during her
childhood were very meaningful for creating
his literary works. However, when Setsu
attempted to tell some stories to him from abook of ghost stories which she had obtained ina secondhand bookstore, Hearn order a strict
demand to her immediately:“Do not take a look at a book. Stories must be
just your own speech, your words, and yourthought.”
Hearn probably thought the true charm oforal culture should be what came fromstoryteller’s own words and interpretation.
In addition to that, Hearn did not simply
listen to Setsu’s stories, but instead told to his
family members his Martinique episodes andIrish stories which he had heard from his nurse
during the Irish days, Catherine Costello. The
Koizumi Family has been abundant in stories.
Our family has inherited two Irish folktales
from Hearn for my generation. I would like tointroduce them.
The Three Wishes

In a country of Ireland, there were a husband
and a wife who worked so earnestly in farming
though often quarreled.
A night just before Christmas, the God
appeared in front of them and said:“Though thou quarrel so often, thou work
hard,” the God said, “Because of this, your threewishes will be fulfilled.”“A sausage I want to eat!” the husband said.
Soon after saying thus, a sausage appeared justin front of him.
“A sausage! Oh what a fool!” the wife
complained immediately. “Why don’t you say
you want the mountain of gold coins!”
As usual, they began to quarrel.
“A sausage,” the husband cried “would suit
your nose, because you’re so greedy!”
As soon as he cried so, the sausage attached
to her nose.
They grudgingly favored to the God to unfix it.
Finally, the three wishes were all fulfilled.
The Animal Languages

Once in a year, the king of cats appeared, andcats gathered there to hold a general assembly.
An honest peddler smoked a cigarette wearily
in the grass in the middle of his journey. To
quench his thirst, he drank water gushing near
the spot where he was resting.
Soon after drinking, to his great surprise, heheard voices behind the grass. But, because it
was midnight, so it was improbable for him tobelieve that they were those of human beings.
Watching carefully, he noticed many cats had
gathered around him. He seemed to be able tolisten to the words of cats. As he listened to them,
the beginning of the general assembly of cats
was declared.
“Well, are you doing well?” the king of cats said.
“Welcome to the general assembly of cats. I’m
glad of meeting all of you again.”“By the way, do you think human beings arefoolish? A lot of gold coins are buried under that
Lafcadio at Home17

tree. But they wouldn’t like to dig that spot. Oh,
what a real fool are they! Ha, ha, ha!”“Do you have anything to discuss?”
Some are discussed, the assembly was closed
peacefully in the meantime.
“All right, so we’d like to meet you again here
the same day next year! See you again!”
As hearing this, the honest peddler tried to
dig the spot under the tree. To his surprise, he
could find gold coins which were reallyglittering. So he became a rich man.
A greedy peddler heard this, and tried toconsider the way to become rich. Then toencounter the general assembly of the next year,
he went to the spot, drank the fresh water, andsecretly climbed to a tree nearby the spot. From
there, he watched the assembly.
After a while, the king of cats exclaimed.
“Well, are you doing well?”“I’m glad of meeting all of you again.
“By the way, do you know there was a spy of ahuman being in the last year’s assembly? Our
important secret was leaked to him. Eventually,
we were completely cheated.
“We never let him do such a thing in this year.
So, before the assembly, we have to search the
spy thoroughly! If you find him, you may scratch
and kill him immediately! Are you ready?”“Oh!”
Cats searched thoroughly the grass and trees
around the spot of the assembly.
The greedy peddler was immediately foundby the cats, and finally became the victim of
their sharp nails.
These two stories seemed to be told to Hearn
by his nurse Catherine Costello. Recently, notes
about her were found in Virginia State
University. One of them says:
The name of my nurse is Catharine
Costello,—a tall girl from Connaught. There isanother servant in the house named
Catharine  —a gentle humble girl with big
brown eyes; but everybody called her “Kate.”
Nobody would dare to call my Catharine “Kate.”
Her skin is very white hair is black, hereyebrows are black; and her blue eyes are green.
Later, in 1901, in a letter to W. B. Yeats, Hearn
said:

18

But forty-five years ago, I was a horrid little
boy “with never a crack in my heart” wholives in Upper Leeson Street, Dublin; and I
had a Connaught nurse who told me fairytales and ghost stories. So I ought to love
Irish things, and do.
It is the Irish atmosphere surrounded bystorytelling that greatly contributed to Hearn’s
future career as a retelling writer. Later in thelife, he told the charm of storytelling in “TheDream of a Summer Day,” written in his
Japanese days:
A Story which had lived for a thousand years,
gaining fresher charm with the passing of
every century, could only have survived byvirtue of some truth in it.
In addition to this, in a lecture of the Imperial
University in Tokyo, he told to the students:
The ghostly represents always some shadowof truth, and no amount of disbelief in what
used to be called ghosts can ever diminish
human interest in what relates to that truth.
The two quotations above were the
manifestation of the real feeling of Hearn, who
lived together with storytellers and loved folk
literature throughout his whole life. His affection
for folk literature, which has had universality andflexibility beyond religion, formed his open mind
and creativity at the same time.
In fact, Hearn never let his eldest son go to a
Japanese elementary school until he became ten.
Instead, Hearn privately taught to him
collections of folktales such as Hans ChristianAndersen and Andrew Lang as the textbooks. He
had always thought the teaching method
adopted Japanese schools tended to heighten theability of memorization disproportionately, notto nurture that of imagination. Our family still
keep these twenty-nine books that Hearn used inteaching to his eldest son.
I assure, it is his Ireland experience that
greatly contributed to the formation of Hearn’s
open mind blooming in his late life. I also assure,the experience was always fundamental for hiswhole life.

Considering Lafcadio Hearn’s Open Mind from the Point of View of One Descendantwww.littlemuseum.ie
hearn2015.sanin-japan-ireland.org
www.facebook.com/hearn2014