In Ghostly Japan, out in a new edition with a foreword by Michael Dylan Foster (author of, among other works, the 2015 University of California Press monograph The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore), is one of Hearn’s lesser-known works. Recently, Hearn’s writings have found renewed interest in the West. They are - despite Hearn’s status as foreigner - many Japanese students’ first point of contact with their country’s 2,000-year-old Buddhist folklore traditions. His writings about Japan and his stories based on traditional Japanese ghost tales - which, when originally published, were responsible for introducing the West to much of Japanese culture, literature, and mythology - are taught in schools and cherished by the Japanese public. “Lafcadio Hearn has been forgotten,” Romanian American poet Andrei Codrescu wrote in 2019, “with two remarkable exceptions: in Louisiana and in Japan.”Īcross Japan, alongside monuments dedicated to great Japanese writers, there are statues, plaques, and museums celebrating Hearn. Yet, at the end of the 19th century, he was one of the most well-known authors in the West. Unlike the rest, his is no longer a household name. In this list, Hearn - a contemporary of the other writers - stands out. BRAM STOKER, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lafcadio Hearn.
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