Kwaidan: Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was born in the Greek isles to a British military surgeon, growing up in Ireland, France, and Ohio, with stops along the way in Louisiana and the Caribbean. He worked as a journalist in the United States before finally adopting Japan as his home.

Hearn encountered a Japan undergoing Westernization, modernization, and militarism. Many in the West saw Shintō, with its lack of religious texts or precepts, as heathen. However, Hearn believed that Shintō lived not in books but in Japanese people’s hearts, stating that "the future greatness of Japan will depend on the preservation of that...spirit, the love of what is plain and good and simple, and the hatred of useless luxury and extravagance in life."

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904) is Hearn's classic compilation of traditional Japanese ghost stories, many preserved for the first time in writing. In the last few chapters, he dwells on Japanese superstitions and his personal thoughts on the insect world: contemplating butterflies as "personifications of the human soul," mosquitoes as "Karmic reincarnations of greedy people," and ants as "mankind's superior in terms of chastity, ethics, and social structure."

Hearn's anthology is more than a preservation of stories from an earlier time. It is a timeless work of art read widely in Japan and around the world, demonstrating his skill as a writer and his perceptive interrogation of materialist civilization.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things: ~80pp

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Librivox 3h 51m

Supplemental:

• "Kwaidan" trailer
• "One Hundred Ghost Stories" by Hokusai

Extracts:

• "Not a little terrified at the sight, superstitious Jarl more than insinuated that the craft must be a gold-huntress, haunted. But I told him, that if such were the case, we must board her, come gold or goblins." (Mardi, 1.19)
• "Dr. Johnson, the matter-of-fact compiler of a dictionary, had been a believer in ghosts, besides many other sound, worthy men." ("The Apple-Tree Table")
• "at a critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly." (Moby-Dick, 110)
• "Among the numerous afflictions which the Europeans have entailed upon some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental introduction among them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers—the Mosquito." (Typee, 29)
• "Madam, or sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the caterpillar? In the natural advance of all creatures, do they not bury themselves over and over again in the endless resurrection of better and better?” (The Confidence Man, 22)
• "We’ll rove and we’ll revel, / Concerned but for this,— / That Man, Eden’s bad boy, / Partakes not the bliss." ("Butterfly Ditty")
• "I...could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool" (Moby-Dick, 17)

This meetup is part of a series on Japan Unbolted.