![]() ![]() ![]() Yet his deep-seated connections with abandonment and failed relationships remained, only matched by his fascination with foreign cultures and an obsession with stories from beyond the grave. ![]() ![]() Hearn didn’t arrive in Japan until 1890, by then an established 40-year-old journalist, having spent 20 years in the Americas. Compiling his misfortunes, Hearn lost sight in one eye in a playground incident, and by the age of 20 had been rendered homeless in both London and Cincinnati. This became the pattern of Hearn’s formative years: jettisoned by more relatives than the Baudelaire siblings, one of whom – a pious Irish aunt – treated his crippling fear of the dark by locking him in a windowless room come nightfall. A quick glance at Lafcadio Hearn’s upbringing, however, and the gruesome dots begin to connect.īorn in 1850 on his namesake Greek island, Lefkada, Hearn’s family soon moved to Dublin where his mother and father separately abandoned him for far-off lands. It’s a curious fact that an orphaned 19th-century Britton of Greek-Irish heritage became one of Japan’s foremost supernaturalists. ![]()
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