The Ghost Writer with Two Names

Lafcadio HEARN / KOIZUMI Yakumo

Lafcadio HEARN is one of Japan's greatest writers. While there have been many films and television programs produced about his life and work, he is almost unknown in his native Ireland. How did this occur?

Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada in 1850 to an Anglo-Irish surgeon and a Greek mother. After his parents' divorce when he was six, he was brought up by a relative in Dublin, Ireland. At age 19, Lafcadio moved to New Orleans and found a job as a journalist at a local newspaper. Lafcadio lived in America for 10 years and during that period, he met a Japanese Government delegate who invited him to Japan. Subsequently, Lafcadio sailed into the port of Yokohama in 1890.

In that same year, he moved to Matsue where he taught English at a Shimane Prefectural School. He later married a samurai's daughter KOIZUMI Setsu, and became a Japanese citizen, changing his name to KOIZUMI Yakumo. This was the time when Hearn fell in love with Japanese tradition and began to write about its culture, in particular Japanese ghost stories, of which he is most well known for. After traveling all over Japan, Koizumi moved to Tokyo with his family where he lived until his death in 1905 at age 54.

Hearn's most famous book is "Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation." Other books he wrote about Japan include "Exotics and Retrospective," "In Ghostly Japan," "Shadowings," "A Japanese Miscellany," and "Kwaidan."

Back to List Page