The train from Okayama to Matsue took nowhere near as long as the one the English writer Sacheverell Sitwell boarded in 1959 to the same destination: "Nine hours from Osaka, into a remote and little-visited part." The region still feels faintly remote, the train carriages clickety-clicking over rivers winding away into deeply forested defiles that seem ready to suck the unwary back a century or more.
The Yakumo Express I settled into for the journey is named after the Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), who arrived in Japan in 1890, never left, changed his name to Yakumo Koizumi, and remains strongly associated with the city.
Not paying heed to Hearn while in Matsue would be a little like ignoring Hemingway when visiting Key West, or refusing to pay homage to Garcia Lorca in Grenada. Their names are part of the cultural upholstering.