Book excerpt: This collection of Lafcadio Hearn's writings, including ghost stories and letters, is published to mark the centenary of Hearn's arrival in Japan. Hearn was the son of an Anglo-Irish surgeon major in the British army and a Greek mother and became famous as one of Japan's great interpreters, at a time when Japan was undergoing dramatic social change as a result of the modernization programme begun in the 1860s.