Irish literature was introduced to Japan, and attracted its people, as Japan was striving to catch up with Western countries in the late nineteenth century. Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, born in Greece to an Irish father, played a key role in introducing Irish literature, especially W. B. Yeats, to Japanese readers. This essay first explores how Hearn's lectures at the Imperial University reveal a fundamental contradiction between his ideals and Japan's modernising efforts. It then examines how recent projects based on Hearn's work have contributed to the global marketplace. Some of his students and, in turn, their students became prominent novelists, dramatists, translators and scholars, contributing both to the creation of new Japanese literature and to the establishment of a strong tradition of Irish literary studies in Japan. As a result, not only is Hearn's presence found everywhere in Japanese culture but also he has been commodified in Japan's consumerist society, and recently on the international market as well. Many different versions of translations of his ghost stories have become a Japanese cultural asset, while reading performances of his work attract domestic and international audiences. His favourite local towns, distant from metropolitan cities, contain his museums and attract tourists; souvenirs with his name and image sell well. Hearn's fame is one example of how Irish literature has become a part of Japanese culture, attracting Japanese consumers.
Akiko Manabe (Fri,) studied this question.