Lafcadio Hearn

Yakumo Koizumi (小泉 八雲), born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn ( Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χέρν), was an Irish writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the West.

His writings offered unprecedented insight into Japanese culture, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

Before moving to Japan and becoming a Japanese citizen, he worked as a journalist in the United States, primarily in Cincinnati and New Orleans.

His writings about New Orleans, based on his decade-long stay there, are also well-known.

Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada, after which a complex series of conflicts and events led to his being moved to Dublin, where he was abandoned first by his mother, then his father, and finally by his father's aunt (who had been appointed his official guardian).

At the age of 19, he emigrated to the United States, where he found work as a newspaper reporter, first in Cincinnati and later in New Orleans.

From there, he was sent as a correspondent to the French West Indies, where he stayed for two years, and then to Japan, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

In Japan, Hearn married Koizumi Setsuko, with whom he had four children.

His writings about Japan offered in the Western world greater insight into a culture that was still unfamiliar to it at the time.

Hearn's parents were married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on 25 November 1849, several months after his mother had given birth to Hearn's older brother, George Robert Hearn, on 24 July 1849.

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on the Greek Ionian Island of Lefkada on 27 June 1850.

His mother was a Greek named Rosa Cassimati and she was a native of the Greek island of Kythira, while his father, Charles Bush Hearn, was a British Army medical officer of Anglo-Irish descent, who was stationed in Lefkada during the British protectorate of the United States of the Ionian Islands.

Throughout his life, Lafcadio boasted of his Greek blood and had a passionate leaning towards Greece.

He was baptized Patrikios Lefcadios Hearn (Greek: Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν) in the Greek Orthodox Church, but he seems to have been called "Patrick Lefcadio Kassimati Charles Hearn" in English; and, the middle name "Lafcadio" was given to him in honour of the island where he was born.

George died on 17 August 1850, two months after Lafcadio's birth.

Hearn's father Charles was promoted to Staff Surgeon Second Class and in 1850 was reassigned from Lefkada to the British West Indies.

Since his family did not approve of the marriage, and because he was worried that his relationship might harm his career prospects, Charles did not inform his superiors of his son or pregnant wife and left his family behind.

In 1852, he arranged to send his son and wife to live with his family in Dublin, where they received a cool reception.

Charles's Protestant mother, Elizabeth Holmes Hearn, had difficulty accepting Rosa's Greek Orthodox views and lack of education (she was illiterate and spoke no English).

Rosa found it difficult to adapt to a foreign culture and the Protestantism of her husband's family, and was eventually taken under the wing of Elizabeth's sister, Sarah Holmes Brenane, a widow who had converted to Catholicism.

Despite Sarah's efforts, Rosa suffered from homesickness.

When her husband returned to Ireland on medical leave in 1853, it became clear that the couple had become estranged.

Charles Hearn was assigned to the Crimean Peninsula, again leaving his pregnant wife and child in Ireland.

When he came back in 1856, severely wounded and traumatized, Rosa had returned to her home island of Cerigo in Greece, where she gave birth to their third son, Daniel James Hearn.

Lafcadio had been left in the care of Sarah Brenane.

Charles petitioned to have the marriage with Rosa annulled, on the basis of her lack of signature on the marriage contract, which made it invalid under English law.

After being informed of the annulment, Rosa almost immediately married Giovanni Cavallini, a Greek citizen of Italian ancestry who was later appointed by the British as governor of Cerigotto.

Cavallini required as a condition of the marriage that Rosa give up custody of both Lafcadio and James.

As a result, James was sent to his father in Dublin and Lafcadio remained in the care of Sarah, who had disinherited Charles because of the annulment.

Neither Lafcadio nor James ever again saw their mother, who had four children with her second husband.

He married his childhood sweetheart, Alicia Goslin, in July 1857, and left with his new wife for a posting in Secunderabad, where they had three daughters prior to Alicia's death in 1861.

In 1857, at age seven and despite the fact that both his parents were still alive, Hearn became the permanent ward of his great aunt, Sarah Brenane.

She divided her residency between Dublin in the winter months, her husband's estate at Tramore, County Waterford, on the southern Irish coast, and a house at Bangor, North Wales.

Brenane also engaged a tutor during the school year to provide basic instruction and the rudiments of Catholic dogma.

Hearn began exploring Brenane's library and read extensively in Greek literature, especially myths.

In 1861, Hearn's aunt, aware that Hearn was turning away from Catholicism, and at the urging of Henry Hearn Molyneux, a relative of her late husband and a distant cousin of Hearn, enrolled him at the Institution Ecclésiastique, a Catholic church school in Yvetot, France.

Hearn's experiences at the school confirmed his lifelong conviction that Catholic education consisted of "conventional dreariness and ugliness and dirty austerities and long faces and Jesuitry and infamous distortion of children's brains."

Lafcadio never saw his father again: Charles Hearn died of malaria in the Gulf of Suez in 1866.

Rosa was eventually committed to the National Mental Asylum on Corfu, where she died in 1882.

Charles Hearn, who had left Lafcadio in the care of Sarah Brenane for the past four years, now appointed her as Lafcadio's permanent guardian.