Writings from Japan by Francis King
Perhaps no westerner has been held in greater esteem by the Japanese than Lafcadio Hearn who, in 1890, penniless and half-blind came to Matsue, a remote town on the northwest coast of Honshu. There, in the fading twilight of feudal Japan, he was able to interpret for the Western world - from a Japanese point of view and as no one had done before - the forces that had moulded the soul of this unknown people. In his "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" and in the dozen or so books that followed, he recorded the minutiae of life in the ancient Izumo province. This selection by Francis King gathers together the finest essays on the customs, lore and scenes of Japanese life from the individually uneven, and now largely neglected, published works of Hearn.
The improbable life story of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) included a peculiarly gothic childhood in Ireland during which he was successively abandoned by his mother, his father and his guardian; two decades in the United States, where he worked as a journalist and was sacked for marrying a former slave; and a long period in Japan, where he married a Japanese woman and wrote about Japanese society and aesthetics for a Western readership. His ghost stories, which were drawn from Japanese folklore and influenced by Buddhist beliefs, appeared in collections throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He is a much celebrated figure in Japan.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140434637 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140434631 |
| Title | Writings from Japan |
| Author | Francis King |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1994-08-25 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |