小泉八雲

Koizumi Yakumo

1850–1904

Born in Greece to an Irish father and Greek mother, he drifted through Dublin, Cincinnati, and New Orleans as a journalist before finding his true home in Meiji-era Japan. Settling in Matsue, he married into a samurai family, took Japanese citizenship, and devoted the rest of his life to interpreting the country he loved for Western readers. His retellings of folktales and ghost stories, gathered most famously in Kwaidan, blend lyrical English with a deep sympathy for the supernatural imagination of old Japan. Equal parts essayist, folklorist, and dreamer, he remains one of the most beloved foreign chroniclers of Japanese spiritual life.