Steve Kemme is president of the Lafcadio Hearn Society/USA and a former reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, where Hearn formerly worked. He is a member of the Japan Research Center of Greater Cincinnati and has spoken at Hearn symposiums worldwide. Bon Koizumi is Lafcadio Hearn's great-grandson. He is a professor at the University of Shimane Junior College and director of the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum in Matsue, which is housed in Hearn's first home in Japan.
My passion for Japan began with Lafcadio Hearn. --Henry Miller Hearn's writing was not only true on the surface but in depth; not only to his conscious thinking but also to the submerged feelings that gave their rhythms to his prose...Long before coming to Japan he had shown an instinct for finding in legends the permanent archetypes of human experience--that is the secret of their power to move us--and he later proved that he knew which tales to choose and which details to emphasize, in exactly the right English. --Malcolm Cowley I had read a book about Japan by Lafcadio Hearn, and what he wrote about Japanese culture and their theatre aroused my desire to go there. --Charlie Chaplin