Lafcadio Hearn
- Japan Society of Boston
- 57 minutes ago
- 4 min read
By Danielle Cochran, Volunteer
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, who went by Lafcadio, was born in 1850 on the Greek island of Lefkada, his namesake. The second of three sons, his Irish father Charles Bush Hearn was a surgeon in the British army and his Grecian/Maltese mother was Rosa Antonia Cassimati. At the age of 6 he was brought to Ireland and his parents eventually divorced and his father remarried. Hearn and his brother were sent to live with separate relatives at 7 years old and he never saw his mother, father, or younger brother again (Tasker).
These relatives sent him to Catholic school in England and he claims to have been partially educated in France but that cannot be substantiated (Murray). An accident during this time at Catholic school left him blind in one eye which he would try to hide in photos the rest of his life. The harsh brand of Roman Catholicism with sermons about wickedness and the torments of hellfire had him gravitating towards atheism, aestheticism, and Hellenic art, later to become the pillars of his identity as a man and writer (Tasker). In 1869, at the age of 19, he set out for America and made his way to Cincinnati where he struggled and worked menial jobs to get by.
Eventually he began his career; becoming a city newspaper reporter. After showing John Cockerill a manuscript he had written, Hearn was hired by the Enquirer, his beat covering the waterfront shanties and poor neighborhoods of Cincinnati like Rat Row and Sausage Row--and the life along the river levee known as "Bucktown" with topics ranging from crime to the occasional ghost story. These areas gave him the kind of stories he was looking for: rich stories from the Irish, African-American, and itinerant denizens who worked on the riverfront or did menial labor throughout the city (Grace).
His time with the Enquirer ended in 1875 when he married Alethea (Mattie) Foley, a Creole woman. Miscegenation laws of the time led to him being fired from the newspaper, but he was immediately hired by the Cincinnati Commercial and dispatched to New Orleans (Schechter). Before leaving for New Orleans, he separated from his wife. Once in the new city, he would remain there for the next ten years. In addition to his work for the newspaper, Hearn authored several books. Notably Gombo Zheves, La Cuisine Creole, and Chita were written perceptively and with flair about the Creole culture of New Orleans and southern Louisiana (Baker et al.). From the writing he produced at this time, he is often credited as one of the people who gave New Orleans the supernatural atmosphere which still carries to this day.
Hearn traveled to many destinations throughout his life, but it was Japan that caught his attention and the work produced during his time there would be his most prolific. After managing to get a contract from Harper and Brothers for a book on the country, he set out for East Asia, never to return (Schechter). While in Japan, he wed the daughter of a poor samurai, became a Japanese subject, and legally changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo (Schechter).
Setsuko Koizumi was seventeen years younger than Hearn, but he was dependent on her as language teacher, guide to Japanese customs and, not least, provider of material for his books (Tasker). In her memoir, she describes how Lafcadio would ask her to tell him stories, insisting that she use her own words, recounting, “After lowering the wick of the lamp I would begin to tell ghost stories. Hearn would ask questions with bated breath, and listen to my tales with a terrified air.” Towards the end of his life in 1904, he would publish one of his most well-known works: Kwaidan, an anthology, is a collection of retellings of traditional Japanese ghost stories, written in a simple, elegant style that contrasts with the prose of his "gruesome" period (Schechter). The word kaidan (怪談) means "ghost story" or "tale of the supernatural" in Japanese.
Lafcadio Hearn was, and still is, an influential figure worldwide. Even to notable figures of the time including W. B. Yeats, Irish writer and literary critic, whom Hearn would correspond with. Albert Einstein visited Japan hoping to find the picturesque Japan he had read about in Hearn's books, as did Charlie Chaplin (Tasker). Even after his death in 1904 at the age of 54 in Tokyo, his work is still a significant and valuable voice at a time when Japan was first opening its ports for the first time in almost 300 years. As Peter Tasker wrote in an article titled "Lafcadio the Greek: The Man Who Dreamed Japan": "The dream-world he described was as mythic as the Middle Earth of J.R. Tolkien – who fought in the Battle of the Somme – or King Arthur’s Camelot or Odysseus taking the long way home. That is why his books continue to be read today, while so many dry-as-dust academic studies are quickly forgotten." In the wake of his death, he left behind his wife, Setsuko, three sons and a daughter.
Selected Notable Works
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)
Japanese Fairy Tales (1898)
In Ghostly Japan (1899)
Visit
Lafcadio Hearn History Center on the island of Lefkada in Greece, https://lefkasculturalcenter.gr/en/lafcadio-hearn-history-center/
Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens in Ireland, https://www.lafcadiohearngardens.com/
Lafcadio Hearn's Former Residence in Matsue, https://www.hearn-museum-matsue.jp/residence/english.html
Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum in Yaizu, https://www.yaizu.gr.jp/spot/1876
Recommended Media
An extensive list of Lafcadio Hearn’s writings, https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Hearn%2C%20Lafcadio%2C%201850-1904
Works Cited
Baker, Page M., et al. “Lafcadio Hearn Correspondence.” J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library, web.archive.org/web/20180608172636/library.loyno.edu/assets/handouts/archives/Collection_5_Hearn.pdf. Accessed 19 Mar. 2026.
Grace, Kevin. Legendary Locals of Cincinnati, Ohio. Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
Murray, Paul. Hearn, Patrick Lafcadio. 1 Oct. 2009. Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.003905.v1.
Schechter, Harold. True Crime: An American Anthology. The Library of America, 18 Sept. 2008, p. 117, archive.org/details/truecrimeamerica00haro/page/117. Accessed 23 Feb. 2026.
Tasker, Peter. “Lafcadio the Greek: The Man Who Dreamed Japan.” Red Circle, 26 Sept. 2019, www.redcircleauthors.com/news-and-views/lafcadio-the-greek-the-man-who-dreamed-japan/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2026.