Writings from Japan: An Anthology (Penguin Classics)

Writings from Japan: An Anthology (Penguin Classics)

by Francis King (Editor), Lafcadio Hearn (Author), Francis . King (Editor)

Synopsis

Perhaps no westerner has been held in greater esteem by the Japanese than Lafcadio Hearn who, in 1890, penniless and half-blind came to Matsue, a remote town on the northwest coast of Honshu. There, in the fading twilight of feudal Japan, he was able to interpret for the Western world - from a Japanese point of view and as no one had done before - the forces that had moulded the soul of this unknown people. In his Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan and in the dozen or so books that followed, he recorded the minutiae of life in the ancient Izumo province. This selection by Francis King gathers together the finest essays on the customs, lore and scenes of Japanese life from the individually uneven, and now largely neglected, published works of Hearn.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 25 Aug 1994

ISBN 10: 0140434631
ISBN 13: 9780140434637

Author Bio
The improbable life story of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) included a peculiarly gothic childhood in Ireland during which he was successively abandoned by his mother, his father and his guardian; two decades in New Orleans, where he worked as a journalist and was sacked for marrying a former slave; and a long period in Japan, where he became a Buddhist, married a Japanese woman and wrote about ju-jitsu and Japanese aesthetics for a Western readership. His ghost stories, which were drawn from Japanese folklore, appeared in collections throughout the 1890s. He is a much celebrated figure in Japan.