As I write this post the terrible storm Sandy is plowing through the East Coast of the U.S. For many, it will bring back memories of Katrina, but for me it was the experience with Hurricane Georges in 1998. I was visiting New Orleans and had been asked to give a talk at the Howard Tilton Library at Tulane. But the storm was headed towards New Orleans and most people had already evacuated. The speech went on as planned with just a few people in the audience including three friends from my Newman class of ’66 who surprised me by coming anyway. The speech I gave that day is attached below, but let me continue the story with Georges. My daughter, Mika, and I evacuated from her low lying home to Canal Street, finding the only opening at the Hotel La Salle(awful) that interestingly was just a few blocks from Lacadio Hearn’s old home.There was no food in the hotel restaurant so all I could do was I keep a lookout from the hotel window. Mardi Gras beads from the past, stuck on trees of Canal Street’s median, danced in the storm’s strong winds. We were under a strict curfew, but the Chinese deli across the street, I recall it was the Golden Wall, opened for business. Slowly a line formed outside, including even a few of the Orleans parish police. That’s when we decided to make a dash for it. Chinese take-away never tasted so good!

Now, here’s the talk:

LAFCADIO HEARN’S DEATH DAY REMEMBERED
Speech in New Orleans, Louisiana September 26, 1998 Tulane University Special Collections Library

Thank you all for coming today in spite of the hurricane warning. We should really all be reading Lafcadio Hearn’s book, Chita, on how one hurricane caused disaster at Louisiana’s Last Isle (L’Isle Derniere).

Hearn would like this commemoration of his death day, right in keeping with Japanese tradition, except that according to Hearn he would only have six more left, for he died on September 26th, 1904, at the age of 54 (exactly my age as I stand before you now), as he himself noted that the Buddhist soul is only around for 60 years after death, then either one becomes a Bodhisattva, a Buddha or reborn again. So no more commemorations after sixty years: no incense, no flowers, no prayers, no gatherings at the grave are necessary for the soul. It’s still OK for the living to revere his memory for themselves,you can visit his grave in the Zoshigaya cemetery, but the soul by then will already be on its journey.

Well, Hearn’s karma does concern me in that his story has kept weaving its way through my life, ever since I decided to marry a Japanese and leave my home in New Orleans. “Just like Hearn”, someone said, but I didn’t know who this “Hearn” was. There were three gifts in particular that I took with me to Japan that still mean a lot to me, especially as they came from New Orleans people whom I loved, but moreover these gifts were meant to support my life ahead.

The first was a kimono and obi sash from Mrs. Joseph Morris, the wife of the Vice President of Tulane. The black Tatsumura obi with its design of samurai warrior armor made me feel ready to battle the unknown and be a proud wearer whenever the situation arose; there was something strong within that obi, like the inner strength of Grace Morris herself, and it has protected me for almost thirty years.

The second gift was a cookbook. No ordinary cookbook and it actually wasn’t for me, but to give and share with my mother-in-law, with whom I would be sharing her house and her life. It was entitled “Creole Cookbook”,(adapted from La Cuisine Creole) the author: Lafcadio Hearn. The gift was from the editor, Hodding Carter and his wife Betty W. Carter. After marriage I really did want to cook things from my culture other than opening cans; but I was frustrated when Hearn’s 1880s recipes called for ham bone, pecans, molasses, cheap crabs, mint, gumbo file or absinthe; none found at that time in Tokyo, and instead I sat in my mother-in-law’s kitchen and learned obediently to cook Japanese style. When mother-in-law decided to become a Buddhist nun and give up all worldly possessions, to my chagrin, she gave the cookbook to my niece to help her learn English. I then had to do a backroom deal, trading a gorgeous piece of spinach-green jade which she had just given me, to get the book into my hands. Thus began the reckless life of a Hearn book collector! But, thank goodness my niece didn’t try to learn English from it.

The third gift was from a teacher at Newman School and also an outstanding member of the New Orleans community. Miss Ruth Dreyfous called me over to her at her home and told me how her father had been in Japan in the early part of this century and had brought back many Japanese things. She wanted me to have one. What she handed me was a small cloth book of mulberry paper with a scary drawing on the front, not exactly what I had expected from Miss Dreyfous who did our student testing all those years at Newman, and all I could remember was her calm “turn to page one” and “stop”. The title was “The Goblin Spider”. Wow, I thought, maybe she thinks I’m back in third grade, not having already completed a Master’s degree. But she corrected me, pointing to the author, “This is by Lafcadio Hearn, the drawings, too, all the Japanese know him as Koizumi Yagumo, He wrote down many of the old customs and stories of Japan, which the Japanese might have forgotten..he did that for a lot of New Orleans stories, too, worked for the Item. Anyway , this is probably a collectors item but I’m not giving it to Tulane. Here you have it!”

So these presents kept a thread between me and New Orleans, and as I learned to be a multi-cultural and multi-lingual person, I found a lot of wisdom in the writings of Lafcadio Hearn. His observations on the customs of Japan, still explain things a lot better than asking anyone around today, he went into the detail and went into the WHY. As I teach an adult class on Shinto and Buddhism in Tokyo, I continually look to him as a reference. His observations on the contrasts of morals East and West still give food for thought for mutual understandings in today’s world and the challenges of our social and political systems. His writings on his Japanese students who went to fight in the Russo-Japanese War and never returned, are as moving as they were in 1905.

I was brought more and more into the traditions of Japan when my mother-in-law moved into her own temple in the Japanese Alps. This small frail woman praying for world peace every morning at five and every evening at five, her solitary voice in the large hall, often with snow and ice all around, her full genuflections, tantric secret handsigns, to participate with her in her determined focus that her prayers had international significance…

I am sure that Hearn would have added a chapter on her to his “Buddha in Gleaning Fields”. She liked going around with me, be it on the streets of Tokyo or in the rural villages of Nagano Prefecture. Once she commented about how often people stared at us, “haven’t seen foreigners before” , she wondered. “No”, I said, “they aren’t staring at me, they are staring at you. I mean there aren’t too many bald women walking around.” She thought about that a while. “Well, I think they are staring at the foreigner and the bald woman talking so happily together.” She was right!

Like Hearn, I am intrigued by folk customs. For the six years I lived in Beijing, China, I explored the forgotten temple sites and interviewed grandmas on what they remembered from their youth about the festivals , the temple fairs and the legends connected with the place. Stories similar to what Hearn wrote in “Some Chinese Ghosts” (like the “Soul of the Great Bell”) kept popping up, “Of course this is all superstition”, they would add to keep their socialist face in tact. One result of this study had been a series of articles in Japanese newspapers and most recently a photo exhibition and brochure on the temple ruins of the Qidan and the Jurched people who made the Beijing area their capital some 1,000 years ago.(The Qidan are the Khitan, from where comes the word ‘Cathay’, often used to describe all of China). The exhibition of over 80 panels has just closed in Beijing after four months on display and has moved to Tokyo where it will exhibit and also at Shimonoseki. Shimonoseki?? Why Shimonoseki? Everyone asks. Yes, Shimonoseki…right at the waters edge, near the Straits of Dannoura, next to the Akama Shrine..yes dedicated to the spirits of the Heike warriors lost in battle there…still no recognition,… then I say, “ the place where the priest Hoichi lost his ears in Hearn’s rendition of Miminashi Hoichi” and then people nod some kind of understanding. I just can’t get away from Lafcadio Hearn!

Hearn and I both received Japanese names when we took Japanese citizenship and we both had to start from scratch like babies and like babies were pampered until our own children were born and then finally were really accepted into Japanese society. We both had warm and supportive families who enveloped us in their traditions.This gave us some antenna-like connection.

When I taught at the Nishimachi School in Tokyo, one of my students was the son of the Irish Ambassador who saw Hearn as his own and had just published a book on Hearn and Ireland. And regularly I used Hearn’s stories to teach my classes on Japanese social studies. I even took the students on field trips to the local cemetery, sat them down on the tombs and read them Hearn’s “Ningyo No Haka”(The Dolls Grave). You know that Hearn even wrote down the messages on the sotoba sticks from Japanese graveyards, and wrote a short piece on the poetry of the graveyards of Japan!! Hearn, too, was fascinated in the unique cemeteries of New Orleans with all graves above ground. He described the famed St. Louis cemetery as “ a labyrinth in which one may easily loose oneself.” He penned stories of people he learned about from the gravestones, as well as New Orleans ghost stories. One article was entitled the “Night of All Saints” of an making evening visits to the cemetery, “ the wind entered like a ghost into the crannies of the white sepulchers…caressed the cypresses and bearing the ghosts of the flowers, rose in flight, to the dying fire of the stars.” However, my own children were rather bored of hearing things connected with the name Lafcadio Hearn.

And so it was normal for my daughter Mika, now(at the time of this speech) a 5th year BFA student at Newcomb, but at that time a sixth grader, to shy away embarrassed when she saw me leave my seat on a train to talk to utter strangers just because I thought I heard them mention “Koizumi Yagumo” that Japanese name of Hearn.

Actually this turned out to be an important encounter for me. These two old guys on the train one Japanese, the other foreign, were yelling to each other because they both seemed to be a bit hard of hearing, and thus those of us on the train heard everything they were saying. “Hearn, …Koizumi,…New Orleans,..Matsue…., Yagumo..(places where Hearn lived in Japan)…” Now, I ask you, could I have really stayed in my seat???

Well, I bluntly went over to them and said rapidly, because we had to get off at the next stop, “are you talking about Lafcadio Hearn? I’m from New Orleans, I live here in Japan, ..” They didn’t look at me at all as if I was crazy, and the two immediately produced name cards. One was John Bellair, in his late 70s, and in the process of writing “In Hearn’s Footsteps” about his travels to all Hearn related sites (by the way, since that encounter and many other meetings in Japan and China, he is always referred to by my husband as my “Australian boyfriend”). The other man… was Lafcadio’s grandson, Toki, also on in years. I had to get off the train in a hurry, we were off to a tennis tournament, “My God, Mika, what fate! That was Lafcadio Hearn’s grandson!” She wasn’t too impressed, but she forgave her mother. Yet, now she has to live in the shadow of Hearn by having chosen to reside as a Japanese in New Orleans, where her mother and Hearn had lived before they moved to Japan. So there.

I recently asked Betty Carter (Mrs. Hodding) if there were any remnants of the World Cotton Exposition of 1884 held at what became Audubon Park. Betty, of course, knows everything, especially about New Orleans. “Meteorite”, came back Betty. “The meteorite on the golf course”,she added “they brought it here from Kansas or Nebraska or someplace and had it on display, but they left it here.” All you Audubon Park joggers and golfers and Monkey Hill climbers, have you seen that meteorite?? Well I’d like to, because I’ve wandered around the park trying to get a feel for what Hearn had seen in the Japanese pavilion, what had clicked, that changed his life, how did he get involved with the Japanese delegation to begin with? But it was this encounter that led him to seek the chance to go to Japan as the journalist for the Harper Magazine.

Six years ago I was able to return to the South when my husband was the Japanese Consul-General in Atlanta, I met Woody Bates, another “Hearnist” on the evening of our first official function there. Thanks to that encounter and Woody’s the “Dependable Bookman” business, I was really able to become a collector in earnest and at the same time found good friendship and a peaceful haven in his Japanese-style home there. And thanks to Woody, when President Jimmy Carter was our guest for dinner and the table conversation turned to Hearn I was able to present him with a first edition of “Japan, An Interpretation.” Just a couple months ago I got an email from Woody calling me to help save a Japanese artist from being evicted from his house. Come again? But it was too late, Hearn’s Tokyo residence was pulled down.

People often mention Hearn’s frustration over the rapid modernization of Japanese culture, especially when he moved to Tokyo in his final years. I’ve had that same frustration watching the transformation of the great city of Beijing as whole sections of the city are being torn down in blocks and rebuilt with tasteless storefronts or some kitch neo-Greco kara OK parlors. In the 80s there was still a sense of the old city despite Mao’s tearing down the walls in the early 60s. Now the recent campaign of widening historical lanes has ripped out 1,000 year old trees, obliterated holy sites and has changed the whole fengshui of the city. So I can click into his bitter attitude toward the westernized officials at the turn of the century trying to make Japan ‘look good’ to the world by doing away with much of the old ways. Thank goodness he chronicled many things that would have been forgotten. My photo exhibition that I mentioned earlier is an effort to remind the people of Beijing that they still have precious relics that need protection, that there are sections of Beijing that still can be preserved, there are valleys in the outskirts of the city still lost in time, but are soon to be prey for developers. I am so afraid that these sacred sites and their stories will be lost.

When reading Hearn’s tales of the supernatural and the mysterious, I find in them a communality of man, his fears and dreams and what seem like fairy tales, or fit for third graders like the Goblin Spider, can be read again later in life when interest comes again to the power of the mind. I’m still enchanted with his stories about the fox gods or the painted cats who came alive in “The Boy Who Drew Cats”. But I especially like the story called ‘Furisode” about the kimono with a spell, but it brought much misfortune.My samurai armor obi sash certainly has its own inner strength, but it seems to cast good spells…

Lafcadio’s soul should take a new turn soon. As a spirit, I know that he would love to be a Shinto priest at the great shrine at Idzumo or else a dragonfly fluttering around the Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan, but he didn’t really care for Japan’s climate so perhaps he really yearns to return to a more tropical setting and will be back looking for Chita’s ghost on Last Isle (L’Isle Derniere) and reviving its cultural heritage, perplexing all the locals of Barrataria with Creole pidgin from 100 years ago.

Thank you.

PS Do any of you remember the Mardi Gras Rex parade with a Lafcadio Hearn theme?

PPS
The only recipes I really found useful in his Cookbook have been those for beverages like his Milk Punch (Mix 2 cups chopped ice, 2 T. white sugar, 1 wineglass of rum or brandy, 2 cups milk.) that have helped me spread the spirit of New Orleans captured by Hearn.