Japan Review, 2006, 18:181-213 Lafcadio Hearn as Japanese Nationalist

lived in Japan (Meiji 23-37, 1890-1904), his attitude toward nationalism underwent a profound change. Before his arrival in Japan the only kind of nationalism evinced in his writings was in the gentle tradition of the old romantic Herderian school, a purely cultural nationalism—more specifically, a nostalgic attachment to “dying ” folk cultures such as those of the American and Caribbean Creoles. But his encounter with Meiji Japan turned him into an aggressive modern state nationalist, to the extent even that he adopted the Japanese cause against China and Russia. How can we account for this dramatic transformation? On the one hand, it seems obvious that the atmosphere of rising nationalism in late Meiji Japan had a profound impact on Hearn. But I would also argue that Hearn’s pre-Japan immersion in the Herderian struggle to save or at least memorialize “dying cultures ” laid the ground for his “conversion ” to an aggressive form of modern state nationalism vis-à-vis Japan, which at that time, like the Creole nations writ large, seemed threatened with cultural extinction