His importance to Japanese-Irish cultural relations is hard to overstate. Emperor Hirohito praised his work on the occasion of a State visit to Japan in 1983 by the then Irish president, Dr Patrick Hillery. Yet, while Lafcadio Hearn is a household name in Japan, he is little known in his home country.
Like another great Irishman with more recent links to Japan, Lafcadio Hearn was sometimes regarded as "moody, resentful, suspicious and easily led to anger, quite impossible at times. . .who lost many friends"; but his great talents ensured his name lived on.
Hearn is principally remembered as a traveller, teacher, writer and interpreter of Japanese folklore and culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He lived in various parts of the country, including Tokyo, Kobe and Yokohama.
Ionian Islands
Like many in the current Irish football team, Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was not actually born in Ireland, but in the Ionian Islands in Greece where his father, Charles Bush Hearn, was an Irish surgeon in the British army. The islands were then under British rule. Patrick's mother was a local beauty named Rosa Kassimati. (The name Lafcadio is derived from the island of Lefkas, his birthplace.)
In 1852, the Hearn family arrived in Dublin and were welcomed by Charles Hearn's mother into her home in Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin. But Rosa could not settle in Dublin and a separation was agreed with Charles. She returned to Greece and Charles took up duties in the Crimean War. Back in Greece, Rosa gave birth to Patrick's brother, James Daniel. Throughout their lives, the brothers were never to meet. Nor would Patrick ever see his parents again. He was adopted by an aunt and lived in Upper Leeson Street, Dublin, and later attended boarding schools in France and England, where he lost most of the sight of his left eye.
At the age of 19, Patrick was sent to US relatives in Cincinnati. He never returned to Ireland. Again bad luck dogged him. His relations made it clear they didn't want him to stay with them. He was now alone in a foreign country. Only 5 feet 3 inches in height, delicate and half blind, his prospects were slight. He became a journalist.
It was in the US that "Paddy" Hearn, as he was then known, decided to drop his first name for the more exotic Lafcadio. Next he took up with the daughter of a plantation owner and slave, Mattie Foley, whose tales of woe matched his own. By then was working as a reporter on a Cincinnati newspaper, but he was sacked because of his his relationship with mixed-race Mattie. The affair itself later fell apart and he moved to New Orleans, where he became literary editor of the Times Democrat.
Martinique
Lafcadio was fascinated by the southern culture, its mixtures of races, creeds and traditions. In his spare time, he wrote one book on Creole folklore and music and another on Creole cooking. By now he had developed a deep attachment to the exotic and he left the US for the island of Martinique in the West Indies, where he produced two books. A serious illness forced him to return to the US. He became a correspondent for Harper's magazine in New York and was commissioned to write a series of articles on Japan. He took the Canadian Pacific Railway across Canada to Vancouver, departing on St Patrick's Day, 1890.
Lafcadio Hearn immediately took to Japan and its distinctive culture. Here he "felt the wind-waves from the snowy cone of Fuji". Everything and everybody was "small, queer and mysterious", he said in his first book on the country, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. He fell out with Harper's and resigned to take up an English-language teaching job, which he loved.
In Japan, Hearn was happier than ever, writing and teaching, and his circle of friends widened. Some of these decided he was in need of a wife, and soon this was arranged. Koizumi Setsuko was the daughter of a samurai, or noble warrior. Despite their differences, or perhaps because of them, it was a happy marriage, producing three boys and a girl.
Immersing himself completely in his beloved Japanese culture, traditions and folk tales, Lafcadio took out Japanese citizenship. He also took his wife's surname and became known as Koizumi Yakumo (the name by which he is best known in Japan). A period on the Kobe Chronicle ensued before the family moved to Tokyo, where he had been appointed professor of English language and literature.
Inner life
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn died in 1904 as a result of a heart attack. He had travelled the world and produced some 13 books on Japan. He was only 54 when he died, but had lived a far fuller life than most of us could ever hope to, sampling and savouring a rich variety of cultures before settling for the great human flourishing of 19th-century Japan. His writings from there are considered to be among the most important interpretations of the inner life of that country in the English language.
Yokohama was the place where Lafcadio Hearn was first enthralled by the beauty of Mount Fiji and seduced by the fall from the cherry blossom trees. Almost a hundred years since his death, it is to be the venue for Ireland's final first-round match against Saudi Arabia.
The Irish team could do worse than take a leaf out of Lafcadio's book and remember: though you may be weakened and the world may seem against you, a strong spirit can take you a long, long way.