Lafcadio Hearn discovered many spiritual and mysterious things very suitable for his disposition including customs, legend, and old stories in Japan.
Japan is a country in which the dead rule people's life as the same as Greece and Rome.
He said, "I was half oriental- blood and I can understand the culture,arts,traditions,customs and manners of Japan as if I felt them by skin."
He hated modern industrial civilization and was attracted by a beauty of ancient society and liked to live apart from municipal life.
Turning his eyes from governing class, intellectuals, upper-class families,he threw his compassionate eyes to social weeks and poor peoples.
He never recognized European and American culture as an absolutely supreme culture but placed equal value in other various cultures.
In his infant age, the compassionate feeling toward the weak or tiny things had been fostered within him.This feeling might come from the feeling toward his own mother through his family's unhappiness.
On the other hand, those unhappy life heightened his sense and imagination toward mysterious and supernatural things.
In his childhood, he was about to be mad to see ghost in the darkness in his bedroom.
He felt repelled against Christianity and rationalism gradually,and devoted himself in the Greece myth or the world of exotic gods and its stories.
In a sense, he tried to fill his mind with the things opposing against the things surrounding him.
He kept on praising old Japan through his various research and observing of the ghost stories, fork customs, and Japanese culture during his stay for 14 years in Japan.
In summary, he had tried to reveal the most deep essence of Japan, spiritual Japan in other word, from ghost stories or other oral legends.

	In the novel "Mujina"there are passages, "When he perceived a woman crouching by the moat,all alone,and weeping bitterly".Fearing that she intended to drown herself, he stopped and offered any assistance or consolation for her. But turning her face to him,he was astounded to escape from her to rush into near soba noodle shop.And the owner of the shop showed his face as the same as the face he saw just before on which there weren't any nose,mouse,eyes and ears like a surface of an egg. The left picture is Kinokunizaka Slope ,the stage of the novel of Mujina.
	The scene viewed from Benkeibashi Bridge near Hotel New Otani in Akasaka,Tokyo. This place around the exterior moat of Edo Castle is now heavy traffic,but only a few passengers passed at the time of Edo period. The left picture shows around the scene of Kinokunizaka Slope,the stage of the novel titled "Mujina". In the beginning of the novel, there are passages as follows, "On the Akasaka Road,in Tokyo,there is a slope called Kii-no-kuni-zaka-which means the Slope of the Province of Kii. I do not know why it is called the Slope of the Province of Kii.On one side of this slope you see an ancient moat, deep and very wide, with high green banks rising up to some place of gardens."
	The stage of the novel titled "The Story of Mimi-nashi-Hoichi" is Dannoura where Heike family ruined in the war of 1185. The story of the novel as follows. A blind man called Houichi lived there.Houichi was famed for his skill in recitation and in playing upon a biwa. Every night he was led by a ghost to play a biwa in front of the graves of Heike family. Priests wrote the text of the holy sutra called Hannya-Shink-Kyo on his whole body with writing-brushes to guard him from ghost. He was cut his ears by ghost of Heike family because priests forgot to write the sutra on the both ears, but his life was saved. There is Akama-jinnguu Shrine facing the Dannoura Sea in Shimonoseki,Kitakyusyu. In the precepts of the shrine.there is a small temple called Hoichidou.

　 The year of 1890 when Lafcadio Hearn came to Japan was also the year of promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education and the next year of the promulgation of Meiji Imperial Constitution.
Japan had taken in the modern civilization of western countries and advanced on its way to modernization.
In the trend of Japan, Hearn looked straight plainly the facts although must hace felt sorrow for the lost things by the westernization,saying that the truth lied in old Japan and that he couldn't like new Japan.
The works of Hearn was written originally targeted not for Japanese readers but for foreign readers. Many works titles "From East Country","Unknown figure of Japan",and"the Dream of Summer Day" had been read mainly in America as a guide book to Japan.
He came to Japan as a correspondent and wrote straight what he looked or heard in Japan.
But he also endeavored to write novels on the basis of Japanese old story such as "Snow woman"and "The Story of Miminashi Hoichi".
His wife Koizumi Setu was the daughter of Samurai class,who had failed in the first marriage.
The works of Hearn might not be such fruitful without the help of Koizumi Setu.

E-mail to Yoshimura Naohiro.