For lovers of Japanese literature, the Kanmon Straits mean above all the tragic climax of Tale of the Heike. The fourteenth-century epic is Japan’s great equivalent of The Iliad and charts the rise and fall of the … Read the rest
Category: Lafcadio Hearn (Page 1 of 4)
Matsue is associated with the writer Lafcadio Hearn (aka Koizumi Yakumo), whose house near the castle can still be visited. It stands close to the Lafcadio Hearn Museum. (To read more of Hearn and his house, see here.)
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July 7 is the date of the Tanabata celebration, and in the days leading up to it decorated bamboo branches can be seen around Japan. Jut over 100 years ago when Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) wrote … Read the rest
Green Shinto has posted quotes before about bridging the divide that apparently exists between science and religion. Thinkers like Richard Dawkins have been particularly harsh about the absurdities and transgressions of organised religion.
If one replaces religion with spirituality however, … Read the rest
In his writings on Shinto and Buddhism, Lafcadio Hearn touched on the interaction between the two faiths and they way they influenced each other. One important aspect he identified was compassion for fellow creatures. Surprisingly perhaps, given that Shinto is … Read the rest
My attention was caught recently by a book review of Ghosts of the Tsunami in the TLS by Times correspondent, Richard Lloyd Parry. The book is an account of the Fukushima disaster and its terrible tsunami aftermath, and the review
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On this day (November 13) in 1894, Lafcadio Hearn published an editorial for the Kobe Shimbun. He’d taken a job there as a journalist following his unhappy spell teaching in Kumamoto. The editorial provides an interesting insight into his … Read the rest