Lafcadio Hearn Photo in Ireland

This post has been backlogged for a long time, but especially after posting some scary stories for Obon, I wanted to post this photo taken by fellow blogger and Japanophile, “Robert” over at Shiawase.co.uk:

Lafcadio Hearn Plaque

This is a plaque dedicated to the famous Greco-Irish author Lafcadio Hearn, known in Japanese as Koizumi Yakumo (小泉八雲). According to Robert, this was taken in Ireland on Gardiner Street, Dublin 1 which is shown here in Google Maps. I have had an avid interest in Lafcadio Hearn for a long, long time, and when I lived in Dublin, I wanted to visit this site, but some parts of Gardiner Street are pretty dodgy (some are quite nice though), along with much of Dublin 1, so I never went. Dublin is a small city with a lot of character, and boasts a long tradition of excellent authors few cities in the world can rival. Lafcadio Hearn is only one of many such authors, but in Japan and now the world, his unique contribution is still felt today. Big thanks to “Robert” for this awesome photo.

I think the plaque speaks for itself. Lafcadio Hearn has had his fair share of deserved criticism,1 but his writing is excellent on its own merits, and few people at the time shared his love and admiration of Asian culture, let alone an appreciation of Mahayana Buddhism at the time, or disdain of politicized religion. :)

1 His tendency toward romanticism, and for me at least, his tacit support of Japanese Imperialist expansion (re: Sino-Japanese War), among others.


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2 Comments on “Lafcadio Hearn Photo in Ireland”

  1. Robert says:

    linky goodness ! thank you.
    Should anyone ever go to see that plaque, that end of Gardiner street near the Bus Station is perfectly fine. The house, now a B&B, is at the end near Beresford place.

    You might find these illustrations interesting to go with Japanese ghost stories.
    http://pinktentacle.com/2010/06/bakemono-zukushi-monster-scroll/
    they also have some great 1970′s illustrations as well
    http://pinktentacle.com/2010/07/macabre-kids-book-art-by-gojin-ishihara/

    I think Hearn might have been a man of his time in terms of romanticism and support for Japanese expansion. All the major powers were expansionist and had imperial ambitions. Everyone wanted their slice of China. I’d say Japan had a very real fear of ending up like China. Supporting one’s country’s ambitions, regardless of the morality of those ambitions, would have been much more of a virtue in the 19th century than the 21st. ( leading to two world wars eventually though )

  2. Doug says:

    Hi Robert,

    Wow, those links are awesome. That warrants a post all by itself. :D

    Yeah, I actually really like Hearn, but I also think he wasn’t perfect either, and like you pointed out, very much a product of his times. His writings includes lots of talk about race-consciousness and such, but he was obviously not a supremacist either, just using the vocabulary people knew at the time. Interesting to see how different people thought 100 years ago though.


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