Born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, he moved from Greece to Ireland at the age of two, and eventually emigrated to America, where he settled in Cincinatti, Ohio and became a reporter. He lived for a while in New Orleans where he continued to write as a reporter, until he went on an assignment to Japan in 1890. Hearn gained a teaching position there in the town of Matsue, and eventually married Koizumi Setsu, a daughter of a local samurai family. He attained Japanese citizenship and took the name of Koizumi Yakumo, the name by which he is known even today in Japan. Hearn is one of the few Westerners that the Japanese have considered to be one of their own people, and to have understood their culture. In the West he is mostly known for his fairy tale collections, which were told to him by his wife and retold in his own, somewhat romantic and melancholy, voice.
