Two articles by authors who I really admire and respect on a topic that sounds very fascinating.
Lafcadio Hearn.
Hearn’s ultra-realist exposés were drenched in the wounded sensibility of a writer with a merciless eye who had Greek myths and Celtic fairy tales in his blood.
The second is by Bruce Sterling.
–Hearn was your basic congenital SF saint-perv, but in a nineteenth century environment. Hearn was, in brief, a rootless oddball with severe personality problems and a pronounced gloating taste for the horrific and bizarre.
From SCIENCE FICTION EYE #6 CATSCAN 6 “Shinkansen”