Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn

★ ★ ★ ★

After visiting my husband’s hometown of Shimane last year, I noticed how much the town seemed to love Lafcadio Hearn, a writer who lived in Shimane only for a short 15 months. I also found it ironic that Hearn wrote about Japan (in English) to share Japanese culture with the western world - and yet today his writings seem to be best-known in Japan itself, rather than abroad. (At the very least, I had never heard of him).

However! I did have a couple of commenters let me know that they did know of Hearn, and I told myself I should give myself a bit of self-education on the topic sometime so that I could know of him too, which prompted me to pick up his book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Published in 1894, this was the first of many books he published on Japanese culture.

The book starts off with Hearn describing his first impressions upon arriving in Japan. Funnily, it almost bears similarities to what a first-time traveller might experience today - even in the late 1800s, there were already “don’t touch this” signs in English (Japan getting tired of the tourists already). And Hearn was enchanted by the Japanese aesthetic, which he admits is because the text on shopfronts being in Japanese just looks cool (Super Dry, anyone?)

He then heads off to Kamakura and Enoshima to check out the temples there (a place still much-beloved by tourists) and even the cave down the bottom of Enoshima Island.

One rather topical section for me was when Hearn explained the Sai-no-kawara - a Buddhist story about how children are doomed to stack stones along a river, unable to continue their journey into the afterlife. I had coincidentally first heard of that story just a month prior when I hiked Mt Ono and came across a small shrine with writing about that story on the trail.

Finally he arrives in Shimane. From the town of Matsue he spots Mt Daisen, “a glorious spectre towering to the sky” - which I didn’t realise you could see from the town, plus “a beautiful little islet in the lake” or Yomega-shima, a small island on Matsue’s Lake Shinji.

Next it’s a visit to the Izumo Shrine and a resort town called Inasa. He mentions the “Chihiki-noiha”, which I think is a reference to a rock with a torii gate on it, now known as Benten-jima.

He also takes a visit to Shimane’s Kaka-no-Kukedo sea caves - which I had never heard of - where the previously mentioned sai-no-kawara story makes a reappearance. In the cave there are statues of Jizo, and many piles of stone - “Only at night do the shadowy children come to build their little stone-heaps at the feet of Jizo”. And it is said that in the early morning the little footprints of children can be seen, before they dry up and disappear in the heat of the day.

I actually found this chapter particularly compelling, and it seems like I’m not the only one, as I found a blog post from 11 years ago where a Matsue resident chose to visit those caves, inspired by Hearn. Maybe I’d like to check it out someday too.

Towards the end of the book Hearn goes on a long tangent about the various varieties of supernatural foxes that live in Japan which starts to lose me a little. In Matsue he is known for being a big fan of the Jozan Inari Shrine, which he has a paragraph on earlier in the book - Matsudaira Naomasa of the Matsue Domain established the shrine after a fox spirit came to him and said that he would protect the capital from fire if a house was built for him within the castle grounds.

He also recommends a Inari temple in Yoshiwara, Yokohama which I wouldn’t mind checking out, although I’m not sure it exists any longer (AI points out that this area could possibly have been destroyed as a result of the either the Kanto Earthquake or WW2 firebombing). I suppose this fixation on foxes is the starting point of his future writings, as from what I’ve heard much of his writing ends up being focused on introducing Japanese yokai and other such supernatural tales.

Overall, Hearn had a very positive opinion of the Japanese people. He’s surprised how even sailors in Japan - who you might expect to be a little more “rough” - were still very gentle and polite. And that in 14 months in Izumo, he never saw any sort of domestic violence, or raised voices during an argument. He seems to be a little naive in taking this at face value though - when I would think that there would have been for sure plenty of that going on behind closed doors. I would assume that this very positive impression is part of the reason why the Japanese people love him today, though.

Nonetheless this was a rather charming book. I would love to see a side-by-side of his writing, together with what that place he’s describing looks like today (if it still exists). It seems even Einstein and Charlie Chaplin had the same idea and were inspired to visit Japan based on Hearn’s work. Alas I don’t think there is such a thing in English yet, but I would bet there is plenty of resources in Japanese available for that.