Kwaidan is the best known work by Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), who was born in Greece and raised in Ireland, the West Indies, and the U.S. South, before eventually moving to Japan, where he married and became a naturalized citizen. The book is a remarkable synthesis of fairy tales and ghost stories which Hearn painstakingly collected from sources as varied as antique manuscripts and conversations with elderly farmers. One highlight is “The Dream of Akinosuke,” which seems almost like a prismatic refraction of Hearn's own unlikely life story of finding home in a foreign land. The novelist Yoko Ogawa praises Hearn (known in Japan as Koizumi Yakumo) for his unique sensitivity to tales that transcend the rational. “Hearn's characters,” she writes, “cross over and submerge themselves in the chaos, and there they play for the spirits of the departed, make a life with the Snow Woman, become one with the cherry trees."