Portrait of Lafcadio Hearn

A 1953 woodblock portrait of Lafcadio Hearn, the writer and folklorist who adopted Japanese citizenship and the name Koizumi Yakumo, and whose collections of Japanese ghost stories and legends brought aspects of Japanese culture to Western readers in the late nineteenth century. Sekino's interest in Hearn — a cross-cultural figure par excellence — may reflect his own experience navigating between Japanese and Western artistic traditions.