Lafcadio Hearn was your typical English-Irish-Greek mixture: that is, his affinity for Edgar Allen Poe came from actually living the life of a Poe character (he spent much time smelling of a barn, and even worse: a stint in New Orleans). He was a lifelong wanderer and eventually washed up on Japanese shores, marrying a Japanese woman, Koizumi Setsu, and fathering a son, Kazuo. His lifelong talent at polyglot literature lent him unique ability to describe Japan, then inscrutable to most Westerners. One such book, available free at Gutenberg, is “Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan” - http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8130/pg8130-images.html - which he finished during the three years he spent teaching English in Kumamoto (1891-1894), but, of course, he’s most famous for his collection of Japanese folktales, Kwaidan - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1210/1210-h/1210-h.htm .
An entertaining Facebook site, Yokai Attack!, posted a user’s photo of Hearn’s New Orleans residence. Search and you’ll find a scattering of residences he used during his time in our town. - William