Lafcadio Hearn

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), born in 1850, had a difficult start in life: after the death of his parents, he was raised by an aunt in Dublin, and at the age of sixteen, he lost an eye in a prank with his schoolmates that went wrong. Rejected by his family, he left Ireland for England and then France, before settling in the United States of America, where he became a journalist. EnquirerHe discovered Japanese culture through contacts with the ambassador of the Empire of Japan. In 1874 – at a time when mixed marriages were illegal – Hearn married Althea "Matthie" Foley, who was of mixed race. When this union was discovered, they fired him and he began working for the rival newspaper, the Cincinnati CommercialHe became interested in the Creole culture of New Orleans, publishing a dictionary of Creole proverbs and a collection on culinary themes in 1885. In 1889, the newspaper Harper's Monthly He sent him as a correspondent to the West Indies. After his first novel, Youma, he collected a large number of traditional Martinique tales, which were the subject of several works. A year later, he accepted an invitation from his friend, the Japanese ambassador, and settled in Yokohama, where he found employment as a journalist in the English-language press. Hearn married the daughter of a samurai, Koizumi Stesuko, obtaining Japanese citizenship under the name Koizumi Yakumo in 1896. He then became interested in traditional Japanese ghost stories (yokai) and began writing his works about Japan. An inveterate traveler, he lived successively in Kobe, Matsue, and then Tokyo, where he was appointed professor at Waseda University. A great admirer of Pierre Loti, Hearn was also an English translator of Flaubert, Anatole France, Théophile Gautier, Hugo, Maupassant, Mérimée, Nerval, and Zola. He died in 1904 of heart disease in Tokyo. Numerous tributes have been paid to him in literature, comics, film, and television.