Not simply as an observer, but as a person who participates in the everyday lives of ordinary people and thinks with their thoughts: "A worthy goal would be to create a vivid impression of life in Japan in the soul of the reader." Lafcadio Hearn is a nomad between cultures. His life reads like a book. In Japan, he is an icon. Even in the 1920s, his extensive work resonated greatly in Germany. Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Stefan Zweig praised him enthusiastically. Since then, he has been lost to us. Lafcadio Hearn's empathetic engagement with religion and culture, his travel accounts, his stories, and his poetic sketches reveal to us the secrets of a foreign, ancient, and vanished culture. He died on September 26, 1904; his ashes are in a Buddhist cemetery.