Fleeting Visions of Unfamiliar Japan. From the Depths of the East: Reflections and Understandings in New Japan

This collection of selected essays and letters by Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) includes essays from his authorial collections "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan", "Out of the East", "Gleanings in Buddha-Fields", "Exotics and Retrospectives", "Romance of the Milky Way", as well as his letters from the collections "Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn" and "Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn", united by a common theme: the culture, beliefs, customs, and traditions of the Japanese during the Meiji era. The collection also includes the author's preface to the first published collection "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" and one lecture from a series titled "Interpretations of Literature by Lafcadio Hearn", posthumously published by his students. Hearn's essays and letters from Japan allowed the Western world to better understand the national character and culture of the unique people of the Land of the Rising Sun, as seen through the eyes of a Western writer and thinker who lived there during a time of profound transformation, and later recognized as one of the classics of Japanese literature and one of the 100 most outstanding Japanese people.