Lafcadio Hearn: The Soul of an Outsider

Your fascinating article on Ian Levy caught my eye as I just finished reading a book called “Wandering Ghost,” a life story of Lafcadio Hearn.

Hearn in the late 1800s was the first and only Westerner to become Japanese. His first impression of Japan was: “It is covered with mistiness in soft colors and shapes; thus, Japanese paintings are shadow-less, with delicate tints of colors, not of raw bright colors.”

He described Japanese women: “. . . a thousand times she forgives, can sacrifice herself in a thousand ways, but let one particular soul-nerve be stung and fire shall forgive sooner than she. Motives are keenly judged. An error can be forgiven; deliberate malice, never!”

Once he wrote, “The best of the moral philosophy of the 19th Century shows no improvement upon the moral philosophy of ancient India or China. If any improvement at all, it is simply in the knowledge of causes and effects.”

I admire both Hearn and Levy for trying to understand the Japanese mind. BETTY O’MEARA

Malibu