Lafcadio Hearn in Himeji, Japan:

The Roots of His Literary Retellings of Japanese Ghost Stories

Abstract

Lafcadio Hearn was a British writer and folklorist who came to Japan during the Meiji era and later became a naturalized Japanese citizen under the name Yakumo Koizumi. He primarily resided in Matsue, Kumamoto, Kobe, and Tokyo, though he traveled extensively throughout the country. Although much scholarship has focused on Hearn’s life and works, his visit to Himeji has received little attention. This paper examines Hearn’s stay in Himeji in August 1890, during his journey to assume a teaching post in Matsue. While there, he met Edwin Baker through an introduction by Ichizō Hattori. Baker, along with his Japanese wife Tori Oka, shared with Hearn the local ghost story “Banshū Sarayashiki,” which Hearn later incorporated into a passage of his essay “In a Japanese Garden,” published in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). This suggests that Hearn’s experience in Himeji served as a significant catalyst for his later retellings of Japanese ghost stories and may have influenced his eventual marriage to Setsu Koizumi.