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By John Burnham Schwartz

• Feb. 3, 1991

WANDERING GHOST The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn. By Jonathan Cott. Illustrated. 438 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

One of the more arresting images in literary biography is that of Lafcadio Hearn dressed in a yukata (summer robe), squatting on the veranda of his house in Matsue, Japan, his one good eye fixed on the tranquil universe of a Japanese garden. It is an image made all the more incongruous by Hearn's diminutive size (he stood just over five feet tall) and strange visage -- the left eye sunken and blind from a boyhood accident, the right protruding and myopic -- a decidedly unexpected figure to have become, at the end of his eccentric, fascinating life, the center of a Japanese household and family. When he died in 1904, at the age of 54, he was a Japanese citizen known in his adopted country by two names, Lafcadio Hearn and Koizumi Yakumo.

The road that brought Hearn to Japan 100 years ago was chaotic and often arduous, as filled with torn emotional connections, abrupt departures and struggles with the prevailing social conventions of his day as it was with public recognition of his diverse literary talents -- in some instances, genius -- as journalist, essayist, critic, translator, novelist, letter writer, interpreter of Buddhism and, most remarkably, Arabic and Asian folklorist. He was born in 1850 to a Greek mother and an English-Irish father, both of whom abandoned him before his sixth birthday, leaving him to be raised by unloving relatives in Dublin and strict disciplinarians at different boarding schools.

This was the man, as Jonathan Cott writes in "Wandering Ghost," "who, at various times in his life, found himself destitute, homeless, and sleeping on the streets and alleyways of London, Cincinnati, and New Orleans; who broke social taboos and antimiscegenation laws with his sexual predilection for mulatto and black women; and who gradually developed into a remarkable, disciplined, mostly self-taught bohemian man of letters."

Hearn's literary career began soon after his arrival in America at the age of 19; down on his luck and homeless, he used a review he had written of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" to persuade the editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer to hire him. The occasion marked more than merely the chance to secure a roof over his head: Hearn spent most of the next 20 years working for one newspaper or another, first in Cincinnati and later in New Orleans. From the first his work displayed a lushly descriptive style and a curious, bizarre imagination, and it was not long before he was recognized as a distinctive and innovative voice in journalism. As a reward he was given nearly free reign in his choice of subject matter.

Weighed down by lingering memories of an emotionally disjointed childhood and deep self-consciousness about his strange physical appearance, Hearn had long felt himself a kind of misfit. He now took advantage of his journalistic freedom to write original sketches and editorials chiefly concerned with people and events on the social and psychological margins of society: prostitutes and violent criminals, Creole artists and voodoo practitioners, Buddhists and mystics. He translated such late Romantic French writers as Theophile Gautier and Pierre Loti, reviewed one after another of the books from his increasingly esoteric library and introduced his readers to a wide variety of Indian and Arabic folk tales.

And the newspapers printed every word Hearn wrote. While his editors did nothing to check the often wild and florid prose, neither did they hinder the twists and turns of his idiosyncratic and vibrant imagination. Like Walt Whitman before him, like Hart Crane and Theodore Dreiser, Lafcadio Hearn found that the newspapers, with their predominantly male readership, were free of much of the censorship and social prudery that infected many of the American magazines of the era. Moreover, the newspapers not only printed the full range of Hearn's work, they also indirectly protected him from the rumors and scandal that invariably followed in the wake of his private life. (Only once -- after the revelation of his illegal marriage to Alethea Foley, a mixed-race woman in Cincinnati -- was he forced off the staff of a newspaper; but he was soon hired by another.)

If Hearn is known in the United States today, it is mostly for his writings on Japan. Of the 20 books he published during his lifetime, 12 were concerned in one way or another with his adopted home. (He first arrived in what he called "the land of dreams" in 1890, and he became a citizen in 1896.) It is paradoxical and yet somehow apt that as his literary terrain became more exotic, his writings took on a new simplicity and directness. He fell in love with the ways of old Japan and sought, with his new vocabulary, to grab hold of the essence of a life that seemed to be in the throes of change, right before his eyes. His essays, sketches and letters from this period all reflect this; they seek not the particular so much as the essential heart ( kokoro ) of a place and a people.

Some critics have commented that Hearn's writings on Japan fail to paint a clear picture of the daily life of the period. It is doubtful that the writer himself would have contested the point. He once confessed in a letter that he knew "nothing, for example, about a boat, a house, a farm, an orchard, a watch, a garden. Nothing about what a man ought to do under any possible circumstances."

If the brushstrokes were broad, however, the sensibility behind them was finely tuned, to a degree almost unknown to other Westerners writing about Japan. For Hearn from the start was no mere visitor to Japan but resident, citizen, professor and family man. His daily existence there was, by its very nature, an attempt at interpreting two disparate cultures and a search for some middle ground of human understanding.

More than any other literary form, Hearn found the Japanese folk tale the right vehicle for his efforts. He gathered them by listening to his wife and assorted acquaintances tell traditional stories. In his versions he often transformed them, shaping them for an audience both Western and Eastern and in the process making his own kind of enlightened art. Hearn was a great admirer of Hans Christian Andersen and understood as well as any writer of his day the universal power of the fable and folk tale.

In his introduction, Jonathan Cott, a contributing editor of Rolling Stone and the author of a wide range of books -- including "The Search for Omm Sety," about an Egyptian seer, and "Pipers at the Gates of Dawn," about children's literature -- explains that "Wandering Ghost" began as an anthology of Hearn's work. But it gradually turned into an "informal biographical reader," in which Mr. Cott has attempted to combine an account of Hearn's life with selected excerpts from his writings. Unfortunately the result is an enthusiastic but frustrating hybrid that too often seems to bog down under the weight of its uncertain structure. The story of Hearn's life is compelling, but the narrative suffers here from constantly being patched together with excerpts that not infrequently run to 10 pages or more. In some cases -- particularly the purple prose from Hearn's early newspaper days -- the selections seem poorly chosen, a problem that is not helped by the virtual absence of any serious literary analysis.

Happily, the book becomes more coherent when Hearn arrives in Japan. This is partly because Hearn's writing was stronger during this period of his life, and partly because Mr. Cott's fascination with the mystical and the exotic is almost palpable in his discussion of Hearn's complex relationship with his new country and its sociocultural history. Indeed, at times "Wandering Ghost" seems rather like a personal pilgrimage of some kind for its author -- an exploration of certain facets of his own nature as reflected in Hearn's. Although this may be rewarding for Mr. Cott, it has been 30 years since the last biography of Hearn, and the general reader still searches for a definitive account of that literary life. 'I WONDER IF I COULD DO THAT'

"Omm Sety was an Englishwoman, born in England, who became Egyptian. Lafcadio Hearn, who was born on a Greek island, became Japanese. Yes, I guess I seem to be interested in people who are on continual pilgrimage, looking for their true homes." Jonathan Cott, who lives in New York but travels half the year as a journalist, doing interviews and travel writing, paused briefly to discuss his two recent biographies.

"It's pretty corny, but they both literally were on the road," Mr. Cott said. "Hearn lived with two suitcases in his hand."

A newspaper clipping led Mr. Cott to Omm Sety, and Richard Gere inadvertently led him to Lafcadio Hearn. In 1987 the actor, an old friend, was doing publicity for a movie in Japan and invited Mr. Cott to use his extra plane ticket. On a whim they flew to Matsue, 400 miles west of Tokyo, the site of Hearn's home and of the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum. They were fascinated by what they found. Mr. Cott's immersion course began with the nearly 600 books by and about Hearn in Matsue and continued at libraries in the United States.

Hearn was, Mr. Cott says, a "sensational journalist" who "called himself a civilized nomad. I call Hearn and Omm Sety bohemians.

"I admire those travelers," he went on. "I wonder if I could do that. For better or worse, New York is in my bloodstream. Hearn hated New York; it was the one island in the world he hated." -- EDEN ROSS LIPSON

John Burnham Schwartz is the author of "Bicycle Days," a novel set mostly in Japan.

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Dracula pp 139–156 Cite as

Tourism and Travel in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

• Duncan Light 3  
• First Online: 12 November 2017

704 Accesses

1 Citations

Part of the book series: Palgrave Gothic ((PAGO))

Mobility is a prominent theme in Dracula and this chapter focuses on one aspect of this mobility: tourism. Dracula was written at a time when tourism was a well-established practice in Britain (and a key characteristic of modernity) and consequently, tourism features extensively in the novel. This chapter examines a number of forms of tourism in Dracula: it examines Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania as a form of business tourism; it considers various forms of health/medical tourism (journeys to provide medical assistance to Lucy Westenra); political tourism (the journey to Transylvania to destroy Dracula); and dark tourism (the Harkers’ final journal to Transylvania). The chapter also questions whether it is appropriate to conceptualise Count Dracula’s journey to Britain as a form of tourism.

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Light, D. (2017). Tourism and Travel in Bram Stoker’s Dracula . In: Crișan, MM. (eds) Dracula. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63366-4_8

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Ahmed Yacoubi: The Occidental Tourist

In Paul Bowles’s acclaimed 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky , the primary characters, Port and Kit Moresby, journey through Saharan Africa as if navigating a dissociative dreamscape: the familiar is slightly askew; contemporary and ancient become indistinguishable; Occidental logic slowly slips into hallucinatory detachment.

In 1947 the New York City-born Bowles had taken up residence in Tangier, a city whose exotic allure similarly captivated Francis Bacon, Tennessee Williams, and William S. Burroughs. A polymath composer, writer, and expert translator, Bowles consumed the cultural and psychic landscape of Morocco, delving deep into the country’s hidden recesses. Methodically, he made audio recordings of native tales preserved through the oral tradition, translating them into English from Maghrebi.

Bowles first encountered Ahmed ben Driss el Yacoubi in Fez in 1947. The young Moroccan, born in 1928, was descended from a family that practiced the healing profession of f’qih. Although forbidden by religion from depicting idols, Yacoubi secretly drew figurative images in ink and, in 1948, was introduced to paint by Jane Bowles, Paul’s wife. Yacoubi’s ensuing canvases were colorful, densely abstract compositions packed with energy; heavily layered surfaces were smoothed through a process that Yacoubi likened to alchemical transformation.

With the young Yacoubi under his wing, Paul Bowles wrote to Betty Parsons in 1951 to advocate for “a young Arab painter from Fez, a natural abstractionist, as is to be expected when there has been no tradition in the culture save that of absolute abstraction.” The following year the Betty Parsons Gallery staged an exhibition of Yacoubi’s work, and soon after he made the acquaintance of Peggy Guggenheim, who purchased several of his paintings. Concurrently, Paul Bowles translated several of Yacoubi’s stories into English, including the play The Night Before Thinking , which was eventually published in the Evergreen Review in 1961.

In 1966, Yacoubi departed his native Morocco for New York City, where he painted in a downtown loft. Yacoubi was illiterate; his frequent and enduring correspondence with Bowles was read and transcribed by friends, including a 1979 letter in which Bowles cautiously offers an introduction to Yacoubi’s painting from the perspective of a writer, rather than art critic.

Like Bowles, who had largely escaped his roots to become a permanent expatriate in Tangier, Yacoubi embraced the United States as an artistic catalyst and place of exotic fascination, dying in New York City in 1985 at the age of fifty-seven. Bowles lived until 1999 as both a tremendous presence in the literary landscape and an elusive voice embedded within the ancient rhythms of the human condition.

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Dracula Through a Cultural Lens (Explorations of Xenophobia continued)

In this blog entry, I will be further exploring the themes of racial/ethnic anxieties that are present in Dracula . In addition to Dracula’s quest for English blood, a traditional symbol of ethnic identity, the factors of his aristocratic status, homeland, and his vivacity all contribute to a narrative of the Count as a distinct representation of a foreign invader. I will be using Stephen D. Arata’s article “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization” to analyze the novel.

When Count Dracula is telling his Transylvanian history to Jonathan Harker, he proudly recalls the warriors of his race: “’Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back?’” (Stoker, 36). The Count believes in his people as conquerors who defended their land against foreign invaders with honor, never sacrificing their racial integrity. As Arata points out, Transylvania is known as a nation with a detailed history of ethnic combat, with a variety of peoples, such as the Huns, the Turks, the Slavs, and Germans, all having fought for ownership of the land. Dracula describes himself and his people as Szekely, a race descended from the Huns that laid claim to Transylvania against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages. Despite the collapse of the Szekely empire, Dracula is still proud and convicted in his belief of the superiority of his race over all the other races that have fought over Transylvania.

Arata also notes Dracula’s aristocracy; he is a wealthy figure, and his wealth is derived entirely from his heritage. He is powerful because of his ancestry. This further reinforces the importance of his heritage to his character as a proudly nationalistic nobleman, and adds to the dimension of his power being a product of his history. Dracula is proud of his generational wealth because it is is directly tied to the history of his race, and is a product of the height of his people’s power.

Dracula’s animalistic physiognomy and healthy appearance as he draws more blood are also important to the narrative of Dracula as a foreign invader. Both of these characteristics make Dracula a domineering, aggressive personality. It suggests that he defends his homeland because he believes in his right to it, and believes he and his people should have control over it. He is a vicious aggressor who gains strength from the expansion of his domain. His thirst for blood is a representation of his need for control.

Arata notes the importance of his bloodlust as being directed to London, as “Dracula’s move to London indicates that Great Britain, rather than the Carpathians, is now the scene of these connected struggles” (Arata, 465), these struggles being the wars for racial domination that compose the history of the Transylvanian region. London was a major economic force, seen as the center of the powerful British empire, and would be a worthy domain for Dracula to rule over and expand with his race of vampires.

This leads me to another important symbol in the novel, which is soil. Dracula brings boxes full of “common earth” to England, which I find puzzling outside of the context of the symbolism of soil. Soil, like blood, had become a nationalistic element of identity in the 19 th century. While blood represents a person’s heritage, soil represents the place where their people belong and have a right to. The symbols of blood and soil were adopted by the Nazis in the 1930’s, and are still used in Neo-Nazi rhetoric today. Dracula’s mission in England seems to be to convert English people to vampires by taking away what makes them English, which is their blood. He also wants to bring soil from his homeland to England, to further solidify his ownership of the nation. The connection between blood and soil in Dracula’s objectives strongly suggest that he is a character embodiment of nationalist ideology, whose inherently aggressive tendencies and generational wealth would allow him to expand his race to England and erase their heritage.

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DOT rewards 15 LGUs for top tourism projects

• Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo
• April 16, 2024
• 3 minute read

LOCAL government units (LGUs) in Nueva Vizcaya, Bohol, and Basilan were the top prizewinners of the inaugural Tourism Champions Challenge (TCC) of the Department of Tourism (DOT).

In an awarding ceremony attended by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. at the Philippine International Convention Center on Monday, P20 million each was granted to Ambaguio, Nueva Vizcaya to build its first local paragliding airport terminal; Tubigon, Bohol for the construction of infrastructure at the Enchanted Ilijan (volcanic) Plug; and Isabela City, Basilan for its Lampinigan Jetty Port and Leisure Development Project.

A total of 15 LGUs were heralded TCC winners, whose projects were independently assessed by PriceWaterhouse Coopers from a total of 98 submissions from 98 LGUs. The Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza) provided P180 million in funds for the awards, and an additional P5 million each for the TCC winners, who come from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Indispensable, active partners

In his speech, Marcos Jr. congratulated and thanked the TCC winners. “It is…a reaffirmation of my belief that local governments are our indispensable and active partners in national development.”

He guaranteed national government support “[to] match your industry, equal your dedication, and complement your work. [We] will build more infrastructure, implement tourism-friendly policies, and arouse interest from global audiences.”

In “crowdsourcing” ideas to bring in tourists, Marcos Jr. noted this was how tourism should be developed—“not relying on trickle-down, but built from the ground up.”

Despite the arrival of 5.5 million foreign tourists last year, the Chief Executive enjoined stakeholders to “work harder to make our country stand out amidst a very competitive market,” by building better and more tourism facilities and infrastructure,  “step up our marketing drive, and rev up training. We have to open up more tourism areas so we can have a diversified and a dynamic portfolio that can drive up interest before a wider clientele.”

Other winners

Marcos Jr. noted that what attracts tourists to the country “are certainly the beautiful sites, certainly the fun activities, certainly the great facilities, but the most important part of it is the Filipino, the heart of the Filipino, that we show the love of the Filipino, that we show even strangers who we have never met before, and will no longer meet after they have come here …. So let us highlight not only the beauty of the Philippines, not only the physical wonderment that they will find when they come here, but that warmth, that affection, that love that Filipinos always bring to their relationships.”

Other TCC winners were: (Second place, P15-million prize) Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro’s Mangrove Forest Park Development, Badian’s Toong Spring Nature Park in Cebu, Davao City’s Cultural Peace Hub for Indigenous and Bangsa Communities; (Third place, P10 million) Bolinao’s Silaki Island Community-Based Tourism Project in Pangasinan, Silago’s Ridge to Reef Eco-Experience Project in Southern Leyte, Samal Island’s Mangrove Boardwalk Project in Davao del Norte; (Fourth place, P8 million) San Jose Eco-Tourism Park in Romblon, Victorias City’s Gawahon Ecopark in Negros Occidental, Tagum City’s Enriched Heritage-Tourism Circuit in Davao del Norte; and (Fifth place, P7 million) Socorro’s Naujan Lake Wetland Center in Oriental Mindoro, Panay’s Coastal Resource Experience in Capiz, and San Agustin’s Construction of a Tourist Catwalk in mangrove areas in Surigao del Sur.

For her part, Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco said, “As we gathered to recognize and honor and award our top 15 local government units, we are not just awarding projects but celebrating the spirit of innovation, collaboration and community that drives our tourism sector forward. Let us continue to support and inspire each other as we work together towards making the Philippines a tourism powerhouse. And also and most importantly, a beacon for sustainable and inclusive tourism development.”

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DOT awards winners of Tourism Champions Challenge

T hree local government units (LGUs) will each receive P25 million in funding to support their winning proposed projects as part of a challenge initiated by the Department of Tourism (DOT).

In a ceremony held in Pasay City on Monday, DOT Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco announced the 15 winners of the Tourism Champions Challenge (TCC) are:

First Place:

• Local Paragliding Airport Terminal (Ambaguio, Nueva Vizcaya)
• Volcanic Plug (Tubigon, Bohol)
• Lampinigan Jetty Port and Leisure Development Project (Isabela City, Basilan)

Second Place:

• Mangrove Forest Park Development Project (Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro)
• Badian Toong Spring Nature Park (Badian, Cebu)
• Cultural Peace Hub (Davao City)
• Community-based Project in Sikali Island (Bolinao, Pangasinan)
• Ridge-to-reef Eco-experience Project (Silago, Southern Leyte)
• Mangrove Boardwalk Gallery (Samal, Davao del Norte)
• Eco-tourism Park (San Jose, Romblon)
• Gawahon Ecopark (Victorias City, Negros Occidental)
• Heritage Tourism Circuit (Tagum City, Davao del Norte)

Fifth place:

• Naujan Lake Wetland Center (Socorro, Oriental Mindoro)
• Coastal Resource Experience (Panay, Capiz)
• Tourist Catwalk  (San Agustin, Surigao del Sur)

Launched in April 2023, Frasco said the P180-million TCC was “designed to unleash the potential of cities and municipalities by inviting them to propose innovative tourism infrastructure projects that aim to foster sustainability, inclusivity, and resilience in tourism development, enhancing our local destinations and communities and most importantly, providing added economic opportunity for our communities nationwide”.

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., for his part, congratulated the DOT for the completion of the tourism challenge and announced an additional P5 million funding for the winning projects.

“With this bearing in mind, the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority approved the grant of an additional P5 million for each winner…We are doing this because it is a very, very, good policy,” said Marcos Jr.

“It is also reaffirmation of my belief that LGUs are indispensable and active partners in national development. Be assured that we will match your industry, equal your dedication, and complement your work. The national government will build more infrastructures, implement more tourism-friendly policies, and arouse interest from global audience,” he added.

The TCC Champions will each receive P25 million from the initial prize of P20 million. LGUs that ranked second will be provided with P20 million; third-placers, P15 million; 4th placers, P13 million; and 5th placers, P12 million. —RF, GMA Integrated News

This article DOT awards winners of Tourism Champions Challenge was originally published in GMA News Online .

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Isabela, 2 towns in Luzon, Visayas clinch top prizes in 2024 Tourism Challenge

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

TOP PRIZE. Isabela City, Basilan Mayor Sitti Djalia Turabin-Hataman receives a symbolic check of P20 million from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. after the city government topped the Mindanao category of the Mindanao Tourism Challenge, while Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco and Isabela City Tourism Officer Claudio Ramos III look on.

courtesy of Tourism Undersecretary Myra Paz Valderrosa

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines – President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. awarded Isabela City in Basilan, and the towns of Ambaguio in Nueva Vizcaya, and Tubigon in Bohol for winning the 2024 Tourism Champions Challenge on Monday, April 15.

The three local governments received a P20-million prize each from Marcos and Tourism Secretary Maria Esperanza Christina Frasco at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City.

Isabela clinched the top prize in the Mindanao category, alongside Ambaguio, Nueva Vizcaya in Luzon, and Tubigon, Bohol in the Visayas. They were acknowledged by the Department of Tourism (DOT) for their “exceptional work and commitment” during the 1st Tourism Champions Challenge.

The local government of Isabela won in the Mindanao category for its project proposal dubbed as the “Lampinigan Sands,” which aims to develop infrastructure and transform a jetty port on Lampinigan Island into a leisure and tourism attraction. The objective is to turn the place into an ecotourism zone.

In the Luzon category, Ambaguio, Nueva Vizcaya secured the top prize for its proposed Ambaguio Skyport, which aims to establish the first local paragliding airport terminal in the Philippines.

Tubigon, Bohol emerged victorious in the Visayas category for its proposed development of the “Enchanted Ilijan Plug of Tubigon.”

Other winners in Mindanao include Davao City (2nd place), Island Garden City of Samal (3rd place), Tagum City (4th place), and San Agustin, Surigao del Sur (5th place).

In Luzon, the other winners are Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro (2nd place), Bolinao, Pangasinan (3rd place), San Jose, Romblon (4th place), and Oriental Mindoro (5th place).

More winners in the Visayas are Badian, Cebu (2nd place), Silago, Southern Leyte (3rd place), Victorias City, Negros Occidental (4th place), and Panay, Capiz (5th place).

The competition aimed to empower communities to champion Philippine tourism, carrying the theme, “Tourism infrastructure for greater innovation and new tourism opportunities.”

Fourteen local governments across the country won prizes, with five in Luzon, five in Visayas, and four others in Mindanao.

Local governments that ranked second received P15 million each, while third placers were awarded P10 million each. Fourth placers received P8 million each, and fifth-place winners were given P7 million each.

Marcos announced that the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA), which provided the prizes, approved an additional P5 million for the winners.

DOT regional offices received about 98 project proposals from 90 local governments, all aimed at improving and advancing local tourism spots.

The project proposals were evaluated based on several criteria: resilience, inclusivity, and sustainable development (20%); alignment with the theme (10%); project objectives and their impact on tourism (20%); economic and financial feasibility (20%); sustainability plans (15%); and the quality of presentation (15%). – Rappler.com

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