Tag - lafcadio-hearn

 
 

LAFCADIO HEARN

Steve Kemme's "The Outsider" offers insight into Lafcadio Hearn's prodigious talent with the pen and the development of his style over the course of his career.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 8, 2023
'The Outsider' brings out colorful personality of one of history’s great Japanophiles
A new biography on Lafcadio Hearn charts the course of the writer’s 54-year life and shows how his years in Cincinnati and Japan were formative periods.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 6, 2022
'Kokoro': Lafcadio Hearn's insights into a country he loved
The collection of 15 essays and stories, which explore the inner lives of Japanese society through topics such as karma, art and architecture, reveal the writer's deep affection for Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Oct 20, 2019
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?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 5, 2019
'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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jun 1, 2019
'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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
May 4, 2019
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jan 26, 2019
With deft portraits and prescient predictions, Lafcadio Hearn's 'Kokoro' offers snapshots of early modern Japan
'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.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2018
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2017
'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 Things."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 26, 2016
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 all be over by Christmas, another milestone will be celebrated in 2017 — the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 19, 2016
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 my own must-see list.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 24, 2016
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.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2016
Expanded Hearn museum reopens in Shimane
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 23, 2016
Insect Literature
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 was alluding to the idea that Japanese appreciation of insects is one marker of Japanese cultural uniqueness.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Oct 24, 2015
Grave company at Zoshigaya Cemetery
When persimmon leaves and the tips of maples take on color, and chilly air rattles windows, composer Yoshinao Nakada's haunting song "Chiisai Aki Mitsuketa" ("A Bit of Autumn Found") floats through my mind. Having just learned that the song's lyricist, talented poet Hachiro Sato (1903-74), rests in Zoshigaya Reien (cemetery), it seems the perfect season to pay respects, and explore the grounds of one of Tokyo's largest boneyards.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 10, 2015
Lefkada's Hearn: Europe reclaims its literary 'lost son'
The Greek island of Lefkada, rising from the Ionian Sea south of Corfu, is famed for its white beaches and vertical cliffs from which the poet Sappho is said to have leaped to her death. The island is also claimed as the one of the potential sites of Homer's Ithaca, home of the great wandering hero Odysseus.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jul 11, 2015
Lafcadio Hearn's timeless anthology of ghost tales
What is it about "Kwaidan"? It wasn't Lafcadio Hearn's first take on Japanese ghost stories — it wasn't even his first such book whose title was a single Japanese word starting with "K" ("Kotto" was published two years earlier, in 1902). But it's "Kwaidan" that still claims a place in literary history, even as its siblings among Hearn's prodigious oeuvre recede into cult status.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 11, 2015
Couples beware as Kayoko Shiraishi returns in intriguing style
Actress Kayoko Shiraishi is famed for her portrayals of male and female characters of all ages almost as if she were possessed by their souls.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 20, 2014
Lafcadio Hearn: 'Japanese Thru and Tru'
A small cage was opened at Lafcadio Hearn's funeral, setting birds into the air, the soul of the deceased presumably taking flight with them. His coffin was draped in chrysanthemums and fragrant olive, adorned by a laurel wreath. Seven Buddhist priests read the sutras at Kobudera (now Jishoin Enyuji Temple) in Shinjuku Ward's Ichigaya-Tomihisacho district in Tokyo, where Hearn had frequently enjoyed a stroll among the gravestones.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 20, 2014
Glimpses of Lafcadio Hearn's Matsue
The Matsue-bound train I boarded at Okayama Station was pointedly named Yakumo, a reference to its destination's best-known former resident: Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), whose adopted Japanese name was Yakumo Koizumi.

Longform

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