176 years ago today, a hero of the Japanese nation was born on the Greek island of Lefkada. Scarcely could one find a life as strange and colorful as that lived by Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, who was the first Westerner to write extensively on everyday life in Japan. His unrivaled affection for the country that would become his home and resting place "lies in the glimpses he offered of an older, more mystical Japan lost during the country’s hectic plunge into Western-style industrialization and nation building," wrote the Times. "His books are treasured as a trove of legends and folk tales that otherwise might have vanished because no Japanese had bothered to record them." READ about his incredible life... (1850)
