Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

Book review for Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn. I rated it 4.5 stars After visiting my husband’s hometown of Shimane last year, I noticed how much the town seemed to love Lafcadio Hearn, a writer who lived in Shimane only for a short 15 months. I also found it ironic that Hearn wrote about Japan (in English) to share Japanese culture with the western world - and yet today his writings seem to be best-known in Japan itself, rather than abroad. (At the very least, I had never heard of him). However! I did have a couple of commenters let me know that they did know of Hearn, and I told myself I should give myself a bit of self-education on the topic sometime so that I could know of him too, which prompted me to pick up his book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Published in 1894, this was the first of many books he published on Japanese culture. The book starts off with Hearn describing his first impressions upon arriving in Japan. Funnily, it almost bears similarities to what…