Honoring a Westerner Who Preserved Japan’s Folk Tales
MATSUE, Japan — As snow silently fell on the miniature garden outside, Bon Koizumi sat on the same tatami mat floor where, more than a century before, his great-grandfather wrote down some of Japan’s best-loved folk tales.
It was the perfect image of Japanese repose, except for the sepiatoned photo of Mr. Koizumi’s ancestor, whose bushy mustache and aquiline nose highlighted an unmistakably Western face.
His great-grandfather was Lafcadio Hearn, the Irish-Greek author whose wanderings brought him here after a career as a muckraking journalist in the United States. Mr. Hearn lived in Matsue only 15 months, but this remote castle city still claims him as its favorite son, displaying his face on park statues, street signs and local brands of beer, sake and even instant coffee.
Mr. Hearn’s descriptions of this medieval city and its ancient tales of gods and ghosts put Matsue on the map in the 1890s. Even now it is a popular tourist destination, thanks to Japan’s enduring fascination with Mr. Hearn, who married a local samurai’s daughter, took Japanese citizenship and died in Tokyo in 1904.
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It was the perfect image of Japanese repose, except for the sepiatoned photo of Mr. Koizumi’s ancestor, whose bushy mustache and aquiline nose highlighted an unmistakably Western face.
His great-grandfather was Lafcadio Hearn, the Irish-Greek author whose wanderings brought him here after a career as a muckraking journalist in the United States. Mr. Hearn lived in Matsue only 15 months, but this remote castle city still claims him as its favorite son, displaying his face on park statues, street signs and local brands of beer, sake and even instant coffee.
Mr. Hearn’s descriptions of this medieval city and its ancient tales of gods and ghosts put Matsue on the map in the 1890s. Even now it is a popular tourist destination, thanks to Japan’s enduring fascination with Mr. Hearn, who married a local samurai’s daughter, took Japanese citizenship and died in Tokyo in 1904.