Apropos Hearn's "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," Basil Hall Chamberlain, the Meiji Era Japanologist, wrote: "Never perhaps was scientific accuracy of detail married to such tender and exquisite brilliancy of style."

High praise indeed, since accuracy and style are normally seen as incompatible; science embracing a clinical prose as objective as a lens, while style is the expression of the individual artist. But just how accurate was Hearn's writing?

Seeking an answer, I retraced part of Hearn's trip to Kamakura, as described in "Glimpses."

His rickshaw clattered to Engakuji on a spring day in 1890. Hearn was surprised by the temple's mammoth, two-storied gate. He noted the open-work of pillars and crossbeams, and the bird nests packing the eaves. He captured the gate's essence in observing the maze of beams inviting expectation of carvings of fanciful creatures, although "the majesty of the edifice could not have been strengthened by any such carving."

On my foray, I was unable to establish if the great bell "under a lofty open shed" at the top of a long flight of steps continues "to sob and moan for at least ten minutes" after being struck. The bell is gated, and there was no monk to open the lock.

Hearn also alighted at Kenchoji, whose gate he attributed to the architect of Engakuji's. But in fact these were built 29 years apart by different priests. He mistook the architect but selected fitting epithets -- "colossal, severe, superb."

His rickshaw halted next at En'noji (which he misnames Zen-oji), dedicated to Enma Daio, the god of the Underworld. Hearn climbed to a platform behind the altar. A priest lifted a curtain, and "a face tremendous, menacing, frightful, dull red, as with the redness of heated iron," startled Hearn.

In the temple's dim interior, I asked if the curtain once hid the image.

"It did in Lafcadio Hearn's time," replied a monk. "En'noji had no graveyard and thus few parishioners. It depended upon viewing fees. Theatrics like the curtain-raising drew visitors."

He explained that Enma Daio sits in posthumous judgment of humans, and therefore must judge himself, for Buddhism does not distinguish good from evil in the same way as Christianity.

It was the sort of palaver Hearn relished.

As the priest swung shut the wooden doors, I passed this judgment: Hearn got some details wrong but distilled essences. It was time to judge myself.