Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn was born on a Greek island to an Irish surgeon, abandoned by both parents, blinded in one eye at school, and worked as a Cincinnati crime reporter before New Orleans and the Caribbean. At forty he went to Japan on a magazine assignment, married a samurai's daughter, took the name Koizumi Yakumo, and spent his last fourteen years explaining Japan to the West better than anyone before him.