A working life across three continents
Born on the Greek island of Lefkada in 1850 to a Greek mother and an Irish father, Hearn spent part of his childhood in Dublin. As a young man he went to the United States. He worked for newspapers in Cincinnati and New Orleans, writing about the lives, food and stories of people often overlooked by the daily press.
In 1890 he travelled to Japan. He taught in Matsue and Kumamoto, worked for the Kobe Chronicle and later lectured on English literature in Tokyo. He married Setsu and became a Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo. Their household was also a place of literary work. Setsu would retell a story so that Hearn could hear its movement and ask again about a gesture or a moment of suspense.
A face seen twice
Kwaidan appeared in 1904, the year of Hearn’s death. In Mujina a traveller’s encounter on a dark road turns on an act as simple as a woman lifting her head. A second encounter changes the meaning of the first. Hearn’s arrangement of that repetition in English belongs to a longer chain of written sources and oral performance, of which Setsu’s work is an important part.
