Born in 1931, Sukehiro Hirakawa is a doyen of intercultural relations and Professor Emeritus at Tokyo University. Over his long academic career, he has taught in Japan, France, North America, China and Taiwan, and famously, is the Japanese translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Among his extensive writings, is an important contribution to the Cambridge History of Japan (Vol. 5, 1989), analysing the Western impact and the Japanese response. Most recently in English, he has published Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West (2005). This current volume on Lafcadio Hearn complements his earlier work Rediscovering Lafcadio Hearn (1997).