On 2001-07-12 B. M. Chapman, Tokyo, Japan wrote: I must admit that this review is tainted with bias. I read this book after staying in Izumo and Matsue on a week long trip to visit a good friend. In Matsue, Lafcadio is probably the most honored celebrity to have ever resided in the city. Statues, posters, honorary names of places abound with his image. I toured the house he lived in and describes in the book, and I became curious about this man I knew only in name.
So a week later I bought this book. It is a collection of his writings from 1891 and his first days in Japan to when he left Matsue just a few years later. The stories range from his personal favorite of telling ghost stories and fables of old, to his traveling adventures, which usually involve temples and festivals. Some stories are really edifying (especially when I had been to places he described), but I must admit that many times my attention was stretched thin and I grew bored.
Many moments in the book are enlightening and offer a glimpse of Japan and offer insights into the culture, but now after spending over a year here, I have to admit that most of these insights are a part of the past. Most of what is written is no longer around. Maybe it is because@I spend my time in Tokyo, but I feel somehow disconnected to the tales of festivals and people that filled Lafcadio´s life over a hundred years ago.
But that is to be expected I guess. The true complaint I have is that after a few temples and shrines, every place seems the same in its confusing description, and it gets, if not redundant, old. The use of the Japanese language will prove confusing for people who have not studied the language. Even I, who is still slowly but surely learning, was stopped occasionally at a word thrown here and there. Also Lafcadio really does have a love for Japan. Sometimes it is easy to see why. Yet even though he never brings himself to admit it, he will often defend Japan at the expense of all things western. (The most foreboding was where he praises the loyalty of the common Japanese for their Emperor and how wonderful it is. Something that just 50 years later would be exploited and manipulated to horrific degrees.)
This is what half of the book is like. Other times there will be captivating stories that transcend time and bias and are completely absorbing. Lafcadio´s prose are fluid and natural and I must admit make me jealous that I lack any such writing skill. It is captivating for exactly what the title says. It offers a glimpse into Japan that frankly does not exist anymore, at least that I know of.. And summed up by saying Japan through an old window.. Currently Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (Lafcadio Hearn Collection) has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
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Tuttle Publishing claimed Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n THE WRITING OF KOBODAISHI. KOBODAISHI, most holy of Buddhist priests, and founder of the Shingon-shu, — which is the sect of Akira, — first taught the men of Japan to write the writing called Hiragana and the syllabary I-ro-ha; and Kobodaishi was himself the most wonderful of all writers, and the most skillful wizard among scribes. And in the Book, Kobodaishi-ichi-dai-ki, it is related that when he was in China, the name of a certain room in the palace of the Emperor having become effaced by time, the Emperor sent for him and bade him write the name anew. Thereupon Kobodaishi took a brush in his right hand, and a brush in his left, and one brush between the toes of his left foot, and another between the toes of his right, and one in his mouth also; and with those five brushes, so holding them, he limned the characters upon the wall. And the characters were beautiful beyond any that had ever been seen in China, — smooth-flowing as the ripples in the current of a river. And Kobodaishi then took a brush, and with it from a distance spattered drops of ink upon the wall; and the drops as they fell became transformed and turned into beautiful characters. And the Emperor gave to Kobodaishi the name Gohitsu- Osho, signifying The Priest who writes with Five Brushes. At another time, while the saint was dwelling in Taka-wasan, near to Kyoto, the Emperor, being desirous that Kobodaishi should write the tablet for the great temple called Kongo-jo-ji, gave the tablet to a messenger and bade him carry it to Kobodaishi, that Kobodaishi might letter it. But when the Emperor´s messenger, bearing the tablet, came near to the place where Kobodaishi dwelt, he found a river before him so much swollen by rain that no man might cross it. In a little while, however, Kobodaishi appeared upon...
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