Linguistic ignorance can be bliss
When it was revealed that Pico Iyer knew only a "smattering" of Japanese despite living in Japan for 25 years, some were critical. However, could there be artistic benefits to not being fluent?
'Japanese Ghost Stories': The ghostly ascent of Lafcadio Hearn's tales of the supernatural
Japanologist Lafcadio Hearn has languished in relative obscurity outside of Japan. But with the recent publication of several books about his life and works, there are signs this is beginning to change.
'Yokai Attack!' review: The Japanese creatures that go bump in the night
"Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide" terrorizes with well-researched descriptions and powerful illustrations of Japanese yokai (supernatural monsters), but also provides helpful hints on how to evade them.
Lafcadio Hearn's 'Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan': Reveling in the remote and mystical — review
Lafcadio Hearn's "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" is an unmissable book offering a visceral, firsthand experience of a Japan now largely vanished.
"Kokoro," a collection of essays published in 1896 by the prolific Anglo-Irish author Lafcadio Hearn, teems with a diverse panorama of observations from a country swelling with national pride.
Lafcadio Hearn's great-grandson working to boost number of foreign visitors to Matsue museum
An improved English service offered by the great-grandson of Lafcadio Hearn, who wrote numerous books about Japan in the late 19th century, has helped to boost the number of foreign visitors to a museum in western Japan dedicated to the author. Since the 2016 renovation ...
'Snow Woman': chillingly modern
The Japanese folklore story of the "Snow Woman" has been told in many places, in many ways, and in many versions, but best-known is that of Lafcadio Hearn, the Greek-Irish writer who published it in his 1904 collection, "Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange ...
The hidden heart of Natsume Soseki
Dec. 9 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), a novelist widely regarded as being the one of the greatest writers of modern Japan. Events commemorating this anniversary have been held throughout 2016 but, in case you think it will ...
Japan's eclectic collection of choice
The Tokyo International Film Festival offers a great once-in-a-year opportunity to see new and classic Japanese films with English subtitles. The sheer quantity on offer — more than 50 titles in the main sections alone — can be overwhelming, though. Here are samples from ...
Shizuoka: Where writers go to hide from the world
Ask a Japanese person which part of Japan they most associate with writer Lafcadio Hearn and they are likely to instantly respond: Matsue, a seaside town in Shimane Prefecture. Hearn is the man who introduced Japan to the West in the Meiji Period (1868-1912) through ...
A museum in Shimane Prefecture reopened on Saturday with more exhibition space for the personal effects and books of naturalized Japanese writer Lafcadio Hearn, also known as Yakumo Koizumi. The Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum in Matsue had been closed since January for a renewal that ...
The Berlin-based author Yoko Tawada recently remarked that one of the difficulties she faced when translating Kafka's short story "Metamorphosis" into Japanese was that the associations Japanese people had with insects — even presumably giant beetles — were different to those of Europeans. Tawada ...
