Lafcadio Hearn in Japan

AMY VLADECK HEINRICH

^ n the early 1960s, the Japanese Nobel laureate in literature,

I Kawabata Yasunari, traveled to England where he visited the
JL. great scholar of Japanese and Chinese literature Arthur Waley.
Kawabata had intended to present Waley with two small notebooks
written by Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904). Hearn had made a name
for himself in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a journalist
in the United States, particularly in Cincinnati and in New Orleans.
He lived for a time in the French West Indies, about which he wrote
as well. His published works include novels as well as journalism,
essays, and even a cookbook.

Hearn traveled to Japan in 1890 and spent the rest of his life
there; he married a Japanese woman, became a Japanese citizen,
and wrote a great deal about Japan that was eagerly read and widely
admired. In Japan, where he is known as Koizumi Yakumo, he is
still widely admired. Hearn was no scholar, however, and the emi¬
nently scholarly Arthur Waley had little regard for his work. In his
meeting with Kawabata, Waley indeed made some disparaging
remark about Hearn, fortunately before Kawabata presented the
notebooks. Kawabata returned the little volumes to his pocket, and,
shortly afterward, offered them to Professor Donald Keene for
the Columbia University Libraries, where they were gratefully
accepted.

In August 1990, a large conference celebrating the hundredth
anniversary of Hearn's arrival in Japan, in conjunction with the
annual conference of the Japan Comparative Literature Associa¬
tion, was held in the old city of Matsue on Japan's northwest coast,
where Hearn taught English in a middle school and met the woman
of the Koizumi family he was to marry. Hearn scholars and librari¬
ans representing collections of Hearn materials conferred for four
festive days; this article is based on my talk to the conference about
Columbia's holdings.

The Columbia Libraries have hundreds of volumes of Hearn's
work, from editions acquired when they first appeared to recent
 

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