Hearn's Japan: Writings from a Mystical Country Volume 1 (Toyo Reference)

Finally the treatment these true classics deserve: thoroughly re-edited and modernized texts with glossary index...and beautiful layout to boot.Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) the son of an Irish Surgeon-Major and a Greek woman of noble lineage who settled in Japan after a checkered career in journalism in Cincinnati and New Orleans is still considered by many the most astute interpreter of the country and its people.In the first part of this series we follow Hearn as he arrives in Yokohama in the spring of 1880 and is immediately taken with its sun-steeped ways the ubiquitous kuruma with their oddly gesticulating runners the narrow streets with their profusion of Chinese and Japanese characters in white black blue or gold decorating everything-all to Hearn is unspeakably pleasurable and new.His unquenchable curiosity leads him outside the towns European quarter. Starting with local temples and shrines he soon wanders farther afield to Kamakura home of the famous Engaku-ji Kenchō-ji Hasedera and the great Daibutsu statue. From there he visits the island of Enoshima and its Dragon Cavern. Then to Yokohama again to visit a Bonichi attend a Bon Matsuri observe a Bon Odori. And then to Matsue the place to which his name has become so inextricably linked.Led introduced and informed by guides and friends with each experience Hearns love for the Japanese grows his understanding for their ways deepens. And it is this pairing of love and insight that make his Writings From a Mystical Country so compelling and enchanting-even now more than a century after his death.