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ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON AT THE CIVIC RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE GOVERNOR OF SHIMANE PREFECTURE

ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON AT THE CIVIC RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE GOVERNOR OF SHIMANE PREFECTURE AND THE MAYOR OF MATSUE

Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a very special pleasure to have this opportunity to visit Shimane Prefecture and its capital, Matsue, and I want to thank you sincerely for your most hospitable welcome.

I am here to acknowledge the unique association which exists between Ireland and this Prefecture through our shared pride in the life and work of Lafcadio Hearn - Koizumi Yakumo.

No writer before Hearn succeeded so sympathetically and so effectively in communicating a sense of Japanese civilisation, tradition and folklore to the world beyond these shores.  Perhaps no foreign writer since Hearn has won such a place of honour and distinction in the imagination of the people of Japan.

That he was Irish is a source of great pride to me, no-where more so than here in this historic city, where his memory is especially prized.  It is the city in which Lafcadio Hearn began his life of scholarship in Japan; the city in which he began a sustained engagement with all aspects of Japanese civilisation; the city which provided so much of the material for his first great work on this country:  Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.

We know from this book just how enchanted Lafcadio Hearn was with Matsue; with the great beauty of the natural scenery in the Izumo region and with its extraordinary cultural heritage.  One of his most famous essays, which he called "Chief City of the Province of the Gods" is about Matsue: a celebration of a day in the life of the city, beginning with the sounds of the morning and ending with the sun setting over Lake Shinji.

Characteristically, what excited Lafcadio Hearn about Matsue were the ordinary events marking the course of an average day: the booming of the temple bells, the pattering of geta over the Ohashi Bridge, the children in kimonos hurrying to school.  Even the simplest sights touched a chord in his imagination: no event, however small, was without significance either in itself or for the lesson it might contain about Japanese civilisation, tradition and sensibility.

It was this attention to the routines of ordinary life in Japan, together with a sure sense of the underlying currents of Japanese life, of religion, history and customs, which make Lafcadio Hearn's interpretation of Japan so compelling and convincing.  It has also ensured that his works remain relevant down to our own day.

Although Lafcadio Hearn is undoubtedly the most famous Irish person to come to Japan in the wake of the Meiji restoration, his contributions can be seen not only as a writer but also as one part of the wider contribution made by Irish people to the modernisation of Japan at the end of the nineteenth century in areas as different as the development of the roads and the railways, industry and trade, university education and scholarship.  There is a link here, I believe, between these early Irish pioneers and the new generations of Irish people, including those who are living in Shimane, who are now resident in Japan a century later.  It is particularly pleasing that in more recent years the JET programme has enabled Irish people once again to come to know the wonders of this special region.

When my visit to Japan was being planned, I asked that my programme should include Matsue because I wanted to honour not only the memory of Lafcadio Hearn but also to acknowledge your part in this prefecture in preserving that memory for future generations.  This you have done through the sensitive preservation of buildings associated with the writer and through the work of the Yakumo-kai, the Hearn Society which is based here in Matsue.  I am delighted also to welcome the recent inauguration of the Japan-Ireland Society of the San'in and to wish them success in the years ahead in their enterprise of friendship.  I also wish to register the important role played in the promotion of Hearn studies by Hearn's grand-son Toki-san whom I had the pleasure of receiving in Ireland, and his great grand-son, Bon-san (who is here this evening).  All of this endeavour enhances the special bonds of affection between Ireland and Shimane Prefecture which have been established through the great achievement of Lafcadio Hearn.

Tomorrow when I visit Izumo Taisha I will have an opportunity to travel further into the Province of the Gods and also to see something of the "chief city" itself.  I am looking forward greatly to this.  I want, in the meantime, to thank you for your great generosity in allowing me to renew this evening the ties of friendship and co-operation forged through Ireland's historic connections with this prefecture and to convey my warmest good wishes to all the people of this region and to everyone in Japan who takes pride in the name of Koizumi Yakumo - Lafcadio Hearn.