Japan. An Interpretation.

Tan cloth binding with gilt title on the front board.

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. Hearn, son of a Greek mother and Irish father, was born in Greece and became a Japanese citizen after marrying Koizumi Setsuko, the daughter of a prominent family. In 1895, he took the name Koizumi Yakumo (Eight Clouds). This work is his introduction to Japan of the Meiji era, and describes the transition from feudal to a more modern society. Full Text of the Philosopher's Letter, He Tells Baron Kentaro Kaneko that Americans And Europeans Should be Kept at Arm's Length".

Yakumo Koizumi (小泉 八雲, 27 June 1850 – 26 September 1904), born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was an Irish writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the West. His writings offered unprecedented insight into Japanese culture, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Before moving to Japan and becoming a Japanese citizen, he worked as a journalist in the United States, primarily in Cincinnati and New Orleans. His writings about New Orleans, based on his decade-long stay there, are also well-known.

Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada, after which a complex series of conflicts and events led to his being moved to Dublin, where he was abandoned first by his mother, then his father, and finally by his father's aunt (who had been appointed his official guardian). At the age of 19, he emigrated to the United States, where he found work as a newspaper reporter, first in Cincinnati and later in New Orleans. From there, he was sent as a correspondent to the French West Indies, where he stayed for two years, and then to Japan, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

In Japan, Hearn married Koizumi Setsuko, with whom he had four children. His writings about Japan offered in the Western world greater insight into a culture that was still unfamiliar to it at the time.

In the late 19th century, Japan was still largely unknown and exotic to Westerners. However, with the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, particularly at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, Japanese styles became fashionable in Western countries. Consequently, Hearn became known to the world by his writings concerning Japan. In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn of exoticizing Japan, but because he offered the West some of its first descriptions of pre-industrial and Meiji Era Japan, his work is generally regarded as having historical value.

Admirers of Hearn's work have included Ben Hecht, John Erskine, Malcolm Cowley and Jorge Luis Borges.

Hearn was a major translator of the short stories of Guy de Maupassant.

Yone Noguchi is quoted as saying about Hearn, "His Greek temperament and French culture became frost-bitten as a flower in the North."

Hearn won a wide following in Japan, where his books were translated and remain popular to the present day. Hearn's appeal to Japanese readers "lies in the glimpses he offered of an older, more mystical Japan lost during the country's hectic plunge into Western-style industrialization and nation building. His books are treasured here as a trove of legends and folk tales that otherwise might have vanished because no Japanese had bothered to record them."