After years of living in Japan, Hearn tries to explain the country to Western readers through its religion: the ancient cult of the dead, the household and communal rites of Shinto, purification and worship, the arrival of Buddhism, and the rule of the dead over the living. Later chapters follow the social organisation, the rise of military power and the pressures of modernisation.
Hearn’s final book, published in 1904, and his most sustained attempt at a portrait of Japanese civilisation. Download the free EPUB.