Koizumi Setsuko

Since she liked stories from childhood, she helped her husband to understand Japanese folk tales and supported his writing about Japan.

[11] Another story says that since the Koizumi family was also impoverished, around February 1891 Setsuko started her work as a live-in housekeeper in Lafcadio's house, where he lived by himself as an English teacher.

[18] Setsuko, however, correctly understood Lafcadio's broken Japanese, called "Herun-san Kotoba" (Hearn-speak) in their family, and the couple communicated with each other.

[17] He became a full-time writer after Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, a book which he wrote during his stay in Kumamoto, gained popularity.

[23] Setsuko not only told Japanese folk legends but also explained what she read in published books to Lafcadio to help him in writing.

[25] The couple had two sons and one daughter in Tokyo, but after they moved to Nishiokubo in 1902, Lafcadio's health began to deteriorate.

[14] Since Setsuko is a major source of Japanese ghost stories for her husband, she is appreciated as "one of Hearn’s main partners in this highly discursive and collaborative culture of translation.

"[1] Setsuko "provided him [Lafcadio Hearn] with new folk narratives to ponder, and he turned from his Creole work to focus on Japanese".