BR2-09 Insect Study Butterflies

Do you know Lafcadio Hearn? He is known to Japanese people as Koizumi Yakumo as well. According to Wikipedia, Hearn was the first Westerner who offered the West first glimpses into Japanese aesthetics through his depth, originality, sincerity and charm of his writings. His first encounter with Japan and its culture was in 1890 when he was 40 years old. He must have felt Japanese aesthetics using all of his sense without Japanese language at first since it seems that he had never studied Japanese before he came to Japan for the first time. You can know how he felt about Japanese culture through his works.

Looking at his work Insect Studies Butterflies, which was published in 1904, you can know his idea of what butterflies symbolize in Japanese culture. He had been in Japan for 14 years at that time. He wrote that butterflies represent female beauty. I totally agree with the idea that butterflies symbolize female beauty in Japanese culture. That’s because I’ve seen lots of butterfly-design accessories and clothes for women in shops.

Furthermore, He says that the souls of both living and dead people may wander about in the form of butterflies. I didn’t know the idea that butterflies represent the souls of people. I’ve known that fireballs symbolize souls of dead people in a lot of Japanese horror stories though. Although, both butterflies and fireballs represent souls of people, butterflies represent romantic element and fireballs represent scary element.

Reading Hearn’s biography and one of his works, I got to know that he was fascinated by spirituality of Japanese people which was different from Westerners’ one.
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