Today is Obon, ‘the Japanese day of the dead’, and an occasion about which Green Shinto has posted in several previous years. (Click here for reflections on Japanese and the dead, here for Kyoto’s Daimonji festival, and here for a … Read the rest
Category: Lafcadio Hearn (Page 2 of 4)
‘Japan, the Land of the Kami as Perceived by Lafcadio Hearn’ was the title of the Lecture Event put on at Meiji Jingu to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Irish-Japanese diplomatic relations. The Japanese for the event was ‘Koizumi Yakumo … Read the rest
On June 3 there was a major event at Meiji Jingu to celebrate 60 years of Irish-Japanese diplomatic relations. It consisted of an introductory talk by the Irish Ambassador followed by two lectures by eminent Hearn scholars. Since one of … Read the rest
People sometimes make the mistake of assuming that present-day Shinto is the way things have always been. Far from it!! Shinto has been different in every age, and you can bet it will be different again in future. And as … Read the rest
Hearn was an agnostic, but he had a sympathetic interest in Buddhism and Shinto as his writings attest. In an 1893 letter to his friend, Basil Hall Chamberlain, he wrote once of the daily cycle of life in his extended … Read the rest
Hearn is noted for his sensitivity and understanding of Shinto animism, but he also had a fine appreciation of the ancestral side of Shinto. This is evident in the first of his Japanese books, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), which … Read the rest
Some years ago I visited Lafcadio Hearn’s house in Matsue City, which is preserved just as when he lived in it. It’s an attractive former samurai house next to the moat around Matsue Castle. The garden he described in his … Read the rest