Reviews for Lafcadio Hearn's Gleanings in Buddha-fields

The average rating for Lafcadio Hearn's Gleanings in Buddha-fields based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-12 00:00:00 Shane Connor I found this an interesting and readable set of essays about life and Buddhism in Meiji-era Japan from the perspective of a European-born, American journalist.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-10-20 00:00:00 David Radest I came to this book by way of an anecdote that I stumbled across. The anecdote ended up as a children’s book (also animated in Japan) about an old man who saved a village from a tsunami by lighting his rice fields on fire. Lafcadio Hearn was an odd fellow, but as a western observer of 19th Century Japan, his perspectives are possibly unparalleled. He was so in love with the country that he ended up naturalizing and died a Japanese citizen (with a Japanese name.) I’d intended to pluck only the tsunami story from the essay collection, but ended up staying for the duration. The treatise on Buddhism is a bit much for anyone who didn’t show up for extended metaphysics, but the rest is surprising, and well-written. Some of the travelogue is a bit wide-eyed for the modern reader, but Hearn expresses a kind of childlike joy at a variety of Japanese cultural expressions that is both pleasurable and instructive for anyone looking for insights on what Japan was like post-Meiji Restoration.