ABSTRACT
Lafcadio Hearn's name does not appear at all in Edwin Reischauer's United States and Japan. It appears once in Akira Iriye's Across the Pacific, and merely as that of a foreign professor who gained the respect of Japanese students. It seems that Hearn is completely ignored by the post-Pacific war generation of American students of Japan. Hearn's writings are today so discredited among American Japan specialists that if a young student quotes Hearn sympathetically, he is almost certain to be criticised by his academic advisers and considered a belated romanticist unfit for serious scholarship. There is, however, no problem at all with quoting the authoritative Chamberlain. If Japanese continue to read Hearn solely because of their narcissistic tendencies, Hearn's continuous popularity in Japan is deplorable. It is true that without the desire to see and to feel an artistically and psychologically satisfying past, Hearn's appeal could never have existed in Japan.
