Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is almost as Japanese as haiku. Both are an art form, an institution in Japan. Haiku is indigenous to the nation; Hearn became a Japanese citizen and married a Japanese [Setsu Koizumi], taking the name Yakumo Koizumi. His…
From the middle of the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth-century, Japan, through the Tokugawa Shōgunate, was successful in rigorously enforcing a policy of seclusion. No Europeans were allowed into Japan except the Dutch who were…