From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, the first book after his arrival in Japan in 1890, through Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, the last book of his life, Lafcadio Hearn admires Japan and the Japanese. In reality, however, he had many difficulties caused by living in a foreign country. Why did he continue to speak well of the Japanese in his writings? My aim in this paper is to look into this enigma psychoanalytically. The keys to solve this problem are a kind of analogy between Japan and Greece, and a theory of Nachtaglichkeit, `deferred action' in English, Freud's conception of psychical temporality and causality. At four years old he was separated from his mother, at seven from his father. As a result of this, he had a yearning affections especially for his mother. To Greece, his and his mother's native land, however, he had complex feelings because of his parents' unhappy relationship in his younger days. In his first few years after his arrival in Japan, he found Japan a fairy land, and also found many analogous points between the two countries. As a result, he reconstructed his Greece under the phenomenon of Freudian `deferred action'. Although the idea of the fairy land faded away in his later days, his reconstructed idea of Greece remained in his heart and supplied him with vitality for survival. It is not important whether his Japan was a real one or not. The 61significant fact is that he was able to reconstruct his idea of Greece with fresh experiences from his fairy land.
