lafcadio hearn glimpses of unfamiliar japan

The Japanese character and the Japanese tradition are still fundamentally the same as Hearn found them to be, and for this reason, his writing is still extremely revealing to modern readers. Here, for example, are essays on such subjects as the Japanese garden, the household shrine, the festivals, and the bewildering Japanese smile-all aspects of Japanese life that have endured in spite of the changes that have taken place during the modernization of Japan. In the pages of this book are the customs, the superstitions, the charming scenery, the revelations of Japanese character, and all the other elements that Lafcadio Hearn found so bewitching. Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan combines two volumes of a work that first appeared in 1894. The modern reader can still, through these pages, experience that 'first charm of Japan, intangible and volatile as a perfume.' Among the reasons is that here, more than anywhere else, the author most vividly captured a place that so affected him that he stayed for the rest of his life. Though Lafcadio Hearn went on to write a dozen more books on Japan, this collection of first impressions remains his most popular.

In 1894, just as Japan was truly opening to the West and global interest in Japanese culture was burgeoning, Hearn published this delightful series of essays glorifying what he called the 'rare charm of Japanese life.'īeautifully written and a joy to read, Hearn's love letters to the land of the rising sun enchant with their sweetly lyrical descriptions of winter street fairs, puppet theaters, religious statuaries, even the Japanese smile and its particular allure.Ī wonderful journal of immersion on a foreign land, this will bewitch Japanophiles and travelers to the East.Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan is a complete, two-volume set of one of the most outstanding books on 19th century Japanese history and culture. In 1889, Westerner Lafcadio Hearn arrived in Japan on a journalistic assignment, and he fell so in love with the nation and its people that he never left. Wherefore it is peculiarly well suited to goblinries and weirdnessess of all kinds and plays in which ghosts figure are the favourite subject. It is a play of which the dialogue is uttered by invisible personages, the actors and the scenery being only luminous shadows. A Japanese magic-lantern show is essentially dramatic.

Lafcadio hearn glimpses of unfamiliar japan